Beastial

Re: Favorite Abuse Duplication, x8 (or more) duplicates. Now have each duplicate buy a power, "usable by others", that doesn't require LOS to maintain, only to establish. +3/4 I believe. Each duplicate gives your main character one power or power pool... movement, attacks, senses, skills, and so forth. I was thinking of this originally as a groovy character concept after watching "Firestarter: Rekindled" last night. A group of psi children raised together... After working closely for Many Years, their minds kinda fused into one being, and they each have all the others' powers. If you're feeling particularly cheesy, you can get them with only the +1/4 0-25% different advantage instead of something more expensive. Give them all the same multipower pool, with different slots. Last night I ended up with 8 'duplicates', each with: 1)+15 ego (this was the 'hub' character, he had mind link x8, everyone else had it at x1) 2) 20-20 0 END FF/some damage shield 3) 27 STR TK/20" flight 4) 30 mental D & 20 power D 5) 10d6 mind control/mental illusions 6) 5d6 ego blast/3d6 ego transfer to ego at range 7) +10 dex, +2 SPD/Teleportation (space-time guy) 8) 2 pts regen, +5 con, +5 rec, +5 stun, +10 end/4d6 heal [body & stun] (bio-manipulator gal) 9) 10d6 telepathy If any member of "Project 38" was knocked out, the entire group lost that member's power. If the 'hub' was knocked out, they couldn't share powers at all, and were stuffed into their own skulls for the first time in Many Years. Traumatic Experience when you've been part of a distributed mind for most of your life. If you're a single mind with multiple non-related bodies, is it incest to have children with yourself? Creepy certainly, but Morally Wrong? Babies born of them would pretty much be garunteed new members of their group-mind. As a villain, this character could come gunning for a player mentalist looking to "recruit" them. As a player? No Way. As an alternative, give them all a variable power pool, usuable by other. A 250 point dupe (for 50 character points) could manage an 80pt variable power pool (after selling back some attributes). Then you wouldn't even have to pay extra for variable dupes. Your "avatar" character would end up with N 80pt power pools. While no one power would be over-the-top having 80 x 8 of whatever the heck you wanted could get horrifically powerful. Now make it x16 (for a measley 5 points). 80x16 = 1260? And you can do this with a 250 point character with plenty of room to spare. If all you did was buy this 250pt dupes, you could afford... 250 - 50 = 200 / 5 = 40. 2^40 duplicates, each giving you 80 character points worth of variable point power pool. 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776. That's about a trillion duplicates... each giving you one copy of that 80 point cosmic pool. After the first billion or two though... where do you keep them all?! Your attributes would all be effectively unlimited, as would your defenses. And you should be able to pull off multi-power attacks using a couple thousand instances of whatever 80-active powers you can think of without breaking a sweat. How about a couple million 1d6 ego attacks, 0 END cost, each w/15 levels of penetration? No? Okay, just the 16d6 EBs then? Fine! Your defenses are less than 96?

Re: Intelligent multipowers

Re: New System: Adjustment Powers Redone Okay, comments: You left out how much a die would cost. That seems pretty important to me... or are you proposing that we do away with dice all together and take a 'standard-effect'-ish thing here? Your examples could use a bit more meat on their bones too. 30 active points for what exactly? Providing an actual play example would help quite a bit. It sounds like you want to get rid of everything except aid and drain... and have everything else 'built' with advantages and limitations (suppress: drain w/ costs END to maintain, transfer: linked aid and drain, absorbtion: aid -1 only up to body physical-or-energy of attack). How is this different from the present system? The only thing I see here is that time chart changes are now 1/2's instead of 1/4's and the "fade all at once" thing. What motivates these changes? What about the 'increased maximum' adder? By all means, continue writing up your revisions... I'm curious to see where you're going with this. The Adjustment powers are very abusable, but I don't see anything here that changes that. PS: Which thread inspired this one?

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense? So a quick-hack fix for the Iowa might go something like this: Base DEF: 10 (superstructure) +10 DEF: 14- Activation (hull) +10 DEF: 11- Activation (armor skirt) Maybe throw in a x2 vulnerability to attacks that penetrate the skirt (it's covering Important Stuff). With 30 DEF, I'd probably rate that at "Uncommon". If you happen to hit the control tower, you'd find something significantly squishier than the afore-mentioned tank... Hitting the skirt on the other hand (both activation rolls, And I'd rule they'd share a single roll) would run you smack into a 30 DEF that the 8d6RKA would have a hard time scratching. Now combine that with the per-hex rules for damaging buildings, and you're good to go. -------------------------- As an alternate solution, I propose we pour some gas on this complexity fire: A "Scale" system, across all of Hero, based on size. You'd pay some ammount for a BB to be 4 or 5 steps up this scale system (heck, tanks would probably be at least one step up themselves). Any attacks against things of a smaller scale would take a CV penalty and a damage bonus... visa versa going the other way. Keep growth/shrinking modifications for PER, reach etc. DEX (rather than CV) and SPD penalties might be appropriate instead appropriate (hordes of fighters swarming around a Ponderous capital ship and all that). Properly designed, this sort of thing would allow for stuff like insects, capital ships, and planets. Things at the same scale would interact normally (Capital ship, Cosmic Gods, rodents, bacteria, whatever), but when you started crossing scale boundaries, the smaller stuff starts to have trouble inflicting damage, while the ponderous, large stuff has trouble hitting. With this sytem, you could define your tanks as having some reasonable level of power in comparison to one another, and their interaction with people, vermin, and capital ships would Just Work. Weapons designed to work on other scales could take an advantage or limitation based on which way they were going (anti-cap ship missiles, AA weapons on a ship, anti-personnel on a tank, the Death Star's planet-destroyer, etc). Insecticide gets a big price break. I propose that this would cost about as much (perhaps a bit more) than 3 levels of intrinsic growth per level (30 per level?)... just because you're getting not just STR, but damage across the board (but loosing SPD). Lessee here... growth x 3: 15. +1/2 0 END, +1/2 Persistent, +1/4 intrinsic, -1/2 always on: 33.75(34) active, 22.5(22) real. That seems pretty cheap all things considered. Maybe 30-40 points per level? Without firm decisions on how effective various aspects of the proposed system are, it's pointless (pun intended) to come up with a fixed value. And rather than a flat SPD bonus/penalty, I'd rather see something along the lines of different turn lengths (though this could get needlessly complex). Each 2 (3?) steps of Scale would change your turn length by a step up/down the time chart... That raises some potentially unpleasantly effects for Really Small things, but then there's really not much they can do at that point. I'd want weapons at a given scale to act at that rate... unmodified DEX/SPD/etc... providing whatever is controlling the power/weapon/whatever could physically act on that scale (or why would they buy the reduced-scale power in the first place?). Titanic-Planet-Eater-Guy might not be capable of acting on human-scale speed, but the Death Star's crew is quite capable of crewing human-scale equipment. Having set a base scale (the PC's I'd imagine), you've determined the actual size of a 'hex'... everything not at that base scale is affected one way or the other. I'd actually considered something like this in the past... degree's of 'heroicness' or 'divinity'... only without the size/SPD thing. I wouldn't really want that sort of thing to be purchasable with points though. You'd just say "Superheroic campaign: all characters have 2 levels of Heroism". You could even have 'subhuman' levels, though I really hadn't thought about it previously. Low-end undead hordes perhaps? So I've stated that crossing Scales changes your damage, but not how. I'd guess a flat DC bonus wouldn't scale well (pun intended again). Doubling damage every level seems way too extreme, but I don't want people to have to memorize 1.5^X tables either. x1.5, x2, x2.5 sounds better... I'd think that should be used as a multipier to whatever was rolled rather than increasing the number of dice involved: GM: "The Death Star fires, you're hit with a 60d6 RKA! What's your rED?" Player: "Dude.... we don't HAVE 60d6". To bring this back to the original subject: Assuming a system like this could be balanced, some BB with a 10 def sounds about right... though it still might be a touch low. The first proposal sounds much easier on everyone's lives (fix the individual write-up), while the latter one could be Very Cool if you could get it to work. With this, you'd have to rewrite just about every non-human-scale object in the game. Ho hum. Dream big, eh?

Re: Three...?

Re: [newbie] Summon with Focus Question Okay, I know now... but I cheated. Never even heard of this show/book/whatever until I dredged it out of the internet. Where the heck did it come from?

Re: Batman vs Midnighter The undefeatable Bad-god could take ANYONE. Plot? Continuity? Reason? Bah! He resently beat the snot out of Amazo with only Nighthawk as backup (serving as little more than a distraction). C'mon... that's rediculous. One could argue that this was a cheap knock-off Amazo (no ring or lasso, could be substandard in other areas too)... but it was still Quite Odd that Bats disposed of him so casually.

Re: Retrocognitive Tracking Option 1: Discriminatory tracking "Detect X" sense. Throw in some PER and you're good to go. Option 2:Get the tracking skill with a pile of penality skill levels to cover "tracking across difficult terrain", "only for tracking X", enough to nullify ANY terrain penalty. You could also get penalty levels against track-aging penalties as well (depending on how retro you want your retrocog to be).

Re: CHARACTER: the dirt

Re: Solving for Speed 1) As an alternative to your proposed solution, how about rating a characters maximum velocity as SPD x move" / 12. Their per-segment max velocity would then be the speed they'd use to do things like inflict damage or determine their DCV bonus with the optional speed->DCV rules. Leave everything else as published. This would probably be the minimum needed to work around what you dislike in the current system while leaving as much as possible intact. 2) Make all movement powers considerably cheaper. x4 I'd think. You'd want to tweak starting values as well. Then you'd still buy your 'per turn' movement, but the velocities would come out closer to what they are now. Removing SPD from the velocity equation should probably make it cheaper too (5 - 8 points instead of 10). 3) Determine per-turn velocity as it is determined now... leave SPD in the equation, keep doing everything else as you propose. 4) Having determined everyone's per-turn velocity (through whatever method you preffer), have everyone move every segment, but only allow them to change what they were doing per phase. Everyone would have to pre-declare what they were going to do until their next phase. If something unexpected turned up (like rounding a corner at a high velocity to find a mother pushing a stroller in their path), oh well. Allowing people to abort their next action to change their movement plan sounds quite reasonable. I'd allow 'relative' plans like "intercept so-n-so".

Re: Summon to simulate seeking projectiles The missile I proposed started to work around that. You could buy it 12 speed with 1 charge lasting 1 segment... -2. 30 points instead of 120. Meh. That's still pretty expensive, but I can't think of any other limitations you could legitimately pile onto that speed to make it cheaper. "Only to overcome summon disorientation" isn't much of a limitation when it's only going to last long enough to get you over that anyway. You'd also have to put that SPD on a trigger (150 active, 50 real. Ouch!), as I did, or it wouldn't activate until the summoned Thing got it's first action. I suppose you could put the SPD in a multi, and put the trigger on the multi... that way you'd still be able to use those pool points for something useful after the Thing was summoned and awoke... but that's still an awfully big multi (120 pool points with a trigger advantage). Hmmm... doesn't putting something on a trigger make it useless without that trigger? Gah. Maybe a second "on impact" trigger for the second slot (the warhead). That bears further research and I REALLY need to get to work.

Re: Summon to simulate seeking projectiles A: As I (very) briefly mentioned, someone commented on a seeking projectile as a summon in official Hero IP, and I went off to build one on my own to see how it turned out. I don't get any credit for independant creation (at least not for this). B: Yes, the EC with slots that have "costs END to start" was something I posted in the "favorite abuses" thread. On the other hand, I believe that charges that also cost END is a bigger limitation than -1/4, though the "only to start" may well bring it back down to that. I initially figured that the two would pretty much cancel each other out, and didn't dig any further. In doing the digging now, I'm not finding any such thing... this would make the missile cost an extra 15 points. (which could be paid for by dropping some SPD and flight). C: One could easily argue that putting the summon inside a multi places no restrictions on what is summoned. They're seperate characters, so I'd strongly argue they really shouldn't have any constraints on them based soley on where the sommon was stashed on their character sheet. But on the other hand, this is a pretty fishy EC to start with. D: One of the disad's I glossed over (in addition to the passing reference to can't talk) was a "can't hear/feel/smell/touch" thing. They can only see. I also considered buying them Radar and IR vision to better simulate a missile with image recognition/heat seeking/radar (like a sidewinder). No acting/persuasion, but the "stealth" option is still very much present, environment permitting. E: The "1 minute charge" is a limit on its range and tracking time. If someone (in the air for example) with nothing to hide behind managed to avoid them (perhaps by staying inside their turn radius), they'd still have to wait out their 1-minute fuel supply... The description of Summon also mentions that a GM might change the definition of how long a "task" lasts if they felt it appropriate. If that GM decided to let a missile last until it was destroyed, one could then drop the extra EGO built into the fire control system, and the 1-minute lifespan becomes a real issue (at least for shooting at things that were Far Away). F: Given that the different summons are technically different (but very similar) powers, I wonder if the "max of X beings at a time" might carry over across the different slots in the multipower. It could be argued either way. G: A 1-hex HA (which I admit isn't how I wrote up the above attack) can hit an adjacent hex, so the missile isn't necessarily destroyed by it's own power... though I admit the -1/2-level side effect would be enough to destroy it if it did body. 2d6 HKA would do a minimum of the 2 body necessary to destroy the missile. Whoops. I actually wrote it up as an RKA without taking the "no range" limitation. My bad. That actually saves 10 points (IIRC). I had initially planned on using a melee attack of some sort, to let the extra velocity DC from a move-through add to the warhead. H: Upon having another gander at the automaton rules (p457 of 5ER), I see that they don't have EGO and are immune to all mental powers, but still have INT & PRE (but are immune to PRE attacks). That inflicts an 8-point penalty on the missile as written up above. I was actually going for something that could be controlled with a machine-class mind control, so maybe Automatons aren't the way to go. I: I didn't "sell back" any SPD. I sold back the DEX, which is quite useful on its own. But missing a little detail or two on that character is understandable when you can only look at part of it in the "code" window. J: If one were to drop the -1/4 "Only at target/max speed" limitation on the flight, the mind link in the fire control system should allow the summoner to control the missile's flight with much greater precision... particularly if the fire control system tacked on a clairsentience with the -1 1/2 "linked to mind link, only through linked senses". 8 points for a basic sight-group clairsentience. This would force the summoner to designate a "lead missile" that the others were all following, unless they bought "multiple perception points"... at which point they'd probably want "rapid" for their sense group so they could actually make use of all the info headed there way. K: The basic summon with the multipower provided could also use 25pt missiles x32, 75 x 8, 100 x 4, 150 x 2, or 150 x 1... WHOOPS. I messed up one of the the multipower slots quite a bit. The last slot should be a 150pt missile, not a 300pt one. BIG difference. L: Buying mind link for the missiles would let you tack another -1 onto the fire control's mind link, and would only cost the missiles 2 points. The saved points from the fire control system could be tacked onto the summon multi to make up the difference of all the flaws listed here. Making the summon powers themselves 11point (55pt critters)x 16 is possible with the multipower as given for the primary slots. M: All this is assuming a >= 90pt active cap on powers in the campaign (the warhead is 90 active). A lower-end campaign (60 active for example) would have to make some adjustments... the listed RKA would become a 1d6+2 for example, which reduces the "penetrating" effectiveness by half. N: This is getting silly. G'day.

Re: Batman vs Midnighter Having read Authority for pretty much the whole run (I'm not much of a critic, I just like Large Scale Violence, which the Authority has provided me in spades), and having read quite a bit of Bat-lore, I formally proclaim myself uber-Authority over this thread. Pun intended. I'm afraid Batman's life would be brutally cut short. The fight would last as long as Midnighter wanted it to last, and would end with Bats dead. The Authority is very much a "take no prisoners" organization. And things would stay that way for at least an issue or two... until someone managed to ressurect Bats, then he'd do the whole "prep for battle" thing and fight midnighter in a slightly-less-lopsided battle ending with Midnighter in a super-prison somewhere... until he decided to say "something clever... like 'door'". A previous poster mentioned the battle where Midnighter butchered a thinly-veiled copy of the X-Men. That thin veil was a gender-swap and some different costumes. That's it. Funny stuff. In that battle, mightnighter caved Colossus-chick's head in with a single blow (with a staff)... establishing his STR in the "way the heck up there" range. 50 at least, with plenty of MA DC's piled on to boot. This was not an HKA, but it still one-shotted a brick. And I'm still waiting for The Engineer to give Midnighter and Apollo (both cyborgs acording to a panel in their origin story back in the stormwatch days) a Mega Upgrade... any tech built prior to "place each atom where I want" really doesn't hold a candle to anything built afterward. Go check out "The Diamond Age" by Neil Stephenson (an actual book!) for some ideas on what The Engineer ought to be capable of. Machines that can fit through your pores can do pretty much anything they want to your insides, for good or ill. If we're looking for someone interesting for Midnighter to fight, I'd recommend Spider-man. Both have superhuman reflexes and strength. Both have "unconventional methods" for avoiding attacks (spider sense vs combat computer). I think S-M would eventually fall simply because Midnighter isn't reluctant to spill blood, while Spider-man would work within ethical limits... on the other hand, Spidey recently got an upgrade of his own, so perhaps things would be in his favor. Of course the deciding factor is simply who's book the fight took place in. Home field advantage and all that.

Re: Favorite Abuse Contact: Heaven 16- 7pts +3 Extremely usefull skills/resources (how's [omnipotent/owns the universe] grab you?) +1 access to major institutions (all of them) +1 significant contacts of their own (everyone) +2 good relationship x3 Organization contact 39 points to have heaven roll out the proverbial red carpet every time you call. These same stats could apply to any Really Powerful organization in a campaign. USA Armed Forces, VIPER, whatever. For an extra three points, you could kick it up to "slavishly loyal"... but that really didn't feel appropriate for the "heaven" angle. Take this, and the "Head of State" perk. Call yourself "Mr. President"... For additional authenticity, sell back a bunch of INT!

Someone recently posted a question about some official power where Hero Games had used summon to replicate a Darkseid-esque tracking projectile that could be outrun. This got me to thinking, and subsequently to scribbling away in my little Hero notebook. The result seems disproportionately powerful, with only a couple drawbacks: Summon: 50pt missile, x16, +1 Slavish loyalty (willing to destroy self, and it certainly will) 60 active points (10 for 1 missile, + 20 for 4 doublings = 30, at +1) 1 STR -9 1 DEX -27 1 CON -18 1 BOD -18 1 INT -9 1 EGO -18 NA PRE NA (automaton) NA COM NA (ditto) 0 PD 0 0 ED 0 0 REC 0 5 STU 0 18 END 8 Running: 0" -12 Swimming: 0" -2 For a grand total of 103 points worth of sold-back characteristics. That, plus the 50 points in the summon itself leaves us with 153 points to play with. Rocket EC, 30 active, 15 real -1 1 charge, lasts 1 minute -1/4 costs END to start **+10 SPD +1/4 trigger (when summoned) 125 active, 42 real -1 1/4 (1 charge 1 minute, END to start) **30" flight, 60 active, 11 real -1/4, must fly at max speed directly at target -1/4 double turn mode -1 1/4 (1 charge, 1 minute, END to start) Warhead: 2d6 RKA, +1 1/2 Penetrating x 3 90 active, 22 real +1/2 1 hex AoE -2 1 charge -2 Extreme side effect, always (death) Throw in a -0 that the side effect will go off on impact with anything Shrinking 2 levels, always on, intrinsic: 50 active, 34 real. That's 136 so far. Throw in: Teamwork 15- 17 points Disadvantages: It's a freakin missile. It can't bend, talk, smell, think, etc. You figure it out. Okay, so what are the consequences of building an attack like this? 1) The missiles aren't too bright. They go that way real fast, and that's about it. They won't pursue anyone around a corner, they'd just plow into whatever obsticle was in the way and expire. 2) The missiles have to sit in the tubes for a segment or two until they wake up and take off. When they do, they burn through all their endurance (that's why I bought it). 3) They're extremely fragile. Any attack will destroy one. 4) The basic rules define 1 phase of combat as 1 'task'. Slaving loyalty grants 1 task per ego of the summoner. At an 11 speed, those tasks are going to be used up in a big hurry... far earlier than the '1 minute' on their lifespan. Ego bought "only to increase # of tasks" sounds like at least a -1 limitation. 5) But there's a whole bunch of them. Any non-AoE attack isn't going to be very effective at stopping them en mass... but a spread EB just might get them all. 6) They take at most 3 segments to get moving, and usually only 2. Their enhanced speed comes on line the moment they are summoned, so their 'next phase' comes up pretty quickly. The longest summon->launch delay happens when they are summoned on phase 12... they orient on segment 2, and start moving on segment 3. Given their sorry DEX, that gives targets with a SPD of >=4 one action to do something about the missiles (destroy them or take cover) before they start moving. On any other segment, they start moving in 2 segments instead of 3. 7) 16x 2d6 killing attacks with penetrating against all but the most paranoid of defenses is going to do at least 32 body to their target. Ouchy. It's also really hard to dive for cover 16 times in one segment (though one could easily argue that any group using a coordinated AoE would all go off at the same time, in the same spot). This basic framework could be used to deliver any number of different 90-active warheads... prefferably the kind that stacks well together: Penetrating attacks, drains with lots of extra max effect, etc. A penetrating regular attack with that teamwork roll could easily stun just about any target... at 6 stun per missile, that's 64 stun. It's quite likely that they'll all make their teamwork roll, giving their target 16 melee attackers all performing a move-through. That takes just about anyone without defensive manuver II down to 1/2 DCV. Throw in the +4 CV from their shrinking, and their target is gonna soak up a healthy dose of pain. "healthy... pain". Alternatively, the warheads could go for straight damage with a 90 active, advantageless attack... 6d6HKA or 18d6 HA, and ditch the teamwork in favor of skill levels with move-through. Throw in some extra DCs for their velocity, and you're looking at a heapin' helpin' o grief. The summon itself doesn't define how their targets are designated. If a character had mind link, x16 subjects, he could arguably designate different targets for different missiles. I personnaly would want to stuff all this into a multipower... something like Missile Launcher Multi, 62 active, 41 real -1/2 OIF Launch tubes **Summon 50pt missile x 16 [16 charges] 60 active, 4 fixed **Summon 50pt missile x 16 [16 charges] 60 active, 4 fixed (different warhead) **Summon 50pt missile x8 [8 charges] 62 active, 4 fixed +1/4 expanded class (various kinds of missiles) **Summon 50pt missile x4 [unlimited] 55 active, 3 fixed +1/2 0 END +1/4 expanded class **Summon 300pt missile x1 [2 charges] 60 active, 2 fixed +50 Ego, -1 only for summon tasks, -1/2 OIF fire control system 100 active, 40 real Mind Link, x16, summoned missiles (predefined group) -1/2 OIF fire control system 30 active, 20 real Total cost: 118pts That multipower can give someone a Really Huge (if somewhat slow-starting) amount of firepower. I briefly considered making the side effect an AoE-type attack... but that would actually inflict more damage on the target, and sounded like more of an advantage than a drawback. On the other hand, you don't get to utterly destroy the launcher when they pop open the tubes and you zot one of the missiles, which chain-reacts into all the other missiles, doing repeated AoE damage to the launcher and anyone nearby. Stuffing the launcher-bearer face-first into the ground or wrapping a bus around their face right after the tubes open also lacks the satisfying self-vaporizing explosions. Se lave. The other way to go about this same sort of thing would be to buy it as an EB/RKA with an activation time, a "physical manifestation", and perhaps reduced penetration (lots of small missiles) and autofire (LOTS of small missiles). That really can't capture the whole "running away from the missiles" thing though... where the target is pushing their NCM movement in an effort to get away from the Anime-esque cloud of missiles on their tail. Yes, I would like to strap all this to a vehicle, "extra limbs", running, maybe a little leaping... high DEF, and an AC20! Err... EB! I meant energy blast! What?! Fasa doesn't even exist any more, they're not going to sue anyone.

Character A (ChiGuy), has stretching with the "doesn't cross intervening space" advantage, described as not leaving bits of the character around to be attacked. ChiGuy's special effect is that whole pseudo-mystic chi punch thing: no actual physical contact. Character B (SpikeyDude) has a garden-variety damage shield. What happens when ChiGuy strikes SpikeyDude?

Re: Armor = Normal Damage

Re: Favorite Abuse Inspector Cluseau rides again: 25d6 Luck. You'll have ON AVERAGE four 6's, plus or minus. Given the descriptions of this degree of luck, you're foes automagically defeat themselves at that point. Anvils rain from the sky, and the universe goes out of its way to make you happy. Silliness abounds. -------------- My own semi-abusive version of a movement munchkinism: 40 point multi 20" flight 4u (40" non-combat) 5" flight, x128 NCM 4u (640" non-combat) 5" flight, megaspeed x 12 (1" = 1x10^12km) That works out to about mach 6 for the NCM version and WAY over the speed of light for the megascale version. The speed of light would be around 6 levels of megaspeed... so we're looking at something around 1 million times faster than light. The turning radius might leave something to be desired, but you'd get there in a big hurry. -------------- Buy all your stats -1/4 Costs END to start. That's not so bad, but now you can put it in an Elemental Control... and you could go and give them all an activation time (1 turn perhaps?) for a rediculous number of points. As you're out of combat, you can also give the EC an activation roll, and save yourself even more. So every morning, you wake up and power up. No combat effects at all, you just go from schmo to x2 as good stats as everyone else in your campaign every morning... at least until you're rendered unconcious... then you revert back to joe schmoe, and are at the mercy of whoever managed to defeat you (ie the GM), who'll probably be a bit irked at you for pulling a stunt like this. I wouldn't recommend buying your END this way though, or you probably'd KO yourself in this infinite goto-10 power-up-loop. (particularly if you went and -1/2 linked them all together). -------------- Summon->Aid Buy summoning, any of a small group (+1/4 right?), friendly (+1/4). You can summon these little genies with aids built on extremely slow power fades (say 5 points per week). Take the activation time (1 week) limitation, and spend some points to summon more than one at a time. You summon them, they beef you up and go away. You could sell back all their combat-useful stats, phsyically limit them into a near-vegitative state, etc. A 20-point genie could have a pretty hefty aid. Actually, that could be a pretty cool way to build an uber-villain. He has to summon some demon-beasty to beef himself into his normally-unstoppable state. He can only perform this summoning during some event (summer solstice, lunar eclipse, whatever), so the summon is cheap and HUGE. The players eventually learn of this and have to disrupt the cerimony in order to have Uber-Villain-Conjurer-Guy weakened to a point where he can be defeated. -------------- Another summoning trick: Build a summoning to duplicate the effect of missiles, buy their self-slaying attack as penetrating (more than once for those swine who go and buy hardended defenses), and give them a whole pile of Teamwork and flight , make their attack a 1 hex AoE). Each hit will only do a little damage, but then you drop another 20-30 points to summon a whole bunch of them in one go. 2^6 = 64. If each of those missiles does even a couple points of damage to their target, the combined attack is sure to stun just about anyone. Lather, rinse, repeat. You could also use charges/auto-fire instead of the whole +5->double number of summoned critters to spew an equally large number of these missiles. 4d6 double penetrating (+1), AoE 1 hex (+1/2), Side effect (-1 enough damage to kill itself), 1 charge (-2). Heck, you could make this a lot more than 4d6. Instead of the "1 charge" route, you go go with x10 END (-4 IIRC) AND sell back all their CON. They'll die anyway. You could theoretically do both... END-using charges is another disadvantage! Don't forget lots of flight, -1 "Only directly at designated target", - a whole pile for "1 continuous charge lasting X (however much range you want to have)" The only downside to this is that you'd have to buy it with the +1 "Slavish loyalty" advantage... that's the only way to get summoned beings willing to throw their lives away (like for example using an ability that destroys themselves)... IF the GM is savy enough to catch on to your suicidal-freebee-auto-stunning-missle-horde ways. With a little extra work, you could figure out how to target multiple foes with the same barrage... spewing 64 missiles at 8 agents ought to be enough to drop them all. Now throw all this in a multipower with different kinds of attacks: stun-ony, HA's, KA's, NND, AVLD, you name it. Maybe even a drain or two (though they don't stack well... or pick up a +1/4 advantage to get a tight group of different missiles. Heck, as far as the drains go, you could buy each one 1d6 with a bunch of +2 max drain for 1 point... then they would add up together just fine. U R Teh UB3R! Madness! -------------- What else can my devilish little mind come up with? Lessee here... "Buy" all your stats/powers as an aid with the +2 adjustment advantage "all in a given special effect", and pile on enough time-chart fade rate advantages to make all your other abilities fade at a rate that doesn't particularly matter (5pts/day or something) You then slap an activation time on it to match its fade rate. Over a couple days (or whatever rate you go with) you'd reach the maximum your aid could give you. In fact, you just buy a 2d6 aid (so the average comes out to more than 5), and sink the rest into increasing the maximum. Over the course of a few days, you'd slowly cap out all your powers (quite possibly including the aid itself) You then buy sad, weak little versions of all the powers you want and watch the aid buff them into the stratosphere. You might want to throw in a +1/2 0 END on this one... the active cost is likely to grow rediculously large, particularly with the aid-to-the-aid thing going (though with all the advantages you'd hit a point of deminishing returns relatively quickly). Potential Limitations: Only self, activation time, can only be activated at X time of day (sunrise, sunset), OAF: Imobile (-2!), 1 charge (per day) Heck, a particularly cheesy person would put the aid gizmo in a vehicle/base/summon to get the 1->5 point thing going... but then you're back to one of my other suggestions. Hey! Aid the summon! that's just evil. With the x5 multiplier you might never hit a point cap on the aid. Every [whenever] you become more and more powerful. You could then pick up additional powers at some rediculously low level and watch them rocket off to catch up to the rest. Going through a summon, I wouldn't be suprised to find that this can reach exponential growth. Now go get a small cosmic VPP, and you end up with a virtually unlimited number of small powers. IIRC the aid wouldn't affect the max active points of any power, but would affect the total points available. Spend all your XP on that maximum, and you're off to divinity. In fact, you only need the two powers: summon and a VPP. Get stupid with it... 240pts for a 80pt cosmic pool, and 10 on the summon. In short order you'd have all the 80pt powers you could ever want. 80pd, 80 ed, 53rpd 53red, 80 lack of weakness, 80 flash defense (for senses X, Y, and Z), a Really Nice find weakness roll, etc. Your attacks wouldn't be half bad either, tailored to the Foe Du Jur... Think of the multi-power attacks you could pull off! Heaping piles of AP, penetrating, NND, AVLD, you name it. Galactus is a WIMP!!! I think I've sown enough mayhem and destruction for one day. Carry on. ----------------------- EDIT: Uh oh. Thought of another one. With "Major Transformation" you can add powers and limitations. Each extra body worth of damage gives you 10 character points to play with. Buy yourself a transformation, give yourself about 30 or 40 points in extra powers/characteristics/etc, and a transformation that is a slightly more powerful version of the last one, with an extra 15 points of transform (1d6). Heck, you could go and do this to the rest of the PCs as well. One instant Parthenon, just add water. To be particularly evil, give yourself a limitation: x2 effect from transformations (and try to be specific enough that it'll only be your OWN transformations). That just won't fly with most GMs. You don't need any kind of extra time/end cost/whatever mumbo-jumbo. You just keep transforming yourself over and over again. Yes, this is straight munchkinism... the transform power specifically states that you should use multiform to do this sort of thing. Two ways around it: 1) Absorb/aid/whatever the multiform (and the aid of course). 2) Followers. You can't transform yourself, but the example in 5ER specifically mentions transforming some followers. You transform him, he transforms you, back and forth. Same result. Now it's technically legal. You could have quite a few initially-feeble followers. After ping-ponging with one of them for a bit, you go back and transform all the others, then go back to ping-ponging. You end up with a bunch of Really Powerful followers, one uber-follower, and the Uber-Leader. The followers don't even have to start off with a transformation power... it can be "inflicted" on them in the first iteration. I'd recommend building those followers as sub-human. Wouldn't want them to go thinking for themselves now would ya. Uber-follower will be just as powerful as the leader (minus the few paltry points that initially seperated them, if any), and with the aid of another follower or two could easily rip Uper-Leader a new one.

Re: Chasing Missles (from Superman: The Movie) Several problems with the 1" megascale flight evading a combat power: 1) Many campaigns will require a flight cost minimum... so the 1" thing is out. 2) Megaspeed movement without megascale senses can quickly turn into megaspeed stain-on-the-wall. 1000m/phase? How many DC is that? And are you likely to survive it? Ouchy. 3) That big ol' STOP next to megascale encourages GMs to whack things with a "veto" if it smells fishy. 1" megascale smells fishy to me. 4) Megascale movement is assumed to have an acceleration just like regular movement. There's a paragraph or two on it in FRED. The GM could easily state that given the slothful nature of your flight power, it would take you a LONG TIME to accelerate up to full speed... more than enough time for the nega bolt to catch up to you. 5) There is no problem number 5. 6) Okay... so there's no '6' either. So there's lots of ways for a creative GM to stomp on a "cheat" like that one. You just have to be able to outsmart your players a bit... Doing it in such a way that they don't scream and cry (ie one that fits well into the game universe/rules) is much more likely to prolong your campaign. A GM that hands down decisions based solely on "I said so" isn't likely to keep his/her/its players in the long term.

Re: Power Construction - theoretical question There's at least one theoretical (and very rare) advantage to getting your power/flash/ego defense through a FF: It's resistant for free. Now I've never seen a 'killing' attack against any of those, but if someone came along with one, you'd be all set. Reaching a bit... stretching even (at least 5" worth).