FroshKiller

Re: Spider-Man: Elementalist? Since Spidey is a Superheroic character, don't you have to buy equipment as Powers? Does that rule still apply?

Re: Spider-Man: Elementalist? I really, really dig the idea of creating two Multipowers to simulate independent uses of his webshooters. Should there be some kind of off-hand penalty at work? Also, assuming I went with the webshooter devices, would it be more appropriate to build the powers with the Limitation Focus or Restrainable? And if Focus, would they be IAFs or what?

Say you've got a character with a Hand-to-Hand Attack Power, and his player defines that the effect is that he conjures a mallet to whack the baddie with. The mallet disappears once the attack is complete; it's not a normal weapon or anything. Two (sets of) questions: 1. I'm not real clear on this, but can he activate the Power, hold his Attack action for the Phase, then use the HTH Attack later? If so, should the mallet persist until he makes the attack roll? If he chooses to use the mallet for some other purpose (thus giving up the attack), should I as a GM feel comfortable allowing that? Let's say the character decides to wedge a door open with the mallet for the instant before it disappears after it's used. 2. Let's say the player purchases the Variable Special Effects Advantage with the HTH Attack, and he states that this represents the character being able to conjure a selection of different items (mallet, umbrella, garden gnome, etc.). If there's no functional difference in the items, should I bother making him take Variable Special Effects? Alternatively, would Variable Special Effects allow him the freedom to manifest different forms of HTH Attacks with slightly different capabilities? Nothing as major as OCV modifiers, but certainly with limited usefulness like the example above. Thanks in advance!

My group is notoriously unreliable, so our current GM and I have decided to run a light pick-up game when some players are absent. We're thinking of doing a "dream team" sort of comic book/video game thing, where the players who show up get to play their favorite characters in an absurd ensemble cast--basically wish-fulfilling junk food, but it should be fun! Of course, it's also an excuse to run lots of silly combat so we can learn the system. We're all new to HERO, but we're using 5ER for a Star Wars game. My GM and I are pre-generating a bunch of characters so we can just pick up and run with it. I was working on Spider-Man just now, and while most of his powers are pretty obvious, I couldn't figure out a completely satisfactory way to handle his webslinging. Then I thought, "What about making it an Elemental Control with webbing as the element?" The immediate objection in my mind is that since Elemental Control powers are supposed to always cost END, that wouldn't accurately reflect the nature of his webshooters as devices (Focuses)...but the Spider-Man of the recent movies produces the webs from his own body! Perfect way to explain the END cost (takes a lot of energy to replenish the web supply). So what other objections might there be? Spidey seems pretty comfortable using his webs to do all sorts of crazy shit in the comics, and the more I think about this pet idea of mine, the more I like it. What do you think?