Daryl

Re: Character Brainstorming I like "Prodigal" but I'm biased--had a character by that name. And I couldn't come up with any powers that had anything to do with his name, either. For poetic justice, and tie-in to the son-who-returns theme, the nemesis has to be the son who stayed behind. If not a biological son of the Kingpin/Fu Manchu guy, then the spiritual heir, the kid who's been a loyal soldier and who thinks of the Boss as a father. So what's the big deal with this new kid, just because he's got the boss's DNA, he's going to come in and take the throne that should be mine? F--- that! Sorry. Channeling the Sopranos for a minute there. One other idea for logo/schtick/theme: the hero could take on a name that honors his adoptive father (who was killed by the Boss, natch). Sort of along the lines of how later writers decided that Daredevil took his name from his dad's boxing nickname. So what name would that be, you ask? Uh.... Okay, here's a suggestion from page 12 of the Charleton Comics Writer's Guide from 1952: Take any manly, honorable profession (mechanic, judge, short-order cook). Take a common tool of that profession and use it as main weapon (wrench, gavel, spatula). Use tool as name (The Wrench, The Gavel, The Spatula). Add catchphrase: "I fix crime.", "Guilty as charged.", "Order up!") The costume draws itself. See? Easy. --d

Re: I made the GM cry.... Years ago, in the first game I GM'd for my wife, she made me cry. And I'm a better GM for it. So there we were, young geek introducing wife to this strange hobby he had in high school and college. I helped her write up a woman, "Telly," who owns her own trucking business, who suddenly develops telekinetic powers. So, I start off with a simple, timeworn scenario -- she's at the bank when a robbery takes place. You know, just something to get her feet wet. So... The supervillain comes in, tells everyone to get on the floor. Telly the telekinetic gets on the floor. The supervillain takes all the money, and leaves. Telly up and goes home, thankful nobody got hurt. I'm flabbergasted. "How could you not attack? You can do, like, 12 dice of damage!" She just shakes her head. She'd never played an RPG, never read comics, and was completely immune to all the superhero cliches that I knew and loved. "Why would Telly do that?" she said. I'd been playing with hardcore powergamers for so long, I'd forgotten what real roleplaying was about. Gradually I figured out that I had to provide real motivation for her character, not just present her with set pieces and have her follow the dictates of the genre. --d

Re: Villian Planning Session Wait-- ChuckG and I overlapped. I like what he said.

Re: Villian Planning Session

Re: Villian Planning Session By leaving the computer there, by the time someone realizes something has happened to the computer, it is far too late. Stealing the computer or physically destroying the computer draws attention to it. Why not just walk in as the tech guy, swap computers, and walk out?

Krypto-Nitey Night Sorry if this has been mentioned and I missed it, but another staple of the genre is the power-robbing villain/object. Warn GMs that players hate this and that it can go badly -- especially if they feel like the GM is punishing the heroes for being effective. However, it does reward players for buying skills.

Gremlin A friend of mine ran a villain character named Gremlin: Duplication, shrinking, and gadget pool. If your computer or power armor had these gremlins, you knew what a day was. --d

Thanks everybody. Especially to VG and LL: VG, because the Area Affect Damage Shield seems to me like the way to go; and to his Lordship, who went the extra mile to look up the legality in the FAQ. --d

Anyone playing in my Teamups game should stop reading now. All clear? Okay, this one has me stumped. I want to build a bad guy with psychic backlash -- you do pain to him, and that pain comes back to you in the form of an ego attack. This should work for any kind of attack -- energy, physical, mental -- but only ones that cause pain (wouldn't work against knockout gas, say). It should work for HTH as well as ranged combat, but the attacker would have to be in line of sight for the backlash to work. It should also work for all attacks hitting in a phase. Finally, it's uncontrolled -- the bad guy can't stop the backlash. This has elements of absorption, missile reflection, and damage shield, but none of those really describe what I'm after. So how would you build it? Thanks for any ideas. --d

Thanks for soliciting opinions, Keith. I'm not a fantasy gamer, but I am interested in maps for other genres (anything modern, really). I didn't buy Battlegrounds because there weren't electronic versions of the maps. What I most want from electronic maps are these features (in order of importance): 1. Scalable (PostScript, like you already mentioned, or even better, PDF). 2. Editable: individual elements can be selected and modified in Adobe Illustrator or similar package. It's not helpful if the object is all one path. 3. Broken into 8.5x11 sections that can easily be stitched together when printed or copy and pasted into larger formats 4. In color (just because they would be printed in the books in black and white doesn't mean we have to forego color in the files). --d

Yes! I couldn't remember the name of the book until you'd said it, but that's where I first remember seeing the power called that. Was that the first use of the term? It's so wide-spread now that "castling" was either in the air before that comic (some SF story, maybe), or picked up since then. --d

Hmmm. I like that. I'll have to figure out the cost. --d

Well, there' s already precedent for multiple characters splitting the cost of a base, vehicle, or automaton, so you could use those rules. I'm not familiar with Psion, but if the construct is like an automaton, with no STUN, etc., then you could even use the same pricing rules. If Psion is flesh and bone, then perhaps you use the rules for duplication, which are similar. I'd allow the same splitting as for vehicles. The only weird part is that any particular instance of the "vehicle" only has as many active points as the number of people who call him -- but that could be a disadvanatage on the vehicle, not a limitation on the powers of the people who call him. --d

This is why it's got to be Usable as an attack -- the King may want to castle, but the rook may not, or the rook may be unconscious -- as in Bob's Trading Places power (thanks for pointing that out, Bob, I hadn't seen it). My only nit is that as a GM I don't think I'd allow Only to Trade Spaces to be the same limitation as T-Port's already established, and more limiting, Only to Fixed Location (-1). I don't think I'd allow DigitalGolem's idea of having one of the two T-Ports as Side Effect, because that's getting an advantage for a limitation's discount. Sometimes it'll be a huge advantage to switch places (Yikes! I'm surrounded by Mechanons! *castle*) The place where I'm choking, is -- how to assess an attack on a rook that may be out of sight and across the world? In Bob's Trading Spaces attack, the rook has to be LOS and within 15", so normal attack mods apply. It seems like it's a Fixed Target, Will Always Hit -- something usually not allowable in Hero. Do we have to make the Attack Port based on ECV, plus global Mindscan, only 1 Mind? Fabulously expensive. Any ideas on just the attack part of the problem?

Well, I was hoping somebody would dive into the details and find a cheaper, yet still legal way to do this. Here's what I came up with. First, you get some base teleportation. Since she wants to teleport over short distances and long, she's got to buy it twice, once with Megascale, as JmOz suggested above. Put this in a multipower with each slot ultra'd, then put 1 charge on the base pool of the multipower, since the whole multi can only be used once. She can port to one Fixed Location. The description says explicitly that this can be a person. So that costs 1 extra point. Can only teleport to fixed locations is -1 or -1/2, and Fred says that if the character has _only_ fixed locations, not floating fixed, then it's worth -1. Each self port is is linked to the Teleport vs. her partner (-1/2, because "self port" is the lesser power). And what about that T-port vs Partner? She has to buy teleportation two more times (short distance and megascale), with the fixed location and charge limitation as in the self port. Plus, she has to buy Usable as Attack (+1), because she wants to do it even when the other character is unconscious (and maybe unwilling). Add on ranged (+1/2), and Linked to lesser power (-1/4). One question, though: how to "attack" that other partner, across megascale distances, and have a chance to hit? The two characters in question have mind link, so we could use Based on ECV. If there was no mind link, I suppose she could buy Mind Scan, only for that Mind. Are there other ways to do this? I suppose she could put all four of these teleports in one multipower, then apply 2 charges to the pool, and one charge to each slot. (Have to look up if that's legal in 5th ed.) Anyway, you see what I mean. It's pretty expensive. Anyone have any more ideas?