Zeropoint

That's just begging to show up in my Deadlands campaign.

I want services from the government. In fact, I want MORE services from the government. I also happen to be perfectly aware that this will require the government to collect more tax revenue (and/or reduce military spending by being less enthusiastic about killing people overseas). However, I'm also aware that the very rich and big business are not paying their fair share of the tax burden. We, as a nation, do not need to raise the tax burden on the middle class or the poor to raise revenue. We can get all the money we need by raising taxes on people who can easily afford it--and who, as demographic groups, were paying far more tax back in the '50s that the right likes so much.

This is a good example of why a voluntary taxation scheme or opt-out system is a very bad idea. All of us, including you, ScottishFox, benefit every day from the advantages of an educated populace. That you would only be interested in paying for the education system when it directly benefits you and yours is disgustingly selfish. Would you also argue that if you don't drive, none of your taxes should go to roads?

"I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. While I don't approve of everything that my tax money goes for--like putting kids in cages and bombing brown people's hospitals--I have no problem at all with the idea of taxes or with paying them. What I do have a problem with is all the entities in our country that aren't shouldering their share of the tax burdern, like big business (Amazon's a trillion dollar company that pays no taxes?) and rich people. I also think churches, of any and all religions, should be taxed the same as any other non-profit organization, but I realize that's not going to be a popular position in the US.

And it feels to me like we, as a nation, have a narrow and rapidly closing window in which to re-assert the rule of law. Until Trump, we just sort of assumed that the president and his staff would mostly follow the law, or at least try not to get caught. If we don't manage to bring the sword of justice down on Trump & Co., I fear that we'll be entering a new era where it's accepted as the de facto truth that the president and his staff really are above the law. I do not want to see my country go down that road, and I don't know what I can do to help my country avoid it.

It's small potatoes compared to that, but Trump also violated federal law (18 USC 2074) on camera by displaying his altered map of Hurricane Dorian as an official weather report. He commits small crimes as well as large in office.

I'm one of them. This makes me wonder what made them so quick to throw her under the bus allow justice to be served.

Majel Barrett-Roddenberry or go home.

The simplest thing would just be to take Detect Ghosts for five points and assign it to the Sight group. There, you can see ghosts now. If you're building something like the Ghostbuster's PKE meter, you start with an appropriate Detect power and build it into a focus, with whatever adders and limitations seem appropriate.

The thing that keeps rolling around in my head regarding the use of swords on spaceships and such is this: how do you ensure that your enemies use them? If you decide to use swords for any of the plausible reasons that have come up in this thread, and your enemies decide that they don't care . . . you show up with swords, they show up with guns, and you either switch to guns or you lose.

I'm definitely NOT questioning deathtraps (a genre fiction staple), nor am I questioning whether this one is escapable (depends on the numbers). What I specifically AM questioning is: how does writing up the ability to throw someone in a coffin and pile dirt on top as a power have anything to do with how escapable it is? I don't understand what is gained by doing that.

I'm not clear on why the coffin has to be written up as a power to offer a buried character a chance to escape. If the killer is making these coffins himself, you just give the coffin lid whatever DEF and BOD scores you think is appropriate for the challenge level. He doesn't need a power to build a wooden box. If he's using off-the-shelf coffins, you do a little research and set the DEF and BOD to simulate the coffins he's buying. He doesn't need a power to buy a wooden box. If you're this hung up on using powers to represent things, a buried character won't have any chance of escape from the grave anyway . . . unless they had the foresight to buy some Tunneling to let them dig up through the dirt.

I agree. You don't need to buy a power with character points to be able to use a shovel. A HERO character already has the INT to figure out how to dig a hole, the DEX to make the shovel go where they want, and the STR to lift the dirt. You wouldn't (I hope) buy the Summon power to represent the fact that your character can call a taxi/Uber/Lyft. This way lies madness and spoons with half-page writeups.

There are no mistakes in bronze casting, only happy accidents!

It never came up in the homebrew fantasy world/game I have, but areas could be "aspected" or "flavored" magically such that certain categories of spells would be easier or harder to cast. A magic user trying to Create Water in a desert, or in the middle of a drought-stricken area, would have a harder time of it. Also I had an area which was once a breadbasket agricultural region but is now a wasteland thanks to past use of strategic level magic; no one is just going to walk in there and fix the problem by spamming noob spells.