Duke Bushido

Not sure if it's still going, but there was a recent BOH chock full of Conanly goodness.

I reckon a new thread? Those who find inspiration from it could then throw their stuff up there, too.

Amusing, but I disagree with the phrasing of his example: great green dragons and green great dragons _can_ exist (obviously they don't), but they are two distinctly different things.

Crud. Now I've got to go to bed all weepy....

Here's a thing (not a really good one, but one I'd like to share): Yes; the since-5e rules allow us to all kinds of fun things with Change Environment beyond just SFX stuff. I know: we always could, but now there are rules for it for those who don't want to make up their own, or who did and would still rather use "official" ones; either way is good. But even with the new rules ("Spend this much for it to damage;" etc), I really prefer to apply an existing mechanic, as Bolo alludes to here: As it is something that has a direct effect on all players (as opposed to someone with a vulnerability to a particular special effect or generally non-problematic environment (comic book-wise, that is)), I personally would prefer to give it a specific mechanic (even if we didn't need it, it would be there to handle problem resolution). Options in this case (again, for me)...... Gravity Well..... I'm thinking (at the very least) X amount of STR in Telekinesis that pulls (or pushes; whatever works) the character "down" when he passes over / through this area. That would mean that it would work on flyers, leapers, even martial artists. (Sorry: that was a joke just for me, when I re-read looking for typos ) If that's not what the player wants, then consider _mechanically_ modeling it as a stick entangle (does 6e still do Sticky?): run in here and get stuck. IF that doesn't work, then a Drain Movement or even Drain SPD (I don't think the Drain: SPD is appropriate, personally, but it's not my character, and it will certainly hold someone still. ) Consider a combination, if you must. But the important thing-- again, to _me_ -- is to have a mechanic in place. Why? It prevents, as someone some time back and someone else recently put it rather amusingly, a clever player from creating an "I win" button. So long as there is a mechanic to work against, there is a way to overcome-- or at the very least work around-- the problem. Instead of becoming a "that sucks! That really sucks! I hate this so much! How was this allowed to happen?!" moment for your players, it becomes a challenge: an obstacle that they have to figure out how to overcome. I've noticed over the years in pretty much _any_ system, there is a certain kind of player who will root out the absolutes, and barring the presence of absolutes, find things with iffy, wonky, or no real mechanics and use those to create his own simulated absolutes. Figuring out a mechanic-- even if it's just for you as the GM to use as opposed to something the player insists on-- goes a long, _long_ way toward preventing that, as well as preventing a lot of irritation on the part of the player who might accidentally end up caught up in that absolute. Someone else (several, actually) posted the idea that "let them build it, so long as the understand that the villains will use it, too." I find that assigning a mechanic to it prevents the need to do this. Just my two cents worth, freely given, and worth every penny of the price, I'm sure. Duke

Wait a minute. Back up. I can't shake the feeling that Chris is trying to tell us something.....

It was the 4e book I put a lot of work into scanning and cleaning up, and a lot of art repair as I could do myself or have done by better-skilled people. I am particularly proud of the covers, but Jason originally put up the no-covers version. For the record: I have just last night sent Jason the version with the covers "installed," as it were. It may be a day or two before he makes the swap. I worked on getting it good enough to print, should you want to go to the expense.

Did anyone else flash back to Clevon Little for a second there? No? Just me? Well, crap.....

I almost feel guilty for mentioning this again, but the best received fantasy game I ever ran started off as a Western (having just gotten Western HERO ;)) and drifted into an occult horror/fantasy almost on accident. We were all sort of disappointed it had to end. but the fact was it was starting to get repetitive and familiar, and we all agreed we would prefer to remember it as a big hit than watch it M.A.S.H itself into a sad and tired thing....

I question a lot of Trigger builds, honestly.

Guys, the comment was originally something of a fantasy, but I am getting sort of excited about it. The only problem is writers are everywhere; some of us do it just because we can't not do it. Art, however, is much harder to come by. The more I think about it, the more I think we, as a fan base, could easily create a whole new world for this game (we all do it individually, after all). As for making it the "new official," though.... I would have no idea how to about that, unless we could get Jason et al to make it an "official" alternate universe or something.... Maybe some place where the 4e characters are still the Champions... Except Defender. I think he belongs to Cryptic now.

I will; I promise. But not tonight. I should have been in bed two hours ago, and am headed there now. By strictest definition, anyone who gets paid for it is a professional. Doesn't mean they're particularly _good_, though. I won't point out any author in particular (I really don't care to insult a happy fan for no real reason; just seems silly), but I'll suggest that you run through your mental list of books that got turned into movies, if that helps. Therein lies that problem: There is _no_ official HERO material. The old stuff (sparse as it was) belongs to Heroic Publishing. The newer stuff belongs to Cryptic Studios. I understand that decisions are made in the heat of the moment, and HERO's least cash-strapped period was during the ICE age, but _still_... Selling the rights to a vital part of your creation (twice!) is _bad_, Man. Oddly, I don't know if any of the 4e characters and mythos are sold, though. (Maybe they were offered to Talisorian? Nah; considering that CNE didn't do so well, I doubt it was tempting. I _should_ be able to, but there are two problems there: I have no idea who belongs to HERO, and who belongs to Cryptic. Further, unless someone has a 4e and prior write-up, I don't even know what /#()@^! their abilities are. Seriously. By the time I stumble through the modern-era powers write-up, I still have to look at their picture and freakin' _guess_ what the hell they can do. At any rate, this has been fun, but I've _really_ got to turn in. Y'all enjoy yourselves.

Agreed on all counts, Sir, but really, that last bit (while I _totally_ agree) gets beat up and down pretty regularly in other threads. Certainly, though, the daunting size that the rules have become-- and the overwhelming presence of math-math-math-math in both our regular discussions and in the books themselves does not lend itself to dispelling the perception that the game is more or less difficult than any other. As Hugh and others note, however, a better layout that focused on Basic-first orientation (rather than Basic being... what? Book 9 or something like that?) might have helped a bit. Like you, I also play a much older edition, simply because the fun isn't bled out by the need for software during character creation or the overwhelming sense of "No." But as the OP was hunting ideas on changing the notions outsiders have about the game, I'm not going to go too deeply into my opinions there. Anybody got a spare unique villain or two they want to donate to the fan-bult adventures idea? (my 2e write ups will likely not cut the mustard. )

If you're shopping opinions: Way back when, we used to do Combiners during our attempt at Transformers on the Champions engine (don't ask how it went. I mean, mechanically, it went _great_. but it was the very first thing we attempted under 4e (Duplication was new to us with that book), and a lot of the 4e stuff -- well, we were too excited to _use_ the new differences to actually _learn_ the differences, and it got all whompus-jawed in a hurry) by building the big, put-together version first, then using Duplication (duplicates are less powerful and different, obviously) and limitations on the powers of the "base robot" that were not available to him while duplicated: a couple levels of Growth, the big monster attack power (whatever that happened to be), etc. you might consider going that route. It was a pretty clean build-out that way.

Man I hope so.... I heard about it _way_ to late to join the kickstarter, so I'm just hoping that there will be a real, honest-to-goodness book I can buy somewhere, somehow.... As far as "in the historical sense," well that's hair-splitting at this moment. There were three editions where Champions was released as a standalone game, and three where it was not (at this point). Eventually a stand-alone version was released for the last one, sure, but not originally. In fact, there was already a genre / sourcebook for playing "Champions" with the 6e rules before there was a stand-alone Champions, so..... The fourth edition was a big departure from all that had gone before: more rules, more changes-- a total revolution on some of the most deeply-ingrained "this is what makes it my game" concepts of the game (Reduced Endurance made my eyes bug out!). 6e did the same thing, possibly deeper. I think the only thing at this point that is "historically" consistent at this point is us arguing about what would have been better.....

If (and it might not be; I may have missed the actual thrust here) the point is to simplify or reduce the size of the rules book(s), this apparently can't happen. While I personally (this often-overlooked term is a word that indicates I'm offering an opinion and not just trying to stir up hate and discontent that leads to a thread-derailing argument of hurt feelings and wounded pride) think that a considerable amount of the rules bloat came from a shift in attitude of the rules themselves. Someone else on these boards stated it more concisely than I could have: the rules have gone from "permissive" to "restrictive." That is, once upon a time, powers and skills and such included whatever you expected them to include-- put another way, whatever you and your group / GM expected them to. Then came the creep-in of "NO!" Bits and pieces were slowly pulled out and teased apart and suddenly became advantages and adders and modifiers, all of which had to be explained, costed, and demonstrated. One small example is "Change Orientation" for Teleport. Used to be assumed, now it costs money. A recently-discussed second option is "Rapid" for perception. What was once just a schtick now costs points, and from that same recent discussion, it seems like it can cost a hell of a lot of them for what, if actually role-played to meet the description, would absolutely wreck everyone else's good time in addition to being totally impossible to do. (we don't make people with flight by life support vs cold to fly higher than a kilometer or so, but we _do_ make speedsters pay for the ability to see where they're going?! Crap; I shouldn't have said that. Edition 7 will now include "able to survive the use of your power" as a separate element for half the powers now....) Once upon a time, you assumed things like "can see where he's going" and "can fly at least 3km up because there's air for him to breathe there" were already included (and you didn't bother with math about the energy expenditures for parabolic travel versus plowing flat over the ground at a height of ten meters, nor the loss of distance traveled in the same time between the two techniques. That'll have to wait for either 7e or APG 9 or wherever it is we decide additional complexity should go.) Agreed, but given the creep toward restrictive build rules -- i.e., "No; not unless you also buy this and this and this and this, (which made the 5e out-of-nowhere inclusion of "Growth Momentum" really glaring. All other editions recognized that there was no inherent momentum in "I get bigger," and characters wanting it built it as a separate attack (or extra damage) with "Growth Momentum" as a separate attack. I didn't mind the inclusion of it, but it seemed to weird next to new rules that were pulling stuff _out_ of "this power comes with" and turning it into "costs extra.") it won't work. If you are going to design a rules set that requires those options to build what the player envisions, then you are going to have to actually present those options. Now it might seem that I'm being really hard on the new overall attitude of the rules, but I'm _not_. I'm pointing out one of the main reasons that the rules _are_ so big and _why_ there are so many options presented. Here's the edge you have to walk to write a set of rules for this game: Keep it short and brief. Okay, one paragraph each for powers. Let's be kind and say "no more than three paragraphs each for powers." If you want to limit the size of those paragraphs to less than a page each, you'll have to include "not written by a lawyer" or possibly even specify "must be written by a mathematician (Why is that word so hard to type?!!!)." I can't _fully_ endorse either of those things, though: lawyers are trained for keen and specific use of verbiage, and tend to be careful about selecting their words and ensuring that contradictions either don't exist or are well-explained (which leads to the verbosity, of course, but now we know why that's not always bad) and I don't know of anything I've read written by a mathematician (I am so done typing that word! We're going back to AMG: amazing math guy), but if playing with numbers is your real joy, well there are likely to be great and lengthy sessions of tear-out and build-in of the various elements to seek the mythical "perfect balance" between Swimming and Ranged Killing Attack. I can't see that _not_ ending up with more and lengthier "power does include this, but if you want any of the following sixty-two elements, you must by the appropriate advantages, so let's explain them, too." Now I started out saying that this shift in the attitude of permissive / restrictive rules is _part_ of the bloat. The rest of it is us. You heard me: It's us. The players. We _had_ the very thing we're sitting here crying about not having. First edition was 56 pages start to finish (+10 if you add the covers and eight character sheets). 2e was eighty pages (which included a selection of villains to get off to a quick start). 3e was 96 pages (boxed set) and had _no_ character sheet (it was printed on the rear cover of the separate 40=page Campaign Book in the boxed set). Third edition gained ever more rules spread through supplements, adventures, etc, all of which were specific to situations presented in those supplements and adventures and eventually even entirely new games build using Champions rules with custom tweaks for the game being presented. 4e, as we all know, was little more than gathering _all_ that material in one place. All of it from all the supplements and previous editions and hammering it all into one cohesive rules set that would cover _everything_. You would never need another rules set again, because it was all here. The the genre books came out and totally wrecked that idea: Here, have new characteristics! Have new Talents and Skills! Have new modifiers for other powers! Have some Kung Phooey! 5e was lather, rinse, repeat, meaning that it had the ground work of 6e already laid in..... So why this constant growth? Us. We weren't happy with what we had. We had questions. We had problems. We didn't want to answer all of them ourselves. We have this super-anal fetish to make sure we're doing our thing exactly the same way someone else is doing their thing (or vice-versa). We might be having the time of our lives, but we're not happy until we know it's a book-legal time of our lives. (Yes; I know every time someone mentions this inherent need to be book legal, we pay great homage to the idea that "the game is yours! Change it how you want!" Then we run off to some other thread to make sure it's all nice and book legal. ) There were _so many_ great points you raised, and I wanted to address so many more, but I have _got_ to get going, so if I may simply offer a poor wrap-up of what I've started (I _am_ sorry to lurch off like this, but the pop-up says Hugh has replied, and it made me glance at the time, and I really have to be somewhere in just a few minutes): We wanted more rules. Some people figured out their own vehicle rules, for example. Others didn't. Others _wouldn't_, and demanded to know how to do that "officially." We ran into situations we weren't sure how to handle. We wanted rules for that. We developed the habit of building the entire world in HERO stats (what was the DEF of Granny's screen porch again? Doesn't it take x4 BOD from fire-based attacks?) We _wanted_ rules. We asked for them. We begged for them, and lamented the lack of new ones all through the long years of 4e when everything HERO-related stopped, and we turned to the internet and our fellow fans for new ideas. We wanted to hard limits to help the different kinds of players work well at the same tables. We wanted to be able to mathematically simulate (and to price in character points) every single aspect of the world we were building, and wanted it all to be precisely relevant tot he world in which we live. Hell, I'm not claiming I'm exempt! I _love_ building stuff in HERO terms! We just wanted lots and lots of rules. Well now we've got them. Yet look at the number of "how do I...?" threads. There are still issues that are not clear. There are still problems. Yes; I personally think the restrictiveness creeping into the massive rules tomes is part of that problem, but I also don't see a solution in simply doing away with it and stating "Okay, just decide that a power features all its elements automatically, and take Limitations on any of them you don't want in your build." Honestly, either way still gives advantage to the clever or the highly-motivated. Obviously simpler rules ins't the answer: I don't think the PDFs of 1, 2, or 3e in the HERO store are selling like hotcakes. I'm pretty sure even Sidekick isn't doing anything appreciable, nor even HERO Basic (Sidekick 6e, dammit! ) Look also at the fact that in the subsequent books, bloat wasn't just in the build rules. It wasn't just in the breaking things rules. It wasn't just in combat or movement. There was more and more bloat in the "tell me about the world I'm going to be playing in" sections, too. People have _always_ wanted playable-out-of-the-box worlds. People have _always_ wanted pre-build adventures. Given the amount of time it takes to create from whole-cloth in the new rules (much, much more to select from when you're building _anything_, after all), people need them more than ever. But not everyone. Not at this point. Most of us have game worlds and game groups with long-established histories at this point. Let's face it: new players aren't happening as fast as the old ones are dying off. There's not a big enough market to support it anymore. So let's try this: Fan-built adventures. Post 'em here. Co-operate and build one together. Get with Jason and see if you can toss them into the store: a buck a piece, even. I won't lie: I've got three groups I have to run, and a job that eats up over 70 hours a week. I'd buy even a passable adventure in a heartbeat. As much as it shames me to say it, I've been recycling from group to group for over a year now, simply because I don't have the time to come up with new stuff like I used to. Now I really, really have to go. I wish I could have addressed more, but such is life.

Thank you, Sir! I've got APG 2, but not 1 (yet). It sounds very much like our own design (had to come up with this first for a Force Wall generated by a Speedster that trailed behind him. Later we adapted it to AOE), save that we added bits about it being "centered" on the character and being mobile (again, because it was originally for a Force Wall). Still, it's nice to see other options. Reckon I can shell out for the PDF in lieu of finding the book at an affordable price....

You're right! I've been so busy I hadn't even noticed. Hope all is well.

You are absolutely correct, Sir. (unless of course, my own understanding and yours are flawed in precisely the same way). This, I suspect, is why we refer to "when can act" as "Phases" as opposed to Segments. "Phase 12" means that your action _begins_ on Segment 12, and runs until the start of your next "Phase." If this weren't the model, it would not be possible to react to something that happened on Segment 2 by "aborting" to another action: if you were done acting at the end of the Segment, you would not still be "maneuvering" about to make that call. Or that's how I understand it. I seem to recall numerous suggestions over the years to model movement precisely this way to (and I hate this as a concept) "make it easier for new people to learn." I don't hate Segmented Movement-- I use it myself for really, really fast things, but the idea of teaching someone the _wrong_ rules to make it easier to learn the right ones: Okay, great! Six sessions in, and you've got a fantastic grasp of the wrong rules. Now forget all that, and here's a new set of rules!" yeah. That'd charm the Hell out of me, I assure you.... But enough of that. Well if it helps, I still use (many, many copies of) a thirty-seven-year-old rulebook. I was totally turned off by the cover of 3e (that logo! Oh my God! And that nauseating color scheme! The art was amazing, but what they did to it when the colorist got hold of it! And it introduced the layout that would become the 4e layout, and I never warmed up to it. It felt too.... uppity.....), so I never upgraded. I crib a bit here and there, but nothing much past 4e, and not much of that. When 5e came along-- well, we'd been playing for nearly 30 years. We had enough house rules that we didn't really need someone else's. Our gaps were filled in, so we didn't do more than read that. Etc. What I'm taking way too much time to say is that there's nothing _new_ in what I'm saying. I don't use any new rules. Honestly, I try really hard to stay out of these "How do I build" or "let's pull apart the rules" type threads simply because I'm the least qualified (and interested) when it comes to the newer editions. But I think you've got it together, as far as the ideal way to construct a character: Look at what happens _first_, then figure out how to model it. Honestly, the only thing I could suggest further is to totally ignore the special effect-- you know, while keeping it in mind. That's not as obtuse as it sounds: what I'm getting is that sometimes there are ideas or concepts that are harder to get your head around just which part is SFX and which isn't. Speedsters are one of them, simply because it's so _obvious_ that their power is _speed_. So you start to think "how would I do this with speed?" or "What's the best way to show that I can do this because I have speed?" Not far enough. Speed is nothing but SFX. As a half-crocked "proof" of that: a character has a movement of 60". if it's running, it's speed. If it's flying, it's speed. If it's T-port, it's just distance, as T-port is, game-wise, "instant." He didn't _move_ there per se; he just _got_ there. But even then, Running can be "running," or it can be Limited Flight or very bizarre Swimming or even "tunneling, only through the air, and only when feet are touching a surface." Yes, it would take a jackass to do that to the GM, but it's-- scratch that. I don't think Tunneling is movement since Steve took over. I think it's just "really fast lock picking" now. . Or, if you're just dying to burn points, perhaps it's "Shrinking: usable as attack, the planet earth and everything on it. Personal immunity." Once the planet shrinks, he takes one or two steps, and re-inflates the planet. if he's only got 2" of movement and a SPD of 2, but can cross a continent that way, is it speed? Speed is just another special effect. it's a matter of removing _everything_ from your idea: get to the bare-bones, which is nothing more than the effect that the character has on the world and those people in it. "He can perceive at such a rate as to make him incredibly aware of details, because he has time to dawdle and look for them." That's not necessarily (or in my games, _at all_ ) "Rapid." That's not even a "sense," really. That's increased levels of PER (skill levels, or what-have-you) and INT-rolls when remembering details. Not a hundred-and-three points of Rapid. That's insane. Well, unnecessary at any rate. Certainly pricey in the build you presented. Seeing the light creep amorphously into the space you currently occupy? _That's_ a special effect of those bonuses / skill levels. That's the speed part. I have no about you are familiar with the more common speedster tricks: auto fire or even area-effect on strength-based attacks, change environment to create wind or fire, bonuses to DCV because you move so fast even in one hex that you're hard to target, or because it takes a _really_ clever angle to trip you up and prevent you from moving out of the way... I can't remember seeing this in any published book (not that I've read a lot of them), but I've had more than one speedster presented to me with bonuses to OCV on ranged attacks, the SFX of which were "I run right up to him so it's harder to miss, blast him with the Fish Missile gun, and run right back where I was." Why not? It's speed. It's a power that at it's base has _nothing_ to do with speed, but how the special effect is applied makes it nothing _but_ speed. For shirtless Australians, it's "Martial prowess." For powered armor guys, it's a targeting system." For your guy, it's speed. It even plays into your idea for perception: He has effectively one hundred years to line up his shot. Granted, he could beat him to absolute _dust_ in that time, but for whatever reason, he's decided to spend the next couple of decades lining up the perfect shot. Really going to be irritating if you miss that, so .... buy some Skill Levels (or more OCV, if you're using 6e) and really simulate that super-speed perception thing. Use as many as you like. I get almost none of them after 3e. As far as the approach-- Honestly, Amigo, I'm not just saying this. I've been playing and running this game for _decades_ (damn. That hurt more than it should have....), and have taught a _lot_ of people how to play (at least, how to play 2e), and I can say this as a promise: the more you fool around with making characters-- and in the early days, everyone does it. You'll have folders full of characters-- good guys and bad-- that you will sock away and never see again, because character building is sort of the "solo" game for HERO fans. But the more characters you make-- and believe it or not, the _more complicated your visions for these characters becomes-- the easier it will be to recognize when you are being guided by SFX and not mechanics. Seriously: the really odd stuff, once you see that there is only a tiny handful of shays to do it, and you have to figure out how your guy is using his power to get that effect (once you know what that effect is).... You'll have this moment where you'll suddenly realize you can, if you were so inclined, fit any power into any elemental control--- well, _you_ won't have that moment, because they don't exist anymore (replaced by "Unified Power, it seems, at least in feel)-- but you'll have that moment where you realize that you can build every single power in the book and justify it for any character because he could use his powers 'thusly....' That, Sir, is when you have really come to understand what is SFX, and how they should have _no_ bearing on what the power actually does; just what it looks like when it's being done. Well thank you, too, Sir. It was quite fun, and honestly, when I can actually do it, I like to help. It's a personal weakness. :lol;

Forgive me if the STR Chart has changed (I straight-up don't know; I yet again admit to only skimming the majority of 6e. I won't live long enough to have the spare time to read it the way things have been going since its release). Champions (4e) Wikipedia, regarding Paul Anderson (emphasis not added by me or wikipedia; just a weird result of the search). I could have gone with less impressive numbers, but Paul Anderson is a local hero where I live, so that's where I went. At any rate, while truly exceptional, 800 kg is within the range of humanly possible. It even reinforces the idea of a "maximum" when compared to the number of people who have managed to do it. Not looking to start a storm here. And in the interest of full disclosure, I am one of the people totally opposed to NCM in a supers game. Or any other game, really, if it's taken as a points-worthy Disad. Rather, I find it should be either in the campaign guidelines for everyone (i.e., most Heroic stuff) or it should not be there at all. From my own experience, if someone _truly_ wants to play a "normal human," they will make a normal human without any Rule Hammer being invoked. I did want to point out, though, that while neither I nor likely anyone I'll ever know can "just barely lift and stagger around a few steps" with 800 kg, there really are normal people who have managed to pull it off, and I have no problem including it into the "maximum humanly possible."

Bookmarks it. For later.

You might have to ask Cryptic.

See? That's the issue with speed and perception and all that. By the time I get all that type up, you've got a half-dozen other replies!

Not for lack of interest; it's a lack of time issue for a lot of us. Here's the bad news: It's this level of speed for which the "speed tricks" like the speed zone and autofire and AOE: Trail (Can someone _please_ point me to that write up? I heard it mentioned a couple months back, and I'd like to compare it to the home-brew we've been using for a couple of decades. Thus far, I've come up zilch. ) and other such things were created. Once you get to "ludicrous speed," it's just more cost-effective and mechanics-compliant to go the "simulated power" route. But enough of that: I won't try to talk you into something that you've specifically said you don't want. If you want my honest opinion, it's going to take handwaving some bits no matter what build you go to. The only remotely affordable thing I can think of is "Running: megascale, 1" = 1/4 earth's circumference" or something to that effect. (No; I did not take the time to look up the distance light travels in one segment), and even then is going to vary based on your SPD. Also, going from the video you offered as referenced (just finished watching it), that end result? Where they are patiently waiting for the light to actually move? Clearly that's much faster than light. I can't recall what changed were made to FTL after 4e, but work up some handwaving to do it in an atmosphere, and run with that. I expect the turn mode will _suck_, but Skill Levels can be used to reduce that (get lots of them). The most significant problem with moving FTL, of course, is that your eyes don't work anymore. Well, they work, I suppose, but once you can actually see light as a thing to itself, do you still see what it's bouncing off of, or just a billion shards of lighting creeping towards your eyes? You can take all the "Rapid" you want, what happens when you read faster than the light itself can get to you? On that matter, how much "rapid" is that? What is the movement of reading, anyway? What is the movement of hearing? Personally, I would flat out ignore and hand wave that. I can read 10 times faster than I can when I'm not using Rapid. Well how do you read when you don't use Rapid? What is the "standard" reading rate? I've got a brother who could bankrupt himself on books. Do you remember the old William Johnstone "Out of the Ashes" series a couple decades back? He read the first four in a day. Those things were huge, too (and not great, for what it's worth. The first two were strong; the rest just started slipping down and down and down...) So what is the "Standard" reading speed? The "Standard Hearing Speed?" It was the utter pointlessness of that exercise that made me dismiss "Rapid" before I even finished reading it when it first hit the rules. It's just .. well, seeing as how using "Cramming" or variations of speed reading have worked for a quarter-century, it's just unnecessary, and silly to say 10, or 100, or even one billion times faster than a completely undefined baseline. That old "I want double my pay!" "Fine; you're a volunteer anyway." gag. We usually just hand waved it as a speedster schtick. GMs that were a bit more anal (No; I don't mean that as an insult: everybody's anal about something, even it's just being anal about not admitting that you've got something you're anal about) making sure every possible gag you could ever pull from a hat in the unforeseeable future before your character retired or died might make you buy "speed reading" or "speed tasting" or some such thing. Taste and scent are both based on physical contact to keyed chemoreceptors: that are based on touching physical particulates to specialized cells (remember that the next time you experience someone else's flatulence). When you are moving fast enough to watch light crawl, those particles are deadly to run into: the scent of that one old church lady who bathes in her perfume will kill you just as surely as running through a cloud of daggers. Further, as scent itself _is_ physical matter, it will affect light. We don't see it now, but if you're perceiving so fast you can watch light flow into a room, cross over to a mirror, and bounce back out... Well odds are even air itself is going to be a huge barrier to actually being able to perceive_. You see what the small amount of milk suspended on "clear" oil did in that video. That glowing blur will be the world around you-- the entire world. it's all you will actually see. Well, that is to say, it's all you will actually see if you're trying to build this perception using "rapid" or trying to stay in keeping with any level of real-world science. I _absolutely_ understand that you can handwave that away and say that "it just works," but at the point-- well, that's when Rapid falls on its unnecessary ass yet again. Why aren't you just handwaving that moving that fast allows you to perceive that fast (the way we have for a couple of generations now) so that you don't shift into super-photonic speed and lose the ability to see the walls in front of you? (Remember how a Move-Through works: even though you don't use your STR in an accidental Move-Through, you still get to take 1/2 of that V/3 damage when you hit a wall at C+....) Granted, MegaScale still requires additional modifiers (or Adders? I don't remember. Our homebrew version handled that part differently) to be able to travel locally. I suppose you could reduce the cost somewhat buy using a Multipower, but I'd probably go with Variable Advantage (limited to scales of Mega Scale) and ... well, and yet again hand wave the sudden lurch between traveling ten-thousand KM per hour and dropping down to a mere thousand KM/hr. I know Variable Advantage requires you to spend all of it's value, which is a bit harder to do know that reduced END is a two-step process, but you can pre-created a list for each "stage" of movement. Still, it's going to be pricey. This brings up another issue with "Rapid." A century of _what_? A century of staring at the oil painting that the traffic in the street has effectively become? How do you play this out? Know; I mean, I _do_ understand that part: "Tell you what, Kevin, you take the next six hours and ask me anything you'd like about the scene in six cars at the intersection and the eighteen buildings you can see from here. I'll answer every question and write them down in case it becomes relevant for next week's game. The rest of you guys can home and we'll meet up again next week. Terry: your turn to pick up the popcorn. And don't get that double-butter crap; it stains the maps and gets all over the papers...." We all know that's going to make for an _awful_ session. So what do we do instead? We uh... we handwave it. Again: Look Kevin, you take the rest of your phase and look around. Do you have that pre-rolled list I asked you to generate for your PER rolls? Strike off your first ten rolls, and here's the three possibly important things you notice...." Or: "How many levels of "Rapid" did you buy?" uh... Sixteen! "Okay, you spend the rest of your phase checking out the scene. Anytime you want to remember something from this scene, you've got a pool of sixteen points you can add to your INT roll to simulate remembering a detail you noticed. We'll mark them off as you use them." Or: Okay, make a PER roll with a +16. For every point you make it buy, I will detail a clearly important thing Or who knows how else, but we're going to handwave it, because the other players didn't come here to watch you spend a hundred years walking around the intersection in front of Rosie's. (or was it Rose's?) This is probably why the Flash is often pointed to as "the most powerful character is [whichever one he is with DC, I think? ]'s universe. For what it's worth, at first blush, it seems you're in the rules, but if I were you, I'd hold off for judgement from someone better versed in the newer editions to give some feedback (I don't always remember all the new "no; not unless you buy this" stuff that the newer editions have added ) And it sounds like you totally understand what would happen if you actually turned it lose in your game. That's the problem, though: if you actually _are_ fast enough to see that, you can't. If we're staying literal, I mean. The playback speed shows that light moving the length of the bottle far slower than any observer could move the length of that bottle: the observer is existing faster than light. As long as he's actually moving faster than light, that light will never reach him. Now there are people on this board far-more physics-talented than I am, and they may be able to shoot every single thing I've said completely full of holes, but based on my _admittedly-limited_ knowledge, you can't make this work _and_ stay within the realm of literal movement. You've got to simulate it, and unfortunately most of the best simulations for this use speed as a special effect for a number of totally-not-speed powers. I have _got_ to re-read 6e EDM, apparently. How did we go from stepping into a dimension to "stepping into a dimension per phase?" I won't get to it any time soon, but I've got to get it done, clearly. Well done!