massey

Mental Illusions can deal real damage if they roll high enough on the dice. I think it's easier to do the illusion as just a power rather than as an entity. It just gives the appearance of an entity. Off the top of my head (and not bothering to check the rules to make sure I have the lims exactly right) 2D6 Mental Illusion zero end (+1/2) continuous (+1) cumulative: 4 levels - 192 point (+1 1/2) gradual effect: 20 minutes (-1) Real cost: 20 The 2D6 illusion hits every 20 minutes. The effects build. At first, there's not enough for the victim to even see it. Eventually the Mental Illusion will have enough points so that the victim can't help but see it. Eventually the points become high enough that the victim takes real damage from the illusion.

Yeah, you might as well just call it zero endurance (+1/2) at that point. It costs END so infrequently that it's almost never going to be an issue.

Yeah he kills himself several times. The movie is a decent summer action flick. 3 stars, probably. Getting the power is an accident, takes him a while to figure out why things are happening. Every time he dies he resets to the same point in time. Basically he keeps gaining experience points, buying up combat levels and things like that, learning how things are going to happen ("remember next time, duck left instead of right, crap I forgot -- *squish*). It's generally a plot device power probably best used for a single player game. You could just use a triggered XD movement that always goes to the same point (triggered being dying) and remember that this is a world without time paradoxes. You just start over and do it again, every time you die.

Mental illusions with a weird special effect. Maybe they get Clairsentience and several overall skill levels when they make the breakout roll.

Overall Batman is gonna have enough maneuvers that he (as far as raw points efficiency goes) should have just bought higher stats. You can look down the list of maneuvers, and every one of them is something Batman has done a dozen times or more.

Buying 3 martial art maneuvers, for a hand-to-hand oriented character, can be very effective. But not always. A character who has a multipower is probably better off buying a hand to hand slot (60 point MP -- +6D6 Hand Attack, +6 HTH skill levels -- 6 pts). If you have a character who has 7 or 8 maneuvers, he's probably better off buying more stats instead. Offensive Strike, Martial Strike, Martial Grab, Crush, all those types of "modify combat values, increase damage" type maneuvers are eventually inferior to simply buying more dice and more Dex to begin with.

12 damage classes (12D6 energy blast or a 4D6 killing attack) is about average for a superhero. Every additional 2 or 3 damage classes is a significant increase in power. So a 15D6 energy blast is a lot more powerful than a 12D6 one. With a 10D6 killing attack (30 damage classes), you're going to kill most superpowered characters in one shot. This is something that does not happen often in Champions. Here are some basic benchmarks (people may disagree a bit with them, but they're what I follow) 1D6 killing - a kitchen knife / a small pistol 2D6 killing - a sword or axe / a shotgun or rifle 3D6 killing - magic fantasy sword that slices people in half / .50 cal rifle 4D6 killing - a bolt of lightning 5D6 killing - taking a bath in lava / a tank cannon 6D6 killing - standing under a rocket when it takes off / a blockbuster bomb 7 - 8D6 killing - full barrage from battleship cannons 9 - 10D6 killing - Hiroshima & Nagasaki Now there are some sources that put nukes at significantly higher levels - starting at 20D6 killing and going up from there. But I think that's overkill. Bah. Change is bad.

I don't know 6th edition, but I think those Drains need to be bought with the Ranged advantage as well. But holy crap that first gun is all over the place, power-wise. An 8D6 Autofire EB (which will almost immediately run out of charges) and a 10D6 RKA. One attack will knock out some Viper agents while the other will blow up the Hoover Dam.

The way I read it is: Shapeshift with mental group would cover any sort of Detect powers. If it's "Detect Mind", it will be fooled by the Shapeshift, the same as how our vision is basically a detect and is also fooled by shapeshift. You could get around Shapeshift with Mind Scan. If I Mind Scan for Shapeshift Lad, for some reason I keep coming up with the image of a pencil. I can then use Telepathy on that pencil normally, and lo and behold, it's not actually a pencil. Telepathy that is bought Area of Effect would also break through it. You'd get the thoughts of everyone in the area, and while you may not realize it's the pencil having those thoughts, you'd have one extra set of thoughts than you had people in front of you. Invisibility vs mental would prevent the Mind Scan from finding you, and probably the Detect Minds as well (depending upon the sfx of the Detect), but if I'm looking at you and I randomly decide to try and read that pencil's mind, then my Telepathy still works. Mental Defense won't prevent someone from figuring out you're there, any more than a high PD makes you invisible. But it will stop mental powers from getting through.

If you put 6 charges on the pool itself, then you get 6 shots from the gun, total, any combination of slots you want. So 6 shots from slot #1, or 3 shots from slot #1 and 3 from slot #2, or one shot from each slot, any combination. If you put 36 charges on the pool itself, then you get 36 shots from the gun, any combination. If you put 6 charges on each slot, then you get 6 shots from each slot. A total of 36 shots, but only 6 from any one slot.

Yeah, I think it depends on how common villains with powers are. A quick Google search says that there are about 371,000 ATMs in the United States. It would probably be a lot cheaper to just eat the losses than try to refit all the different units with armor. Are you seriously going to spend all that money giving each ATM 15/15 armor? What do you do when a desolid guy comes along and just sticks his hand inside? Or a mind controller who just waits until your service guy comes along to restock the machine?

Yeah, since it's an NPC you just don't bother to build it. Just declare what they do and leave it at that. If you want to freak out your players, before you perform an effect, grab as many dice as you can hold in both hands and roll them. Pretend to count up the numbers and then look down at a character sheet. Pretend to do math, then look up at one of the players and ask how much Power Defense he has. You can build a reality warping power, but honestly there are so many possibilities that it's not worth it. It's like saying "how many points would it take to build God?" The characters really aren't meant to fight this character, from what I gather. They interact with him but not in a combat sense. So there's no more reason to give him a writeup than you would a hot dog vendor.

Really it depends more on the politics of the person writing (or reading) the story than the character in it.

10 combat levels w/ ranged OCV (5 point levels) only to increase damage (-1) only with guns (-1/2) 20 pts 2 combat levels equals +1 body on any killing attack, or +3 stun on any normal attack. So you're looking at +5 body or +15 stun. Any firearm.

Just buy a big attack Multipower with the limitation that it requires a weapon. Edit: Ninja'd by Greywind by just a few seconds.

There's a power for that. Aid.

The Authority are militant left wing types. They aren't exactly a realistic depiction of modern liberalism and they don't do nuanced positions, but they're obviously liberal. Captain Atom is probably a fairly hardcore Republican, or at least he seems to be portrayed that way. Lex Luthor probably votes elephant as well. More iconic characters like Superman and Batman are sometimes used for whatever political point the author wants to make. Look at Superman in Dark Knight Returns, where he's Reagan's attack dog. Captain America is going to be a lot more politically conservative when you try to write Falcon as an "angry black guy" and you need Cap to represent the establishment.

I've been poking around at having a group of agents as a single stat block. I'm not sure if things will speed up, but it decreases record keeping. So your basic agent is like: One guy Str 13 Dex 12 Con 13 (snip) PD 5 ED 5 Spd 3 Rec 6 End 26 Stun 24 Blaster Rifle - 8D6 EB, 16 charges, OAF Cobra uniform - 5/5 Armor, OIF, radio transmit OIF Something like that. But if you want a big group of agents, you could have: Room full of guys Str 30 Dex 20 Con 25 Body 15 Int 10 Ego 15 Pre 20 Com 10 PD 20 ED 20 Spd 5 Rec 11 End 50 Stun 45 Martial grab (dogpile) Crush Martial escape 2 lvls HTH 2 lvls blaster rifle barrage Blaster rifle barrage - 10D6 autofire - OIF (hard to disarm cuz its a lot of guys) Cobra uniform - 5/5 Armor - OIF, radio transmit OIF He shouldn't be a serious threat to a hero, but he's tough enough to take several blows to put down. Captain Batmerica will bounce around the room kicking this guy (these guys) in the face. Each hit drops an agent, but they just seem to swarm him until the writeup runs out of stun. His last hit knocks two of them down, then he looks around and sees the rest are all unconscious.

In West Philadelphia, the kids spend most of their days on the playground. They chill out, relax, and act all cool. Sometimes they play basketball outside of the school. I have all this on very solid authority.

Right. Basically what you're doing is buying a much more comprehensive skill by buying it to counteract a -10 penalty. Example: Batman has Knowledge Skill: Stuff at a 25-. This means that he can take a -10 penalty to his KS: Stuff roll (so he's operating on a 15-) and can use it to have knowledge of basically anything. 17th century operas, Romanian traffic laws, the Gotham electrical grid, the history of professional boxing, postwar Japanese economic policies, and Star Trek trivia. All of these random topics can be covered by a single skill. You just take a -10 penalty to the original skill because the topic is so immensely broad. So if you want Science Skill: Science, you buy it up really high and it covers everything from botany to genetic engineering, time-space folds, robotics, interdimensional physics, time travel, chemistry, and that science where you study bugs. All with one very generic skill.

I've been using Summon for my scientists as of late. Summon a vehicle (even if you sell back movement so it's just a big stationary thing) and there you go.

Wow, you guys would really really hate my group.

Would anyone really care if it was in poor taste?

Yes, your attacks are way higher than normal fantasy levels. If you want warriors cutting full grown trees down with one swing of their sword, then 60 AP attacks are fine. But understand that your normal fantasy-level armor will not be sufficient for such a campaign. With that level of strength you can grab a dragon by the throat and choke it to death.

If I'm building it for a horror game, against normal humans, it would be something like this: Str 15 Dex 3 Con 15 Body 10 Int 3 Ego 3 Pre 15 Com 0 PD 6 ED 3 Spd 2 Rec 6 End 30 Stun 26 4/2 Damage Resistance Martial grab (as an NPC monster it doesn't have to buy a full martial arts package) +3 with grab (still only giving it a 3 OCV) 1/2 D6 HKA (D6+1 w/str - reduced penetration) Tracking scent Major Transform - 1 pip, 0 end, continuous uncontrolled, no range, bite must do body, gradual effect every 5 minutes Life support: breathing and does not sleep (the rest are irrelevant to the game) x2 body from head shots Distinctive feature: zombie (not conceal, extreme) Psych lim: all flesh must be eaten (VC, total) Keep them simple. Individual zombies are not that tough. They're fighting normal humans who generally don't have access to the best weapons. A zombie is still generally not a match for a mean human. It's 30 points, and I think that properly reflects their power level. They'll be facing competent normals at best, who have to account for a weapon's strength minimum (so a baseball bat might only be doing 4 dice total or so), and are probably trying to conserve ammo.