massey

Cyclops is plenty tough. He's way tougher than a stupid rhino. How many rhinos fight Magneto? You seem to be under the impression that PD and ED have some kind of testable, real world equivalent. Like a certain material density gives you a certain PD. There isn't. While tougher materials can have higher defense, that's not the only thing that can give you more PD. Cyke's PD isn't a measure of bone density or muscle mass. He has high PD because he's usually one of the last X-Men standing. He has a high PD because he just doesn't really get hurt.

Superheroes don't take it.

Take a look at the table on page 58 of the 5th ed Champions Genre Book. You can get to 15 base PD and ED, before any Combat Luck, without being classified as "superhuman".

Who says 20 Def is superhuman? Superheroes don't follow that damn Normal Characteristic Maximum. Batman doesn't have a 20 Dex or a 4 Speed. Not to mention that we have plenty of examples of characters in comic books engaging in superhuman fights, getting hit, and not dying. In the Hero system, that's normally represented by good PD and ED.

I don't know how you're imagining them. My versions of Cyclops and Storm have around 20 Def each. They don't have a force field or anything like that, they've just got high nonresistant PD and ED and then some Combat Luck.

Who says that Storm and Cyclops have no defenses? Just because they don't have a defined superpower that protects them, that doesn't mean they've got 5 PD/ED.

This movie sucked because it didn't have Otis in it.

Just because a dude is really strong and is also nice, that doesn't mean he knows a damn thing about governing a country.

Charges cost 0 End to use. They just do. It doesn't take "one End" worth of effort to pull a trigger. If the guy with Drain wants to penalize a guy who primarily uses Charges, he should pay for it.

When I built the Millennium Falcon in Hero, I gave it 3 types of propulsion. Basic flight, conventional FTL, and then an XDM "hyperdrive" that crosses the galaxy almost instantly. Or you could just assume that in Star Wars, their stars are closer together than ours.

Only the gas was important. The other things he could fix with 19th century tech. Perhaps he drained the gas and other fluids before he put it in the cave, so it would last longer.

I thought Indy managed to get in the sub. It's been a while since I've seen it, but I thought he was hiding inside somewhere. As far as it being a plot-hole, Indy didn't know the Ark was going to melt all the Nazis. He was trying to stop them from stealing a priceless archaeological treasure, not keep them from using an all-powerful weapon. Actually if the Nazis hadn't opened it, Indy might have done it himself. At the beginning of the movie, he mentions it being "superstitious nonsense", or something along those lines.

Doctors feel your balls when they have you cough. Actually for that line I just googled "punchlines without jokes" and found the first one that made me chuckle. Point is the guy says something off-color and someone not involved in the conversation gets offended. Look at Iuz the Evil's example above for a sexual harassment case being stirred up without any actual sexual harassment. So you don't disagree then, good. It's just how I'm structuring my argument. I'm beginning with a general statement that everyone should agree with, and then moving forward with more explanation for why I believe the way I do. It also helps signpost where I'm going next. We can also look at the title of the thread, "What should happen to men fired for sexual harassment". As though women were never sexual harassers. There's an underlying assumption that it's always men who are the problem. That is not true (and you've already acknowledged you agree with that). And Andrea Dworkin said things like that. "Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman." Our Blood (1976) I don't know that a uniform standard can exist in a situation like this. Different companies and different states are going to have different ideas on it. I am not saying that a uniform standard should exist, just that since we don't have one at all, extra punishment beyond someone losing their job is completely unacceptable.

There is a long history of some men abusing their positions of power to harass women. Obviously that's bad. There's also a long history where some women would willfully go along with it because they could benefit from it. Obviously that's bad too. It perpetuates the behavior -- the guys will keep doing it when they realize it sometimes gets them what they want. Part of the Harvey Weinstein problem (how much, we don't really know) is that, according to the rumors, many young actresses were perfectly willing to sleep with the fat ugly guy if it meant they got a part in a movie. So, to a degree, you can understand why he kept doing it. Whether a particular behavior makes you a creep or a stud is at least partially defined by its success rate. There are certain cases where it's really really obvious that somebody is in the wrong, but I'd argue that the vast majority of cases are not so clear. Bob makes an off-color joke to Steve by the water cooler ("...then the doctor says, 'Ok, now it's my turn to cough'"), and Sarah overhears, gets mad, and goes to make a sexual harassment complaint. What do you do about that? Could it be sexual harassment? Sure. Bob and Steve could have been leering at Sarah when they made the joke. Or maybe they didn't even know she was in earshot and she's just an angry bitch. Each company is going to handle that differently, and without knowing all the details of the people involved and how the company operates, it's almost impossible to judge whether they made a good decision or a bad one. People don't have more or less moral worth just based upon gender. It's a complete lie that men are all pigs and women are all pure flowers. Now there's still some degree of that perception because of older social norms, where that kind of behavior was accepted in men, but women were supposed to remain chaste and virginal. And our culture generally expects men to be the first mover when it comes to initiating a relationship. But since the Sexual Revolution, when we as a society decided that it was okay for women to have the freedom to make their own sexual decisions, we've had to deal with conflicting ideals. We accept that women shouldn't have to wear a hijab in public, they can dress attractively and display some sexuality if they wish. On the other hand, people shouldn't be coerced into sexual behavior that they don't want. But once you eliminate the bright-line rule, and you accept that yes, sometimes women do want sex, you get this big muddy area in the middle where behavior might sometimes be appropriate but not always. How do you judge which is which, particularly when the person making the decision for the business didn't witness most of it? The problem is that with no real uniform standard in place, a guy who has been fired for sexual harassment could just be one step removed from a serial rapist, or he could be completely innocent of any wrongdoing and just the victim of an angry person and a company terrified of litigation. And we have no way to know whatsoever. So I think anything beyond the guy getting fired is entirely unjust. The original action of him getting fired may have been unjust in and of itself, so additional action with no new information would be even worse.

The previews don't make me want to see it. Wakanda does not look anything like a real place, it looks like a video game. I could handle that with Asgard, realm of the gods. But I'm not sure that I'm ready for another place that's all CGI, particularly one that's supposed to be on Earth. The movie is getting great reviews so far, but I don't trust those yet. There's too much praise for the movie being "culturally significant" or "historic". Not enough talk about it being just a kickass action/adventure movie. I really liked Black Panther when he appeared in Civil War. Thought the actor did a great job and he seemed like an interesting character. It's just that all the positive reviews I've seen so far have focused on the wrong things for me. I'll probably wait and see what the reactions of the people on this board are, and maybe for people I know in real life to see it. Going to the movies is expensive, and if I can wait for DVD I'll probably do that.

Ultimate problem with the PC crowd is that you can never be PC enough. The entire mindset is based upon finding some oppressed people somewhere. You could have an all-black, all-gay, all-women and transgender cast and crew, and someone will complain that all your stars are too "conventionally attractive" or some other damn thing. You gotta just make the movie you want to make and ignore everyone else.

Ah. I see the problem. Your group doesn't like superheroes. You like people with powers. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But I'm not going to be able to explain to you what is cool about a particular genre, any more than you could make me like jazz by talking about it. It's like if I'm saying what a cool movie Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure was, and you go "why didn't they just go back and murder Ted's dad? Then he can't send Ted to military school..." I can't logically explain why they didn't do that, except that's just not what you do in an 80s teen comedy. I guess if you don't like those movies, it doesn't really make sense? But, damn dude, I can't explain why D&D characters want to get treasure and magic items either.

I don't think some of those people remember the 80s very well.

One thing I'd suggest to keep superheroes "super" is to steal something from the old Mayfair DC Heroes game. In one of their Legion of Superheroes supplements, they explain why starships aren't as super-powerful as you might expect. You don't really get Super Star Destroyers or Death Stars in the Legion universe. Instead the starships are smaller and less powerful. Somebody wanted to know why. The answer is because those mega-ships are really expensive, and no matter how tough you make them, Superboy can still smash through them without a problem. The really high-end supers can take apart a fleet of giant warships in an afternoon. To avoid that occurrence (which could bankrupt your entire empire), you build smaller ships so it doesn't hurt so much if you lose one. This can help keep a lot of the super-tech rare, especially when it would outclass your PCs. They aren't engaging in space combat with ships that have 100 PD and 30D6 RKAs, because Captain Super Surfer, who has a 9 Speed and a 250 point Cosmic VPP, can make the Imperial Colloso-Dreadnought vanish. And won't Emperor Glurgg be pissed that you wasted so much of his money. Even if the average member of the Legion of Superheroes can't take down those massive ships, guys like Superboy, Mon-El, Cosmic Boy, and Element Lad can. The galaxy just has to have enough ultra-powerful people to make those things not cost effective. So instead you're getting enemy ships that do damage and have defenses that your players can deal with. Galactic Champions was for characters around 700 points, as I recall. Attacks somewhere in the range of 20D6 or so. That should be plenty powerful for an enemy spaceship.

Once when my younger sister was in high school, the family went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant. For whatever reason, my sister was in quite a mood. Halfway through the meal she stormed out, only to come back in and yell at us that we better bring her fortune cookie home. Having brought her own car, she left. When the fortune cookies arrived, one of them was slightly open so you could see the paper. I pocketed in and took it to my parents' house. I very carefully peeled open the plastic packaging, then slid the little strip of paper out and examined it. Going to their computer and printer, I matched the font and the point size, printed out a fortune of my own, snipped the paper to fit, and carefully inserted it into the cookie. The cookie went back in the plastic wrapper (though it was still open). When my sister got home about an hour later, she stormed in and demanded her fortune cookie. I pointed to the kitchen table, where a single cookie waited for her. She grabbed it, ripped apart the plastic package, and opened her cookie. Her eyes got wide and her jaw dropped open as she read the cryptic words. "You need to quit being such a huge bitch to your family."

I try to spend about 10% of my character points on skills (not including combat levels or martial arts). I don't always get there, but that's a good amount for a standard, experienced superhero. For a 350 character that's about 11 or 12 skills. Breakfall (kinda combat related -- always take) general helpful skills: Computer Programming Deduction Oratory Paramedics Persuasion Security Systems Stealth Systems Operations Scientist (skill enhancer) Biology Chemistry Physics That's 36 points, gives me generically useful science skills (I think almost everything can be broadly grouped into Biology, Chemistry, or Physics), and a bunch of skills that superheroes seem to use a lot. Computer Programming and Systems Operation should let me use any giant wall-sized computer systems that you might find in a villain's lair. Deduction is nice for when the player's brain isn't working that well. "My character is smarter than me, can he figure this out?" Oratory and Persuasion are good for inspiring people, and superheroes should be inspiring. Security Systems and Stealth are good for sneaking into places, and sometimes superheroes have to do that. Paramedics is important for saving people who are hurt. Add to that some general science knowledge and you've got a reasonably skilled generic hero. I pick up other skills depending on character concept. Sometimes these are "background skills" that justify how you normally operate. A professional skill for whatever it is that you do in your secret ID is nice. Acting can help maintain that secret ID (though not officially necessary). Superspeed movement types can use Navigation to arrive where they want to. It's not that you're going to be making a lot of these rolls in the course of the campaign, these are more "get the GM off your back" skills that shut him up when he asks about how you do certain things. All these skills give you at least a halfway decent argument that your character knows enough to try and do whatever thing it is you're trying to pull off at the moment. It makes it easier to come up with an okay plan that doesn't involve just blasting people. We've been using skills pretty heavily for a long time. They're quite handy as long as the GM lets you use them.

Focus works fine. A power doesn't have to come from the focus for you to get the limitation for it. Dumbo's feather is a great example of a focus that doesn't actually contain the power. He needs it to fly, so it's a focus. It doesn't matter that it's all in his head -- that's just the justification for when he wants to buy off the limitation after getting some more XP.

There are a lot of ways to do this. You have to ask yourself what you want to accomplish, in game, and then build to that goal. Otherwise you may spend waaay too many points for something that isn't necessarily that effective. So, one of the problems you're going to have is that the most obvious way to do what you're talking about is with Triggered attacks and Triggered movement. That's expensive. In any normal game with a point limit, that's going to eat up a huge amount of your points if you want the attack to be similar in power level to your normal, non-advantaged attack. If you normally have a 12D6 punch, now you're having to buy an additional 12D6 punch with Trigger on it (as well as Trigger on some movement) just so you can do this. That's 75 points, minimum, plus whatever your movement will cost. Is that really worth it, just for the cool visual? Do you have an extra 75 points sitting around? Probably not. So we want to find a way to simulate that effect without actually having to purchase it. So how can we make it look like you're doing that, and save some points? How can this be cost effective? I can think of at least 5 other ways, depending on how comfortable you are with abstracting some of this stuff in the game. Each has their strengths and weaknesses, and which one you should pick depends on how you see it playing out and what sacrifices you're willing to make (and what the limits are in your campaign). 1) Buy a naked advantage on your attack, Indirect (a few inches of Stretching could also work instead of Indirect). Put a limitation on it "requires acrobatics roll" or maybe "must still have X amount of movement remaining". You simply punch your opponent in the back. This method works like a move in an arcade fighting game. You do the super move, they take damage, they fall down. The primary purpose of this is for them to take knockback in a different direction than they would normally take it. You could combine this with an Autofire attack (or a Rapid Attack) if you really just need that second punch to be more than a visual effect. The problem with this technique is that you're not actually moving anywhere. You fly up to the guy, hit him, and he goes flying away in an unexpected direction. The "zipping around the sky" aspect is just the special effect of the power -- it doesn't really do anything. It just looks like you teleported behind him and punched him twice, you don't actually move. 2) +4D6 Hand Attack, with limitations. This is also a pretty basic way to simulate it. Very video-gamey, like Street Fighter II. You're hitting him with a powerful move and he takes damage. Maybe it requires an acrobatics roll, or you have to have a half-move remaining. The idea is that the "punch in face, fly behind him, punch in back" is all part of a single "attack" in game terms. One attack roll, one damage roll. Like the first example, this has the benefit that it's cheap and easy to do. You could even combine the two together if you wanted. It has the disadvantage in that it may seem like you're "faking it", because you aren't really moving and hitting him in the back. You're just saying that you're moving and hitting him in the back. That's the justification for more damage. 3) Have a Speed and Dex advantage on your opponent. This is easiest when you hit Spd 7 and above, but you can do it earlier than that. It's purely a matter of gameplay, it doesn't cost anything. It can be achieved simply by holding action until the appropriate time. In DBZ it would be considered "in genre" to let somebody do this. All you're doing is making sure you're going to act in back to back segments. So if you're Spd 7, you'll act on segments 6 and 7. On segment 6, you want to hit the guy and knock him backwards. On segment 7, you use your movement and get behind him, then hit him again. You just have to make sure that he doesn't get a phase in between your actions. This has the advantage in that you're actually doing what the characters appears to be doing on the screen. It has the disadvantages that basically anybody can do this (a guy with Spd 2 can hold action until segment 11, then act back to back on 11 and 12 as long as he goes first on 12), and that it requires you to know the Spd chart really well and skillfully use it as a player. You can't hand the character sheet to a new player and have them use the move. It's also not something that you can write down on the character sheet as a power, it's just a thing you know how to do as a player. And you have to set it up, so it's not something you can whip out anytime you want it. 4) Multiple move-bys (or multiple passing strikes). Basically you're just looping around and hitting the character over and over again. They don't actually fly back and forth when you hit them, they're still in the same spot. This has the advantage that it's free (provided you have a lot of movement), but again the disadvantage that you have to know how to do it. And again, the target isn't actually flying around back and forth. 5) Multiple combat maneuvers. 5th edition has some pretty abusive rules for using multiple martial art moves on someone in the same phase. You can punch them, disarm them, legsweep them, and then put them in a choke hold, all in one move. We've house-ruled the crap out of this in our games, because it's way too open to abuse. I don't know about 6th edition. But in 5th anyway, it's legal to run up to them, use a Passing Throw, then whip around them and use a Passing Strike from the other direction. A lenient (i.e., stupid) GM might even let you combine the velocity damage. The problem is this is super nasty and once you've got a character who can do it, there's no reason not to do it every single time you attack. So, here's what I'd do if I wanted to give this to a character. Kind of combine #1 and #2 together. Superspeed assault -- +4D6 Hand Attack (or however much the GM will let you take to hit the absolute dice limit of the campaign -- this is the same bonus a haymaker gets). Only with passing strike/move-by (-1/2), must have at least half of movement remaining when hit occurs, must finish movement behind opponent's starting position (-1/2), must beat target in Dex roll-off (-1/2), attack must do knockback to opponent (-1/2); plus 3" Stretching, only to hit adjacent target from another direction (-1), only w/ passing strike/move-by (-1/2), must have at least half move remaining (-1/2), must beat target in Dex roll-off (-1/2). Real cost: 10 points. Active points: 35. So what would happen is you fly up to them, perform a passing strike, and you have to have at least half your movement remaining when you make contact. Roll to hit. Now make a Dex roll vs your opponent. If you win, you get +4D6 damage, and you hit them in the back (or other unexpected angle). They go flying a different way than they would normally go. You can then complete your movement behind where your opponent used to be. Now, the attack must do knockback to get the extra damage, so I'd roll the 4D6 in a different color in case I crapped out on the knockback and they didn't move. Theoretically, you could require that the original attack (without the 4D6 bonus) do knockback, but that's a bigger limitation and I don't think it's necessary since we're generalizing all this into a single hit anyway. Just know that you have to get at least an inch to get the extra damage. It doesn't seem thematically appropriate to hit the guy with this and have him not move at all. It's good in that you get extra damage, so there's a reason to use it. It's also fairly cheap. It doesn't require an overly complex method to use it (no fiddling with the Spd chart or holding phases, or multiple power attacks that GMs hate). You also move around when you use it, so you'll have a different ending location than where you began. And your opponent goes flying off in a different direction than you would normally hit him. It also has a chance of failure so you may not want to just spam it over and over again. It's bad in that your opponent doesn't actually move backwards and then move forwards, and you're only doing one punch. You've generalized the damage together into one single attack. I don't think that's really that big a deal though.

We had a game once where that Dr Destroyer ran away because he didn't want to fight the heroes. "Screw this, I'm out." He figured somewhere out there, there were easier worlds to conquer.

This is one of the characters I've always planned on building but never have. I think it was the late 90s when I wanted to make "Spirit of the 80s" as a Champions character. I had a bunch of powers that I'd come up with for him, but I can't remember most of them now. I do recall that he could draw a large rectangle in the sand, then fall back into it and turn it into a swimming pool (the Nestea Plunge). I think any car that he drove up to 88 mph would travel through time. Bunch of stuff like that.