The Hyborian

Re: Equipment Pools? Wow. Unless everyone in the SEALs has Genius level intellegence, the body of the greatest athleat in human history, and dozens of areas of skill foucs brought to up to world class mastery, no they dont cost that much. Your "normals" are spending more on their stats than some supers do. Saying all but one are under 200 points in characteristics is like saying your car only goes 180mph. The point totals for the power frameworks that you are listing are staggering. A 5 speed is better than Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee smashed together into one little butt kicking body. By definition it is superhuman. Either you have the least effective character builds EVER, or you guys are playing cosmic level supers without knowing it. Im not sure Conan would cost 700 points, even you built the entire Army of Aquilonia as followers. Now, Im not getting down on anything here. Your campaign is your campaign. If it works for you its none of my buisness. But these kind of numbers boggle the mind. Personally, I would make them pay for the gear out of points. If a 700 point fighter needs another 100 points in magic items to make it through the day, well, I cant image what they are going up agaist. Unless they are killing alien gods and knocking off ancient dragons 12 at a time, this seems a little over the top. Just my $.02. Ignore at will.

Re: Martial Balance I agree with the others that sometimes you have to put a hard cap on damage. Otherwise some is going to create a silly min/max build that is out of balance. While a 12d6 HA may be 60 active points, its unbalanced once you add strength and marital arts maneuvers. I would tell your shadow magician to cut back on the Hand Attack so his total attack in in the 12-14d6 Range, which seems to be the upper end for the campaign. I will also say that there is a downside to damage caps. If the hard cap is 12d6 normal damage or 60 Active points in powers, then everyone toes the line with a 12d6 attack. Its not that hard to come up with 60 points of offence in a 300 point character. It cuts down on variability. A possible solution is to try to enforce a bit a of good character design. You could set some minimums like at least 40 points in non combat skills. Also set defense and CV limits, and be sure to make them all high enough that characters cant afford to max them all out. If you hit the max in offense, you wont have the points to max out CV or defenses, etc. IN fact, 60 is a fairly low Active point cap. You might pull back to 275 or 250 point characters if you want that to be the maximum attack level. That way the characters who go the the red line in on offence will have to make a genuine sacrifice somewere else. I would also suggest that your gun character find a way to up his offense a little bit. The extra knockback does not compensate for being 6-8d6 behind the blaster in dammage output. Unless he has some other attacks or utility powers he is going to feel cheated when you get into play.

Re: Trying to make an attack that forces dex roll

Re: Flash: Inner ear/ Sense of Gravity/ Sense of Balence I suppose the questions of how much drain depends on how intese the effect is, and if it is accompanied by nausia, disphoria, etc. I have seen people with migranes get knocked down so hard they literally couldn't stand up. Does your attack make them a little woozy or does it make them beg for an early death? I agree that the alien/robot/nonhuman issue needs to be considered. If robots and aliens are common in the campaign you probably need a Limited Power limitation on the attack. If they are rare, probably not, it would fall under minor advantages and disadvantages that come will all special effects.

Re: How to do Split personality

Re: Flash: Inner ear/ Sense of Gravity/ Sense of Balence My $.02 on the issue. I think that we are confusing sense with awarness. I am with the camp that says for game purposes senses are abilites a character uses to perceive the envrionment around them. Flash disables one of these abilites, the classic being the bright light in the eyes, but it could be any Fx and any of the five senses. A charcter is also aware of things within themselves, but these are not really "senses" in game terms. Hunger, fatigue, balance, orientation in space, even emotional state are all tied to certain activity in our nervious system, and feed into our cognitive processes, but are not senses the way we mean when we are speaking in game terms. Perhaps the following could serve as a definition: Unless you could pay the points to make it a targeting sense, its not really a sense in game terms. I dont think you could have "Targeting Balance", (or targeting hunger, targeting need to pee, etc) so they are not senses, they are states of awareness. So, IMHO, I would not let a charcter flash "Balance". They could drain dex with the Fx that they have messed with the persons balance, they could drain stun or use a NND of some kind to represent the crippling nausia. But "Balance" can not be directly turned off via flash.

Re: Question about "DANGER SENSE DODGING" ] We forgot "Are Druids the New Clerics (overpowered)" and "A level 20 Wizard and a level 20 cleric are having a duel. . . . ."

Re: Trying to make an attack that forces dex roll Ok, this is with 5th edition, Nonrevised, so FRed owners feel free to call BS as needed. Change Environment, Marbles on the Floor, 2 hex radius, -10 inches running (30 points, see chart pg 90) 45 Active Points. Limited Power: Dex check at -2 Negates Effect (-1/2) OAF:Bag of Marbles (-1) 1 Recoverable Continuing Charge Lasting up to 20 min (-0). Real Cost 18 pts. The character carries a bag of marbles that can be dumped on the ground. Any entering the area affect find it very hard to walk or run unless they make a Dex check at -2. The power effect lasts up to 20 minutes, after that its assumed that he marbles have been dispersed to the point that they are no longer effective. The Continuing charge can be ended by spending time to clear the marbles out of the way. The charge is recoverable if character spends time after combat to gather them up again.

Re: Question about "DANGER SENSE DODGING" . Ok, I will adimit that on another forum I once started a "DnD Clerics are overpowerer" thread that went more than five hundred posts. But debate and vigorous argument are the fun part. What did Al Gore invent the internet for, if not to grouse about complete strangers? Its like politics, you champion your case and dont take it personal. No need to stay away from the boards.

Re: Question about "DANGER SENSE DODGING" OK, I mean that a hex does not have a DCV the way that a character has a DCV. There is a standard DCV to hit a specific 2 meter wide area. But that is not the same thing as being a character. Can you use aid on a hex? Does it have a speed? Can you stun it? Can you effect it with an ego attack? Even if you use the phrase "Area Affect" in place of "Usable by others" (which i think would be more on target), there is still nothing to effect. The usable by others rules specifcally say that they let a character use the power. A hex is not a charcter. It doesn't start to dodge around and evade attacks. Its always a hex. For charcters DCV is a measure of ability to defend oneself. Unless you could give me a special effect where the 2 meter region of space I was targeting with my area affect was defending itself, by say moving around or blocking my attack, I dont think I buy the idea that the hex should have a higher DCV. It just sits their being a region of space for me to shoot at. To make character A miss a hex character B has to do something to character A. That could be a number of things, from a dex drain to a change envrionment with a CV penalty, to images to make them aim at a false target, to a perception penalty through Darkness, or something on those lines. The hex remains just the hex. You have to do something to the shooter to make them less able to hit it. Ok, so I can hear you thinking, "what if I'm playing Captian Euclid,and I warp space to make the hex harder to hit". Well, thats Change Environment, "Warp Space", with penalties to OCV, and the charcter with the power would be affected as well unless they bought the personal immunity advantage. You have changed the nature of space in the region to make attacks more difficult to target, but the hex is still DCV 3. I would think most of these types of powers would be through change environment, or in the case of the "speedster dodge", images to make targeting harder. Nothing is so hard about that, but I have yet to hear a Fx jusutification at would support giving a Hex higher DCV.

Re: Rifts HERO I always like the Rifts setting, but I thought he rules were horribly broken and utterly unbalanced. Observe the following first game session. Player A: I want to play a GlitterBoy. Player B: I want to play a Full Cyborg Player C: I want to play a wilderness scout. Any attack that would even slightly dammage player A or B's character would instakill one-hit-dead player C's character. What goon wrote this thing? Ever heard of "game balance" Its a bit like saying, ok, you build your Hero charcter with 1000 points, you build yours with 125, and I will come up with an encounter that will challenge you both. Riiiiighhhht. My advice: Dump megadammage. Its just a really, really big attack. Decide going in if you are going to play the big nasty combat monsters, or the more noncombat characters, and dont try to mix and match. You are in for misery if you do. The Hyborian

Re: Question about "DANGER SENSE DODGING" See my above rants for more details, but in short: Area Affect can be applied to powers that target others. The power then affects all targets in the area of affect. DCV levels do not target others, the normally only affect you. Usable By Others could be used to give DCV to someone standind near, (with the proper Fx as justification) BUT, the rules say that Usable by/on Others affects other CHARACTERS. A hex is not a character. It does not have a character sheet or stats, etc. IT DOES NOT HAVE A DCV. The DCV of a hex is just a standard for how hard it is to hit a location. And its not that hard to hit a barn door. To make someone miss you with an area affect you have to do something to make them less accurate with the attack (like affecting their OCV with change environment) or making them shoot somewhere else (like with images, set effect "Im actually standing over there"). Even then the area affect still goes off, and unless its small (like a 1 hex area affect) you still might get wacked with the big badda-boom. For some reason I never tire of saying this. The Hyborian

Re: Nonarchetypal Heroes

Re: Aberrant Hero! I played in an Aberrant campaign for a while. I dont think taint was actually ever used "in game" once. The standard Aberrant Nova would probably be 250 point characters, although we played at a higher power level. I think the most important thing to make Aberrant work is the setting and factions. Recreate that well and your players will have fun. The differences in the rules will be unimportant.

Re: [Would-Be Hero-GM]Lethality

Re: Range of Light The range of images is 5xActive points. If that seems too long save some points with a Limited Range (-1/4) limitation. Someone else could probably see the effect area of the power from a very long way off. Have you ever been camping and seen someone else's campfire? They can be spotted at a huge distance in the dark if you have line of sight. That doesn't mean that you can see that area clearly, but you can detect that there is an area of light over there a long way off. As for seeing the beam, well, its only visible when its hitting something. Shine a flashlight at the wall, you see the wall, not the stream of photons. Mist, rain, smoke, or similar conditions might make the beam visible as the particles in the air are illuminated. As for partial illumination outside of the area of effect, the rules do not strictly support this, but the GM could certainly allow a house rule for that sort of thing. Mitchells' solution seemed very reasonable. (dont tell him I said that )

Re: Aid, Power Frameworks, and Hulk-like Power Boost I think you might be overcomplicating things here. You can buy characteristics as powers. I say skip the adjustment power, and buy your extra stats with a limitation Only When Engraged. Thus, when the Enraged disadvantage goes off (or other circumstances that your GM agrees to) your stats kick in and last as long as the rage lasts. The exact value of this limitation would have to be set by your GM, based on how often you become enranged in combat, probably in the -1/2 to -1/4 range. And this way you dont have to roll the dice to see how much you gain. The Hyborian.

Re: Question about "DANGER SENSE DODGING"

Re: Question about "DANGER SENSE DODGING" While im at it, I just had another idea how to simulate this. If you continue with the "I move so fast that you cant tell where I am" special effect you might buy change environment with the penalty to CV combat effect. Although the rules do say that "any ability to reduce a target's CV should be strictly contolled", I would allow a few points penalty to the target's OCV to reperesent that the character is a speedy blur. That way rather than depending on DCV to keep you out of the area affect you are lowering the enemie's abilty to target you properly. Its a fine point, I know, but still an important one to me. You would of course need some limitations to represent the exact effect, and remember that a missed area affect still goes off, it just is centered in another hex. Unless its a huge miss or a small area affect the character probably takes dammage anyway. The Hyborian

Re: Question about "DANGER SENSE DODGING"

Re: Question about "DANGER SENSE DODGING" Ok, DCV bought with Usable By Others is fine, but we have moved away from the original issue. It doesn't matter how high the target's DCV is, it doesn't protect against Area Affect Attacks. Why? No attack roll. The attack is against the Hex, not a target character in the hex. If you are in the Area Affect you suffer the effects of the attack. Relative CV is totally unimportant. Can a hex use DCV granted by a character? I would respond with a resounding no. Why? The rules for Usable On Others state, "This suite of Advantages allows a character to give a power to another character ." (my emphasis) A hex is not a character, its a location. Its DCV does not come from its ability to defend itself, but rather is just a standard for how hard it is for a character to target a specific location. The hex itself doen't have stats that can be improved. Even if you dont buy the above agrument, consider this- Even if the hex gets the dcv,(and I dont think it should) the area affect attack still goes off, just centered on another hex. The character may very well still be in the blast zone. The attack doesn't dissappear, it just shifts. I think that to have the ability to avoid area affect dammage you would have to look at some form desolidification, probably with a pack of limitations on it. You could define the fx of the power as some kind of super dodge, or uncanny combat luck. But just DCV isn't going to get you anywhere.

Re: [Would-Be Hero-GM]Lethality Overall, Champions is much more lethal than something like D&D. Someone without protection who gets wacked with a axe or sword is going to be hurtin'. Not necessarily dead, but certainly hurtin'. You can tweak down lethality in number of ways. One is to not use the optional imparing/disabling/bleeding rules. This is less "realistic" but lets characters stay on their feet acting until they run out of body. Another way is to allow pretty good armor. Add a few points to the listed armor values in the books and characters survive longer. A third way to to have character focus on Combat Values in character design, rather than body. (get away from the Hit Point mentality). Those goblins are a lot less deadly if they have 5 less points of CV than the heroes do. I like this approach, as you end up with heros that parry and avoid dammage rather than soak it up. Lastly, be generous with healing magic. Characters aren't going to be so paranoid about catching an arrow in the throat if magical healing is fairly accessable, especially to non-spell casters in the form of potions, salves, pixie dust, what-have-you. The Hyborian

Re: Yet Another "Name This Character" thread. Thanks everyone who posted. The Hyborian

Re: Sentient Weapons What exactly would the sword be able to do? Define the concept first and then build the powers. It may be nothing more than a special effect, unless the sword has powers that the character can not control. For an item that can think, speak, be affected by ego powers, use its own powers, etc, I agree with the idea of a Follower. Another option depending on the special effects might be a Summon with some degree of loyalty, (the characters calls forth a mystical weapon from Valhalla, or something similar.) Basically, if the weapon is a truely volitional thing with a mind and an ego score it needs its own character sheet. The Hyborian

Re: Question about "DANGER SENSE DODGING"