SkyKnight

Re: Power Trick For Heat Vision I would lean towards this method myself. Of course, it is really more like remote laser welding, rather than spot welding, since there is no physical contact. SkyKnight

Re: GMB Hard to find in my area. GMB means "Green Man Book". It is a heretical acronym from before the council of FREd. Burn him.

Re: Invulnerability to Fire I understand what you're getting at, but I think that the FREd philosophy is that you wouldn't be buying the power if you didn't expect it to be useful. Fire + Heat is listed as common in the Champions vulnerability table. I look at it as more like a -1, since there are scads of energy attacks, so you are losing at least half of the usefulness of the powers.

Re: Invulnerability to Fire 75% damage reduction (only vs fire -1) plus +30 ED Armor (only vs fire -1) gets you pretty close. I know it's not complete immunity, but the question comes up whether complete is really necessary. After all, humans are substantially composed of water, but you can easily kill a man with a high pressure hose.

Re: What superhero character concepts are you tired of seeing? This is what I like to tell players. "Every superpower has a source. Yours are no exception. If you write up the source, you get to choose. If you don't give me a source, I'll make one up for you. Either way, I'll use your background in my plot. You're doing yourself a favor if you make up a background that you actually like."

Re: Archer ideas? Maybe you could have some sort of electronic bow. It could use smart materials or somesuch to give a boost of power to your arrows. Computerized rangefinders could feed into the tensioning mechanism to adjust for range. Maybe a bow could fire a wave of sonic energy instead of an arrow. I like the idea of an archer who doesn't use the same old explosive / diamond tip / flash / net arrows.

Re: Ultimate Brick -- What Things Weigh I wouldn't mind seeing a "random grab" chart for different settings. When you want to pick up a heavy thing and hurl it or beat someone over the head with it. You could have charts for things like Office, house/apartment, demolished building et cetera. Brick: "Can I pick up a beam or something and clobber him over the head with it?" GM: "Let me see." Rolls, cross references on the "Office" table. "Yes, you grab a box of copy paper, DEF 2, 5 BODY. Roll to Hit." Or maybe this is too simplistic to bother putting in a book. I'm a pretty lazy GM.

Re: BATTLETECH HERO : Starting Cash ? How much ? If memory serves, 1 C-Bill is roughly equivalent to $5 in 1985 currency. 500 C would be about $2500 in the days when we were watching hair bands on MTV.

I kind of lump powered armor into 3 major categories: Exoskeleton Classic OIF or OIHID powered armor. The innate abilities of the pilot are pretty important and it just offers more armor than normal un-powered devices with some attribute increases. Example: BGC Hardsuit "Heavy" Suit This is an OIF or OIHID suit with about 2 levels of growth (either purchased or 5ed'ed but still functions as armor. I like to add 50% damage reduction for physical & energy to represent that the suit is quite massive and protects the occupant very well. This sort of suit works well for a Power Armored brick, since he will only have 30 to 40 stun and limited CON. Otherwise he will be constantly CON stunned or even unconscious compared to normal bricks. Example: BGC K2 Armored Trooper Mecha This is a vehicle with arms & legs. It uses normal vehicle rules and can be surprisingly pricy when all of the necessary skills and systems are in place. You also will have a hard time taking it indoors. Examples: Battlemech, Veritech fighter

Also, CON determines Energy Defense. The way I'm looking at it, BODY represents how much alteration your body can take before it gives up and you die. A high BODY score might give you some resistance to tampering. Realistically, a normal human could only get 4 points of Power Defense through high stats, and almost nobody every buys their BODY up that high anyway. It's just a little perk to those who buy up their little respeced fourth physical characteristic.

I have several times seen the suggestion for a house rule to make mental defense a figured characteristic. In other words, all characters would start with EGO/5 points of Mental Defense for free. The idea sort of interests me, so I started thinking, what about Power Defense? Would would happen if you gave everyone Power Defense equal to BODY/5? Both could be treated the same way as PD and ED, with a normal characteristic maximum of 8 and costing 1 cp per point to increase. I suppose the Age disadvantage would increase the maximum for Mental Defense, and probably decrease the maximum for Power Defense. What do you think, assembled Herodom? SkyKnight

A quick gut check -1/4 loses about 1/4 of its effectivness. Very few characters would spread their EB 3 times out of 4, so this is too low. -1/2 loses about 1/3 of its effectiveness. My energy projectors have never spread 2 times out of 3, but if the character is set up with spread effects in mind, this seems fairly reasonable. =-1 loses about 1/2 of its effectiveness. Spreading is genuinely useful, so this level of limitation is probably too high. I'd go with 1/2 SkyKnight

I wasn't sure at first if Vapire was a typo or a play on the word Vapid. "Interview with the Vampire" versus "Legally Blonde"

Graph-Fighter? or if he's German Graf-Fighter

The simple answer is no. More complicated answer: Is the energy projector just buying the Ranged modifier for his existing sense of touch? If so, it will function exactly the same as ordinary touch, except at range. If you want to buy discriminatory, it will be an improvement over the basic touch sense. If he is instead buying "detect energy" at range, simulating the touch group, the answer is still pretty much the same. The new detect will have all of the same modifiers that come with the touch group. You can find more detail under the simulated sense group rules.