CBikle

Re: A teleport EC You're probably going to want to add the Selective advantage to your AE EB, this way you're only punching the people you want to.

Re: Universal Translator: Overpriced at 20? I think the high price is there to keep Universal Translator from making the linguist and language skills from becoming obsolete, which is a good idea. That having been said, two extra points of speed will ALWAYS be more useful.

Re: Detect weakest defense location Right. This is actually becoming a very, very, very minor pet peeve of mine and I'm a little cranky today. I wish people would get into the habit of including things like context and genre when they ask stuff like this.

Re: Detect weakest defense location Depends on the genre, but this seems like the kind of thing that a PC or NPC could notice anyway without having to buy a special skill. If a character has a plate mail helm and the rest of the character's armor is made of studded leather or if there are areas that are unprotected, the PC/NPC will probably notice this. If you had to go your original route, sounds like the Analyze skill might be what you want.

If someone fires an area effect mental attack, do they need to hit the hex (DCV3); each individual person's ECV in the affected area or is it resolved in some other way ? Thanks.

Re: The VPP - my bugbear. Please help! Mechanically, a VPP has two point ceilings (active points and real points). In a 60 pt. VPP, no individual power can be more than 60 active points and as a group, all the powers in the pool are limited to 60 real points total. Here's an example of a VPP with a starting configuration: 60: Cosmic Wand 15(30) Control Cost (OAF: wand) 1 Cosmic Blast: (12d6 EB; OAF) [60 active and using 30 of the VPP's "Real Point" reserve] 2 Cosmic Flight (15" flight; OAF) [30 active and using 15 "Real Points"] 3 Cosmic Shield (10/10 Force Field- hardened and 1/2 end; OAF) [30 active and 15 "real"] The "real" cost of the powers in the pool equal 60 (30+15+15) and none of the powers exceeds the active pt. limit (the EB couldn't go to 14d6 which would make it a 70 pt. active pt. power.

Re: Central Casting: Heroes of Legend They were pretty good. When I used them in my games, I basically treated them as a 25 pt. perk (50 pts. for superheroes) that basically covered all the additional good and bad things gained. The choice of having a character go through Central Casting was always optional and I would usually discourage players from going through it if they had a reasonably complete character idea thought out. I've always thought that the Central Casting books would really work as a software game aid.

Re: Central Casting: Heroes of Legend The sci-fi edition.

Re: Central Casting: Heroes of Legend This is the modern-day genre edition.

Re: Starting up a new campaign -- Recruitment ideas? Additionally, check out local game stores and see if there are game postings or online message boards. Also, try Googling your location and "role playing game" or "RPG" and see if that brings up any gaming groups near or local to you.

Re: Pyramid in the Sky? It was OK, although the villains were a little underpowered and a little too cute.

Re: Was there ever a name for this Guy I was figuring, Bert Convy.

Re: AIs, automatons, etc. as PCs I was interested in doing something like this too for a Star Hero game I'm in, but scrapped the notion because I figured it'd be too much of a pain in the ass for me as well as the GM. Guess there's no easy way to build a Star Hero PC-version of "The Robot" from Lost In Space ?

Re: Starting Combat They're both currently in non-combat time, but seem to be anticipating trouble, so neither side gets "surprise". When they meet, combat will start on segment 12. Instead of going down segment 12 in dex order, you might go by whomever makes their dex roll by the most.

Re: Super Human Registration Act in 5th ed One thing about the whole "Supers Registration" type plot element is that, if the GM has it go into effect, odds are that it'll complicate the game if some of the PCs register and some don't. For awhile, the GM might find himself running two separate games.

Re: Length of Background/Origin For a beginning character: 1 page: good (or very good if it's concise). 2-4 pages: the player is motivated. 10+ pages: the player is insane and thinks his character is a real person.

Re: Trading up with Skill Levels Sure, why not.

Re: Shoot First, Ask later It actually doesn't happen much at all, but when it does it annoys me. The few times it has happened it was usually the same scenario (and the same player) : I'm reading aloud an NPCs transcripts/broadcast message/whatever and right in the middle of it, the player will interrupt me to let me know they're tracing/recording/whatever the message. The reason the player does this is out of concern that I'll say "Too late" if he waits, even though that is very much, NOT my style (I'm fairly easygoing as a GM) The player is never rude about it, but it unnecessarily breaks the mood and distracts me.

Re: Shoot First, Ask later On a side note, I've been in games where the GM can't get through the villain's "big speech" because of PC-heckling and you can clearly see that the GM is annoyed, especially after building up how impressive the NPC is supposed to be. My biggest pet-peeve is getting interrupted when I'm physically describing a situation or reading off a pre-recorded speech or live telecast, however that doesn't extend to face-to-face confrontations (however, any interruptions better be either OOG clarifications or in-character insults/comments).

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster If you're on a Mac, just hold the pointer on the image and drag it to your desktop. If you're on a PC, left click on it and use the "Save Target As" option and call it whatever and save to your desktop (or wherever).

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster ...

Re: Shoot First, Ask later Not really. The GM has to keep it relatively brief; nobody wants to hear Dr. Destroyer give his Oscar speech. This is almost a moot point, in that, usually the master villain can't get through his speech because of the PCs constantly interrupting and heckling him/her/it. Most Champions villains have an enraged vs. ridicule/disrespect, so usually the villain will wind up being the one to initiate combat.

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster Not exactly sure how this one motivates...

Re: Are HERO gamers more wedded to more "realistic" game physics? Just because you reminded me of this, I wound up adding additional character classes/races for Morrow Project personnel and Paranoia clones for a Gamma World game I had planned to run.

Re: Shoot First, Ask later Blaster-guy sounds annoying. In the game, soliloquies are free actions, so no "surprise" is gained (unless the PCS were disguised, invisble, etc.) plus, as a GM, this is the kind of behavior I don't want to encourage, so no reward is given. I think I'd just start the combat normally (segment 12; go down the list in dex order) and explain it as the Blaster-guy "telegraphing" his hostile intent to the villain and everyone else by making a sudden move, powering-up, whatever. What's a little weird and funny about this, is if the "hostile" PC has a lower dex than most of the rest of the characters. In this case, his "hostile move" starts the combat before he even gets to do the action which caused it in the first place.