Grailknight

The movie takes place over a short time period and in that time, she gets teleported at random across the universe, meets aliens for the first time and has to save the world. She goes from not doing anything more serious than the events of Ms. Marvel to having to make hard choices with the lives of thousands of people and face off against a villain with the power to break reality. In the aftermath, she begins to form her own super team. So, no, her basic personality doesn't change, but she goes through plenty of growth. The movie isn't flawless but the characters are on point.

We've played with attacking not ending a phase.  It did not change much.  Take that as one experience only - our group has never focused on eking every last bit of effectiveness and efficiency out of every character point and every phase, so a group more focused on that efficiency could find ways to create more issues. As well, there is already some "analysis paralysis" in many Hero games, especially with newer players, and having more options will only increase that.
 
As has already been highlighted above, how tightly you stick to existing rules about things you can only do once per phase, like reassign multipower pools and skill levels, could have an impact.
 
You could also add a rule that some of these zero phase reallocation "actions" cannot be performed after an attack, or perhaps once you have used the points allocated to an attack or to OCV/damage.  That is, once you use a level in an attack (OCV or damage), it's gone until the start of your next phase (unless you abort) and once you use Pool points (Multipower or VPP), they are similarly locked until the start of your next phase.

Just got in from seeing The Marvels. It's a solid entry, not their greatest work, but nothing to be ashamed of.
 
The action is good although Carol's power level isn't as consistent as I'd like.
 
Kamala and Monica are excellent, Carol and Fury are good, Kamala's family feels very real and the villain actually has a valid motivation if somewhat extreme methods.
 
I'll score it a 7.5 out of 10.

Just got in from seeing The Marvels. It's a solid entry, not their greatest work, but nothing to be ashamed of.
 
The action is good although Carol's power level isn't as consistent as I'd like.
 
Kamala and Monica are excellent, Carol and Fury are good, Kamala's family feels very real and the villain actually has a valid motivation if somewhat extreme methods.
 
I'll score it a 7.5 out of 10.

The movie takes place over a short time period and in that time, she gets teleported at random across the universe, meets aliens for the first time and has to save the world. She goes from not doing anything more serious than the events of Ms. Marvel to having to make hard choices with the lives of thousands of people and face off against a villain with the power to break reality. In the aftermath, she begins to form her own super team. So, no, her basic personality doesn't change, but she goes through plenty of growth. The movie isn't flawless but the characters are on point.

Just got in from seeing The Marvels. It's a solid entry, not their greatest work, but nothing to be ashamed of.
 
The action is good although Carol's power level isn't as consistent as I'd like.
 
Kamala and Monica are excellent, Carol and Fury are good, Kamala's family feels very real and the villain actually has a valid motivation if somewhat extreme methods.
 
I'll score it a 7.5 out of 10.

I understand that the girl playing Kamala does a good job, but sadly her character doesn't grow beyond squeeing fan girl.

Just got in from seeing The Marvels. It's a solid entry, not their greatest work, but nothing to be ashamed of.
 
The action is good although Carol's power level isn't as consistent as I'd like.
 
Kamala and Monica are excellent, Carol and Fury are good, Kamala's family feels very real and the villain actually has a valid motivation if somewhat extreme methods.
 
I'll score it a 7.5 out of 10.

If you watch John Carpenter's The Thing, I expect you'll feel very conflicted.

Which is exactly what Striking Appearance is.

Oh, I don't doubt the moral panic is completely sincere. The rules are changing quickly; people like them feel, correctly, that they no longer have the social privileges they once enjoyed. Of course they're lashing out at anything that offends their sensibilities.
 
It's Fundamentalism 101. When you're about to lose everything, you can't give an inch on anything. Double down, even.
 
I am told this is how American Christian fundamentalism came about. (Warning: I recount what I read; I am not myself an expert.) The late 19th century was another time of rapid changes that some Christians thought threatened the underpinnings of their faith and their notions of social hierarchy. So, they doubled down. One result was a redefinition of the Bible: no longer a complex text whose truths might be obscure and subject to re-interpretation, but *inerrant* in every word and *self-evident* in its truth.
 
This created problems because the Bible manifestly holds heaping helpings of poetry, metaphor, parable, dubious history, and outright contradiction. So fundamentalists qualified their claim: The absolute truth of the Bible becomes self-evident to anyone who reads it if they have the Holy Spirit in their heart. Anyone who points out problems like Genesis giving multiple versions of the Creation merely prove they lack the Holy Spirit. In fact, that they are deceived by the Devil.
 
Only this makes further problems, because people will still read this complex and difficult text and reach different conclusions. So who has the Holy Spirit and who is deceived by the Devil? Reason and historical and linguistic study having been ruled out, such contests become political. And this is how the Baptists, who began with the libertarian premise of each believer reading the Bible for himself, ended up with completely authoritarian dogma.
 
It also follows that reading the Bible also no longer becomes necessary. The text is no longer a text: It is a talisman for evoking the Holy Spirit. I suspect the people who mock Speaker Mike Johnson for his Biblical/political claims miss the point. He doesn't need to cite a verse to explain his stance about, say, tariffs or aid to Ukraine. He's guided by his idea of the Bible, which he knows is true because the Holy Spirit tells him so.
 
And I suspect the Moms for Liberty don't need to read the books they want banned, let alone read them critically, because those texts are also seen as talismans -- but for invoking the Devil. But that's just my own guess.
 
Dean Shomshak

Seems like a custom limitation "Movement through substance reduced 2m for every +1PD above 6PD".  You simply then have to consider how much that is worth.  +1/2??
 
I think people sometimes look for complexity rather than reach for the obvious solution but this looks nailed on to me.
 
Doc

They should be subject to one week's incarceration for every day before Remembrance Day (including that date), with their own Christmas muzak played non-stop throughout their incarceration.

Hero is not overly complicated. It is overly frontloaded. 

Hundreds Of Rare Sealed Nintendo and Sega Games Discovered In Nebraska Storage Facility

Maybe; I am not sure of where you are at with it, so lwt me try a rephrase:
 
Striking Appearance is COM.  It is the same thing, reserved dor what would have previously,been more elevated or lowered values of COM.  Instead of buying COM, one buys the mechanic of COM.
 
Similarly, if we do away with DEX amd declare that any rolls for physical coordination and deftness default to 11 or less, but can be raised by 1 by paying a cost of (the cost of ever-how-many points of DEX it takes,in 6e to raise a DEX roll, well...  We're still buying DEX.  Even at half the price, we are still buying DEX.
 
Same with Steiking Appearance: we are still buying COM. 
 
 
 
 
Right.  We are buying COM.  We are just calling it something else, and we are requiring a bigger buy in, unless "wow; that guy is strikingly unstriking" or "stunningly unstunning" is an acceptable thing (don't see why it wouldn't be,  but the name suggests otherwise).
 
 
 
 
Fine.  It's not a characteristic; I get that; I have no problem with that.  My problem lies elsewhere, which I think may have been missed.  However, as I said, we can do the same with DEX- remove the characteristic and just buy the mechanic.  We can do the same with CON; we just brand it as "defense against being stunned" or change that mechanic as well and create a talent "healthy" that we roll against when exposed to disease and the like.  We can get rid of the characteristic, but if we keep the entire mechanic, what the heck is the difference?  (Except to people who just want specifically,a listed characteristic, of course).  Is there a Comeliness score in this game?
 
No.
 
Too bad.  I wanted a character with a very high Comeliness.
 
Oh; I see.  Here is how to buy the mechanic of a high Comeliness.
 
Same thing.
 
 
 
Yes; yes; point taken.  However it is long-standing shorthand on this and other boards to refer to char gen decisions as being done by the character; it is in the very rules books themselves.
 
 
 
And there, Sir, is my problem with Comeliness as a stat or any appearance based mechanic:
 
Who _is_ the author with the say so here?  "The player determines his character is shockingly, jaw-dropping my, car-crash-inducingly beautiful."
 
So the GM has no say in his NPCs:  all NPCs will now react according to the points spent in Stellar Appearance (or COM:30 or whatever).  None will think "eeew!  She looks like my ex, with whom I endured an agonizing divorce"  or "meh; not my type" or "I don't care how many kartrashians she looks like, all I can see is the plastic and the head full of snakes" or anything else _except_ "oh, my; she is beautiful, and I will react favorably to her!"
 
The complete load I find this to be hasnt changed since the 80s, and is the reason COM is free in my games:  in the oft-repeated mantra, "you get what you pay for."  
 
 
 
 
And I say it's not really,your decision as to how the rest of the world treats you or reacts to you.,,if you want to control how people treat you, well, as I have mentioned, we have a mechanic for that: it's called Mind Control.  Buy that.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
There isn't a guide.  There's a mechanic.  GM agency is lost here.
 
Being fair:
 
I am a competent GM.  If a player tells me his character is very handsome, then it will come up now and again, perhaps quite often.  But if there is instead a mechanic deciding that while there was a 52 percent chance that everyone he meets reacts favorably because he is  pretty,  but he bought a mechanic that means 68 percent of the people will, 
 
Well, I don't know exactly which part of a book is the anus, but it is more than welcome to stick that mechanic there.
 
 
 
No.
 
I do not believe a man can fly or shoot lighting from his anythinf but a Tesla cannon, and I am willing to bet good money that you don't, either.
 
 

You lost whatever benefit +10 COM provided, and the same benefit that buying an additional 10 COM would generate.  But negatives became positives, which was an oddity.
 
 
Being hideously ugly could be distinctive features - acting to your detriment. It could be Striking Appearance - acting to your benefit.  It could be both, or it could have no in-game effect and be neither.
 
Being supernaturally beautiful has all the same possibilities.
 
In these cases, appearance is merely the SFX for a game mechanic.  If there is no mechanic behind it, there are no points spent or gained.  You can be a redhead for free.  You can be a stunning redhead with a drop-dead gorgeous face and figure for free.  If, however, people notice and remember you, or even lust after you and seek to hunt you down and imprison you for their own, it is a complication/disadvantage.  If it allows you to wrap people around your little finger, then it is Striking Appearance, a benefit you pay for.  Maybe it's even Mind Control.
 
The appearance itself is just a special effect for what you want that appearance to do, in-game.

/semi-rant on
 
You may have heard about the hockey accident last week last weekend where Adam Johnson died after a skate slit his throat.  Horrible on many levels...but particularly because it was 100% preventable.
 
In response, today, the English Ice Hockey Association mandated the use of neck guards in its leagues, altho oddly, that doesn't include the league Johnson's team  plays in.  It's not immediate, the association said, due to supply issues...ok, I get that.  It's effective 1 Jan 2024.
 
But why, why, WHY do so many sports require a senseless TRAGEDY to move forward with *common sense* precautions???  OK, slashed throats are VERY rare;  there's 2 well known ones in the NHL, but who knows how many across the other leagues?  The only time we'd hear about them is...well...when someone dies.  AND, this was a former NHL player, making it "more newsworthy."  #GAG.  There's another case where a puck hit a throat, crushing the windpipe.  The player was forced to retire;  his breathing capacity was reduced permanently, and obviously, that's a problem.
 
It took *forever* to bring in batting helmets and require them...and a long time to require them for the 1st and 3rd base coaches.  (Until, IIRC, a first base coach took a foul ball hard in the head.)  The goalie mask in hockey goes back to the 60's...but good GOSH, the goalie faces how many slap shots a game, traveling HOW fast?  Hockey helmets were required in 1979.  We still don't have a requirement for pitchers to wear helmets...despite a few cases every season of line drives smashing off pitchers' heads.  There's issues with the catcher's mask...that got required very early, but its shape doesn't deflect the energy very well.  The hockey-style masks are generally considered better at that...but few catchers use them.
 
It's generally the macho, tough aspect...which just irritates me beyond words.  SO stupid, at least in most cases.  Some things are harder to protect;  pitchers getting hit in the face, which is a substantial fraction of these, get nothing from any proposed headgear.  But others, like neck guards, or throat guards for catchers...take forever, and something hideous, to change the obstinate, macho mentalities.
 
OK, I needed that...
 

Yeah I never used that rule, because there's no level of ugly in my mind that makes something terrifying.  It just is disgusting.  Presence is terrifying.  Buying a stat down makes it worse, by definition in my book, so you ought not gain a benefit for buying it down.

Which gives an amazingly good argument for eliminating it.  You should NEVER get a benefit, however small, from something *gaining* you points or costing nothing.
 
 
Striking Appearance can be about anything you want it to be.  
 
COM, by the rules, is also an interaction stat, as they're mentioned as being used for complementary rolls for interaction skills where it matters.  So it needs another roll?  Striking Appearance doesn't, it's a roll modifier.  
 
 
 

There is so much wrong with this  that it's difficult bring up all the implications.
 
First off as rape is already illegal the crime that triggers this is the intent to breed  an army on unwilling victims.  Of course that's illegal. But would that mean that a government or private project to do the same with volunteers would be acceptable? "Have Super Kids for the Nation's Future" suddenly become a worldwide debate and a new arms race begins( Or just becomes public, you can bet that many countries already have these projects going clandestinely.) What about a project with donated eggs or sperm?
 
Secondly, it doesn't matter if the criminal or the victim is normal or paranormal, you are making an international law that says that rape that results in pregnancy is a death penalty offense. I can't see anybody being happy with this except stockholders in DNA testing labs. Victim's rights groups will cry for it to apply to all rapes and defense advocates will argue that this is excessive. Can you imagine the crapstorm that will happen when a female mentalist is found guilty of raping a man to get pregnant by him against his will? What should the penalty be for false accusations? Would it be  attempted murder?
 
Next what happens when a more reactionary country executes a "rapist" before the exonerating DNA results are in? Not usually an issue in countries with drawn out appeals processes but that's not the case in all member nations of the U.N.
 
I'll stop here though. The abortion debates centered around predestined evil are a political, religious and moral sewer that I don't care to contemplate.   

No legal eagle here, but it occurs to me that lawsuits do not have to target actual persons, nor be brought on behalf of actual persons. Corporations have only a legal fiction of quasi-personhood, but they get sued all the time. And environmental laws have resulted in lawyers bringing suits on behalf of rivers, forests, and other natural phenomena on the grounds that human activities have damaged them. So even if undead (or nature spirits, or whatever) are not legal persons, they still might be subject to civil law and use it themselves. -Just to add another layer of complication.
 
In the litigation-prone US, at least, judges and legislators might not want to open the cans of worms implied by super-powers and nonhuman intelligences, but lawyers will probably force them to do so. If for no other reasons, lawyers with a hunger for publicity would probably try bringing test cases to see if some existing law or precedent could be contorted to fit the situation.
 
Dean Shomshak