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There are plenty of RPGs where that is not the case. Palladium. Shadowrun. Storyteller. Just about any point based game out there like Hero and Gurps. I actually think these days, games that give the majority of xp for killing creatures are actually in the minority.

Well, RM breaks magic down to Essence, which is using ambient magical energies to maipulate reality, Channeling, which is using the power given to you by gods and entities and Mentalism, which is using internal spiritual enrrgies to effect reality. So I can see the difference between Essence and Mentalism. Some people see it as magical psionics. I see it as the difference between a classical wizard who learned magic via academic study and a mystic who gained control over their own spiritual energies via meditation and self reflection.

Whats wrong with starting a game out with characters who are competent in their roles?

There's one big difference this time: Bat v Supes screenplay was written by the Destroyer of Franchises, David Goyer, who also wrote the screenplay behind Man of Steel. Chris Terrio was brought in for rewrites and clean up after Affleck read Goyers treatment and said "somebody fix this mess!" But Terrio only cleaned up the screenplay, he didnt rewrite it....there wasnt time. This time, with Justice League, Goyer is completely out. Terrio will be writing the screenplay from scratch, not trying to fix someone elses mistake and he will likely be recieving a lot of input from comic book fan Affleck. Zack Snyder is a good director who seems to have an obsession with darkness, but he's been made aware of that now. So if we can get a decent screenplay from people who respect the original properties, and the best action director in hollywood with producers who keep his tendencies in check, I think Justice League has the potential to be very good. Now that Goyer is out of the project, I am feeling cautiously optimistic for the franchise...

The weaponization of space is a hot topic right now, especially since DARPA announced they fully intend to build weaponized space stations "just in case" http://www.idigitaltimes.com/darpa-plans-build-us-military-space-base-stave-intergalactic-threats-542022

The lighter elements were mined by advanced ETs since their lower temperatures are within the heat tolerance of their ship hulls.

This is not an edition thing, but simply a design philosophy issue. There was nothing in the previous editions preventing players from leaving their base characteristics alone and boosting their secondaries with CP. If they feel they need to buy up primaries just for the bonus, then in my opinion they are metagaming rather than building characters to concept. Now theres nothing wrong with metagaming, many games encourage it. But that doesnt mean other builds arent possible.

An excellent breakdown of parkour. However while I think the guidelines are pretty good, I dont see the need for Parkour as a skill. Acrobatics, Breakfall and Climbing handles all those things. How I would represent Parkour is as a Talent composed of Skill levels to the 3 above mentioned skills (3pt level) with the limitation of only cancelling penalties to traversing obstacles while moving. For my games, I would probably just boil it down to a single Acrobatics, climbing or breakfall roll depending on which skill the specific action requires. Going over a tall wall would be climbing. Vaulting over a series of obstacles would be acrobatics and diving off a 13 foot roof would be breakfall. I would base the difficulty on the number of obstacles in the characters path and only require a single roll unless the area was particularly complex. Then I would only require one roll per skill.

I build Jedi-type characters all the time, including the occasional actual Jedi character. They mix well with non-jedi just fine. As long as everyone is working under the same guidelines. You are going to be ok for the most part.

Me personally, depending on how big your essence reserves are, I would do 1LTE for 3 END or maybe for 5 END.

It depends on how frequent you want to allow a recharge. If you want to make it cost LTE to do so, thats a good deterrent to prevent mid-adventure recharges. People will make sure to do it before they rest for the evening.

Thats what I figured.

So penetrative is new for senses in 6th? For seeing through objects?

Yes, I allow personal recharge (the mage pouring their own mana into the item) or recharging at specific "Mana pools" (known as Essence flows and Foci in Shadow World) which has excess mana that mana batteries will automatically use to recharge themselves. I also have the vast majority of mana batteries recharge slowly overtime. This simulates them drawing from the general ambient magical energies of the world. I give them a Recovery which usually recovers by the hour as opposed to by the Turn.

A lot of people do Star Wars like Champions. Personally I prefer treating it as a Heroic level game. The difference between a skiled character and A Jedi are indeed the skills. A Jedi would spend a good portion of their points on Force powers. Non force users would have a lot more to spend on higher characteristics, Talents and skills. It is no different than running a mage vs a Fighter or theif in Fantasy Hero. Once you get the balance down, it works great.

I would with some adjustments. True about passive detects. However, your assessment about needing to detect the electrical signals in the brain somehow isnt necessarily true. This completely depends on the SFX of how mental and emotional "energies" are handled in the specific setting in question. For example in my Space Opera game, mental and emotional energies are broadcast via a living creatures Aura which can be read by both passive and active mental senses. In that case the topic creators Emotional Sense as written will work just fine. Alternately, if one made contact with a targets mind with a Targeting Mental Sense like Telepathy or Mind Scan, a successful contact with those powers should allow a character to use any passive mental senses they may possess to detect whats going on inside that mind specifically. However I would require that the sense be less effective than achieving an appropriate level of Telepathy. I disagree partially here as well. Discriminatory is necessary to differentiate between emotions. It would do more than detect if the person was animal or human or alien. It woudld differentiate between love and hate and anger and jealousy and joy, but the emotional sense would give zero context for the emotion itself , just tell the character what emotion they are currently feeling. Analyze would give an indication on how in love the target is, or how angry the target is, but again gives no context behind the emotion. To gain more information than this requires Telepathy of a deep enough level to obtain the information. Irrelevant. Unless the character has mental defenses that must be bypassed, in which case the Mental Combat resolution determines if the character penetrates the targets defenses or not. Easily remedied. True enough. Although if one uses mental senses like Telepathy or Mind Scan to enter multiple minds, this shouldnt be necessary if they assess one mind at a time. However if one places 360 degree sensing onto the detect/sense, then they can assess multiple minds simultaneously. In Star Wars, the SFX is that people broadcast their thoughts and emotions through The Force. No other explanation is needed. Any Force Sensitive who bothers to train their senses should be able to pick up these mental and emotional energies. Obi-Wan detects the fear of the collective population of Aldaran as it is destroyed from several light years away. Vader is able to sense Luke's surface thoughts and emotions without even doing a mind scan during their battle on Bespin. In Star Wars, emotion flows from Force Users in particular if they dont gain a handle on them. Or if they purposefully want to broadcast that emotion such as the Sith who broadcast hate or anger to intimidate their Jedi opponents during a battle. Unless Telepathy has been significantly changed in 6th, it should easily handle most of that without modification outside Area of Effect as long as it is powerful enough to achieve the desired level of effect.

I mentioned Charlize for the role once (mostly because she flat out resembles Danvers) and a bunch of guys jumped down my throat for it....weird.

There was an optional rule for combat skill levels. I dont know if it still exists in 6th. But basically you can spend 2 CSL to add +3 stun damage to normal damage attacks or +1 Body to killing attacks. However, the bonus cannot exceed the maximum rollable on the dice. Thus if you have a 2d6k attack, the most you can do is 12 body no matter what. Just take that concept and transfer it to the to-hit roll. For every 2 points beyond the target number add +3 stun or +1 body depending on the type of attack, but it cannot exceed the maximum rollable damage. This corresponds to the critical hit damage rules which allows automatic maximum damage on a half roll or better. I think it goes well with that optional rule.

There's a reason why the Green Lantern books dropped that limitation. Its silly.

Yeah, with RMs open ended rolls, it allowed even low level characters to defeat extremely high level enemies by luck. I had a scene in the veginning of one of my campaigns where one of the Big Bads (Lorgalis for those in the know) invaded Nomikos Library looking for a rare tome. The PCs happened to be there and decided to aid the Changramai monks and librarians in defending the library. One of the PCs saw an important looking guy being flanked by some tough looking Lugroki (orcs) and decided to take a shot at him. He let his arrow fly and ended up with a total of about 350! The characters were around 5-7 level. Even with Lorgalis's incredible defenses, that ended up with a C level crit and severly injured him. His Lugroki bodyguards formed a wall to protect him and a mage teleported them all away. When the Librarians informed the character who he had shot, the player nearly shat himself. He spend the rest of that campaign paranoid as hell, looking over his shoulder expecting Lorgalis to personally hunt him down for revenge. Of course during the final confrontation, Lorgalis recognized him and went after him with extreme prejudice, but by that time the character was 20th level and more than capable of defending himself adequately. Fun stuff!

It sounds to me like your players still have the "play to win" mentality rather than the "I want to roleplay THIS character" mentality. There are several ways to encourage the latter: Lesser starting points. If you want Orcs to be somewhat of a challenge, then a 100 point character is where you want to start. Partition character points: rule that a character can only spend a percentage of its starting points in one area. The areas are; Characteristics, Skills and Perks, Talents and Powers. So if younare running 150 point characters but you want them to be very human, then limit the expenditure to 50 points per category. Or 75 points per category. Or 100 points per category. In general, when I make a Heroic character, I try to distribute the points as evenly as possible. Require Templates: require that everyone have a profession template, a cultural template and a racial template if appropriate. This will burn a percentage of the characters spendable points and will give them a background with the relevant non combat skills, almost on accident. Run combat light for several sessions in a row: get the characters involved in political machinations or involved with a crime d Syndicate or solving a mystery where the characters must heavily rely on their non combat skills. Do this somewhat regularly and watch as the players adjust their character creation philosophies. Reward roleplaying and task resolution more than combat: when giving out xp at the end of the session, give bonuses for solving situations without resorting to violence. Give bonuses for excellent roleplaying. Q And give bonuses for excellent and imaginative use of non combat skills. If a character performs very well in combat that session, sure give them a bonus, but it will quickly become apparent that solving problems while avoiding voilence will be more lucrative on the experience front.

Yes. It would be a case of replacing DCV with DEF in the to-hit calculation. Then since we are dropping defense as damage resistance, we have to rebalance the Damage and Body ratios to reflect this change. This is not a difficult thing to do, but all of the published Hero literature takes great pains to balance that damage mechanics based on defense as damage resistance, and thus would have to be rebalanced as well.

Some excellent stuff in here. I've written up quite a few martial arts on these boards over the years. Most notably the Fighting Arts of the Spartans (based on the action scenes in 300) and the Halfling Wardance, the martial art of the little folk.

This here is the factor which is the difference between "cosmetic" and "minor". If it only changes the appearance and not the function, the change is cosmetic. If it changes the function, adds or subtracts abilities, then it is at least minor. In this case, it is not changing the basic functionality of the object but it IS increasing the effctiveness of said object, thus it is beyond a cosmetic change and slides into the region of minor. Thata how I would rule it.