massey

Lemme try again with a super bare-bones approach. Bob the Wizard starts with the Power Skill, defined as Magic, on a 13-. He paid 3 points for the skill, and 4 points for a +2 to the roll (let's leave out his base Int stat for just a moment), so 7 points total. With this, he gets access to a handful of simple spells. Let's say we have maybe a dozen "basic magic" tricks that he can perform. 5 Str Telekinesis. 1" radius sight and hearing Images with -0 to the perception roll. Simple, basic spells. He takes a -1 to his Magic roll for every 10 active points in the spell. So if he wants to get better at casting these basic spells, he needs to buy up his Magic roll. There are better spells that he can cast than just zero level cantrips, but of course they're going to have more active points and so will be harder to perform. So now Bob wants to be able to do Fire Magic. So he buys KS: Fire Magic for 3 points, which gives him an 11- roll with it. And he spends 3 more points so he's got a 14-. This now gives him access to basic Fire Magic spells. There are a dozen or so spells the GM has created, and he can now cast these just like the basic magic he could cast before. He uses his KS: Fire Magic as the skill roll for any of these spells, which is cheaper than buying up his Power Skill, but it only applies to Fire Magic. Later Bob decides he's going to learn Wind Magic (or Plant Magic, or Divination, or whatever). He buys another KS for that. Each time he buys access to a new type of magic, he learns somewhere between five to ten new spells. Some of them are minor, but some of them are pretty good. Fire Bolt may be a 2D6 RKA, Armor Piercing. Not bad at all. Of course, he needs to have a pretty decent skill level in Fire Magic to use it reliably. The basic spells you get are considered "general knowledge". Every fire wizard knows how to cast Fire Bolt. These spells are all pregenerated by the GM and are balanced against what warriors and other classes can do. No wizard is going to be overpowered just from the "starter pack" of spells. More powerful spells have to be discovered through adventuring, research, or outright point buy. Suppose Bob wants to be able to raise an army of the dead. That spell is not in the KS: Necromancy starter pack. He might have an Animate Dead spell that can raise 4 skeletons (Summon 50 point skeleton, slavishly devoted, x4 being = 40 active points, or -4 to KS: Necromancy roll). But Bob wants to be able to raise thousands. Well, he's going to need better magic than what he's got. Increasing the Summon so that he can have 1000 skeletons in one go would make it 120 active points. That's a -12 to his roll. Now maybe you're okay with letting a guy who buys KS: Necromancy at 25- to start raising armies of the dead. Or maybe you want him to find the spell through a quest of some kind. That kind of magical knowledge is probably jealously guarded. This is an excuse to send Bob and pals to look for the Necronomicon ex mortis. Now maybe Bob doesn't want to do a quest. Well he might be able to research a spell like that. He's a wizard, after all. This can be roleplayed out too. If he's got the Research skill, have him make some rolls. Assign a certain difficulty, declare that it takes a certain amount of time and costs a certain amount of money. As an example, maybe it takes you a year of research, and 50 gold pieces a day. At the end of each month, you need to make a Research roll at -3. If you fail, the month is wasted. After 12 successes, make a Magic Skill roll (unmodified) and a Necromancy roll (at -1 per 10 active points, but you can take extra time and use supporting skills and such to give bonuses) to make sure the spell actually works. If you fail the roll, it's an extra month of research for every point you fail by. Do that, and now you have your spell. Just add it to your spell list. But maybe Bob doesn't want to do research either. He wants his army of the dead spell now. Well, he's always free to just buy the thing with points, like a normal power.

Knowledge Skills are 1 point per +1 to the roll.

When we played horror games, usually it was for a limited time. Everybody knew that we would only have like 6 sessions or something, because Bob had finished running his game, and Mike wasn't quite ready to start yet. Or Billy was going to get deployed overseas in a few months, and didn't want to start something long and involved. Taking a break in the month of October to play a scary game was also a hit. The idea of "normal guy versus the supernatural" has an appeal. You just have to realize you're not Rambo. For munchkin players, I found that giving them small scale stuff to fight keeps them happy for a little bit (you can kill a cultist, but the monster he summons flies away without seeing you). The monsters should be established as clearly outside of their weight class, something that requires a special weapon or whatever to defeat. 1st level D&D characters don't charge dragons. Even the most die-hard powergamer understands that. In fact, I think the roll players (as opposed to role-players) are the ones most likely to react appropriately if they think the monster is too tough to kill. Some Vampire the Masquerade player may love the idea of standing up to Cthulhu and delivering an impassioned soliloquy on how love conquers all. A point-crunching munchkin is going to run like his ass is on fire as soon as he realizes the battle is hopeless. But I didn't really put players in the situation where they were facing down hopeless odds. Not in a combat situation anyway. You find out that there are CHUDs living in the sewer below the city. You fight one of them when it comes out for a stroll late at night. It nearly kills you, but you manage to beat it to death with a lead pipe you grabbed in the alleyway. You hear movement behind you, and when you turn, you see a dozen pairs of their creepy, glowing eyes coming out of the shadows. You've lost a lot of Body and are barely standing as it is. You have to run. As long as the player chooses the clearly obvious action, he'll get away (they aren't interested in pursuing you, they're primarily interested in retrieving the body of their fellow creature). But now he knows that he can't just slaughter his way through the things. As far as playing doomed characters goes, it can be fun if you're in the right mindset. The way I see it, in horror stories people usually have one terrifying experience and then it's over. The sequels usually involve new people encountering the same monster. It's rare for somebody to become an Ash, fighting the same things over and over again. The character doesn't have to die by the end of the adventure, but you shouldn't expect them to keep coming back. I found that leaving them "on the run" can be pretty enjoyable. The players wonder what happens to them after the game ends. I played in a game where I was a camp counselor. Turns out the camp was a cover for a Dagon-esque cult. I was supposed to be a sacrifice. They already had a death certificate printed out for me and everything. I found out a lot of the rich, old money families in the United States had traces of Deep Ones in their ancestry. Sometimes, it manifests and one of the wealthy goes all fishy. They get sent to live in the underground lake near the camp. A lake with hundreds of half-fish men. Most of the people who sent their kids to camp there were part of that elite group. The movers and shakers of America. So I found a list of names in the camp office, and jotted down as many as I could. Names, addresses, etc. I stole a bunch of money, set the place on fire, and ran. I escaped the scenario successfully, but I still couldn't go home. I was officially "dead" already. A week later, someone ransacked my motel room when I went out for burgers. The cult leaders at the camp were dead, but clearly there was somebody who figured out that one of the sacrifices had escaped. So I had to keep moving. The only way I could get my life back is to start picking off the people on my list. They are out to take over the world. I am going to be a hero. If only they hadn't destroyed the list when they trashed my room. But I'm pretty sure I remember who was on it. We played that game like ten years ago, and I still wonder what happened to him. From an outsider's perspective, he's absolutely insane. He wants to kill all the fish people, the ones who secretly control the government? Riiight. From my own perspective, he's insane. He's not even sure who was on the list anymore. He's trying to do the right thing, but his perspective is skewed. He's a half step from putting on a mask and murdering kids at some random summer camp. At the very least, he's going to break into rich people's houses and shoot them as they sleep. Maybe some of them will even be the right ones ("Swenson? Swanson? Oh, Samsonite, I was way off!"). Wondering about what became of him is way more fun than just saying that he went on to have a happy ending.

It's not exactly what you're asking for, but I'd suggest having a few different magic systems. The most powerful, and the most expensive, would be just buying a big VPP or Multipower. At that level, the character has spent way more points than a warrior. It makes sense that he would be more effective. In fact, he should be. Chucking dozens of fireballs is very powerful, but if the guy has spent 80 points or so on magic, then hell yeah he should be able to wade through hordes of orcs. The next level down would be buying an individual spell. Somebody wants to cast Xen's Lively Lightning, a modified version of your basic Chain Lightning spell. Let them buy it as normal. With enough limitations stacked on it, they can make it cheap enough that it's not that much more expensive than buying it as a skill. Especially if you just make them buy the extra stuff and let them use the underlying "skill based magic" without buying it outright. So if the Lightning Bolt spell is a 2D6+1 RKA, then Xen's Lively Lightning might be a naked advantage. Area Effect Cone, nonselective. That's 26 points (in 5th edition, anyway). Now limit it with concentration, extra time, requires skill roll, gestures and incantations, focus (spell components), 4 charges (you can't do it very often at first), costs end. That'll bring the cost down to 5 points. That way people can tweak things if they want to spend the points, without being too out of line with the basic spells. At your most basic level, just write up some cheap spells and let the players access them with a skill roll. Since a warrior can swing a sword without paying points for it (needing only a 1 point weapon familiarity), a wizard can probably cast Burning Hands without unbalancing the game, even if he didn't buy the whole thing. I'd keep these spells somewhat in line with normal damage. If a fighter is doing 2 1/2D6 HKA with his axe, a 2D6 RKA Explosion that requires a skill roll and extra time is probably not unbalanced at all. Might even be a little weak, in fact. Your wizard buys KS: Fireball spell at his base 13- (from 18 Int) for 3 points, then +4 to skill roll for 4 more points. If it's a 50 active point spell, that gives him a 12- to cast it for 7 points. If anything, that might be a little weak. His spells with rapidly get very expensive, the more he buys. Taking Scholar would be a must, to reduce the point cost. The way I think that would go, you'd have "dabblers" in magic who would take maybe one or two spells. Bob the swordsman learns how to cast Fire Blade, and just leaves it at that. He spends his 6 points or something to get a boost to his damage, and he leaves the rest of the magic to the experts. Once you've bought 3 or 4 skills with spells, a Multipower is going to start to look appealing. Another possibility is something I had a GM fiddle around with once. We never used it, it was a magic system he wanted to use in a Champions game, but nobody ended up playing a mage. You bought Contacts with extra-dimensional beings. Make your Contact roll, they would grant you their magic spell. You'd get a default spell that the entity cast through you. So if you wanted to cast the Ruby Lance of Lyacon, you make your 12- Contact with Lyacon roll. If you're successful, you cast a 9D6 Energy Blast (or whatever it is). Just don't be surprised if, later on, he wants a favor in return. Cultists and other low level magic users would often take the Contact route, because it's a cheap and easy way to get access to decent magic. You've got a long way to go if you want to be Sorcerer Supreme, but it's the mystic equivalent of handing a soldier a machine gun.

First, figure out how you want your magic system to function. Don't worry about game rules, just think about how your fantasy world will look. How do wizards/sorcerers/whoever use their abilities? Do you have wise men who use magic so quiet and subtle that people aren't sure if it exists? Do you have video game wizards who shoot glowing energy all the time? Can your magicians create massive effects that wipe out armies? Or are they just warriors who have different flavored attack powers? Visualize it in your head, and then that will determine the right way to do it. Personally, if I wanted to play D&D, I'd just play D&D. That magic system works reasonably well enough for that game, even though there are still problems with it. If I wanted to play Fantasy Hero, I'd probably try to have characters with abilities I couldn't mimic in D&D.

This is why you have robots. Or you hire cheap foreign henchmen who don't speak English.

Generally in heroic games, you take x2 Body from a hit to the head. If you kill somebody with a head shot, I'd say that might count as decapitating them. You might give monsters that have Defenses defined as "instant regeneration", and put a limitation on those defenses that says "not vs cutting attacks to head/neck that do enough Body to kill creature". I'd probably give it a -1/2 limitation (doesn't come up very often, but when it does it really sucks). Special effect is that you're dead before you have a chance to regenerate.

Finally saw this movie. When I first heard they were making a Black Panther film, I was excited to see it. I really liked the character in Civil War, and wanted to see more of him. Then I saw the previews, and they just hit every wrong note with me. I wanted to see it much, much less. Then I heard the reviews, and most of what I heard also made me want to see it less. Everything I read talked about how "important" the movie was, because it had a primarily black cast, black director, etc. Telling me that a movie is "important" is a good way to guarantee I will not watch it. But on Saturday, I took my 12 year old nephew to see it. He was super excited to watch it, and since I normally take him to the Marvel movies, I took him to this one. Overall I was pleased. I liked this movie. It felt like the Lion King meets James Bond. Favorite character was M'Baku. I thought he was supposed to be the villain (I've stayed away from most spoilers), and was surprised when he turned out to be a more heroic character. But I thought they handled him pretty well, and the actor did a great job of making him charismatic and entertaining. Killmonger was kind of a throw-away villain. He's clearly a badass, and I understood his motivation. The actor did a good job. But it was pretty obvious he wasn't going to live past the first movie, and since you never figure out who he is until the third act, you don't really become emotionally invested in him. A few small criticisms: First, too much CGI neon. Wakanda stops looking like a real place (or even a fantastical place like Asgard) and starts looking like a computer game. I know that's the style these days, but too many glowing energy fields pull me out of the film. Second, that new suit seems to make him really freakin' powerful. Probably too powerful. For somebody I mentally put on par with Cap and Bucky, now he seems Iron Man grade durable or more. Like a martial artist character who bought 40 PD and ED. Third, I am not completely sold on his sister the super-inventor. She's obviously fairly young, and she's supposed to have invented a lot of Wakandan tech? But... haven't they always been really advanced? I think they said she invented the energy fields that allowed the vibranium trains to run. What did they do before her? And maybe they just needed to give her some more technobabble, because she still just comes across as a girl in her early 20s to me, and not a super-genius. We are told that she's super-smart, we aren't shown it. But generally I liked the movie. It wasn't Ant Man or Guardians of the Galaxy, but I put it above Thor 2 or the Iron Man sequels.

If I was going to establish a "Rule of X" (and I'm not going to do the legwork on that), I'd look at what actually makes Champions characters effective. Start with a baseline "average" character for your campaign, presuming that he will be built and played intelligently. Figure out what Captain Generic will probably have, and define that as your standard. As a character drifts from that standard, determine whether that makes them more or less effective, and assign a bonus or a penalty based on that. Instead of raw numbers, I'd look for certain boxes to check. For instance, Green Dragon has 40 Stun. That's pretty good. But he's only got 10 PD and ED, and that sucks. Instead of assigning him a score for his 40 Stun, I'd look at "can he stay up through more than two campaign average hits?" The answer is no, he can't. Let's say that Captain Generic has the following abilities (5th edition): 12D6 attack 8 OCV/DCV 25 Con 25 Def 5 Speed 18" movement one special defense 5-10 pts one extra targeting sense one primary attack, two secondary attacks (flash, entangle, NND, area effect, etc) enough Stun to stay conscious through two 12D6 attacks enough Endurance to move, keep his defenses up, and attack each phase for one turn Anybody who falls roughly within this range is going to be acceptable. They're average for the campaign. What things push them beyond the average? What things should a GM look for that could potentially throw the game out of whack? Well, having one extra OCV isn't going to do it. A guy who is completely average, except he has a 13D6 attack, is more powerful, but that's obvious. What we're really looking for here are game-breakers. So we start asking questions. --Does the character have a special defense that makes him very tough to damage? We're talking Invisibility, Desolidification, or a large area of Darkness that he uses on himself? --Can the character use this defensive power and still attack unimpeded? Can he attack while desolid? Does he have Darkness vs sight 6" radius, and also a Radar sense? Can he turn invisible and also has invisible attacks? --Does the character have an OCV/DCV more than 3 higher than the average, that he can use consistently? It's hard to hit somebody if you have to roll lower than an 8. And if he still hits on a 14, he probably won't miss much. --Does the character have a Speed score of 3 or more above average, and the Endurance to use it effectively? --Does the character have a special movement power (like Tunneling, Desolid, or Megascale) that will bypass conventional obstacles? --Can the character stay conscious through 4 or more average hits? --Will the character Stun an average opponent with an average damage roll? --Can the character Stun/KO a group of 3 or more "agents" with average to-hit and damage rolls? --Does the character have an attack that most people won't have any defense against? --Does the character have more than 3 attack methods? A guy with 9 different attacks in his multipower will nearly always have something the enemy can't stop. --Does the character have any powers that are unusually effective together? We're looking for combos. Desolid, Flight, N-Ray Vision, and Density Increase lets you fly though the ground, come up behind people, and hammer them. --Does the character have any Stop Sign powers where it's very clear that this is why the stop sign exists? Check these boxes off as you go through the list. If the character checks off more than one or two, you should look at it very closely. However, these boxes can be countered by someone who has the following negative boxes: --Will the character be Stunned if he is hit by the campaign average attack? --Does the character have a Vulnerability to something that is fairly common? --If the character has a special defense (Desolid, Invisibility, Shrinking), is he reliant on that power for most of his defense? --Will the character be knocked unconscious by two campaign average hits? --Does the character have an OCV/DCV that is 2 or more less than campaign average (does he need a 9 or less to hit the average foe)? --Is the character's offense all special attacks? Does he lack just a straight XD6 damage attack? --Does the character run out of Endurance before the end of the turn? --Does the character lack any sort of enhanced senses and/or special defenses? --Will the character take Body from a campaign average attack? --Is the character in danger of being Stunned by the attack of an agent? --Does the character lack a good movement power? Is his movement 1/2 or lower than the average? Check those boxes. If the character's "negative" boxes equal or exceed his "positive" boxes, he's probably okay. Not every box is equal, but that's okay. So let's say that you've got Amazing Lad. Amazing Lad is right at the campaign average, but he has 11 OCV/DCV and an 8 Speed (where 8/8 and 5 Spd is average). If that's the only difference, he's probably too powerful. But... let's say that he's got a x2 Vulnerability to Fire, and he'll blast through all of his Endurance in 6 phases. Well suddenly he looks not nearly so tough. Now his two "good" boxes are both really good, and his two "bad" boxes checked don't quite seem to fully counter it. But what if he also has no enhanced senses, no power defense, no mental defense, no flash defense? Now he doesn't really seem so bad to me. Now he's just a guy who is fast. Somebody can spread a 12D6 Sight Flash and Amazing Lad is hosed. Anybody can tell that a guy with a 13D6 attack hits harder than a guy with a 12D6 attack. That's pretty easy. But will an average of an extra 3.5 Stun really make that much of a difference? Probably not, unless it just edges past the villain's Con score. That's why it's more important to look for whether somebody gets Stunned/KO'd by an attack. These are the things that really make the difference. Go with something like this system, and I think you'll get a much better balanced game than a rigidly numerical Rule of X.

The biggest problem with a Rule of X is that it's either so simplistic that anybody with any experience doesn't need it, or it's so complex that it creates the illusion of being more accurate than it really is. The spreadsheet above is an example of the latter. Green Dragon is a glass cannon. I'd say he has gaping holes in his defenses, but that would imply that he had some kind of defense at all. He's quick and he hits hard. He can be pretty effective in very limited circumstances. But most any hero worth his tights can drop him like a bad habit. He's susceptible to every kind of attack there is. Mental powers will hammer him. You can spread an attack to get a bonus to OCV (if you have a 12D6 attack, go ahead and spread for +4 to hit -- even an 8D6 attack will have about a 50/50 chance of Stunning him). Flash or Entangle will screw him. Area of Effect attacks will do the same. He's only really effective when heroes have very limited combat options. And yet, with the above spreadsheet, he's the most powerful character in the basic book. But if Black Harlequin (the weakest character in the list) can figure out a way to not get his face punched in on segment 12, he'll completely own Green Dragon. If he's got his gadget pool set up with something that prevents a one-hit KO, he can just throw his cherry bombs (8D6 area effect) and the fight is over. The chart makes it look like Green Dragon is easily the mightiest character. But he's so unbalanced towards offense that he's actually quite weak. His defense is not getting hit, but there are so many ways around it that it isn't really that good of a defense.

If a player doesn't want to enjoy the horror aspects of the game, no amount of game rules will force them to roleplay it. But if they are willing to get into character, a sanity mechanic artificially shortens the game. I ran a CoC-esque game in another game system a few years ago. I changed the descriptions of the world based on how much nasty stuff the characters had seen. I wouldn't say: "You are walking down the street. It's a beautiful summer evening. The park is on your right. To the left, there is a line of old 19th century brownstones. You hear lively latin music coming from the second story of one of the buildings, and the street bustles with activity." Instead I would say "You hurry down the avenue, constantly looking over your shoulder. The street is crammed with people, you feel as though someone is following you. To your right is a park. There are children playing there. Make a perception roll. You notice that instead of playing, the children on the merry-go-round are all staring at you. Decrepit buildings are on your left. The sound of strange, foreign instruments and singing in an odd language drifts down to you from one of the dark windows above." Basically it's the same description, just more sinister, and filtered through the lens of paranoia. I've found that trigger happy players are far more susceptible to scenarios like this. It's perfectly logical to play CoC like a murder hobo, except for the problem that nobody else in that world realizes they're in a horror story.

I always liked Desolidification, Invisible Power Effects, Area Effect, Usable Against Others, Personal Immunity, Affects Desolid. People enter the area and become Desolid. They shoot at you, their attack passes right through. They shoot at you with their Affects Desolid attack, it passes right through you. They've got to shoot you with an Affects Real World power to get any effect. And who buys that if they aren't a Desolid using character?

I always disagreed with the Sanity mechanic in CoC. Lovecraft's stories didn't work that way. You became "insane" because you realized that the world you were seeing was an illusion. Other people thought you were nuts, but really it's just that they didn't know how the world really worked. All that stuff should have been handled by roleplaying, not a game mechanic. [/end rant]

Especially after Riker has been there.

I'd say the opposite. While you might think they'd have strict workplace safety regulations, the fact that people seem to keep getting powers from exposure to this stuff shows that the rules aren't working.

Pfft. I can defend against a dude with a rubber knife who isn't actually trying to stab me. If I had a knife, and I'm trying to cut Krav Maga Guy here, I swing at his arm. You don't use these big overhand stabs, you slash at him quickly. Slash at whatever he puts out in front of his body.

I don't think you should punish players for knowing how the game works. Your average VIPER agent has 10 PD and ED, 6 resistant (at least in 5th edition). He has 30 Stun. A 12D6 attack, on average, will barely put him unconscious. If you pull your punch, so you're only doing like 6D6 or so, he won't even be stunned. And "Viper Agents" are often code for "the GM wants to use dirty tricks to teach you a lesson". Why not hit these guys full power? The characters should know that when Strong Guy (Str 60) hits a Viper agent in armor, the guy maybe gets a cracked rib and he gets knocked out, but he's otherwise fine. They see it happen again, and again, and again. The fact that 100 tons of force would splatter a guy in the real world, doesn't mean it works that way in the game world.

I wouldn't mess with point costs. Instead I would pre-design a lot of the ships and just limit what the players can take. Just because the game system would let someone buy something, that doesn't mean it's appropriate in the campaign setting. For example, you can't normally be a starship commander in a D&D game. Point costs aren't about how "realistic" something is. It's about how useful it is in the game. FTL speeds get very high for a tiny increase in points. That's not realistic at all. But remember, in the game, there's not much difference between 20 points of FTL travel and 50 points of it. In both cases, you're traveling to a fictional location that is as far away as the gamemaster wants it to be, and it takes as long to get there as the gamemaster says. It's a "scene change" power. The GM says "Okay, you're traveling to the Andaarian Nebula. You've been going there for the last 4 days. You still have 2 more days to get there. On the way, your trip is interrupted by this thing happening." It doesn't matter if it's the Andaarian Nebula, or some other place he made up. It doesn't matter if you've been traveling for 4 days, or 4 weeks, or 4 hours. You've entered into the realm of GM narration. It's perfectly fine to say that your big battleships can only go at X speed, while smaller interceptors can go faster. If you want your game universe to work that way, that's fine. But don't bother with changing the point costs. It will give a false illusion that you've balanced it somehow, when in fact you haven't.

The Guilt Complex is still a screw job. If you want to look at the source material, it's telling that you basically never see anything like this scenario happen in the comics. How many accidental bad guy deaths can you think of in comics? The closest you get to this situation is someone like Superman (who is built on a lot more points than most heroes) purposefully holding back when he fights. But that's exclusive to him, and so should probably be represented by something specific to that character. Even then, it's not an everyday occurrence. Instead it's something that gets mentioned every once in a while (either as an excuse when he spends XP buying up his powers -- "I've been holding back all this time", or in the first few phases of combat when he faces a new foe). I think "Psych Lim: Overconfident" and "Psych Lim: Underestimates New Opponents" would work there. There are two big problems with the Guilt Complex characters. 1) They are rampaging murder machines , and 2) they detonate when hit with a standard 12D6 attack. They even take lethal damage from nonlethal attacks. Most of them are physically more frail than an 80 year old woman. It's a screw job. What should actually happen in that scenario is that these three villains go to rob a bank, the security guard shoots at them (and misses, they're all DCV 10), and the villains start rolling their chance to go Berserk. 14-, recover on an 8-. If one of them fails, he'll attack the closest person to him, full power. That's either a civilian or one of their teammates. By the time the heroes get there, it'll be a scene of mass carnage. Oh, and the speedster only has 10 Endurance. He uses 4 per segment (at a 12 Spd), and he feels no pain. He'll knock himself unconscious by Segment 5 (or the first time he does a move-by on someone). You don't teach your players any lessons with a session like this. You just make them resent you.

In "Up the Long Ladder" (the episode with the drunken Irish people), somebody mentions that the ship has a self-cleaning function when the colonists set a fire in the shuttle bay.

The Guilt Complex is horsecrap. The only thing it will do is cause arguments at the table, and people leaving. The guy who wrote it obviously completely misunderstands the law. If a villain is killed in the middle of a robbery, that's just too damn bad for him. A bunch of villains who go berserk in combat? Cops aren't arresting the hero who accidentally kills the psychotic villain.

Did anyone take it seriously before?

A bullet through your left ventricle will cause heartbreak every time.

40D6? Is that all? I once had a speedster who could hit 56D6 on a Passing Strike. It wasn't long after that that character got retired.

I don't think it's reasonable. A skill roll of 11- is supposed to be competent in your profession. You can make a living by performing the skill. An 18- means you're one of the best people in history to ever perform the skill (page 43, 5th ed revised). I don't think I'd allow five complementary skill rolls to boost a guy who is "pretty darn good" into "one of the best in history". Also he's not spending that entire year fixing every possible weak point in the system. He spends a week installing it and then the rest of the year screwing around looking at porn. Also, you attack the easiest point of failure in a system. I'm not a computer guy, but I do know how large corporations work. The guy may design what he believes to be the perfect system. But Bob from HR regularly checks his Facebook on the company computer system. Bob has zero skills in computers, and he's always clicking on some link he shouldn't be clicking. Plus, the CEO decides that the company needs to upgrade some random piece of software, and he wants your network engineer to make it happen. Plus, things need to be backward compatible with the program the company used back in 1993, because you've still got a lot of old records stored on that system. So make it happen! As I was typing this, I got a call on my cell phone from an unknown number. I answered with "Hello, this is (my name)". It was just some recording telling me that I needed to call them because of my credit card information. Of course, it wasn't my credit card company, it was somebody else. I used to answer the phone with "Yes?" But I don't anymore, because there have been reports of telemarketers recording you when you pick up, and if you say "yes" at any point, they insert that as an answer to a question letting them bill you. Very shady, very crooked. Also very likely to catch your company's least intelligent employee off guard. You don't have to defeat Hacker McNerd's ideal computer security system, because regular normal folk are using the system and are basically inflicting massive skill roll penalties to his Computer Programming roll.