bigdamnhero

Lena Luthor's "I know you'll be there for me when I need you" was in no way ominous and I'm sure won't come back to haunt Kara later.

I wouldn't use Summon for it since Summon typically brings in an additional character but doesn't replace the "host" character, but YMMV.

[nod] ...and/or a GM willing to enforce the law. Most of the objections I hear to getting points from Disadvantages stem from early editions where there was no limit to how many points you could get from them; so it was easy for munchkins to tack on a ton of questionable Disads to get a tone of extra points and min-max their characters out. A problem easily solved by saying "you must take X points of Disadvantages - you can take more than that, but you don't get additional points from them." It's not that hard. (I realize I'm preaching to the choir here...)

The whole "zero gravity = immobilized & helpless" thing is actually a pet peeve of mine. Today's astronauts spend most of their time in zero G* and yet they somehow still manage to function. The idea that futuristic characters living & working on spaceships/stations wouldn't have at least some basic knowledge of/training in how to move if the artificial gravity fails (albeit with penalties) seems wildly improbable to me. They're certainly not going to just let go of their weapons, float to a convenient point halfway between floor & ceiling and hang there all stupid and impotent. (Lookin' at you Guardians of the Galaxy...) [/sOAPBOX] That said: it sounds like what you're looking for is not just a lack of gravity, but something that actively pulls people to a specific point in mid-air and holds them there, right? So the question is, based on the sfx, what can targets use to try and get out of the trap? Assuming targets can't use STR to break out, then both Entangle and TK are probably out unless you want to tack on some sort of NND (Defense is Environmental Movement), which is not RAW-legal but might be close enough for handwaving purposes if you're not worried about the precise point cost. Flight UAA is a valid way to go, and can only be opposed by something that creates a Flight-like effect - in true zero G, a simple fire extinguisher would provide enough thrust to push you to a wall. But in this case it would have to provide enough thrust to overcome however many Gs you say the trap is built for. If all you want to do is keep them from moving, another option might be Change Environment, -X meters of Movement. That's harder to do with superheroes where Movement rates vary so much, but you could probably make it work in a Heroic game where Movement rates tend to fall in a narrower band. * Or technically microgravity, but micro enough as might as well be zero.

Demons Rule is my favorite 4ed Champions adventure, hands down. I assume since you posted this under Champions that you're not interested in 3ed/4ed Heroic books?

Apologies for playing the It Depends card, but how do you see this coming up in actual game play? If this is a PC and they're likely to have the same (presumably willing?) host all/most of the time, then you're probably just looking at some flavor of OIHID. If it's a PC but you want him to be passed around to different NPC hosts, then maybe a Physical Complication is the simplest option. If it's an NPC, and the bracer is going to be picked up by random people then its either a plot device or some combination of Possession and Transform might be the way to go.

Yeah, sounds like the Personal Focus to me. (6e1 p380, CC p106) I'm not sure what you're trying to do that isn't covered by that rule?

The numbers change but the effect of halving stays (roughly) constant: a 12d6 attack against Heroic mooks is massively overpowered,* a 6d6 attack will STUN or maybe KO them, but a 3d6 attack will only get a couple points of STUN through. Whatever the "standard defenses" are for a campaign, the first X dice do no damage and every die after that is all damage; halving subtracts dice that do all damage while leaving dice that do no damage. It's not proportional. * If you're using a 12d6 attack against mooks in a Heroic game something's already off. Also: Massively Overpowered Mooks is my new band name.

That's a fair point. Plus presumably this isn't the character's only attack, so it's not like they're going to have to use it when it's not advantageous. I imagine it varies from game to game, but remember that because of the way Defenses work in Hero hitting half as hard rarely means doing half as much damage. Say you're fighting Standard Supers with defenses in the 20-25 range. An average 12d6 Blast would do 42 STUN to everyone in the AOE, roughly half of which gets through. That's enough to Stun many non-Bricks, and 2 or 3 of those will get some KOs. But a 6d6 Blast does 21 STUN on average, which means nothing gets through. Even if you're smacking down mooks with Defenses in the 10-15 range, the 12d6 blast is going to Stun and possibly one-shot everyone in the AOE, whereas the 6d6 will get 5-10 STUN through. That's not a trivial distinction. (I have occasionally thought that it might be better/more realistic to make all defenses work as a percentage ala Damage Reduction. Because Hero doesn't have enough math...) Yeah, the number of times when damaging the environment is really disadvantageous to the PCs is pretty rare in our games.

Yeah, I see what the author was trying to say but the article doesn't convey it very well. Trying to rephrase as generously as possible: Subcultures that tend to obsess over certain things - sports, geekery, religion, etc - can be off-putting to people not fluent with or not interested in those things. Professions that want to broaden their demographic appeal should be aware of how their cultural norms may be excluding the people they're trying to attract. Both of those are valid points bordering on obvious. But the article could've been better about tying them together and maybe being a tad less preachy. I get your point. But there's a big difference between treating women at a geek convention like they aren't geeky enough, vs treating women in a school or business setting like they aren't geeky enough. I don't think that's what the author was trying to say. There's a fine line between "enjoying my stuff" and "making you feel unwelcome/inferior because you don't enjoy my stuff." But again I concede the author could've made that point better with less finger-wagging.

Interesting. Going off my memory of Bronze-Age Avengers comics, I can definitely think of a few city & wilderness fights, but yeah a lot of bases & caves. The Defenders always seemed to operate out of the public's eye, so either bases, caves or extra-dimensional weirdspots. "Tearing up downtown" seems to be more common in modern comics, tho again that's not based on a scientific sampling. That said because solo books vastly outnumber team books, our memories of "superhero fights" are going to be shaped more heavily by those, where as you point out street fights are much more common. Agreed. I've always found it works better to make the city up as you go, beyond broad strokes; most of the players aren't going to study it in detail anyway, so you'll be feeding them "you character would know..." stuff anyway.

Amen. I don't shoot much anymore, but used to do it all the time for fun and on the job. (Military & law enforcement.) One of my standard drills was to empty a 15-round pistol clip, fast-reload, and empty the second clip. I could do it in well under 12 seconds (ie 1 Turn), and while doing it accurately took some learning, getting tired was never a concern. I was in decent shape then, but 60 END should've burned through my END, most of my STUN, and probably knocked me out. But I wasn't even winded afterwards. And to be clear, I was no John Wick. (At my best I was maybe Agent-level in Hero terms, and that's being generous.) Frankly for anyone who's actually been trained to shoot (ie - Weapon Familiarity) and in halfway decent shape (ie - meets STR Min), even charging END once per Phase seems high; I can see charging it for game balance purposes, but anything beyond that makes the opposite of sense. Movement is way more tiring than pulling triggers; the idea that when doing a half-move-and-shoot the shooting costs more END than the movement is frankly absurd. Steve knows guns, but I don't think he thought this one through.

That was my first thought too. But Spreading doesn't halve the damage, it just reduces is 1d6 per additional hex, so it's not quite the same thing. Yeah, I was thinking along those lines too. Tho I think Split Damage would be worth at least a -1; if it were a standalone Limited Power, the power loses half its effect if you have even 2 people present, so that's a -1. And I'm of two minds whether it would work best as a modifier on the cost of the AoE, or as a standalone Lim - GM's call. Selective may not be exactly the modifier you want, since that normally lets you choose who to hit; maybe something like "Does no damage to environment" or however you want to define it, or just incorporate that into how you define "Split Damage" and reduce the value of that accordingly.

FYI, Vixen (animated) Season 2 is up on the CW Seed.

That's not what this Talent does, in FH or in D&D. It has nothing to do with how many Hit Points/BODY/Whatever the opponent has. The point is that whether it takes 1 blow or 10, when you drop an opponent you can exploit that to attack the guy behind/next to him. It's not about mook rules.

"Bird Brain" was my suggestion for naming the power, but the player went a different direction.

Nice - thanks for bothering to actually Look Stuff Up! The article does note that at the executive/board level "only" 60% are women, but that's still pretty good.

Sure. Tho that in no way precludes him from also acting.

And yet is the lowest-grossing film in the series since the first one (which was a bit of a sleeper no pun intended), was critically panned, and the next film brought back Bourne/Damon and grossed $400M+. So yeah it wasn't Ishtar-level flop, but it's widely seen as the weakest film in the franchise.

I played in one short-lived game where the clever-but-low-PRE character would come up with some brilliant idea, everyone would ignore him, and then someone else would say "Hey, you know what we should do [whatever other character said but pretending it's my idea]" and everyone would go "Great idea!" and do that. The player running the clever-but-low-PRE character thought it was hysterical and did everything he could to set it up whenever possible, but we all felt a little sorry for his poor character.

"I'm sorry, your policy clearly covers Disarms, but in this case your opponent hit your Focus with a Ranged attack and you let go of it - I'm not blaming you, mind - but your policy does not insure against droppage associated with Foci being hit by ranged attacks, there's nothing I can do..."

I was under the impression it's still pretty male dominated, but I admit I have no actual data to back that up.

I like that HvW - make it more about a change in personality, approach and maybe sfx, less about changing power level per se!

Interesting. (And points for linking a fivethirtyeight article about something other than politics!) My first thought was to wonder is YA titles were disproportionately represented, but of course the statistics geeks at 538 would think of that and correct for it. I found it interesting that books with Girl in the title were overwhelmingly written by women (79%-21%). But of course as the article also points out, most authors don't get final say on their titles, which could mean the G word is being inserted by male editors & publishers. I still remember when Ms. Marvel joined the Avengers back in 1978(ish?) and the Wasp welcomed her with something like "Nice to have another girl on the team," and Carol replied with something like "I haven't been a girl in a long time, but I appreciate the sentiment." It wasn't portrayed as some big deal, just a recognition that some women see "girl" as acceptable and even empowering, while many others feel the opposite. Helped highlight the two characters' different personalities without making one of them "wrong." But it does sometimes seem odd that we're still having the same conversation today. See Supergirl's premiere episode, where Kara & Kat have a not-dissimilar exchange. Forum ladies? I'm curious what your feelings are on the G word? Empowering, or belittling, or bit of both?

As for a solo BW movie - I'd love it but I'm not holding my breath.