Grailknight

Really? Because worse than this is happening in Mexico today, and arguably has occurred in the United States as recently as a few decades ago.

Now you've given me all these images of Clark as Zorro in his alter ego. He just needs to borrow Comet.

Public outrage is a strong motivator for even the most corrupt government and law officers and a campaign to stop a violent crime wave will have an effect on criminals not directly involved. So yes, drawing too much attention by public terror tactics will be frowned upon by your peers. Said peers tend to deal with problems with Punisher style solutions.

The Deep Cover perk has many aspects of what you want. Buying it and wealth in tandem should cover it .

Contagion and Cataclysm are good plots to work into a campaign. No Man's Land required some large scale suspension of my beliefs but can be used if the other two plots are still ongoing.

Contagion plots-Spread of the disease, Search for the Cure, Attempts to break quarrantine by normals AND villains. Attempts to steal, horde or destroy the cure. New heroes and villains appear.

Cataclysm plots-Should occur just as Contagion is almost under control, Relief efforts stymied by quarrantine, Disease flares up again, Lack of power and utilities causes anarchy. Riot prevention, putting down neighborhood warlords and protecting remaining and incoming resources.

No Man's Land plots- Disease mutates into multiple strains and everyone is a carrier, quarrantine enforced with draconian measures but stops short of nuclear options, relief efforts break down into airdrops that cause riots, shadowy government and corporate facilites begin to infiltrate. monstrous villains and heroes appear . villain organizations set up bases.

And said crime boss will be quietly retired by his peers. That type escalation will attract too much heat, even from the most corrupt officials and media. It's bad for everyone's business.

There's a simple fix for this. Make the problematic CHAR linked skills into general skills. That way, all skills are 2 pts and 1 pt/+1. You can do the same with perception and start everyone at 11- as a campaign rule.

This does penalize some archetypes that rely heavily on skills but you can also use it as another way to highlight the exceptionalism of PC's and major NPC's.  Make the above rule the default for Normals only. Now your absent-minded scientist or overly focused doctor makes more sense in game terms. They had to tight focus their studies to get to the point that the natural genius PC's get to intuitively. 

Superman loses, and is in situations where it's credible he could lose.  Sure against the average street thug or even against 90%+ of the villians he isn't even close to needing to kill.  But against those who actually challenge him he STILL doesn't go lethal.  This is even though those who can possibly defeat him are orders of magnitude more dangerous than the others.  If anyone who could take down Superman did, who would stop them afterwards?  How many would they kill before they were defeated?

Superman is following the law, even though it may put him at risk. He can't be sure that the villain may not have a magic or kryptonite weapon or trap prepared for him or know that they may be powerful enough to beat him outright. If it's fine for Superman to kill rather than risk losing, then how low is the lethal force bar set for Wonder Woman, Captain America, Spiderman or Batman? How low is it for the regular police? If it's ok "whenever i'm at risk of defeat" then the villain population will be in serious decline.

Your argument doesn't even apply to real life. In the case of the Boston bombing, the police took the second brother alive. Yes, the thermographics showed he didn't have a gun, but he could have been wearing a plastique vest and they couldn't get a visual until they were right on top of him. Did they snipe him or commando raid the boat? No. They took a chance, after evacuating the civilians, and rushed him and cuffed him. I hope he gets the death penalty and wish that the law allowed for execution by hitting him with a frag grenade and watching him bleed out, but i'm entirely behind taking him into custody for trial. That's how the law works. 

Heroes take risks, that's why they're considered heroes.

No.  I'm pretty sure that we should make up our own stats*, and delete such things as PRE and INT.  I really don't recall anyone suggesting Einstein was any good at Bugging, Disguise or Survival.  Maybe he was, but that is not the point: the point is that 'Smart dos not equal Practical' and a lot of Intellect skills are practical, at least in practice.

 

Linking skills to characteristics is always going to cause appalling contradictions.  

 

Let's get rid of characteristics.

 

 

 

* Mna mnu malu: I don't actually mean make up characteristics, I mean you can build with skill levels and the skill levels apply to, well, whatever you like.  that defines how your combination of physical, mental and emotional innate abilities actually manifest in your abilities.  In effect you ARE making up characteristics, but you are doing it on a VERY individual basis.  I don't know: a 3 point skill level gives you +1 with 3 skills, 5 points gives you =1 with 6 skills, a 10 point level gives you =1 will the lot.

A lot of that is already in the system. Most of the skills have a general option in HD that divorces them from CHAR. There needs to be a repricing of the adds to those skills though, so that the CHAR option is not the only affordable way to build a Character.

This is my biggest problem with comics today, too much love for the villains shown by the writers.

Superman, just like most policemen, avoids using deadly force to capture villains. He can do it almost anytime because his powers give him options policemen and most heros don't have. It's not his fault that the legal system in his universe refuses to execute murderers and can't build a prison to hold the insane.

Superman is obeying the law and not setting himself up as judge, jury and executioner.

The Punisher starts from the premise that the law is ineffectual at all times. He executes criminals because, in his view, its the only way to see justice done. Except there are many instances in his world where criminals do go to jail, they are sentenced according to the law and people do get the death penalty.

So Punisher is a criminal because he doesn't try to work within the law.

The Punisher's villains are disposable though. All are faceless mobsters for the most part. Not so with Superman. His villains have become as iconic as he is. Killing them off would require the writers to invent newer villains who wouldn't sell as well.

This wouldn't be a problem under Silver and Bronze age morality but  too many writers want to use Iron Age tactics for the villains but restrict the heroes to earlier standards. Much of the Iron Age came about because of the shock value of villains with high body count and the revenge fantasy of killer heroes but it also came through independent publishers who had throwaway villains not the Big Two publishers.

They didn't do good Iron Age plots until they did mini-series such as Kingdom Come and Squadron Supreme that showed the downsides of superheroes taking over. Because that's what breaking the default CvK logically leads to, heroes becoming government operatives or becoming the government.

Any security can be cracked. The problem with this scenario is that it assumes that someone has undetected physical access to your base. Spying is the least of your problems.

You misunderstand, sir. I'm saying that the strange device provides its own wireless connection. Any physical switches would be irrelevant.

I think we're both assuming something about the other's builds.

In the case of our base.

The security and science computers are all wired in a closed system. There are no USB or media card ports and no Wifi hardware installed on them.  These computers are able to be manually connected to a buffer server  which can connect to an io computer which does have access to the outside world. The buffer server can connect to only one of the computers at a time unless there are 3 team members present to flip switches while turning keys. There are CD and DVD drives.

There is a separate system for recreation use  but it's not WIFI. All the team tablets and laptops have built in aircards and we have cell towers on the property.

Honestly I think this is an unfair comparison.  Castle is a skilled normal.  Superman is like unto a god.  Punsiher may open with deadly force, but he almost has no alternative given that he's nearly always outnumbered and possibly outgunned at the outset of any encounter.  He can't fight fair because he'll lose, and probably die, if he does.  Conversely, Superman embodies a kind of superiority complex wherein he has the duty, if not the luxury, of operating with much stricter rules of engagement.

Batman would like to discuss rationalizations with you.

LOL what do you think the Raspberry Pi is for?    We just got a report this morning of malware that hijacks the host's mic and speakers to communicate with other copies of itself using ultrasonic communication.

 

My character would hand the device over to someone who might be able to analyze it, maybe a friendly superhacker or a sorcerer type who can do some kind of psychometric aura detection.  Shrug.

When I say manual switches, put emphasis on the manual. It's possible to physically throw some levers but there is not an electronic or remote way to do so. The security and team database computers have no Wifi ever and no internet except when these switches are thrown. 

Investigate as we could but not really worried about it. The computers that handle anything important in our base don't have WiFi and cant access the internet unless a series of manual switches are thrown.

It's not paranoia when there are supervillains out to kill you.

Starcore

Singularity

Superman.

The Punisher could adopt Superman's moral code. He could choose to be a vigilante crimefighter like Batman, Daredevil, Green Arrow or many others.

He doesn't. He plays it safe, opens with deadly force  and makes no attempt to capture his targets. He has judged them beforehand and only changes his sentence if confronted by blinding flashes of obvious evidence and pleas of contrition accompanied by his targets being turned in to the legal system.

Superman could take the Punisher's moral code. He can listen to conversations held all over the world, watch a suspicious person/area better than a spy sattelite and read evidence that a crime lab would miss with their best equipment. He'd know who was guilty and could take them out quickly, leave no physical evidence and with no collateral damage risk.

He doesn't. He works within the law and takes risks to capture criminals, including repeat offenders who boast of their exploits, make personal threats  and some who have tortured him and his friends when they had the upper hand. The times that he chose to kill have involved mass murderers that he had no viable way to imprison and have caused him considerable mental anguish afterwards(to the point of a nervous breakdown). He has had breaks with his closest friends when they chose to kill in similar situations.

Heroes are supposed to be the best of us.

It would be Steampunk Champions.

FMA and FMA:B are basically quests by the hero to atone for a earlier mistake. In due course, they become entangled with magical conspiracies but stopping them is not their primary motivation(at least at first).

In Urban Fantasy, the heroes become involved through direct(attack/inheritance) or secondhand(loss of loved one/friend) exposure to the world's secrets and that is their primary focus.

There is some overlap, but the FMAs are basically government conspiracies with sinister elements while Urban Fantasy focuses more on the secret magic war going on in the world.

That's just Stretching.

It was Champions Universe. Started a tradition that was carried over in 5th and 6th also.

Is there a default SPD for environmental hazards in that fires, crushing  or other hazards do damage at a set SPD or time chart interval when they are not driven by a PC/NPC? I guess i'm asking if the world has a default SPD.

Because aside from the comic fan sub-culture, it isn't popular as opposed to Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, etc.

That's an apples to oranges comparison. I'd say Watchmen was enormously successful. It's easily the most influential work in the industry in the last few decades.

First, frameworks can be abused that's what the GM is for. The most abusive build i've seen,(that wasn't intentional) was a perfectly legal VPP of 60 points for Characteristics only.

Second, the Special Powers are things that you generally only need  on rare occassions. They are also generally defensive powers and thus cheaper in Hero. This makes them easier to abuse with frameworks.

Third, they only require GM permission, they are not expressly forbidden so there obviously must be exceptions. These will vary from GM to GM and from character to character.

So yes, I would make exceptions on a case by case basis. Sometimes its part of a concept, sometimes its just a cheesy build. Reward one and forbid the other but EXPLAIN to the player why you made that ruling.

That works

 

It still assumes that someone with a high CON will be better at resisting it (but so does the Stunning adder for CE...).

 

I'd probably make it cost more, not have a defence, but require that the purchaser defines one, possibly with some sort of cost break depending on how common the defence is.  Anyway.  Details.

 

Other stuff I'd like to see: an adder for invisibility so that whatever you are invisible to can not affect you.  So, if you are invisible to normal vision, IR and UV light, an IR laser will pass straight through you.  None of this limited defences nonsense, especially with the ridiculously poor cost breaks allowed for such things.    I can already hear some of you plotting your 'invisible to touch' character.  I don't care if it can be abused, that is why we have GMs.

 

I'd like the ability to nullify mass.  I jump off a building, fall to the ground at terminal velocity, the nullify my mass as I hit and simply stop dead.  But not dead.  Someone punches me, I nullify their mass and, unless they are braced against something, they fly off, not hurting me at all.  That's a hard one to do in the present system.  Hardish, anyway: I can only think of a couple of ways to do it off the top of my head.

 

I would like to be able to increase mass too.

 

I'd like to be able to turn off friction.

 

I'd like to be able to completely ignore the effects of fire and heat.

 

I'd like to be able to teleport an enemy into a solid object.

 

I'd like a power that makes it incredibly difficult to move me.  (Speaking of which, why is KBR so expensive?  Forget that - another time.)

 

Lots of stuff.  Sure you CAN do it, given an unlimited point budget and a half ton of Handwavium ore, but why make it so difficult?

The Invisibility immunity is something that makes sense but is hard to implement as part of Invisibility. Sounds perfect for a limited desolid tho.

The rest would follow the reasoning from effect metarule. I can see a way to do all of these with the existing rules . Some are expensive, many take a compound power but they are doable.

As an aside,I don't think nullifying mass would do that. You'd impart no force to your landing spot but would still have the instantaneous deacceleration to deal with. Same with them hitting you, you'd take no damage but there'd be no force to bounce them back.  I think you want to redirect kinetic energy.

Did you not bother to read the rest of the thread, or the fact that I *admitted* that in the second sentence?  This is about playing with the rules, and a part of that is suspending or ignoring silly little things like it being illegal.

 

Fair point about it trying to KO instead of just Stun.  The original intent was to Stun, and this seemed like a fair answer.  It also seems more balanced to just stun than a one-shot temporary knockout.

 

Chris.

Sorry, no offense or criticism was meant, was just acknowledging your admission.

Well, for Stunning (and breaking the game system) consider Dispel vs Stun.  Sure, /officially/ you can't do that.  But if you could?  

 

Cost?  3 AP/d6, halved effect for it being a defense..21 AP to Stun a normal, 60 AP to Stun a 35 CON brick.  Not that bad.

 

And because it's a Dispel, the effect instantly resumes on the target's next action (more or less).  Which means no real Stun loss, other than what is inflicted on them by others while Stunned.

 

Chris.

An interesting(but illegal) idea. However wouldn't that have to knock the target out since Dispel is all or nothing.