massey

God I really hate these arguments. I can't even read the entirety of the thread without wanting to yell at people. This is why every limitation I ever put on a character is just a variety of Limited Power. I don't take Focus of any kind. I take "Limited Power: Kinda like Focus but it works like this instead -- blah blah blah". Or at least I'm going to treat it that way if I ever get into a discussion on this board again.

If you really wanted to do the Legion, I'd suggest having different power tiers. Phantom Girl, Triplicate Girl, and Invisible Kid are on the low end. They're standard starting superhero level, but heavy on the skills and maybe some power constructs that are pretty darn expensive. Phantom Girl doesn't just have Desolidification, she has Desolid with all the tricks (invisible power effects, affects real world strength, etc). Invisible Kid is a full scale gadgeteer, who also happens to have Invisibility. Triplicate Girl... well, I'm sure you can find a way to spend the points somehow. Next tier up are powerful characters like Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and Karate Kid. All of these characters are high end versions of their archetype. Saturn Girl is a near-Professor X level telepath. Lightning Lad is an energy projector on the scale of Havoc. Finally you've got the Kryptonians and their ilk. Standard Galactic Champions power levels probably won't be enough.

+3D6 Hand Attack, must build up in this way (blah blah blah explain) -1/2 Easy as pie.

In my experience: sight and hearing flash def : uncommon (maybe one player in a group will have it) Life support temp cold : uncommon outside of a total life support character mental def : most common type of special defense, most PCs will have at least a few points Life support breathing : first life support chosen, maybe half the group members will have it power def : rare (often no players have it) flash defense other than sight and hearing : almost never Life support other: rare outside of a total life support character

I'm thinking there's gotta be a way to do it that doesn't actually use the Duplication power. Or perhaps your Duplicate goes away and you simply leave behind another Duplicate in your place when you Teleport away. Or perhaps you build the characters so that nobody teleports at all, and you merely swap power sets, as it were. 1) So for the first option, you could represent the Duplicate with something other than Duplication. Suppose your Duplicate just needs to be a guy who punches for 12D6. He goes on a Speed 5, like your main character, and he has an OCV of 8, like your main character. Everything else is just a matter of special effect. Well you could do that with Duplication, but you could also do it with Energy Blast with the right power modifiers. Let's take a 12D6 Energy Blast, and we'll make it Area Effect Radius, Selective, Continuous, Uncontrolled, Costs End Only to Activate. We'll put limitations on it so you can only attack one target per phase, and we'll give it Physical Manifestation, so it can be destroyed. We'll also throw a random additional limitation so that it can only move and act as your character could (it can be martial thrown, suffer knockback, it has to use movement to get around, etc). Now your "Duplicate" is just an attack power that continues to hit people, once per phase, without requiring any kind of action from you. If you did it that way, using 5th edition costs, you're looking at 240 Active Points. If you say "one target per phase" is a -1/2, "physical manifestation" is -1/4, and "has to move around, uses character's movement characteristics" as another -1/4, then you're at 120 points total cost. But theoretically you could fling these things around as long as you can pay Endurance to activate it. Maybe you want to limit it so you can only have one going at a time. Let's say that's another -1/2. And you've got a 17" Radius that the "duplicate" can move around within (and you can double that radius for another +1/4), so maybe you can take the No Range limitation for another -1/2. You activate your "duplicate" and he just runs around inside that area. With those limitations, the total points cost is only 80 points, for effectively another version of you running around within 17" (as long as you only plan on hitting things). If you go up to 85, you'll get a 34" radius. Now, you'd still have to buy your own Teleport, but you'd save points because you aren't having to move another character. The "duplicate" can just go away when you teleport to his spot. You can play with the wording of the "uses character's movement" limitation to clarify that the duplicate automatically switches spots with you. Just Teleport while you're within its radius. Total cost is 80 or 85 points plus the Teleport, which is probably cheaper than your Duplication plus a second Teleport route. 2) Purchase "Easy Recombination" on your Duplication for +10 points. You now recombine as a 0 phase action. Spend 5 more points to create a second duplicate (-2 limitation on those 5 points, "only for a phase"). Slap a Trigger on your Teleport, so it goes off when you use Duplication. So now you start your phase, and you create a second Duplicate. That's a half-phase action. Now your triggered Teleport goes off and you appear where your original Duplicate was. Then you recombine with him as a 0 phase action. Now you've got a half phase left over. Voila! 3) It doesn't matter who the Duplicate is and who the original is. You switch places because one guy has a higher Stun total or something. Or maybe because the Duplicate is Stunned and you aren't, or he's on his back and you aren't, or it's not a perfect Duplicate and you've got an extra power that you want to use. So instead of actually teleporting, you're going to create both your character and your Duplicate with powers that can only be used by one person at a time. Each character gets the same "Swap with Duplicate" package: --Position Shift on movement -- 5 points, only when one of the two characters is still on his feet, using this places other character prone. --Cannot Be Stunned -- 15 points, only when one of the two characters is not Stunned, using this makes the other character Stunned (effectively allowing you to choose which character gets stunned by an attack) --+30 Stun -- 30 points, only to bring character up to Stun total of highest Duplicate, other character drops to Stun total of swapped character --+30 END -- you get the idea --4D6 HKA magic sword -- only usable by one character at a time (this is the special attack that only the original gets) Make it a Unified Power for an additional -1/4, and maybe slap a limitation so it uses up their movement half-phase to "swap" places, and you're good. Basically all you're doing is switching the "status" effects and Stun and END totals between the characters. So those are three alternate ways that jumped out to me.

Of course there’s a cheaper way to do it! There’s always a cheaper way to do it. How is the duplication built? What is the basic description of the character’s power? How would you explain it without using game terms?

No we can't. This is a thread for advice to a rookie GM, who is building characters for his players. You are free to build your character however you like, but let's save the "your character has a low attack because sucking is part of his concept" for another time. We want example characters to feel useful, every single one of them. A degree of sameness is necessary. The BBB builds are wonderful for that.

I think Kinetik's character sheet is wrong. He's listed as having 9 PD and 8 ED, and then he's got a "protective suit" that gives him 6/6 additional. If you look at his total Def on the right of his PD and ED listing, it says 15 PD and 14 ED. But he's also got +10/10 in his powers section called a "protective aura", with the limitation 'only while moving'. So his total should be 25 PD and 24 ED. That's not that bad, really. But Kinetik isn't really a great build. He hits for 9D6 and then he has some minor 30 point attacks that aren't gonna do much more than be annoying. I think they tried to get too fancy when they built him. One thing that really makes a character useful is to just have one attack that is straight dice damage at the campaign average. Kinetic doesn't have that -- his normal dice attack is only 9D6. Witchcraft is the only member of the Champions to have less than 20 Def, and she's a mentalist. The thing about mental powers is that they don't have a range modifier -- she can be sitting on a rooftop half a mile down the street and still hit just as effectively. That may be why they gave her lower defenses. On your character build, I'd drop the Damage Reduction. It's a pain in the butt to calculate during battle (particularly the 25% version), and you could probably use those points elsewhere. Generally Damage Reduction isn't worth the points compared to just putting more into PD and ED.

Yeah, normal characteristic maxima is usually for heroic level games. Indiana Jones instead of the X-Men. Defenses should generally be scaled to the attacks you'll have in the game. Somebody who has 1.5 times the average dice in Defense is going to be fragile. If you've got a 10D6 campaign, then a guy with 15 PD and ED (including combat luck, armor, force fields, etc), is going to take a lot of damage really fast. In my experience, somebody with that level of defense should probably have something else as well to make them more survivable. It's okay to have 15 PD and ED if you are a shrinker (whose DCV will normally be extremely high), or if you are mostly invisible (so people generally don't shoot at you), or are mostly desolid (so their attacks pass through you). But otherwise you're gonna be face down in the dirt most of the time. If you want a character who is fragile that's fine, but fragile they will be. Somebody with 3 times the average dice in Defense is going to be tough. In a 10D6 campaign, the guy with 30 PD and ED will take forever to go down. Blast him and blast him and he'll just shrug it off. I've found that between 2x and 2.5x the average dice gives you a good range of defense. When you're building a character, you also want to make sure that they won't be Con-Stunned by the average attack roll. If it's a 10D6 game, every character needs to be able to take at least 35 Stun without it passing their Defense plus Con. So if you've got 20 Def, you need a 15 Con at a minimum. 18 to 20 is better, because sometimes people roll above average. Losing an action because you got Stunned is a great way to remember how awesome your iPhone is and start checking Facebook during the game. You don't want it to happen too often.

I'd suggest the following: 1) Don't worry about overly complicated designs just yet. Focus on having a simple character sheet that is easy to understand. New players won't be impressed by a character that's too complex, they won't get it. Keep it simple and don't be afraid to fudge things in their favor. 2) Build everybody a starting character and let them modify it to their tastes if they wish. Let them be as involved as they want to be, but have a functional character for everyone. 3) Keep all OCVs and DCVs within 3 of each other, and keep all Speeds within 2 of each other. If the fastest guy in the group has a 10 OCV and a 6 Speed, then the slowest guy needs at least a 7 OCV and a 4 Speed. Otherwise people can't hit and they don't get to go enough. Likewise keep damage within 2D6 of each other, and keep defenses within 10. If the brick has 30 PD, the weak guy needs 20. 4) Don't worry about certain things at first. Endurance, range modifiers, and body damage can all be disregarded for a while without causing a problem.

Loki is the god of mischief and lies. He should trick someone else into getting the Soul Stone for him. Let them sacrifice what they love.

I'm sure I agree with Chris Taylor on this, but I kinda spaced out by the second paragraph.

Get killed by a sewer clown. Then you'll float too.

I'd buy 1" Swimming, 0 End Persistent. Since you're naturally buoyant, you don't need to be awake to do it (hence the Persistent). Since you aren't actually flying, I don't think you need Flight. Swimming is the appropriate power for movement in water/liquid.

Yeah, if you just want to play a regular wizard, or a fighter-wizard, or something like that, D&D has you covered. But what if you want to play a guy who uses a bastard sword, wears no armor, and can hypnotize people who meet his gaze? He's known far and wide as a powerful wizard, but he doesn't have a spellbook. In D&D terms he's basically got one really powerful spell-like ability, and that's the whole of his "magic". With Hero that's really easy to do. With D&D you've got to get GM permission to sort of cram it together and just make up the rules as you go.

This'll be unpopular, but there's no reason to switch. There is no way that Hero does D&D better than D&D. You switch to Hero because you want a system that does superheroes well, and if you are going to do fantasy or sci-fi, because you want complete control over how to do weird things you can't do in other systems. But if you think role-playing is just a normal dungeon crawl, there's no reason at all to use Hero.

Chris Hemsworth is a hilarious guy. I think he's my favorite of the Avengers actors.

Yeah I absolutely hate this idea that everyone gets their own streaming service. Basically nobody has enough content individually for me to want to subscribe to them separately. It's only when you get something like Netflix that it becomes worthwhile.

Taking a Recovery and recovering from being Stunned are two different things. For one, recovering from being Stunned isn't capitalized. It's not the same game term. For two, the timing is different. Suppose I act on Speed 5, Dex 20. On Segment 2, I get hit for more Stun than my Con score. I am Stunned. When Segment 3, Dex 20 comes around, I am no longer Stunned. If I get shot again on Dex 15 of that same Segment, I am not Stunned any more. Once my Dex has passed, I'm good. But let's say I'm taking a Recovery. If I take Stun damage at any point during the phase (including after my Dex), then I don't get any Stun or End back. They are two different things.

You can just do it. It's called a Multiple Power Attack (or at least I think it used to be). Basically you paid for them both, so you can just do it.

That's how I feel about all the CW shows.

Just checked. It was NOT in place in 4th edition. Which is, of course, why we never noticed it in 5th and later.

There's no reason why the game can't have both. Right now it looks like the popular thing is to produce these paint-by-number adventure stories. I could see people who don't have a lot of free time to plan finding these very helpful. There's no reason why they shouldn't get to play too. In the last year, I turned 40 and got married. My game time has virtually disappeared. I have nothing like the time I had available even 5 years ago, let alone when I was in my 20s. If I was our regular GM, well we just wouldn't have a game anymore. I don't have time to produce adventures like that. But if I had something I could just run from a book, that would work pretty well. A campaign-in-a-box would be great.

I'll have to look when I get home. I don't think it is.

Wow you're right. Crap. We've been playing it wrong for more than 20 years.