massey

In Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan, during the final battle Spock notes that Khan's tactics indicate "two dimensional thinking". It's a great moment, and also something that's extremely difficult to simulate in a tactical game sense. The problem is that doing so would require both the GM and the player to have a incredible grasp of the game's combat rules, to the point that the GM could make intentional mistakes, that the player then recognizes, and knows to attribute to the NPC villain and not to the GM. Khan made the mistake, not Ricky the gamemaster, and the mistakes fit a particular pattern. A situation like that is the domain of the Tactics skill. "Spock, make your Tactics roll." "I got a 9. Made it by 5." "Awesome. You notice that when the Reliant moves, it isn't taking advantage of the Z axis like a normal ship would." These are just the natural limitations of player/GM interaction. At some point, you just need the GM to tell you when your character would know something that you don't. I think the "natural leader" abilities of certain characters would somewhat be the same. I don't know that we need a specialized power to simulate that. The GM just needs to make your points spent on Tactics and Teamwork actually worthwhile. Let's say that Leader Guy has a 30 Presence, +10 Pre defensive only, Tactics 15-, Teamwork 15-, and 4 Overall levels with all combat. He also has 3D6 of positive Reputation as a powerful leader. His mutant power lets him create an energy shield, which he can throw at people. How do we use his leadership abilities in the game? The X-Vengers is a team of superheroes, led by Leader Guy. Iron Badger is a Canadian inventor with razor sharp claws coming out of his super-suit. Russian Red is a femme fatale assassin with telekinesis and martial arts. Snowman transforms into a giant ice monster when he gets angry. And Weatherman is a robot that can control the weather. Left to their own devices, the X-Vengers will each select a target, put their levels into OCV, and blast away. Most of the time, that's enough to win. They each go when their Dex comes up, and attack using fairly straightforward methods. Each X-Venger might have a special trick they use if direct blasting doesn't work, but they tend to stick to their initial target and hammer away. When they are overmatched, or can't solve their problems with brute force, that's when they call on Leader Guy. Leader Guy has a 30 Presence, so more than any of the other characters, he is unlikely to be affected by Big Bad Guy's Presence Attacks. Even if Big Bad Guy rolls really well, Leader Guy's higher Presence means he will be the first to recover. Then he can use his own Presence Attack (with a +3D6 bonus for his Reputation) to inspire his teammates to action. "Let's go get 'em, guys!" This allows the team to recover earlier than they otherwise would. When he makes his Tactics roll, Leader Guy is going to be able to identify problems in the villain team's movement and positioning. "They're standing directly under those high tension power lines," says the GM. Hint hint. He can also make a roll to analyze how the bad guys have their combat levels allocated (this might require Analyze Combat, if you're using that skill). "Weatherman, they've got their levels in defense, an ice slick will drop their DCV!" And by making his Teamwork roll, Leader Guy can give other people some bonuses. Maybe somebody gets +1 or +2 to hit when they follow Leader Guy's plan. I think the important part is that Leader Guy holds action, seeing how the battle unfolds, and acts as a commander rather than running in and beating up somebody himself. While Leader Guy certainly can fight, his leadership skills come into play when he's dedicating himself to that role. Instead of bashing somebody in the face on Segment 12, he instead holds action and watches to see how his teammates fare. Anybody who looks like they need help will get his attention. That's how I would do it, anyway. It's not just a character build. It's also how the character is played.

Eh. Doctor Strange knew what the spell would do. It was Peter who didn’t quite understand. Strange has never had good bedside manner. I don’t think explaining things to other people is his favorite thing to do.

You mean Mr “they really shouldn’t put the warnings after the spells” guy just rushes into things?

When I saw that pumpkin bomb, my face lit up like a kid at Christmas. And Alfred Molina's Doc Ock was fantastic. I can't wait for this movie.

Goku not allowed huh?

I just want to make it clear that every time you build an inefficient character, Santa kills a puppy.

I doubt you'd even need to open a real cash business. Just incorporate a company and get yourself a business address. Then start depositing cash into the bank. Sparkle Car Wash Inc., at 952 SW 58th Street, Office 2B. If somebody drives by it's just a cheap office building and office 2B has your logo on the door. The lights are off, but there's a mail slot, and if you look inside you'll see some furniture. There are flowers (fake ones) on the receptionist's desk. It just looks like people stepped out of the office for a bit. Anyway, every day you have somebody come by and deposit large amounts of cash. Just make sure to declare it on your taxes.

I tried using hidden rolls, but after the sixth critical hit in a row the GM started yelling at me.

Generally, I don't unless they've got a held action or you've already used the "cover" maneuver. This isn't Magic: The Gathering. There are no interrupts, particularly of a zero phase action.

I'll take characters with ECs and Multipowers any day of the week over letting an inexperienced player try his hand at a VPP. Talk about slowing a game down to a crawl.

That's pretty much the basic version, but the more I fooled with them, the more my characters diverged from that. Let's suppose you have a character with Shadow Control. 22 pt EC 23 18/18 FF, 1/2 End 23 18" Flight, 1/2 End 23 4" Darkness vs Sight, Alterable Size 23 8" Images vs Sight, -5 Perception rolls 38 12D6 EB Something like that gives you enormous versatility, since you can use all of the powers at once.

I think there's a certain playstyle that old school Champions assumed you would use, and ECs fit pretty well into that. The Human Torch would often have his fire extinguished during a battle, and when that happened he was basically out of the fight. He probably had an Elemental Control with a "not in vacuum/water" limitation on it, and a Vulnerability to wind/vacuum/water" attacks. So Dr Doom can whip up a 6D6 Ranged Drain with his gadget pool, defined as a "wind cannon" and knock out most of Johnny's powers with one shot. But Doom would then write Johnny off as inconsequential and turn his attention to other characters. He wouldn't fire up his RKA and blow a hole in Johnny's torso. The game kind of assumed that players and GMs both understood this. In old school comics, characters might have their powers deactivated fairly frequently, but they didn't get murdered when it happened. In game, it's a good excuse to take a character off the board when a player has to leave early, or you need to move on to the next plot point. Something happens and Batman wakes up without his utility belt, Superman finds he's in a room with red sun radiation emitters, the Human Torch got hit with a vacuum blaster and he's still recovering. But then the characters escape and their powers come back. It's not a "game over" scenario. In my experience, there's another factor as well when it comes to ECs. Unlike normal limitations, Elemental Controls push characters to have similarly priced powers, which alters the optimum build (sometimes in positive ways). For instance, an energy projector character might normally want 13" of Flight, an 18/18 Force Field, and a 12D6 Energy Blast. For the sake of argument, let's just pretend that those are the most efficient purchases for the character. That's a 26 point power, a 36 point power, and a 60 point power. Now he can save points by purchasing a 13 point EC (saving a total of 26 points on the 3 powers). But the structure of ECs means it may be in his best interest to bump up his Flight to 18", so he can have an 18 point EC (in fact if those are the only 3 powers, it's definitely in his best interest, because the cost remains the exact same). If you really look at trying to maximize your points, you're going to wind up with a different construct than you would otherwise. An EC character is not going to look like a brick, and is not going to look like a multipower character.

It really depends what you mean by "summoning dangerous entities". What exactly are we talking about here? If a pre-teen girl is found playing around with a Ouiji board, are you going to execute her? Dangerous beings might be able to possess someone if you do that. Of course, lots of times people play around with those and nothing happens at all. What if a group of high school kids draw a pentagram on the floor and play around at witchcraft? If they're trying to give a mean teacher at school a wart on her nose, does that count? If the description is that a vengeful spirit crosses over and curses Ms. Johnson the math teacher with a big yucky wart, is that enough to count? Or are we talking about summoning a big heavy hitter, a high-powered Balrog or something like that? The bigger the danger, the more severe the punishment needs to be. If you're worried about some lunatic summoning a 500 point monstrosity that can destroy half the city, then you don't wait until he's summoned it. You execute people who even have those spells in their possession. Even asking around for certain sorcerous tomes will get your hands chopped off. You want to stop that stuff before it happens. On the other hand, if the city guard are a bunch of high-level paladins who routinely kick Cthulhu in the nads before breakfast, then such punishments are probably an overreaction.

I don't believe in Spiritual Transform. That's just special effects. There are no game rules for spirits (except for 4th edition in Hero Almanac 2, I believe), so there's nothing to Transform.

Every. Single. Time. And you're right, it is a personality problem. My point is, some people will complain about everything. You can't make them happy. At the beginning of this thread, there were comments about buying an 18 Dex instead of a 17. If that's someone's measure for powergaming, then there's no solution.

This is a good point, but it also means that any character you build is subject to accusations of "power gaming". Part of the problem is that there's a breed of gamer out there who will whine and bitch any time somebody gets something they don't have. I was in a D&D game once where a grown man threw a fit for an hour because the GM let one of the other players start with a horse. Not a magic horse, just a regular horse.

I built an Invisible Woman character once, and played her in a short-lived campaign (lasted maybe 5 or 6 sessions). I decided to try something along these lines. In a 350 point campaign where most people were throwing 13 or 14D6 attacks, with 30+ Defense, I had something like an 8D6 Invisible to Sight Energy Blast (force ball) and 9 PD and ED with 2 levels of Combat Luck (15/15 total). But she could turn invisible, she could turn other people invisible, she could suppress the invisibility of others (this never came up), and she could turn normal objects invisible (like walls). She also had an 18/18 Force Wall that was invisible to sight. The problem with the character is that it was a huge pain in the ass for everybody. If an enemy had the right powers, they could spot me easily. I could still put up a Force Wall, but I was way weaker than the rest of the group and the enemies we fought. I couldn't really hurt anyone tougher than an agent with my force blast, unless I caught them by surprise (as in out of combat) to get x2 Stun. I wasn't a combat monster by any means. But if nobody in the other group had enhanced senses, I could do whatever I wanted. Nobody would target me. People would run face first into invisible walls. I could disarm somebody and turn their focus invisible so they couldn't find it. It was really frustrating for the GM, and the other players, because I couldn't contribute to the fight in normal ways, so the traditional ways of balancing combat didn't work. I was either mostly useless (if people had other senses), or could be overwhelmingly powerful (if I decided to make our whole team invisible). Mostly I just chose to harass the villains and tried to think of new and creative ways to use my very non-offensive powers. The problem with making a character who can only beat up agents is that the rest of the characters in the game aren't set up for that. If your GM doesn't feed you a steady supply of agents, you don't have anything to do. Characters that break too heavily from the traditional mold end up being a big pain in the butt to the GM, because he has to go out of his way to make the game fit your character.

The only reason to have points in the game is because they are supposed to help balance characters. Two different 250 point characters should be roughly equivalent to one another. My 60 points of Energy Blast should be about as powerful/useful as your 60 points of Transform. That's what points are for. Now, when it comes to building characters, obviously there are more efficient ways to spend points than others. A guy who buys a 12D6 Energy Blast is going to be more efficient than a guy who buys 4 separate 15 point ranged attacks (1D6 RKA, 3D6 EB, 1D6 ranged Drain, 3D6 Suppress). That's just how the game works. The only way the game will be balanced is if players make an attempt to build efficiently. You can always build less efficiently, but aiming for characteristic break points and things like that will tend to top you out. Players need to aim for the most efficient paths for their characters, otherwise what's the point of points?

Building inefficient characters is a mortal sin. It offends the gods of Champions.

Technically that is a true statement...

It can't be untold havoc if we, the readers, were told about it.

Well, his legs (or body) can be on fire, and then he can pick things up with his hands. In Secret Wars I remember him carrying a hot alien chick he met in his arms while half his body was on fire. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that his Damage Shield (as in the power) was activated at the time. I've never seen him carrying somebody around, and then get attacked by somebody else who gets burned on his fiery portion. I think you'd be pretty safe in not worrying about that possibility.

In the older Fantastic Four comics, Johnny Storm's powers were fairly easy to deactivate, at least for certain villains. Not as easy as in Twisted Toyfare Theater, where The Thing said "flame off" and Johnny fell to his death, but still easy. Doctor Doom would build a wind cannon, and with one powerful gust, Johnny's fire went out. Likewise if he went underwater, his fire didn't work. To me, this is probably best represented by Only In Hero ID. With some experience points, he might buy that off (I haven't seen the wind cannon stunt in a very long time). He probably has the Power skill, and maybe has a couple of tricks that he can do in his normal ID. He also can turn off his damage shield at will.

Build it however you want. Don't let these guys tell you any different.

If I had to make it work in a semi-realistic way, without Batman being guilty of extreme child endangerment, I'd say he only brought pre-teen Robin along on investigative adventures. It's not that big a deal if your 8 year old kid is hanging out in costume while you're taking fingerprints from the scene of a burglary or something, or talking to someone who witnessed a crime. But you leave him at home when it's time to bust a bunch of mobsters. You could even take him on "patrol" when you're pretty sure it's going to be a quiet night. Now by the time he's 13 or 14, and he's in excellent shape and has been doing super advanced martial arts training with you for the last 5 years, maybe you let him help you beat up low level thugs and criminals. It's still not super safe, but the justification is that Dick is dealing with the same anger that Bruce is, and you have to give him an outlet.