massey

I didn't say the terrorist hit the wall first. I said that Supes doesn't go through backwards or shield the terrorist with his body. He doesn't. Maybe Superman's fist (or forehead, or whatever) did enough damage to destroy a hex of wall, and the GM ruled that it was clear when he pulled the terrorist through. Like the wall sort of explodes outwards or something. But I thought the intent was to show Superman killing that dude. That was really what I thought when I saw the scene, and watching it again doesn't change my mind on that.

Depending on the player, sometimes one is too many.

Or if you have a good enough plastic surgeon.

I watched the clip several times and paused to see what I could see. Superman definitely doesn't go through the wall backwards or otherwise shield that guy with his body.

I think we once had a game with like 5 or 6 players, and each player had multiple characters they were running. It was a "wrap up the campaign" type adventure, like Avengers: Endgame, where we brought in the PCs of people who had dropped out of the game much earlier. We probably had about 20 PCs and former PCs on the field at once.

Yeah, it's just a scene change power. Think of it like a movie. You're in one place, you cut, now you're in another place. It doesn't matter how long it takes to get there, you're just there. It doesn't matter if you're Super Rich Guy, and you got to Paris in a private jet. It doesn't matter if you're Drunk Tourist Guy, and you got to Paris riding in coach. It doesn't matter if you're Superspeed Guy, and you got to Paris in an instant with your superspeed. Exactly how you do it isn't important, because nothing important happens between scenes. The GM knows the limits of your powers. If it's important for you to get to Paris before the terrorists strike or something, and he doesn't give you the opportunity to do so, then it's not that your character failed, it's that he wasn't allowed to succeed. If we are relying on Drunk Tourist Guy to save the day, and he's got to get to Paris, then the terrorists have to wait for him to catch a regular flight. Otherwise the character just isn't allowed to participate in the adventure that is going on elsewhere.

I thought Affleck did a pretty good job as Batman. The movie sucked, but Affleck was certainly not the worst part of that. I did, however, mock the decision to cast him before I saw the film. I've never seen a Twilight movie, and don't think I've ever seen Pattinson in anything. I could probably pass him on the street without recognizing him. But sometimes weird casting decisions work out. And then sometimes you get Nick Cage Superman, where it's so obviously wrong that you want to kick a producer in the crotch.

Yeah, that dude's dead.

Every person Iron Man killed in the Chitauri invasion, and with the Snap, was a member of Thanos' army. His actions were comparable to Luke blowing up the Death Star. I don't know how many Storm Troopers were there, but I bet it was a lot. In real life, the people with the closest kill count would probably be the crew of the Enola Gay. That's a similar type maneuver, except they couldn't target it like Iron Man could to avoid civilians.

Not completely fixed, no. But I think limitation values since 5th have gotten closer to their real value. I don't have a way of measuring this, just a general impression. Maaaybe. But there are a couple of possibilities. 1) Characters don't exist in a vacuum. INT is less valuable if a character doesn't have any INT-based skills. A character who has a lot of INT skills benefits more from a higher INT than somebody who only has one or two. It's possible that, let's say Deduction is worth 2 points per +1 if that's the only INT skill you have. Obviously adding more skills makes that +1 seem too expensive, but by itself maybe that 2 points is a bargain. 2) We get into problems with rounding. It may be that +1 Perception for a single sense isn't worth 2 points. Maybe it's actually "worth" 1.8 points. And maybe 3 points for a general +1 Perception isn't really worth it unless you've got a lot of different targeting senses, but the assumption is that you won't bother to buy it unless you are one of those characters who do have a bunch of different targeting senses. Maybe +1 with all Perception is only worth 2.4 points, but you gotta make it pricier than the +1 for a single sense. I think what happened is that people got a discount by buying a limited version of an existing ability. But the belief at the time was that these limited versions were still worth more than a single point or two, and so they got priced higher. The idea was that if somebody wanted all the abilities, they'd just purchase more of the unmodified stat. Breaking it up into pieces isn't as cost efficient, but maybe you don't need everything the stat gives you. We can debate whether that's the right way to do it or not, but I think that's clearly what they did.

Creative application of Extra-Dimensional Movement can simulate any situation in which a character is in a different state of being, cannot interact with the “real world,” or is any place which is inaccessible to others. Possible examples include the sub-atomic “universe” a Shrinking superhero can “travel” to by shrinking to incredibly tiny sizes, a virtual computer universe in “cyberspace,” or an “impenetrable ward” spell where the protected items are safe because they’re actually in another “dimension.” Champions Complete, page 67 It appears that a "dimension" can be whatever you want it to be. So you can travel into the Webway Tunnel or the Speed Zone or through the Wormhole Field and pop back out on the other side. Or you can just recognize the power for what it is, and that's the ability to Scene Change at will.

I don't agree that Dex, Int, Pre, and Str are worth 2 pts per point. That's crazy talk. Back when we still had figured stats, the common complaint was that Str, Dex, Con, etc, were too underpriced because they gave you more points in figured stats than they cost. But that's really a criticism of the costs of those figured stats themselves. In 6th edition, one of the good changes was to reduce the costs of those stats, showing an implicit understanding that they weren't worth what they used to cost. In 4th edition and before, there was a strong inclination to undervalue the level of limitations. You can still see champions of that movement today. Hugh will often speak out and say that XYZ limitation shouldn't really be a limitation (just ask him). Somewhere in one of the 4th ed books, I think it's even explicitly stated, to err on the side of a smaller limitation. This thinking was obviously followed with powers that were derived from a stat. Hand Attack was 3 points per D6, which is basically Strength with "no figured characteristics", except it also doesn't add to your jumping and doesn't help you break out of grabs. Perception was 3 pts per +1, so it was basically Int with a -1/2 limitation. Likewise a 5 point skill level with Int skills doesn't grant you Perception bonuses, basically Int with a -0 limitation. Those limitation values aren't high enough. They never were. But now we're seeing people take those components and trying to reconstruct the original stat from it. And they're saying "oh boy, look at Intelligence, it's so underpriced. You can't even buy all the things it gives you for that price." That's because those components were overcosted to begin with. Now it's possible that all the components of a stat are worth more separately than they are together. Maybe Perception really is worth 3 points per plus (I don't think it is, but maybe). Maybe a skill level with all Int rolls really is worth 5 points. But that doesn't mean the two together are worth 8 points per +1.

Use Extra Dimensional Movement. Single dimension, any location. Define the dimension as this dimension, then put a limitation "only on the surface of this planet" for like a -1/4. Should be like 20 points.

I always figured the Tiger Squad would be sort of like the All-Star Squadron. You've got everybody from 250 characters like the Red Bee (a minor martial artist with a small multipower of "trained bee" tricks), to 1000+ pt monstrosities like Superman and Dr Fate. Many heroes would probably be on the lower end, specialist heroes that hit for 8 to 10 dice and have one cool trick. And then you'd have a bunch more that are probably around 350 and are just a palette swap version of an existing hero or villain. Then you could have a handful of big guys who can be a serious problem for a hero team.

Well, in the comics, there was no tech behind the Infinity Gauntlet. It might as well have been an Infinity Dice Bag. Take the six gems and hold them all and there you go.

I'm curious as to how an insurance company could "require" a super to do anything.

That's why I said secure corridors, not high traffic areas. Your guards can carry a rake or something to even out the sand after they walk through. You'd alter the internal design of your castle so that there were multiple secure passageways like that. You could also have just more locked doors, with guards on the other side. They won't open the door unless they look through the peephole and see a person there.

I'd think that a quick, cheap setting/game that uses the bones of the Hero System could be relatively successful. The point would be to create a game that is easy to learn, fun to play, and catches the eye. Suppose you make a little 80 to 100 page softcover book, Terror at Camp Blood (which happens to have been the original working title of Friday the 13th). And let's say the game is meant for one-off game sessions when your regular GM is gone, or you're between campaigns. On the cover you have a picture of a lake, with trees in the background, and a man's leg and boot in the foreground. The man's arm is visible, holding a bloody axe. People are swimming in the lake, and haven't noticed anything amiss. This cover clearly communicates what the game is about. Everybody already knows what they're going to find within, and if you keep it at like fifteen bucks, people who are interested in horror will buy it. The game itself uses basic Hero mechanics. Str, Dex, Con, OCV, DCV, Body and Stun. Eliminate things that aren't necessary. Trim as much as possible. We don't worry about MCV. We don't worry about the Speed chart. Anything we want to take from that can be given a simple mechanic that takes place behind the scenes. Have some pregen character stat blocks (Jock, Nerd, Cheerleader, Stoner, etc) where each one has a bonus in a particular area. Don't separate out any genre rules, those are an integral part of the game. Those are the rules. There can be actual Hero mechanics behind everything, but they'll only be presented within the structure of the specialized game. For instance, each character may have 3D6 of Luck, only when they go out in the woods to look for their friends. The killer may have Detect: Skinny Dipping. Characters may also have 3/3 Combat Luck, only when they're the last one alive. None of these things are going to be spelled out in Hero terminology, they'll be called something appropriate to the game. The whole thing should work as a complete stand alone game. People familiar with Hero may say "hey, I know what this is..." but everybody else should just think it's a fun little game. Build fun game mechanics that are appropriate to the genre into the game itself. If you smoke pot or get naked, you get a "blood point" or something, and the more blood points you have the faster you get killed. But maybe there's a reason why you'd want to gain blood points too. But you'd have a carefully hidden Hero mechanic that guided this (like an Aid or something) that formed the basis for how it worked. You just wouldn't call it that. Have a note in the front of the book, "this game uses the Hero System mechanics, but you don't need to buy anything else. Terror at Camp Blood is a complete game by itself. The Hero System itself covers more genres (from fantasy to superheroes) and can be modified extensively, but TaCB is all you need to play slasher movie mayhem." At the very end of the book, you might have a little paragraph breaking down the Hero rules that were used in the game.

I'm going to suggest more conventional defenses. How common are these powers, and how exactly do they work? So shrinking, can everybody do it, or is 1 in 100 considered "common"? Can they shrink valuables as well, or not? If a shrinking guy can go down to 4" tall, slip under a door, grow again, grab the gold, shrink with it, and then leave, that's different than if he can't shrink the treasure along with him. If everybody can shrink, I'd just build my house for a 4" tall family. Realistically, castle design (and wealthy home design) would just have tighter design standards. You wouldn't have any gaps that a 4" person could slide between. For invisible people, I'd suggest that secure hallways have several inches of sand on the ground. If somebody walks down the hallway, you'd see their footprints. Guard dogs would bark if they smelled something they couldn't see. For teleporters, I'd put a fence more than 40 meters outside my castle. Build the castle on a hill, and have the fence at the bottom going around it.

You know, a Stephen King rpg would be cool.

Hela would probably be the best candidate. We don't really know what happened to her after Surtur destroyed Asgard. I mean, we presume she died, but we don't really know that for sure. Or what death means for a goddess of death. Still, I don't think they should bring Thanos back anytime soon, if ever. It makes Iron Man's sacrifice mean a lot less.

If I was in charge (and had lots of money to blow), I'd make some little stand alone games, with a stripped down version of the Hero System in each of them. A fantasy game with pre-made spells (and no Powers section), a horror rpg where characters are competent normals, etc. Hero would run in the background, but really it's about nice looking art and a cool theme. See what sparks interest. If something sells well, bring out supplements for it. Don't try to convert people to a new religion just yet. Instead let them have fun playing the game, not reading a set of encyclopedias to figure out the rules. Then, eventually, you come out with Hero System 7th edition. Much thinner than the double volume 6th. Hero System -- the game you've already been playing. Something like that.

So, I think the answer depends on how effectively normal people can deal with super problems. If the most dangerous guy in the world has a 60 Str, 18 Dex, 5 Speed, 25 PD and ED, with 15 resistant, then maybe specially equipped cops can take him down. You lure SuperBubba into an evacuated part of the city and you rain down grenades on his head. But if Ultron is out there, you have no choice but to let the supers take care of it. The problem I had with Civil War (both the comic and to a lesser extent, the movie) is that the governments of the world have no answer at all when a supervillain decides to rampage. Sure, you know who the Avengers are, and maybe you can get the drop on them when they're sitting back eating shawarma and taking a break (at least some of them). But you have no answer at all for Loki, or really any of the other villains. Putting restrictions on heroes, trying to control them, just means that you keep them from doing their job. Ultimately you end up drifting pretty far from the superhero genre if you really want to push it. If the government mandates that all superheroes register with them, and undergo training, and basically get drafted, would people be superheroes anymore? What happens if Clark Kent decides not to put on the costume? Oh he can still save people in burning buildings and things like that, but what if he just wears blue jeans, a leather jacket, and a ski mask? And then he doesn't stick around to give interviews, he just flies off. I think more government regulations would just drive a lot of stuff underground. There wouldn't be official superhero teams, and people wouldn't wear costumes. They'd just wear regular clothes with a disguise. I'm not sure that's preferable. Or people would just not be superheroes, and the villains would run wild for a while, until the police and the politicians threw their hands up in the air and begged for someone to help. Then you can't really put conditions on how the heroes choose to help. "We'll let you help, if you tell us your real identity." And the hero is like "well, have fun fighting Doctor Cannibal by yourself, a-hole."

Isn't that just... running two turns back to back?

If you own the property, theoretically you could sell it again. It probably doesn't make much difference if you're talking about making a few PDFs and putting together a Kickstarter to hopefully get a print run of your next game supplement. When you're scraping by, it doesn't matter. But if you're talking about hitting it big (like White Wolf did), you've got the book sales but you no longer have the IP behind it. Realistically it probably isn't that important, but when you're looking to invest money it sucks to know you've got a hard cap on how much you could earn from it.