David Blue

Re: Can Superheroes Be Too Pragmatic? Lightray: "... the PCs are the first real, public "superheroes". Supposidly." OK, you know what your problem is: a lack of superheroes. You only have some superpowered toughs. That's not good enough if you want a real superhero game. As far as I know, the solution that works is to start fresh, with players who want to play superheroes, with new characters built from the first concept up to be superheroes in fact as well as name, and a new world, where the population hadn't already been convinced that the term "superhero" refers merely to pragmatic thugs with superpowers. If there's a milder solution that works, I know nothing about it. I know as a gamemaster, I'd feel completely unmotivated and uninspired, trying to use carrots and sticks to get characters who really aren't superheroic to act superheroic. I'm just the gamemaster, I'm not supposed to be the source of morality in the game. I do the villains, the victims, and the people who fold their arms when the going gets tough, because it's dangerous out there. (Plus the odd sympathetic character with the desire but not the power to do good effectively, on the level that the heroes can. OK, and possibly rival superheroes championing competing concepts of the good, but not constantly.) The player character superheroes are supposed to supply the effective moral impetus. If they aren't motivated to do that, it would make more sense to play a game that is supposed to be about killing the monsters and looting the bodies.

Re: Character Design Theory My design theory is that two ends have to meet up. One end is inspiration. That comes from me and source material. The other end is context. That comes from the game system and the gamemaster. 1. A character with no personal inspiration or appeal is no good. 2. A character with no valid basis in the genre (the source material) is no good. 3. A character that the game system cannot handle or overly punishes will become bad in play. 4. A character that doesn't suit the campaign will become bad in play. After making the two ends meet as best I can, I write down some numbers, which should be simple - as simple and clear as possible. INSPIRATION There are no rules for inspiration. One thing that has repeatedly clicked for me is, when building characters for a high-powered game, usually Amber (a game that has some assumptions that resonate strongly with me), I'll devote a lot of attention to what flunkies, house troops, special servants (high technicians), privileged henchmen and romantic and other personal interests they have. These can be in any genre, depending on what (shadow) world they're set in. They are generally things that an egotistical lord of reality (from Amber or Chaos) expects to cast credit on him or her self - no trash. From time to time I find one of these subordinate characters looking very interesting, even more interesting than the boss. Then I write an alternate description of that character in another system, usually Hero because of its cross-genre flexibility and clarity. You can see these things in a lot of my characters - the high COM and PRE scores, the clear-cut promotion of Order or Chaos (not in a specific psychological limitation but through the character's total concept and working out), the preference for characters who will and will be seen to be honourable or noble from some pretty clear-cut point of view, and close adherence to "mythic" stereotypes, above all "The Mighty Hero". (It's not that I build the characters to focus on Order or Chaos in order to comply with Amber; rather the idea of Amber helps me connect with things that have what I see as some universal validity, underpinning the appeal of characters who are especially steadfast, devastating or whatever.) Another thing I'll do is start with a threat, and make a hero to beat the threat. When vampires were overdone, it was time for The Slayer to appear. And so on. Lots of people do this. You get fed up with ninjas and you build The Ninja-Crusher! (laughing) GENRE/SOURCE Genre appropriateness comes from your movie-going and your reading. For this it helps a lot to have friends who tell you what's happening that's interesting. I don't think you should get stuck on a "canon" for what has to be in a genre. Zombies used to be slow, shambling things. Then came the Infected of 28 Days later, and the full-blown Turbo-Zombies of Dawn of the Dead (2004), and my ideas on what I would build as a dedicated zombie-crushing hero changed immediately. It's also good to (haunt non-gaming discussion) and argue (politely and with goodwill, for the sake of learning, not for ego!) about characters, teams and so on. There are people who have done their reading and their watching, and who have "studied this well," and it shows. Losing is learning, in this kind of discussion, and only learners are really winners. SYSTEM Knowing the system is a problem, because both game companies and their dedicated fans (unconsciously) distort things, exaggerating the ability of the game system to do justice to different kinds of characters. Often, once you know what the system can't really (no, I mean really) handle, the solution is to pick a different game system to reflect the character. In my opinion, supported by the Champions genre book, Hero System can't properly run Superman-level superheroes (especially invulnerable ones), or superheroes who have no resistant defences but get by on agility, or quite a lot of characters in between (especially one-trick ponies, useful though they often are in a Lord of Reality's retinue). The solution for these characters is to build and play them only in a system that can handle them, if the opportunity ever arises. I wouldn't rebuild them all as middleweight Hero System tanks. That's one example of filtering by game system. For Hero System, I routinely decide at this point that a character who uses extra-dimensional movement or other things that Hero does poorly or prices through the roof either belongs in another system, or will get these abilities activated only when the boss shows up. (Which of course will be never.) CAMPAIGN/GAMEMASTER The campaign - for this, you need lots of time, and for the gamemaster to talk with you. Rushed character creation, or character creation in ignorance, turns out badly. To continue the Amber thread - if now you discover that there will be no extra-dimensional adventures, and your character was built for them, you need to rethink your character concept. Or if the game will soon shift to the Barbarian Wastes and stay there, maybe you need to rethink your feeble aristocratic plotter with all their points sunk in status, wealth (that will soon be forfeit permanently) and abilities that support contests of snobbery and skullduggery. The gamemaster may let you play that character (because you will certainly not be outshining anyone else), but in the new context, the character will become stupid. NUMBERS In actual number-writing stuff, I go for transparancy, simplicity and economy - "clean" character designs that can be taken in at a glance, with no tricks and no room for a trick to hide. No "spreadsheet characters," no munchkinisms, or as little as possible (because sometimes odd limitations and so on are the only way to build something reasonable), no malarky. The ideal, as far as I'm concerned, is the official character cards that came with DC Heroes, where you had a picture of a character like the Flash on one side of a small postcard, and everything you needed to know for game play in large, clear print on the other side. That's the ideal: I don't expect to achieve it, I just approach it as far as practical. PS: what "you" do meant what I do, and the idiotic things that you of course will never do (like winding up with a wizened Melnibonean plotter with STR 1 and no strength drugs in sight crawling after the party in a wilderness adventure) are things I have done - and learned from. PPS: "TLC, and lots of it." Yes, that's the non-verbose version. (laughing) "You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to prestidigitator again."

Re: Creation philosophy No. Does it look like Last Hero would beat Zl'f? My point is, Zl'f's gamemaster knows far better than any combat calculator could how this character plays in his campaign, and he's fine with it. That's all there is that needs to be known about whether Zl'f is balanced. The problem is not that there's something wrong with an experienced, in-control gamemaster looking at a character who fits perfectly into his game and has for a long time and being happy with the player and the character. The problem is: how can other gamemasters and players best achieve such characters!?

Re: Hero too hard? So effectively he has a lot of money sunk in the way published characters already work. I still want to know why ... "an encounter vs nonpowered thugs [...] went really well (sort of)".

Re: Creation philosophy I am so not seeing the problem with Zl'f. The gamemaster knows everything about how she works. However, the fact that we have intelligent people unable to agree over which hero might be unbalanced and why underlines one of the problems with Hero System as a superhero game. It's not transparent. It never was, even when it was Champions, and it's getting worse, not better. In that sense, I like Gary's Lariat. With a little experience, you can look at her in a few seconds or a couple of minutes at most, and say no, unless your game is so high-powered that this really is what you want. In that sense, she's an ideal build.

Re: Creation philosophy I think Trebuchet's Z'lf looks like an outstanding character. She is supposed to be swift and agile, and she is. You can see that in a game of Sledgehammers and Egg Shells, Z'lf is built to be a winner. concord said: "We call this one, Sledgehammers and Egg Shells... Sledgehammers for attacks and Egg Shells for defense... our typical experience shows that it leads to a lot of dancing around, then a quick flurry of action with one man left standing style of combat." That's why Z'lf is so relevant to the thread, which started with the idea: maybe we should build low-defence characters (who will of course be unable to last long in combat, thus speeding up the fights). Z'lf is built with low defences. I imagine her gamememaster knows all about how she works by now. She could easily be a lot nastier with a killing attack. (This is any attack built to kill, with No Normal Defence (NND) Does Body and so on, not just a Killing Attack (HKA or RKA).) Killing Grond is a trivial task. You just build an appropriate beginning character with the typical Autofire etc. killing attack. Hero System does favour brawn to some extent. But it favours intelligence in character design and Variable Power Pool (VPP) use infinitely more.

Re: Creation philosophy

Re: Creation philosophy You are not paranoid, you are correct. Your character will soon be unconscious. Bring a book to read, while the cleverly built characters fight on for hours after you are out. I recommend the Iliad. Dream of mighty heroes ... That isn't an accomplishment, good or bad. That's just how it is. Last Hero represents the concentrated essence of what I like to build and play. Not just lately (5th Edition) - always. For me, in terms of how I think a hero should be, this is The Perfect Build. http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30583 You can know everything about how he thinks, fights and gets about in seconds. First impressions are correct, there are no tricks. It's easy for the Yancy Street gang to annoy this character, which is how it should be. I want to give the gamemaster complete freedom. It's easy to "touch" this character, psychologically and physically. There's no need to do anything artificial to get Last Hero's attention, so most comic "bits" including light-hearted ones are "on". He's a hero who belongs in a comic book, the kind I happily pay for and read over and over. Ideally Last Hero would be involved in magnificent multi-page brawls, in the style of the early Hulk vs. the Thing, but this can never be. I have found characters built in my "clean" straightforward way rarely see Phase Eleven, if that. Often the martial artists and others are out after the first hit, which is apt to come soon. The only thing that makes Last Hero workable is that Hero System loves bricks. Not as much as I do, but a lot. But that's not enough. The game also has other, stronger preferences. Nice guys finish, or rather are finished off, first in Hero. Want a different result from this character design philosophy? Play a game that rewards and punishes different things. When I see a better game than Hero System, I'll play it. I haven't seen it yet though. And I'm not holding my breath.

Re: Background skills

Re: Background skills

Re: The Essential Bad Iron Age Bloodstrike #5 I wanted to see what the new comics were all about. It was extreme, gaudy, and cheap. I should have kept it as a perfect bad example. It always gives me a little jolt when people talk about Supreme being a good character. Not on what I've seen of him - and I don't want to see any more. Hey, the Quarter Bin guy knows that one too! OK, I'll contribute something else. Pergatori: The Dracula Gambit #1 Vampire sex and slaughter porn. I was surprised to find this still in my comics when I went through them recently. It can stand for a lot of similar trash. I think I'm glad I kept it, but it's not Bloodstrike #5. That's about what you need to know about generic, bottom-quality male and female protagonists in the Iron Age.

Re: Impossible to abuse / Absolute Balance challenge. I have never seen idiomatic Lithuanian, with a native accent (4 points) abused, and never expect to. I have never seen someone abuse +8 COM (4 points), and never expect to. I have never even seen someone abuse +2 BODY (4 points), and never expect to. Of course, they can all be highly abusive in combination. You just buy some typical planet destroying munchkin power linked to any of them. Or indeed, to anything else. The requirement "that could not possibly under any circumstances or in any combination become abusive or unbalancing" makes the challenge purely rhetorical.

Re: Batman vs Midnighter With Seth and the bad Doctor the point was to set up divine intervention and a cosmically infallible endorsement to further reinforce the rightness of the Authority's position. Seth: a god figure raises them all, tells them all they've been cruelly dealt with in return for all their (nonexistent) goodness and kindness, and returns them, a risen collective Christ in glory to judge the wicked with a deus ex machina ending. We finish with the usual depraved Authority execution with humiliation, and the Authority bathed in smug satisfaction and cruel glee. The Bad Doctor: we see further demonstrations of how omnipotent the Doctors' powers and how brilliant his planning is (and how Midnighter enjoys being a boy with a boy in the torture chamber). The Bad Doctor gets a dose of ultimate cosmic conscious, the point of which is for him to realise - and announce infallibly to the reader as deathbed testimony - that he's wrong (like that was news) and the Authority are right. He kneels in shame before their (nonexistent) goodness, and they slaughter him with stage-y contempt. We finish with the Authority bathed in smug satisfaction and cruel pleasure. When stealing glory involves the Authority in a little superficial suffering, they do a little superficial suffering. For Christs risen, that came with the territory. And one should not under-estimate how much fun the Midnighter and Apollo have with boys getting cruel with boys, particularly Apollo in his favourite role as hunky victim. The reader's pleasure comes in identifying with the Authority, enjoying their murderous cruelty and irredeemable depravity, and soaking up sanctification and cheap murderous victories over all other notable comic characters - the X-Men, the Avengers, and so on. They're like Syndrome, killing real heroes so that they can pretend to be heroes, but with the jealous support of the writers etc., who fully identify with them and the moral and political stances they take. It's a picture of moral Hell, all lies, pride, cruel violence and (often sexual) depravity. It's why I consider the "beat the Authority" threads pointless in one sense and good and healthy in another. Every Authority fight is rigged, far more than is normal in superhero comics (which is saying a lot). It's like arguing about whether Captain America beats Mephisto in Mephisto's fantasies. Of course not. But at the same time it's great that people have a fundamental desire to see true heroes beat these depraved and evil false heroes. That's morally necessary. Rise to the challenge, I say! On the good side of the Authority as a series, there's lots of seductive art, plenty of mega-violence, and the energy that only comes when the creators are rocking. Many creative people seem to hate heroes, and it shows, in games and in comics. For example, White Wolf's hero game was made by people who despised comic book heroes and their uncritical devotees. This kind of attitude gradually turns everything into a bitter grind. The Authority isn't a grind, it's a blast. And it's tremendously influential. Someone said, in the thread on DCs Countdown to Infinite Crisis - jeez, does everything have to be an Authority knock-off now? More and more it looks like the straight answer to that is: "Yes it does."

Re: Reality check time: so what about the players' feelings? Players feelings and rules tweaks .. . This is mostly an issue before the game. During the game, I want to change nothing. The players also become more emotionally robust with experience. Three big things: (1) Don't put newcomers to Hero into a state of shock. It's very easy to do. Just give them a character sheet with only what they need to know, written in words. ("Strength" not STR.) Rules tweaks definitely fall into "don't need to know." (2) The best workaround for a veteran is an older version of the rule. I don't like how Desolidification works now. Is version one, where you went through only so much body and shed only so much damage, depending on your points in Desolidification, a good enough fix? Yes. Then don't even think about making up a new house rule, use the old one. That's one example. (3) Don't get the players trying not to think of a white horse. This applies to veterans and newbies alike. If you print out a list of things you're not allowed to buy and do, even though you may or likely will have crafted it with exquisite care to help simulate the world you want, what you are really doing is waving sweets past the players noses and saying: "These are too good for you!" That entrances the players' imagination and causes problems. Haven't you noticed sometimes, "everything" seems to be banned and it's only clear what the gamemaster doesn't want? Even though the gamemaster didn't seem to think there was a problem at all? Or you had no special idea for a character till the gamemaster said "I'd be reluctant to allow X", and instantly you thought "why not X, X could rock, what if X was something just tweaked a little like - hey, I'd really like to play that!" It's a devilish lure. And you're also creating the bad impression that the stuff you didn't mention isn't worth talking about because it's not interesting - whereas it's just what you want to see in your game. I'm coming round to the view: it's better to keep your lists of banned things secret, and talk only about what you want, the sorts of characters that will be waved past inspection with a smile, and the sorts of action there won’t be much trouble with. (Because, just quietly, you've nerfed the natural enemies of these preferred actions.) For example, if you want mega-movethroughs all over the place - I wouldn't - the neat, economical way to support this is to throw out stuff like Martial Throw and Knockback Resistance. Don't talk about that or everyone will instantly flip into the mental role of a martial artist or a brick having their good staff unfairly barred. Talk about how you want high-speed, effective characters and that (not exactly how) you are going to favour them.

Re: Favorite Abuse Out of curiosity: do you think you can continue to sleep even if you no longer suffer the necessity to do so? I would say yes, just as you can eat even if you have life support and don't need to eat.

Re: EC balance fix Yup. Good answer.

Re: EC balance fix Thank you for your kind words. Your question is a very good one, and what I suspect is your suspicion (grin) is well-founded. I have seen issues I've talked about in games. The influence is mostly on the marginal case, the player or the character that could go either way depending on what seems to work. But, the overwhelming power of the focus bonus stacked with other limitations and frameworks tends to sideline other issues. I mean, a 7d6 RKA is more effective than a 21d6 EB, but what does a Daredevil clone care? "Need to buy into the STUN lotto to effect these big guys" is an issue, but "gotta get a power suit" is so much bigger an issue. Elemental Control: Powered Armour is just part of the "winner's bonus" - a "fast track" character like Steel Man will get it, along with other benefits like END Batteries, a "slow track" character with a billy club and a swing-line won't, and that's really all you need to know about Elemental Controls. I haven't seen any problems with 5th Edition Elemental Controls and/or Adustment powers in games, because I'm not in such games, or the issues haven't arisen yet. So there's a lot of mere speculation in what I'm saying. Now, let me take a different tack. Instead of criticising, let me invite you to put forward examples of the sort of thing you think should be waved through with a smile by the gamemaster. If the player wanted to be a "good guy" and get respect and rewards for it, he or she would do - what? We have Dust Raven's example, which you and I liked. We have Gary's idea, which could use an illustration but which is pretty clear already. I've given my two examples of "perfect" Elemental Controls, and explained why I think they're OK. We've got the Robot EC, which is free points to support a superior concept with inherent limitations (like being affected by steel cutters). More! And why does your example work, in the context of the issues Gary started the thread to discuss, or if that's not an issue - it isn't for me or Hawksmoore - why not?

Re: EC balance fix

Re: Favorite Abuse Increased End Cost: x10 (-4) I take it this is Grond's wind-up alarm clock.

Re: EC balance fix Well, let's try this example, which is the same as my previous example: Ice Girl wants the following power, built as an Elemental Control: Cost Power 30 Ice Powers: Elemental Control, 60-point Powers 30 1) Ice Blast: Energy Blast 12d6 30 2) Ice Block: Entangle 6d6, 6 DEF 30 3) Ice Slides: Running +30" Total Cost: 120 points. Ice Girl, like Darklight, is built line for line from page 72 of Sidekick: this is the example where it shows you how to do an ideal, textbook legal plain vanilla Elemental Control. (All I did different for Darklight was swap in Flight for Running, since I didn't think running extra fast on black, sticky pseudo-tar would look good.) I like this example, because as I noted before, it conforms perfectly to a "real" Marvel universe power. That's simulation! Yet they (the Powers) are not sharing any advantages or limitations at all, as zornwil would expect them to. Is refusing to play the Hero System munchkin game of accumulating advantages and -1/4 limitations inconsistent with Elemental Controls? (Or is it just so strange to think about a character built on four-coloured rather than Hero System concepts that one readily forgets ... ? (laughing) Hmm?) Dust Raven: "In short, I would probably allow the example ..." Bloodstone: "I would have to talk to the prospective player a bit and ask a my usual barage of questions, but something like that would most likley get approved with little to no alteration." Is this how it's supposed to be for the simplest, most in-genre, most book-legal thing you could possibly write down regarding an Elemental Control? Why is it so easy to get special treatment for nasty, complicated "grey zone" concepts (and sympathy for 0 END powers in the Elemental Control, small powers in the Elemental Control and so on), why is it readily acceptable that Elemental Controls are limited only by Adjustment attacks that nobody (or hardly anybody) may be using, and yet the simplest, most good-guy thing you can do gets a firm "probably"? Truly, Hero System makes the straightforward hero pass his ideas through the eye of a needle, while it swallows the villain's Death Star whole. These complicated fixes and re-interpretations intended to make an over-ripe rules system smell sweet tend to make things worse, not better. The fancier you get, the tougher it is on character concepts that aren't supposed to be fancy. However, I admit I did love the example of Fairhand's Floating Field. That was helpful.

Re: Punisher Vs Batman You left out that he has Returned From Death (at least once). I suppose it's easy to forget that. So many heroes have done as much. This is why I specified which Punisher I had in mind. I like the Thomas Jane movie version. He's just a guy, or rather he's superhuman, like all action heroes, but not too much. He's got nothing on Arnold Schwarzenegger's Colonel John Matrix, from Commando, or Jean Reno's Leon, from Leon (alternate title The Professional), in power and skill. He's between them in morality, far more than half-way up, since rescuing is superior to punishing, and either is in a higher moral universe compared to assassination, which Leon does. In this context, the Punisher deserves to be considered one of the good guys. Keep him human and sympathetic, like Thomas Jane does, give him scenes where he shows his decency and where he recognises the decency and courage of ordinary people, don't let him rise above the action movie level where he fits in, and I think he's fine. I would warmly support what Suzano said for some comic versions though.

Re: Biggest whine about HERO

Re: EC balance fix That sounds to me like a solid and well-considered "maybe, maybe not, depending." That of course is what I expect: uncertainty. Still, it's always reasonable to ask for details. OK, I'll fill in the details. And I'll be as simple as can be. The prospective player of Natasha Shaposhnikova, Darklight, intends to defend the Motherland with the following power built as an Elemental Control: Cost Power 30 Dark Force Powers: Elemental Control, 60-point powers 30 1) Dark Force Blast: Energy Blast 12d6 30 2) Dark Force Pseudo-Tar Attack: Entangle 6d6, 6 DEF 30 3) Dark Force Flight: Flight 30" Total Cost of Dark Force Powers: 120 Points Legal? Or not legal? A true Elemental Control? Or not a true Elemental Control? Three powers? One power built with three Powers? Three Essences in one Substance? And what about the filioque? http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06073a.htm (wink)

Re: EC balance fix Walk me through an example. Here's an official Marvel power: Darkforce Manipulation. Darkstar (Lania Petrovna of the Soviet Super-Soldiers) has it, among others. It can produce force rams, or shields, or a bunch of different things, though any one character is likely to have just a few tricks (Powers) they use over and over, like fly, ranged energy bash, force wall. I hope it's obvious from what I said before what I'd do with this: I'd rubber-stamp it. Dark-force Powers all using Dark Energy, Purple Powers all using Purple Energy - I'm easy. And I think out of ten guys all applying my approach, nine or ten of them would say: "Power up your Dark Force Manipulation, baby: it's all good." It's not at all clear to me what you'll do with this power. It's even less clear to me that ten different gamemasters trying to apply what I see as the FUBARed Elemental Control rules according to your suggested saving interpretation would all or almost all make the same call on this. I can't see the bright line. It looks like the rule, applied as you suggest, might in practice amount to: "if the gamemaster is in a giving mood that day, you get the Elemental Control bonus, and if not, not." What would you do? Why would you do it? Where's the predicability coming from? Dust Raven: "Think of some constructs that actually are a single power that should be represented by a single Power, but the only way to do it is to build it with many Powers. There aren't many, but they exist. As a GM, this is how I quallify an EC in my campaigns. If what the player wants or what the character needs doesn't fit this description, the character doesn't get an EC. If it does, they do, and it doesn't matter what Powers are going into it (though I disallow most Special Powers... as in I haven't yet allowed one)." Show me what this means.

Re: EC balance fix Dust Raven: "Woah... long reply." Heh. I'll go for relative brevity this time. (Looking back - well, I tried.) Dust Raven: "I would say that yes, as most people are interpreting EC, it is FUBARed (damn, I haven't used that acronym since the 80s). There's a different way to look at it though, which I'll get to in a moment." In the meantime, will you agree that before 5th Edition came out there were no Elemental Control rules that were widely respected and consistently in force, and after 5th Edition came out there were still no Elemental Control rules that were widely respected and consistently in force? Dust Raven: "Vuln inceases the effect roll of an attack, the limiting factor on EC simply applies that effect roll to addition Powers in addition to the targeting Power. A Susceptibility is closer, except that the amount of effect varies with the strength of the attack power." Yup. (Assuming you meant "targeted Power" not "targeting power". Typos haunt us all.) Dust Raven: "There are nifty ways around this though. There are certain limiting factors on any number of Powers and Frameworks. All a GM has to do is say "instead of the normal rule for this particular instance, we will be using this alternate rules which I've judged to be of equivalent value." Nothing wrong with that, and there's already a lot of precidence for it in the published material (check the USPD and count the number of "exceptions")." I don't have USPD, but am thinking of getting it. You like it? Dust Raven, re: my "colour" SFX approach: "Well, if that's what you want to do, then that's what you do. But that's your game, which at this point has nothing to do with the rules governing character balance. You are specifically giving a bonus to some characters and not others. That's just a house rule. House rules don't mean the real rules are broken." It seems to me you suggested above that not to apply the rules as written but to create house rules or exceptions was a good approach. Obviously I agree. I hope we also agree that just as house rules don't prove the real rules are broken, they also don't prove the real rules are not broken. Dust Raven: "Here's how I see the whole EC thing. Fairly simple really. EC is a group of Powers with a "tight" SFX, and when one Power in the EC is negatively affected by an Adjustment Power, all Powers in the EC are." [snip] "So, what is an EC? It's a single power. Not Power, but power. Little 'p'. More specifically, it's a single power that is so flexible, useful or well trained that it functions as more than one Power in game mechanics. But EC takes this a step further. Not only is it a single power represented by several Powers, the single power is so "tight", that all of the Powers, the game mechanics that define it, are to be treated as a single Power. So an EC turns many Powers into a single Power, to represent a single power. Dust Raven: "I really hope this is making sense..." Maybe.