Killer Shrike

Heh heh. I made pretty much the same comments last week here: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2330&perpage=20&pagenumber=3 and got lambasted for it by Monolith. Glad to see Im not alone in my take on MC.....

If Invulnerability were really really desired in a campaign, I would recommend using the 'Create New Power' rules in FREd. Figure out how much it costs to be Invulnerable to an SFX using Desolid vs Damage Type, and then redefine it as "Invulnerability" with a behavior tailored to the effect desired. So, Desolid, Only to Protect against Limited Form of Attack, 0 End, Persistant gets us close. Then, we will want to "Buy off" the built in "cant affect Physical World" limitation of Desolid; the book indicates that a GM can insist on making people taking Desolid to mimic Invulnerability buy Affects Physical World on everything else or not as they see fit. Im betting most GMs dont, however Ill comprimise with a +1 Advantage to accomplish this half way between buying it off and not buying it off. Usually with Desolid you have to define a SFX that will affect the character, but we can skip that with our version because this form of Desolid is explicit rather than implicit; in other words ALL other SFX hurt the character normally EXCEPT the one the Invulnerability is bought against. Cost Power END 60 Invulnerability: Desolidification , Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2), Buy off Cant affect Physical World (+1) (120 Active Points); Only To Protect Against Limited Type Of Attack (-1) Power Cost: 60 OK, so we define Invulnerability: 60 Invulnerability: Custom Power (60 Active Points) Constant, Self Only, 0 END Persistent [Notes: A character with this Power is immune to the direct effects of any Power directed against him with a Specific tightly defined SFX, whether that effect would be beneficial or not. This includes any of the characters own powers which are not Self Only or Sensory in nature; thus Instant powers such as Aid and Healing cannot be used on oneself unless specifically limited to Self Only if they are of a SFX covered by the Invulnerability.] This compares well to 75% Resitant Dmg Reduction for PD or ED, which is more generally broadbased, but doesnt stop all damage, and Invulnerability will protect vs some powers that dont fall under Dmg Reduction because they dont deal in pure damage. A character with this power would be Invulnerable to a single tight SFX. Thus 'Mutant powers' may or may not be tight enough depending on how prevalent mutants are in a campaign setting; similarly 'Magic' is rather broad and will not be tight enough in a Magic-heavy campaign but would be fair in a campaign where Magic was rarer. See below for more on this. For example, the Marvel hero Collossus is Invulnerable to Magic (for all intents and purposes); Magic is fairly uncommon in the Marvel universe (it comes up, but is relatively Uncommon) so this is acceptibly tight in that setting. An Invulnerable Character still takes Knockback normally and Invulnerability does not provide protection from Knockback damage unless the SFX of the Invulnerability covers Impact damage or Knockback damage (Invulnerability to Knockback Damage, 60 Active Points, Nonpersistant (-1/2), Activation 14- (-1/2), 30 real cost). Characters that want to represent a complete nullification of effects by a SFX to include not being affected by Knockback should buy Knockback Resistance Linked to thier Invulnerability. A few Modifiers might be specifically appropriate to Invulnerable. Scope: The broadness of the SFX defined should have an effect on the cost of the power. A reasonably tight single SFX should represent a SFX that approximately 10-15% of the potential opposition possess within the campaign as whole. Thus, SFX: Heat/Fire, SFX: Radiation, SFX: Magnetism are all tight single SFX in most supers campaigns but SFX: Mental or SFX: Mutant Powers are usually not as they cover a broader range of powers/abilites unless mutants or mental powers are abnormally scarce. Similarly Invulnerability to "My Brothers Mutant Powers" is much more specific and should be less expensive. To affect a broader or more narrow SFX use the following chart: Scope Modifier Vs. a tight SFX and a single specific Individual with that SFX -2 Vs. a tight SFX and a Small Group (family, fellow test subjects) with that SFX -1 1/2 Vs. a broad SFX and a single specific Individual with that SFX -1 1/2 Vs. a broad SFX and a Small Group (family, fellow test subjects) with that SFX -1 Vs. a tight SFX and a Group (race of people or a large sub-race) with that SFX -1 Vs. a broad SFX and a Group (race of people or a large sub-race) with that SFX -1/2 broad SFX (appoximately 25% prevalent) +1/2 very broad SFX (appoximately 50% prevalent) +1 extremely broad SFX (appoximately 75% prevalent) +1 1/2 encompassingly broad SFX (appoximately 100% prevalent) +2 For example, SFX:"Blunt" or "Impact" (however you want to phrase it) would be a SFX that stops, among other things (including Knockback and falling damage), STR based damage; practically EVERYTHING can do this type of damage in HEROs, so this is an Encompassingly Broad SFX (+2) and costs 180 points. {Off hand, that seems fair to me for the magnitude of such a power.} However, SFX:"Slashing/Piercing" or "Edged" (again, semantic of choice) damage is a tighter SFX; maybe 50% to 75% of the opposition will have a piercing/slashing weapon (including projectile weapons). In most supers, with an emphasis on non-lethal I would go with 50%, but in a Fantasy or Dark Champs setting 75%. Thus this would cost 120 to 150 points depending on setting. Thus, in a normal supers campaign with more non-lethal attacks, it would cost 300 points to be Invulnerable to Blunt and Edged Damage which is pretty encompassing. Points wise it is equivalent to 100 PD Hardened x4 Armor. SFX:"All Energy" is similar to "Edged", but reversed. In most supers campaigns many enemies will have Energy attacks, whereas in Fantasy or Dark Champs, etc they will be less prevalent; therefore 75% in supers, 50% in more realistic settings where EBs and RKAs vs ED are less common. Thus this Invulnerability would cost 150 points in a Champs game. To be Mr. Invulnerable with no offsetting Limitations would therefore cost 450 points in most Champsion games, granting across the board protection from Physical and Energy attacks regardless of source. If that character applied even a single Limitation such as Visible to all 3 forms of Invulnerable detailed above, it would cost 360 points, and when combined with Nonpersistent (-1/2) comes in at 257 points, leaving almost 100 points for Strength Linked to Invulnerable and sundry other abilities in a 350 point starting game. SFX: All Superhuman Powers (ie anything bought as a non-FOCI/item based superhuman ability built using the Powers rules) is obviously a +2 Scope. However, it is important to note that Invulnerability only protects against affects that apply effect or damage directly, and not the secondary benefits of such powers. Thus an opponent with Density Increase or Strength bought as a Power has great strength, and when striking with strength damage would still affect a character with this type of Invulnerability. So for example, Collossus's strength-based strike, Wolverine's Claws (bought as SFX: metal claws, not SFX: mutant power), and Cyclops shooting a tree branch overhead to fall upon such a character would all do damage as normal, but all direct Power Attacks such as Storm's lightning Bolts, Psylockes Psi-blade, or Leech's Power Suppress would fail to affect a character with this Encompassing SFX Invulnerability. As a secondary example, someone with Invulnerability to all Mutant Powers (depending on campaign, ususally either Very Broad, 120 pts or Broad, 90 pts) in the same situation would also be immune to Storm, Psylocke, and Leech since all of those characters are using Mutant Powers, but would not be safe from the Human Torch's Nova Blast because that does not have a Mutant Power SFX; the character with the Invulnerability to all Superhuman Powers would be completely safe from it. Hulled: If a Character or Vehicle's Invulnerability stems from a protective outer skin or outer layer and thier insides do not benefit from any sort of Invulnerability, having only any normal defences, then that is roughly equivalent to a mild form of Restrainable and is worth a -1/4 Limitation. Any attack, including some Conforming AoEs (such as gas clouds and similar), some Change Environments, and some Indirects which can circumvent the Invulnerable Hull are applied normally, ignoring the Invulnerability. Further, some circumstances may circumvent the Invulnerability for all attacks outright, for example an Invulnerable Hulled Vehicle with an open door would lose the benefit of its Invulnerability to an attack that was able to exploit such an opening, typically with a -2 to hit or with a Called Shot if using Hit Locations. Finally, opponents that have successfully Grabbed an Invulnerable character or Vehicle may strike at openings in the Hull with the usual penalties for Grabbing while keeping a hand free if they can reasonably reach those openings. For most characters, as opposed to Vehicles, openings in thier 'Hull' would include thier eyes, nostrils, ears, mouth, and other bodily orifices at the GMs discretion. Weakness Some Invulnerable Characters have a specific exclusion clause to thier Invulnerability. For some, it is a literal location on thier body (an Achille's Heel), for others its a specific material (such as Baldur and Mistletoe or Superman and Kryptonite), and for still others its more abstracted. If a character has a single location on thier body that is not protected by thier Invulnerability, this can be best represented by using a process similar to the Focus rules. The spot may be either Obvious or Inobvious, and either Accessible or Inaccessible. It is usually appropriate to also take either a Vulnerability or Susceptibility (or both) revolving around the Weakness to depict a truly serious frailty. An Inobvious Inaccessible Weakness is a -0 Limitation; it represents a Weakness which is neither apparent or exploitable in combat and is not limiting enough to gain points from. Such a Weakness basically serves as a flavorful character hook or as an enabler for a larger concept; for example a character with such a Weakness may take a Physical Limitation that occurs if the Weakness is exploited as Infrequent or something similar. An Obvious Inaccessible Weakness is worth -1/4; it represents a part of the characters body that is noticably unprotected or vulnerable, such as thier eyes perhaps, but which is generally difficult or impossible to target in combat; suprise attacks or attacking the character while they are incapacitated will do the job; this form of Weakness can be used to represent a character that must concentrate to maintain thier Invulnerability, like Captain Britain for example, and when caught by suprise or incapacitated are as vulnerable as anyone else (aside from any other defenses they may have). An Inobvious Accessible weakness is worth -1/2; it represents a Weakness which is not obvious or apparent but which can be targeted in combat to circumvent the Invulnerability. There are two basic types of Inobvious Accessible Weaknesses, Locations and Materials. Location Weaknesses are a place on the body of a character which is not protected by the Invulnerability; an opponent that knows about the locations may take a -2 OCV on attack rolls if not using Hit Locations, or may make a called shot if using Hit Locations to target this area and if successful will completely bypass the characters Invulnerability. Material Weaknesses represent an Invulnerability which does not affect a specific type of material such as alluminum, silver, or wood; a weapon constructed of that material (even a makeshift weapon) will always circumvent the Invulnerability. Superman's weakness to Kryptonite or the Norse god Baldur's weakness to mistletoe are examples of this type of Weakness (Material), as is the classic Achille's Heel (location). An Obvious Accessible Weakness is worth -1; it represents a weakness which is both clearly identifiable and exploitable in combat. By taking a -2 OCV to thier attack rolls or by making a called shot if using Hit Locations, opponents can circumvent the characters Invulnerability entirely. Such a weakness is rare, but examples include the classic Power Suit\Super Body Armor without a Helmet or face mask. Some existing Modifiers might behave in interesting ways with this power. Some of them are listed below: Affects Desolidified: Though derived from Desolid, Invulnerability is now a seperate power and is not affected by powers with this Advantage. Area of Effect: Normally this has no bearing on Invulnerability, but Areas of Effect that are bought Conforming do have an effect on Hulled Invulnerability. A Conforming attack treats a Hull as a wall, but may at the GMs discretion seep into any breaches or openings in a Hull circumventing the Invulnerability and having its normal (or a reduced) effect. For a character with a Hulled Invulnerability, this might indicate a poison gas or a fire ball which gets into his respiratory system even though his skin is unharmed. Armor Piercing: AP has no effect vs a character Invulnerable to the SFX of the AP attack. AVLD: AVLD has no effect vs a character Invulnerable to the SFX of the AVLD attack. Invulnerable is not a 'Defense' per se and thus cannot be defined as the targeted Defense of an AVLD attack. BOECV: If the Invulnerability applies to the SFX of the BOECV attack, then the BOECV attack has not effect. Inherent: Invulnerability can be bought Inherent. Indirect: Normally Inderect is immaterial to Invulnerability, but can interact with Invulnerability if the Hulled Limitation is taken with Invulnerability. If an Indirect Attack is bought in such a way to circumvent a targets 'outer layer', or which indicate a particularly accurate form of attack which is 'guided' then as circumstances indicate Indirect of this sort will allow the circumvention of Hulled Invulnerability. Often the Invulnerable character can take steps to minimize this flaw by closing any breaches in thier Hull but at the GMs discretion a suitable Indirect attack may continue to exploit this weakness by taking an appropriate penalty to thier attack roll ranging from -2 OCV up even if the Invulnerable character is attempting to prevent it. NND: NND has no effect vs a character Invulnerable to the SFX of the NND attack. Invulnerable is not a 'Normal Defense' per se and thus is not circumvented by an NND attack if the SFX of the NND Attack is covered by the SFX of the Invulnerability. Penetrating: Penetrating has no effect vs a character Invulnerable to the SFX of the Penetrating attack. Personal Immunity: This Advantage may be taken on Invulnerability, although it is a limited use case. This would allow a character to affect themselves with a targeted beneficial effect if the SFX of the Invulnerability would normally prevent it. The primary use for this would be if a character had an Aid or Healing Power not bought Self Only which had a SFX covered by thier own Invulnerability. Usable On Others: This can be applied normally to Invulnerability. However, some duration or other means of ending the effect should be defined as normal for a 0 END Constant Power. Variable Special Effects: At the GMs discretion, this Advantage may be allowed to represent an Invulnerability which may be 'fine tuned'. However, this could be very powerful and should be considered a STOP sign ability. Ablative: This is not appropriate to Invulnerability; a better way to represent an "Ablative" Invulnerability is using either a Burnout Activation or Charges. Activation: Activation Rolls are appropriate to Invulnerability, particularly with either the Jammed or Burnout rules. Burnout particularly could be used to model an "Ablative" coating. Charges: In general, since Invulnerable is already a 0 END Constant power, Charges are inefficient. However, they can be taken with Invulnerable if desired, and is another method that can be used to represent an 'Ablative' coating or even a '9 Lives' effect. However, the Fuel option should not be allowed, or at least treated as a Yield sign power. Boostable Charges have no relevance to Invulnerability. Nonpersistant: This can be taken with Invulnerability, and can also be combined with Concentration, Costs Endurance only to ACtivate, Increased Endurance, and Extra Time to represent a kind of Invulnerability that takes some effort to 'turn on', and when combined with Visible may indicate some kind of Armorskin or a metamorphosis into some more durable form. FOCI: Foci works normally with Invulnerability unless the Weakness modifier is also taken on Invulnerability. A GM should carely examine an Invulnerability with both FOCI and Weakness to ensure that they are 2 seperate issues and not a 'double dip'. Typically a FOCI will benefit from whatever Invulnerabilities it grants. Thus an Amulet of Fire Prevention which grants Invulnerability to Fire would itself be immune to fire damage. This is open to GM's interpretation however, particularly in the case of a Fragile FOCI. Gradual Effect: This is not appropriate for Invulnerability. OIHID: This Limitation is appropriate to Invulnerable, but see Visible below and Nonpersistent above. Restrainable: This is not normally appropriate to Invulnerability; see Weakness instead. Visible: Much like Armor, Visible Invulnerability takes the form of some outward indication that the target is particularly resistant to harm. Unlike Armor, the visual appearance should give a very strong clue of the appropriate types of damage the Invulnerable character is resistant to. Thus someone with Visible Invulnerability to fire may have red skin and constantly flaming hair as a SFX. Someone with a Visible Invulnerable to Mental may have an effect apparent to any with Mental Awareness such as a specific aura or a constant mental static surrounding them. The net effect is anyone possessing a power of the SFX that the Invulnerable character is protected from should be able to 'guess' thier Invulnerability by making an Intelligence check, PER Roll, Power Skill check, or even automatically as the GM decides before deciding to attack them.

Hi Steve, I read the FAQ and consulted FREd but couldnt find the answer. When granting a Power which is UBO 0 END Persistant 0 Range: Q: What is the limit to the duration that the recipient may keep the power, and does it need to be predefined when granting the power or can it be terminated at any time by the granting character? Q: Is the 'maximum range' that the recipient may travel from the granter and still keep the power equal to AP x 5 even though the Power is 0 Range? Q: If someone Suppresses or Dispels the power on the granter, what happens to the recipient(s)? Q: If someone Suppresses or Dispels the power on a recipient, what happens to the granter and any other recipient(s)? Thanx!

Dont have book but IIRC I dont think you can put FW in a MP. Even if you can, I would think that yes, switching the slot out would nullify the effect. Also, I dont think FW is an Attack per se and therefore couldnt be combined with a MPA. Even if you can however, it would be applied LAST, as per the MPA rules relating to effects which would diminish the opponents defenses.

Martial Arts: well the important thing to keep in mind is that 'Martial Arts' is a broad category and represents more than just Oriental arts such as Karate and Kung Fu. It also represents Boxing, Wrestling, and also just plain Scrapping {er--thats an American slang term for down and dirty bare-knuckled fighting; a "scrapper" is some one who may not have any formalized training in a fighting style, but still knows how to get into a fight and mix it up; its synonymous with Brawling). You can also use Ranged Martial Arts to represent Lasso's and whips which are fairly common in the Old West setting. So it would not be unusual to see a character with a 'Barfighting' style for example, with a few manuevers like Martial Block (Ain't Happening), Martial Strike (Jab), Offensive Strike (Roundhouse), Martial Throw (Get out of here!), Takedown (Dog-pile), Martial Grab (Let's Dance), and a Club Weapon Element (for barstools and bottles). I highly recommend you get the Ultimate Martial Artist, which contains a plethora of rules and examples on the subject. The important point to remember is that in HEROs Martial Arts <> Asian fighting styles. Its much much bigger than that. Munchkin: Well, it really depends on the point level of the campaign and how good the PCs are compared to the opposition. Remember, Equal OCV and Equal DCV cancel out; they scale together in other words. So if the PCs have an average OCV of 8 and the villains have an average DCV of 8 then its not really much different than if the PCs had and OCV of 3 and the villains had a DCV of 3. The percentage to hit with a basic attack is the same. So, all you have to do as the GM is eyeball the average OCV/DCV of the PCs and then for each villain decide: is this guy hard to hit, easy to hit, or average to hit; should he be able to hit often, average, or rarely and then arrange thier OCV and DCV levels accordingly using any of the methods available to so. As an aside, a character with a 20 DEX has spent 30 character points, gaining +4/+4 OCV/DCV and also gaining a point of SPEED which normally costs 10 points. To seperate the side effect of SPEED out, subtract the 10 points it would take to buy the SPEED seperately from the 30 character points; so we are dealing with 20 character points for and OCV DCV of 7/7. A character with a 10 DEX that spends 20 points on Combat Levels cant get close to a global +4/+4 OCV/DCV. Even spending 30 points they cant get it. However, if the character only needed to be good with 1 attack, he could buy +2 DCV levels for 10 pts and +5 OCV w/ 1 Attack for 10 pts or +10 OCV w/ 1 Attack for 20 pts. Combat Levels have other uses, but for raising OCV/DCV across the board DEX is far more efficient than CSLs until you hit Normal Characteristic Maxima. Another main consideration is that if a character has better defenses, DCV doesnt matter as much and they will do better with CSLs, if they dont have good defenses then DCV is much more important and DEX will be better. CSLs are more immediate so impatient players might end up with lots of them where as the more patient will buy thier DEX and see slightly longer term pay offs. At an average of 3 Exp per session, it takes 3 sessions to see the +1/+1 gain from DEX, where as a person buying 3 point tight group levels will see an immediate +1 CV gain each week, but only for his tight group. If in your example the characters have an average DEX of 18, it will always be more efficient for a character to spend 6 points to bump that up to a 20 than to buy CSLs. This unfortunately leads to characters in a shooty campaign that all tend to have stats that more or less look like 15 STR, 20 DEX, 18 CON, 15 BODY, 10 INT, 10 EGO, 15 PRE, 14 COM, 8 PD, 4 ED, 4 SPD, 7 REC, 36 END, 40 STUN. To counter that out however, another character might buy +3 OCV with Pistol or +2 OCV with Called shots to the Head (5 pt Ranged, -1/2 Lim) for the same 6 points. Basically, for starting players, I might recommend that you keep things simple. DEX is much easier to calculate because it is static. Therefore, you may want to encourage players to only take a couple of CSLs to start with. If the group then encounters villains that they cant hit, they will actively try to raise thier OCV levels with experience. If they themselves always get hit, they will actively try to raise thier DCV or defenses. This gives an opportunity for growth. They can put the rest of the points saved into some background skills, which are a little harder to explain away in-game than combat levels because its an assumption of the genre that early experience in battle leads to greater capability in battle fairly quickly; the baptism of fire concept is built into the RPG paradigm. Another tip to help you and your new play group learn to deal with CSLs is to get index cards for each player (we usually call them 3"x5" cards in America but I have no idea what you would call them in a country on the metric sytem ), or slips of paper will do in a pinch. With a bold marker write down 1 CSL per Character per Card. Thus if a character had 3 All Combat levels, you would end up with 3 cards with +1 All Combat written on them. Now, take two other cards for each player and turn them 90 degrees on edge so that the short side is up and write across the top of 1 OCV: {Base OCV} and across the top of the other DCV: {Base DCV}. Each player puts the OCV and DCV cards in front of them on the playing table. Each Phase they may allocate their CSLs as they see fit and as appropriate to the action taken between OCV and DCV, physically stacking the cards on their base OCV or base DCV card to represent how they are assigning these levels. Characters with Martial Manuevers or which frequently use one of the Basic Manuevers which has modifiers should take 2 cards for each Manuever and write down the Manuever across the top and the OCV and DCV modifiers of the manuever each to a seperate card; if they have 2 pt OCV levels that only apply to a single Manuever they shoul sum them together on the Manuever's OCV card rather than have them on seperate cards to simplify things. Finally, the GM takes a pile of cards and just writes down a few modifiers, several cards each for the most common such as +1, -1, +2,-2,1/2 DCV,0 OCV. In play, whenever the GM assesses a modifier for circumstances or a PC tries to do a Move By at Non Combat Speed or is Grabbed, etc, the GM can toss the appropriate cards onto the pile appropriate to the character. This method takes a few minutes of arts-and-crafts time and a little bit of paper shuffling in game, but makes it very easy to count OCV and DCV and not get confused about what levels are assigned where. Ive found it to be both a great teaching tool and even a game speeder in the past. Once the players get used to sorting it all out, they become very proficient at dialing in thier CSLs and Manuevers. Some people have found it to be a decision making aid even; by framing thier modifiers in such a visual fashion, they realize which courses of action are more likely to succeed or fail statistically and act accordingly.

Grindstone: Solomon Cain-Nelson, step brother to Professor M the famed mystic master, was with his step father Ryan 'Arkansas' Nelson and his weakling step brother Charles when they found an ancient crypt in the Sudan, containing fascinating artifacts including a very strange apparatus that looked like a stone exoskeleton. Solomon stepped into the exoskeleton causing 4things to happen; 1st the trapped crypt collapsed upon him, killing him instantly, 2nd the collapse also crushed his step father to death, 3rd the exoskeleton conformed magically to his body, permanantly bonding itself with him and 4th crushed another artifact which released a powerful extraplanar entity called Dabu from a trap it had been caught in for several Millenia. Solomon was stuck below the rubble for a decade and believed dead. However, somehow the magic of the strange armor animated the corpse or arrested the release of Solomons soul. The armor grants the Undead Solomon great strength and seemingly complete invulnerability, and the ability to curl into a wheel-like posture so as to inexorably roll forward head over heel. No force on Earth has yet proved strong enough to keep the menace called the Grindstone from rolling forward. Grindstone's immunity extends to Mental attacks, but being a mystical entity, he is vulnerable to magical effects. He is quite possibly unkillable; concerted effort of many heros and expensive containment equipment has been able to capture and imprison him for short periods of time, but he always escapes in the end. He believes that his step brother caused the collapse of the crypt all those years ago and pursues a vendetta against him in between making money as a super criminal for hire. (Solomon Grundy + Juggernaught) Professor M: Charles Nelson was the son of famed archeologist and adventurer Ryan 'Arkansas' Nelson. Charles was always frail and sickly, taking after his mother a noted researcher and cataloger, who died when he was only 5. Ryan dragged his dissapointing son from dig to dig, and eventually remarried when Charles was 16. His new wife, Shannon Cain, had the seeming of an angel but in reality was a cold manipulator who was only after Ryan's estate. As luck would have it she was killed by a booby trap on a dig in the lower Nile basin, leaving Ryan straddled with 2 kids he didnt know how to take care of. Though Shannon's son Solomon was not his own, Ryan tended to favor the fearless, impetuous, and physically-oriented Solomon over the bookish, often ill Charles. A year later Ryan got a tip about a lost tomb or crypt somewhere in the Sudan rumored to have great treasure, so off they went to find it. They found the crypt, but the impetuous Solomon set off a trap which collapsed the structure and struck Ryan dead. Charles had remained outside the crypt due to his allergies (and general cowardice). When the crypt collapsed, a mystical entity known as Dabu, a Lord of Order, was released from a dimensional trap it had been caught in for 3 millenia. Weakened by its long imprisonment, Dabu entered the weak body of the only human within 50 miles, that of Charles, and partially possessed him. Dabu used some of his magical powers to enhance the weak form of the boy sufficiently to escape the hinterlands for more civilized locales. Charles inherited his father's considerable estate, and under Dabu's urgings retired to an extended mansion located near Syracuse NY that Ryan had won in a high stakes poker game many years before. There Dabu harbored its energies and practiced its arts through its mortal host until after a decade it had accumulated sufficient strength to return to the other planes. However, blessed with a scholarly intellect and an Edetic Memory, and altered forever by his association with such a powerful entity, Charles possessed mystic knowledge far surpassing that of most other Earthly magi, and the power to weild it. Fortunately, the kind hearted Charles decided to use his power for good, and in fact soon set up a private school on the grounds of his Syracuse estate and began finding children with mystic capability or talent and arranging for them to be sent to his school where he also teaches them the use of thier arcane abilities. Later he formed some of his older students and outsiders with more developed mystic powers into the Unearthly M-Men to counter the threat posed to the world by Magnifico the Master of Mysticism and his Fraternity of (Evil) Magi. Professor M is perhaps the most powerful magic user on Earth overall, though other individuals exceed his capabilities in specific fashions. For example, Magnifico is less poweral over all than Professor M, but his control over offensive magical force exceeds that shown by the largely pacifistic Professor M. (Professor X + Dr Fate)

Baring official indication, why not the Over-the-Horizoner or the Aloofer or the Exceeder Im partial to 'The DUDE' myself. Imagine this scenario: "So, The DUDE snaps his fingers and all heroes and villains from all realities are instantly transported to DUDE-Space; a explanation-defying alternate Multiverse completely under the control of The DUDE. Bad Guys got Skins, Good Guys got Shirts; you all have to work together to beat up on the Bad Guys to score Power Play Bonus points and win The Game of The DUDE! The DUDE is downsizing the Omniverse, and the top performers in The Game of The DUDE will make the layoff cut, and the others get pink slips. You obviously dont want to get laid off from this job, cause there wont be another one out there after The DUDE liquidates 98% of all planes of existance to make a new 'coherent' reality spectrum. Ok, now FIGHT!" Bonus points to the GM that can shoe-horn a Cosmic Geometric Shape into the mix. Also, if this proves to be even marginally viable commercially, there will be a sequel even more contrived than the original! We promise!

To fix it fast, open up the HTML file in Notepad, then Find and Replace !SPAN STYLE='font-family:Symbol;mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Symbol'>!SPAN STYLE='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Symbol'> with !SPAN STYLE='font-family:Symbol;mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Symbol'> (Again, Im switching the "<" for !) If you arent on a version of Windows with Find & Replace built into Notepad, Wordpad will work as well.

For some reason, span tags for various mathematical symbols are doubled up. Snippet begins below Active Cost: 86 for Astral Form, (Vampire character total ¸2.5) + 12 for dimension-travelling Duplicate Below I replace the leading "<" with a ! so that it will not render as HTML. !P>Active Cost: 86 for Astral Form, (Vampire character total !SPANSTYLE='font-family:Symbol;mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Symbol'>!SPANSTYLE='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Symbol'>¸2.5) + 12 for dimension-travelling Duplicate !/P>The same thing happens early on the page under the Disadvantage Torpor, but because its in a table cell the SPAN is squelched by the closing of the cell.

For a jaunt into the Sophomoric, how about a linked Flash vs Smell. This whole concept is just too much to bear. Im going to go sulk in the corner until you people stop proliferating my favorite msg boards with smut and toilet humor !

Im familiar with the flying heads (the ones with trailing entrails? Hopping Vampires IIRC?) but badgers with spectacularly super-useful scrotums had some how escaped my notice

This is interesting. Can you post the URL when youve got it set up? Thanx....

Take Instant Change so he can wear his scrotum as a hat? Uh...I meant robe..... Im just at loss what you would want to use such a ....entity...for in a game?

Hey, its like a Haymaker reunion in here. Ok, ok, quit twisting my arm already; Ill read it!

I got almost all the way to the bottom not believing that no one took a Village People swipe at it; until near the end: "This Issue: Revenge of the Village People!"

RE: Combat Levels If it helps, think about it this way: 2 normal people with a 2 Speed and an 8 in all thier Primary Characteristics including DEX both have an OCV and a DCV of 3 each; we will call them A-Man and B-Man. Since an attack roll is 11 + OCV - opponents DCV, basically whenever 2 opponents are evenly matched they both have an 11 or less (11-) chance to hit each other which isnt really 50% (its 62.5% actually), but in HEROs serves as a proxy for roughly half the time. Because of the 12.5% difference inherent in this, characters have a tendency to succeed when all else is equal in the HERO System, which you must admit is rather heroic. As a total aside, here is a decent dice method site that a Google search turned up that might help you visualize the probabilities more as you mention some d20 experience: http://www.darkshire.org/~jhkim/rpg/systemdesign/dice-methods.html Back to the point, since equivalently skilled opponents are always at an 11- to hit one another with a basic Strike or basic Power attack, you can see why some way to add a little variation to this needs to exist. If A-Man wants to increase his ability to hit B-Man, he is in luck; the HERO System offers a wide variety of ways to do this. His options include (but are not necessarily limited to) the following: 1) Increase his Dexterity. This has many many beneficial side effects: every 3 character points increases what in other games is called "initiative", allowing him to act before B-Man; every 9 character points raises both his OCV & DCV by 1 each making him both more able to connect and less likely to be connected with in combat; and every 30 character points also increases his SPEED by 1, allowing him to take more actions than B-Man AND staggering his Actions across the Speed chart which enables him to act sooner in a Turn as well. If A-Man put 15 character points into DEX (+5 DEX), he would have 13 DEX, and a base OCV/DCV of 4, 1 better than previously. Further, his SPEED will figure as 2.3 rather than 1.8, so the 2 points he applied to SPEED to bump it to a 2 make that a 2.5 figured; for 5 more character points he can have a 3 SPEED. Lets go ahead and spend those 5 points. A-Man is a 3 SPEED 13 DEX 4OCV/4DCV character now. Fighting B-Man, he would get an extra action, hit 74% of the time, and get hit 50% of the time. By holding his Segment 4 action he could Dodge B-Man's segment 6 action, getting hit only 16% of the time, attack in 8, and dodge again in 12. He has a significant advantage over B-Man even with just a +1/+1 difference in OCV/DCV and an extra action. Of course, B-Man may have put 20 points into Defenses, canceling out some of the advantage, but you get the idea. 2) Buy Martial Arts Manuevers. This isnt a sure thing, but many Martial Manuevers have positive OCV and/or DCV bonuses. By being discriminating, A-Man could increase both his chance to hit B-Man and the amount of Damage he does, and even widen the range of his abilities for not very many points. The minimum buy-in for Martial Manuevers is 10 character points, but this is easy to acheive. Fast Strike (+2/+0, STR+2d6 damage; from the Ultimate Martial Artist {a highly recommended product by the way}), Martial Dodge, and Martial Block are 3 excellent choices, giving very efficient OCV/DCV bonuses for thier cost; add on a Knowledge Skill: Martial Art of Choice for 3 points and you have a nice compact little Martial Artist who is fairly decent (for a normal). Martial Manuevers are what you can think of as "point efficient", meaning you can often get a little bit more effect for your points by taking a Martial Manuever than you could by building the same effect seperately. I dont have my book handy, but IIRC Martial Block, Martial Dodge, and Fast Strike are all 4 point Manuevers, so with a 3 point KS: Martial Artist skill thats 15 character points. If A-Man bought that and put 5 points into STR, when fighting B-Man he could Martial Block on Phase 6 with a +2/+2 IIRC, blocking B-Man 83% of the time, and then strike 1st (a feature of Block) in Phase 12 with Fast Strike (+2/+0), again hitting 83% of the time, or 50% if B-Man Dodges, and doing 4.5d6 damage for an average of around 15 or 16 points of normal damage (which will knock B-Man out after 2 average hits or 1 good hit, and will stun him each hit). If B-Man does manages to hit him with his 8 STR, inflicting 5 normal damage on average with 1.5d6, A-Mans increased Strength also translates into +1 PD, +3 Stun, and +1 REC so he is somewhat more able to absorb that damage. Alternately, instead of +5 STR, A-Man could have bought +1 DEX for 3 character points and +2 PD for example, which would probably allow him to sucker punch B-Man in segement 6, stunning him on an average roll, and then drop him in 12. 3) Buy Combat Skill Levels (CSLs). Combat Skill Levels reflect a general competence with fighting and as you know come in many varieties. The more expensive CSLs are efficient in a direct proportion to how overall effective and well rounded a character is. It does little good for a dedicated ranged character with low HtH attacks and low defenses to by All Combat levels for example; its a waste of points usually. Similarly, a dedicated ground pounder who lacks ranged attacks might chuck a car or two occasionally depending on the genre, but generally All Combat Levels are less efficient than buying more 5 point HtH or 3 point tight group levels. Generally speaking and in my opinion, characters for whom 8 point CSLs are the most efficient levels are rare; usually a character that has enough HtH and Ranged abilities to want the flexibility of CSLs also has enough other skills and/or abilities to pay 2 more points (10 total) and get the all-mighty OVERALL levels (listed under Skill Levels not Combat Skill Levels) which are just like All Combat levels except that for 2 points more they apply to all skills AND Find Weakness for those fortunate enough to have it (according to the FAQ). Personally, I'm a big fan of dedicated DCV levels, but your mileage might vary; afterall 10 character points will buy +2 DCV, 9 character points will buy +3 Dex which give +1 OCV +1 DCV 1/3 of another point of SPEED and the ability to act sooner in a segment. Typically, if I have Normal Characteristic Maxima on a character I go for DCV levels; else I go for more DEX. If you dont have a lot of attack powers or Martial Manuevers, 2 point +1 OCV with Strike is usually good enough, mixed with maybe a few 3 point levels here and there. So if A-Man took +1 DCV for 5 character points, and +5 with (Block, Strike, Disarm) for 15 character points for 20 character points total and went off to fight B-Man, he would hit with a Strike 98% (!) of the time if B-Man does not Dodge, or 83% of the time if he does. By contrast, he will be struck 50 % of the time if he does not Block or Dodge. 4) Get an area of effect attack. Normally not an option in a Heroic campaign (aside from grenades), this allows a person to strike at a hex (a roughly 6.5 foot or 3 meter diameter area essentially) rather than at a person; this is vs DCV 3 at range and vs DCV 0 adjacent. This cancels an opponent's CSLs, and Martial Manuevers outright. To a certain extent it also cancels an opponents DEX, but using the Dive for Cover manuever, an opponent who is able to Abort to Dive for Cover uses thier DEX to resolve whether they get out of the way or not and thus a high DEX will still play a roll vs AoE attacks. If A-Man bought a +4d6 Hand Attack AoE: 1 hex (+1/2) 0 END (+1/2) HA (-1/2) OIF (Universal): Fighting Staff (-1/2) for 20 Base Cost x ((+1/2) + (+1/2)) = 40 Active Points / ((+1/2) + (+1/2)) = 20 Real Cost {SFX= he swings the staff in wide horizontal swaths, bisecting a hex}, he would hit B-Man (DCV 0 vs an Adjacent Hex) 90% of the time and do enough damage to stagger him on average each hit. The general idea Im trying to get across is that you shouldnt get too hung up on CSLs in and of themselves; rather understand the basic concept of OCV and DCV modifiers in general, and also understand how OCV and DCV relate to each other. Basically, if my OCV is 3 more levels than your DCV, Ill hit you 90% of the time; if your DCV is 5 higher than my OCV Ill miss 90% of the time. Thus, the to hit favors the attacker, but to balance that out the Defender has the active options of Abort to a Dodge, Block, Dive for Cover, or a Roll with the Punch to minimize my chance to hit, avoid damage outright by either effectively contesting a roll with me, or by moving out of the way, or by minimizing the damage inflicted by a successful hit, or the passive option of increasing thier Defenses so that attacks do little or no damage. Because of this a person with a 8 OCV/5 DCV in HtH is slightly better off than a person with a 5 OCV/8 DCV in HtH. They will hit each other the same percentage of times normally, but if the 8/5 dodges to become an 8/8 the 5/8 will connect only 25% of the time, while if the 5/8 dodges to become a 5/11 the 8/5 will connect the same 25% of the time BUT if the 8/5 person aborts to a Block, he will Block the 5/8 persons attacks 90% of the time preventing all damage while the 5/8 person will only block successfully 25% of the time. In Heroic level games, I find that a decent Dex of around 15-18, with a couple of 2pt +1 OCV levels with my most common attack, an Overall Skill Level if I can squeeze it, about 15-20 points of well-chosen Martial Arts, 2 Range Penalty levels, and a 4 Speed is usually comes in under 75 points and forms a very capable core functionality. If I have points left over, season with Characteristics and background skills; Ill often buy a few 1 point Familiararities for an 8- roll and then pay the 2pts per to buy them out with the first few nights experience points; that way usually by the time I need to use the skill I am actually proficient with it and can then apply my Overall Skill level. If the GM is nit picky and wants a rationale, i can usually play it off as 'all the action we've been going through have emphasized practical application and has catalyzed years of accumulated knowledge into a cohesive whole' or spin it off of some in-game effect. Most GMs are just happy to see a character with off-beat skills and dont make a big fuss over it. What Im getting at, is that the most effective way to improve a characters overall combat capability vis-a-vis the OCV/DCV scale is to mix and match elements such as Martial Arts, DEX, CSLs and occasionally AoE attacks rather than focus on any one of them overly much. YMMV. Welcome to HEROs!

Seekers got no use for Solitaire; a Shiela hanging off his arm would only cramp his chick-magnetism. Great White Ninja's pull serious tail, dontchaknow -- women love that "I'm a Martial Artist" mystique.

Hey Bob; I still remember your works from Haymaker so it was cool to see you get an official product in print, but I assure you auld lang syne did not predispose me to give a good review. It really is a great product.

Who you calling Poindexter? Besides, humor has no place on these boards, Smacky! :| Seriously though, the new UMA is a quality product, although the organization of information always baffles me when I flip through it. I have old Ninja HERO, and a lot of the material is still pretty much the same, but it has plenty of cool new stuff as well. As far as the new Ninja HERO, I bought it, but only because I buy everything HEROs puts out to support the company and encourage the local game store to continue stocking HEROs products. I actually just glanced through it, so I cant comment on it. Same with Star HERO and Terran Empire, actually, although a cursory pass thru of both was very interesting and they seem like excellent products. I was dissapointed with Champions on first examination (its very lowest-common denominator) but on further appraisal Ive actually come to like it very much (its very thorough). I hadnt realized how much of the Supers genre I take for granted is foreign to many players. Its proved to be a fabulous resource. Champions Universe is pretty good, CKC is excellent, and Millenium City is really cool. Im not terribly fond of the Bestiary; the art particularly is a real turn off. When I get around to doing a Fantasy campaign in 5th ed Im sure it will come in handy, but currently it doesnt see much use. The Ultimate Vehicle is really really cool. Its saved me a LOT of time already. The Motorcycle and Armored Car entries in particular have seen many permutations. I like the minimalist approach it takes to vehicles; its much easier to use than some other Vehicle books write ups Ive seen in other systems.

Re: Crosshair Collie Hehe sounds fun, and plus it had an obscure New Universe reference (The White Event), earning the post bonus geek points. Let us know how it turns out. The good news is Seeker might actually be able to beat Nighthawk, but Im particularly interested in how Ironclad vs Obsidian pans out. Whose going to fight the Jaguar guy thought? Kinetik?

As an aside, since your main thrust seems to be finding a way to handle crafting Magic Items in a Fantasy campaign, I though I might share a method Ive used to good effect. In the past in a Fantasy setting using the HERO System I ruled that "Ephemeral Magic Items", meaning FOCI with Non Recoverable Charges and the SFX: Magic, could be paid for with money rather than character points because, as you point out, it is retarded for any Mage/Wizard/Whatever to burn Character Points to create Scrolls, Potions, and other such items; there is no percentage in it. IIRC the monetary cost used was Real Cost x Active Cost in gold to make and the Market Price would be a 150% markup or more, which was very very expensive relative to the game economy, and of course modified by in character (In-C) bartering and applicable skill rolls and/or use of PRE. Non ephemeral items were paid for in points (for the mechanic) AND money (the in-game materials and labor (P&L will cost you in any timeframe)). The same cost formulae was used for P&L IIRC. As far as points go, a Wizard paid points and money to make items unless the item was commisioned, in which case the commisioning party paid the points and the money. This helped take the burden off a Wizard getting hit up by all of his PC friends to make items for them; they had to pay the points AND whatever monetary cost the Wizard set as his price for P&L (and profit should he see fit). As an important note, all Magic Items were required to take the Universal FOCI and IND limitation, and acquired magic item were essentially 'found points' but were also unalterable. These items could also be sold for money; most merchants would pay RC x AC or trade at 125-150% markup, modified up or down by bartering In-C, applicable skill rolls and/or use of PRE. Some items always sold at a premium however, and were strictly a sellers market, like Rings of Power, some powerful Staffs, or any beneficial item with 200 or more Active Points (which would be regarded as near-artifacts) and would sell at top dollar in a big enough market, and even more powerful items were effectively priceless and would sell for whatever the market could bear. Private buyers usually would buy at a higher rate, but were usually harder to find. Some bigger metropolitan cities would have 1 or more Consignment Agents and/or an Auction House which could be used to find potential buyers at a higher rate, but which would of course take a percentage cut or some other renumeration.

I never argued that the controller of the VPP couldnt use Powers on Continuing Charges and have them stick around for him. What Ive argued is your assertion that you could create 'magic items' with Continuing Charges and hand them out to others. Putting powers into an item which is usable from a VPP and can be distributed is using the FOCI rules to allow others to use the powers and that is what I have been illustrating to you as not working quite as you seem to think. If you make a power like: Flight X" 1 Continuing Charge (1 Day), then YOU as the controller of the VPP could use it and it would last 1 Day BUT no one else could use it. IF you wanted to distribute the ability to use this ability to others you cound either buy it Usable By Others for +1/4, likely with Persistent (+1/2) so LOS is waived, OR buy it as a Universal Focus OR, if you want to retain control over the use of the power, Usabel as Attack. Of the 3 options UBO and FOCI are the most likely modifiers, so lets take a look at those. With the UBO option (which is an advantage youll note), you CAN switch the points of the Flight power out of the VPP and the Continuing Charge will still stay active and the recipient of the power can continue to use it at thier discretion. WIth the FOCI route, (which is a limitation youll note) if the Focus is defined Universal than anyone can use the power but you dont have any control at all over the item once it leaves your possession; further being a Focus you cant loan it out and switch the points out of the VPP in accordance to the VPP/Foci rules. What you cant do is make a Universal Focus, loan it out of the VPP on a Continuing Charge and then swap the points out of the VPP. RE: Steep Price: If you dont care about the costs involved, then go ahead and piss points away. I wouldnt put all my eggs into 1 'reasonably common means to deactivate' basket but its your character. RE: Reasonably Common means of deactivating: If you think throwing something into Mount Doom is 'Reasonably Common' I begin to see where some of the problem might lay in this being abused. Unless there's a Mount Doom on every other street corner in your campaign then, yeah, its going to be hard to shut down a bunch of 20 base point effects bought through long lasting Continuing Charges defined as destroyable by being cast into Mount Doom.

Cool. Thanks for the catch. Thus, it is even more ridiculously expensive to have a 1 century Contin Charge.

Check this ruling for more info: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2723

Never mind; found it: DP7, Displaced Paranormals, from the ill-fated New Universe ala Marvel early 80s. A Jim Shooter enterprise, it suffered an unmerciful lynching after not quite 3 years. The Character I was thinking of was 'Antibody': http://marvunapp.com/Appendix/rndobi.htm whos powers consisted of: [/i] O'Brien is able to create multiple negative-image versions of himself out of an unknown substance dubbed "psychoplasm". These duplicates can fly, become solid or immaterial at will, and are as strong as their human original. Although they lack vocal apparatus, they can confer their experiences upon living beings by touching them and willing such an information-transfer. The number of Anti-bodies O'Brien can manifest at one time is unknown. Each Anti-Body develops its own personality, apparently based on some facet of O'Brien's personality. Each of them, once created, are capable of independent activity, and respond to O'Brien's verbal or mental commands to varying degrees. The Anti-Bodies apparently need to rest inside O'Brien's body for at least an hour every 24 hours or else their psychoplasm begins to deteriorate (an Anti-Body once spent 78 hours out of O'Brien's body before totally dissipating). The demoses of his Anti-Bodies apparently has no physical effects on O'Brien. O'Brien is able to prevent Anti-Bodies from re-entering his body through hypnosis, as he did when one of his Anti-Bodies went rogue. Initially, O'Brien believed he had only one Anti-Body, but later discovered he could create up to five at a time. Later still, he learnt he could create any number of Anti-Bodies, and enter their bodies, taking on their physical appearance. O'Brien is presently unable to remove the Anti-Body he resides in, due to a blast of "Pitt juice". Within the Anti-Body, he possesses the same powers as any other Anti-Body, except the ability to become intangible. Also, any additional Anti-Bodies he creates are only one foot in height. [/i] And now we all know