Killer Shrike

If you're the GM and those are your terms, then the players who agree to play in your game are opting in. As long as, in the end, people have fun, there's no harm. Part of the GM's job is to be a quality filter on what makes it into play. If you feel like the best way you can provide that level of quality is to fully own the character creation process, and you have players who don't mind then it is a non issue. Personally, I prefer to start new players with an array of pre-gens to choose from, which is an even more extreme form of what you are talking about here. Saves time and allows getting into the action right away with characters intentionally designed to be relevant to the setting, reliable at their shtick, and to be interesting in some way. This is one of the reasons I write up a bunch of "Iconics" for my various settings; not only do they help me build out the setting, and demonstrate the range of possibilities as archetypes, and provide benchmarks for stats, they also serve as potential starting pre-gens for players to choose from. Later, after some trust has built up, if the player wants to make their own character and put the time in to do it then I'll work with them through some number of rounds of back and forth. They submit their character, I make some tweaks and bat it back for acceptance or negotiation. My main concern is that the character make sense within the setting (lore, power level, etc) and equally important be distinct from the other PC's in the campaign. Every now and then, a player submits a character that is 100% in line with the setting and campaign and is mechanically clean and free of exploits or problematic mechanics. But it is definitely the exception. :) Back in the day I would sit with each player in person and help them make their character, but it was a huge time sink, and in the grand scheme of things not really any more successful than the approach I settled into over the years. As my available free time shrank over the years, I began to optimize for trying to make every face to face session focused on actual play as much as possible. Dinking around with a character build with a given player...some of that is unavoidable and will happen if necessary, I but I really prefer for it to be handled between sessions via email or direct 1:1 communication and not at the table. So, tl;dr: if it works for you and your group, then more power to you.

If you are going that route, you might use a custom variant of Offensive Strike, adding a must follow element ("must follow stealth roll"). Slap a couple of other maneuvers together into a "Backstabber" martial art package (etc) and you are fine.

The 5th edition book The Ultimate Skill has an Everydemon skill list on page 45, under the heading "EVERYMONSTER SKILLS".

I agree with the core premise that a computer user is not a computer programmer. As to the designer's original intent, to be fair when the rules were written computers were much less pervasive in everyday life, most interactions were via command line / terminal as GUI's weren't much of a thing, and to even use one required some basic technical knowledge. It was not yet consumer grade technology. It has been a long while since I ran a sci fi setting, but the last time I did I split it into two skills, Computer Usage and Computer Programming with a great deal of expanded granularity including a detailed list of modifiers,hacking rules, and a more realistic means of determining how long it should take to make new non-trivial software. http://www.killershrike.com/MetaCyber/MetaCyber_Technology_ComputerUsage.aspx http://www.killershrike.com/MetaCyber/MetaCyber_Technology_ComputerProgramming.aspx It was written in the 5e era and has some content specific to the setting's version of virtual reality, but is generally reusable for 5e or 6e if you just trim away the setting specific bit. I also took a stab at generic-ising real world programming languages, to avoid having to use real-world IP mentions in gaming content; so for example "Enoch" and "Enoch Plus" are obvious stand ins for C and C++. I made this list a long time ago, and if I were to revisit it I would update it to include more recent trends, particularly the encroachment of FP and FP-influenced languages, but it would just be embellishment: http://www.killershrike.com/MetaCyber/MetaCyber_Technology_ComputerProgramming_Languages.aspx In the model I put forth, a character with a high computer programming skill is good at fundamentals, theory, and practice, but they also need one or more computer language skills to actually apply that skill and take penalties when forced to program in a programming language they don't know.

You'd probably find that many of the characters from Here There Be Monsters would work within an MHI campaign. https://www.herogames.com/forums/forum/89-topics/ http://www.killershrike.com/HereThereBeMonsters/Concept.aspx

You might consider using Summon for Homing attacks...something like this character's "Lamplighters"

True story, my father was a country music DJ and MC and I met a lot of the genre icons of the 70's and 80's as I got dragged to a lot of concerts and festivals and hung around back stage while my father worked / MC'd; some of them even came to dinner at our house. One of the ones I met was KR, and I told him that I really liked his music (which was true); he laughed. Later, one of his people came back around and gave me a Kenny Rogers Fan Club box, in which was various curios and a belt buckle that looked like this:

So, given the givens of the current state of reality, I think it is probably best to postpone face to face sessions until things have returned to normal. If social distancing becomes the new normal for more than a couple weeks I'll look into getting an online virtual table top type of solution going. In the meantime, I've been chipping away at adding more meat to the Cortex Plus Heroic port. I did more character writeups , more Ability Trait writeups, and filled in the details on how dice pools are formed, how plot points work, and so on. In days to come I'll be porting over setting content, vignettes, npcs / monsters, and so forth. It might be of interest to some of you, and of course feedback is welcome. Obviously, I hope all of you & your families are well. Stay healthy and safe!

Scything and I unexpectedly can't be there tomorrow; my daughter came home from school today not feeling well and just started puking all over the place. It may or may not be contagious, but no reason to risk it. Sorry for the late notice, I was psyched to wrap up the arc, but that's how it goes when you are a parent.

It depends entirely on the setting of the campaign and the tone that I am going for. In a "realistic", lower pointed setting I do tend to use fringe benefits of this variety...particularly in a "modern" setting modeling something similar to "the real world". In a less realistic setting (such as supers) I don't because most of the time if I'm doing that sort of fantastical set up the focus is not on mundane things and too much granularity just pours grit into the gears. However, most importantly, if I do require characters to pay CP for things I try my best to make it matter in-game. I actively do not like "concept tax" abilities and avoid them when possible and try to make them matter at least once over the course of the campaign to pay for themselves. If, at the end of a campaign, I look over the player characters' sheets and see points spent that they never got to apply in some way over the course of the campaign, then something sub-optimal occurred -- either the player didn't incorporate such abilities into their portrayal of the character and make it matter or I as the GM didn't provide opportunities to make them matter, or a little bit of both. If such things also happen to be perks (or whatever) that I made players take out of some pro forma obligation then it is even worse. So, I make a conscious effort to make points spent on abilities matter commensurately to their cost and if I feel like that isn't going to happen, I'm not adverse to making adjustments to the pricing of certain things to discount them or to offer some other compensatory offset elsewhere on the character. I'll grant perks and similar things as story awards. I'll restructure contacts that aren't working out. I'll bundle fluff skills into some form that is costed based on benefit. Etc. I tune things as the campaign progresses in an active attempt to reach / maintain an equitable equilibrium.

Starting to do the bump on the character files heading into Act 3 of Arc 4. Accepted versions of Joey, Jack, and Murgy are up, and proposals for @Steve / Beretta; @King Red / Killroy w/ Weaponmaster [Firearms], and @WilyQ / Drew are proffered. I will update this post as final versions shape up and are accepted.

Placeholder: because I've been too busy to keep the adventure log up to date but intended to back fill it with at least a summary if / when time allows.

Bring it, and if it proves unnecessary oh well oh well.

Excellent. FYI: I'm not printing out or bringing PC character sheets this week, as there have been no changes. Hopefully everyone held on to their copy from last session.

I like the term "oddmongers" and fully intend to shamelessly appropriate it.

Is everyone else available for tomorrow or do we need to reschedule?

FYI, the campaign details continue in the Clubs section of the forums.... Here There Be Monsters - Be At Ease, Hunters Campaign

I'm planning to run on Saturday. I'll get the event calendar updated, etc later today. Buried by work right now...end of sprint.

There is a Minuteman Robot write up in the 5th edition Champions Universe book / pdf, page 145.

Ok, so here are my thoughts: 1) Normally if 1 player can't make it I prefer to still meet and work around it. 2) If two or more can't make it, I make a judgement call based upon where the the characters of the missing players are at narratively and whether or not their absence can be worked around without causing more trouble than it is worth. 3) However, currently the team is in a critical place where I actually want everyone at the table. Particularly considering we just spent an entire episode / session jumping thru the necessary hoops to get the team back together in a way that avoided a deus ex machina. 4) Unfortunately due to the holidays the current "action" has gotten stretched out in real world time over the course of a couple of calendar months and I feel like it has sucked away the urgency / emotional impact of the stakes involved for the characters. In the game world, the stakes are quite high, time is of the essence, and the situation is quite dire. In the real world, it may be hard for some of us at the end of January to remember and / or care about stuff that happened in November and to still feel the anxiety and engagement I hope was present when the current leg of the adventure unspooled. Now, real life presents us with challenges to all being in the same place at the same time and I get it. Work is important. Family is important. Shit happens, and when push comes to shove meeting to play a game or indulge a hobby is obviously of lower priority. However, I feel like we have a good thing going with this group and I at least am having fun with the campaign and would like for us to find a way to move past all of the recent disruption and continue. So...here's what I want to happen and then we can discuss if we all agree and if we can make it happen: I want us to all be present for the next session, which will hopefully be Feb 8, and for us to all make an attempt to re-engage with the in-game narrative and try to get back into the headspace of feeling trepidation for the characters and caring about what's going to happen next. For my part, I will take a beat at the beginning of the session to reframe the scene and do my best to sink the hook for all of you. If some of us are at a point where we need to take a step back from the campaign and focus on other things, or if we are tired of the campaign and don't want to continue that's ok too...I just ask that we all be transparent about where our heads are at.

Evenstar flares on disk of night...I fall, R'lyeh rises to full height... Hidden shapes in cyclopean vaults...surge forth from schismatic faults... That is not dead which can eternal lie...and with strange aeons even death may die...