Duke Bushido

Yep. That's what I do. Has nothing to do with game balance, though: it is just faster, easier, requires zero preload, and absolutely no "stop the game for a minute; I need to do some math." It is easier on the players as well: all they have to remember is "I can do +X with this kind of weapon."

For what it's worth, as "Deadly,Blow," it only comes,up (for me) with the thirty-and-under crowd who learned RPGs through DnD. Though a similar thing comes up with the forty-and-under crowd who learned fantasy through beat-em-up style video games, and they all have a wierd similarity of execution: "I jump into the air and-" Apparently it is pretty common in such games that you hit the smite button to attack, but if you jump up and hit the smite button, you do some sort of super-smite. If they move on to side-scrolling platformers, I expect I will get requests for double jumps, too. When there are no more role playing games, it will mostly be because humans are visually-oriented, and videogames grab more people more easily by their favorite sensory inputs.

Ah; So no changes there, then. Thank you.

Before I say anything (as I may not belong in this conversation, and I am not looking to stir up a rash of ill will), may I ask for a clarification of your question: Are you asking a general audience if we would allow martial arts on TK, or are you asking specifically about the build's legitimacy as a telekinesis MA build? (Not being obtuse; I just dont want to butt in where I cant offer anything). Thanks, Vlad.

Right; forgive the lack of clarity: I meant as far as allocsting Skill Levels: use them for OCV once, then move them to damage later, then split them in some way between the two, etc. Sorry for the shorthand. It is maddening that I get comments about going overboard with my posts, yet when I don't, there is invariably something critical to the post that gets left out. :😆:

Shut up and take my money!

Can Any of you 6e afficianodos tell me if 6e still allows Skill Levels to convert to additional damage? Tangential, I know, but it is q big part of many of my Heroic level games.

Not gonna lie: I dont sweat it. If we decides that your Deadly Blow ability was worth Xd6 RKA (which is how I build such a thing: "+2D6 RKA," as an example) then that's what it is. So you have 0 END on your bow; if it is not built into your Deadly Blow, then those Xd6 still cost END, if your bow has other advantages or limitations, then so does your Deadly Blow. Odds are that I will get comments telling me how I am letting 2.7 AP slide by for "free," or over-charging someone 3 AP when they swtich to a different bow or something, but the long and short of it is "I do not care." I so not care because I have never once seen a game wrecked by letting it slide, and I have never seen one improved in any way by stopping to figure it out precisely; I have most certainly never seen a game imoroved comensurate to the sropping and re-mathing with every weapon switch, not even once. Now the question may come up about playtesting these free-wheeling, devil-may-care, dangerously-sloppy judgements, but we have been playing "Fantasy HERO" via Champions rules since before there was a Fantasy HERO, and.... Absolutely nothing has popped up to remotely suggest that any of the above was even close to worth doing. As an additional plus, I have found that overall, Players much prefer knowing "oh; I get +xD6 with this kind of weapon!" and never have to put more effort into it than that. Works for them; works for me; saves stopping the game; savws me front-loading lengthy lists in case one-tenth of these situations actually comes up. Go ahead: fire away. Let's hear how awful this is.

I took a lot of flak on another site for observing that 2/3 of DnD humor is mimic jokes, but in all honesty, I have to admit that it seems to be much more than that.

Doubt it. Though I am quiet certain that they would like you to believe they were that clever, as opposed to caught with their pants down and two counties away, and caught attempting to strong arm small time writers into surrendering their livelihood. The idea that this might be a brilliant smokescreen is akin to the "brilliance" of Coca-Cola's "New Coke Maneuver." Yeah, in the end, nostalgia and public outrage actually worked in Coca-Cola's favor (thiigg I will never pass up an opportunitjy to note that they switched to corn syrup anyway, even while telling the world that the peole demanded that they not do it, so they weren't going do do it). Now given that people are lining up by the thousands to participate in the surveys and join in the "conversation" and help to push the focus away from the fact that you dont send drafts out for signatures, all of which essentially is selling- well, whatever you want to call it: ret-con? about face? I prefer "blatant lies and and frenzied play born of desperation," but that might just be me. Tangentially, I think it would be hilarious to see Hasbro put Wizards up for sale as being "too troublesome to keep"- or better; too expensive to keep," but again, it may be just me.

[ sorry. ,I was working,on a very unrefreshed window.]

FINISH HIM! [/Shao Khan]

True. Especially if he inadvertently picked up 3e'a "Enemies: Available!"

Yet Another Tolkien Rip-Off. My age us probably showing; this wxpression was much more common when almost every small press FRPG built a game set in vagurly medieval Europe, was peopled with humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls, and halflngs.,,,, Yep. Totslly agree. Honestly, it is the single _best part_ of playing superheroes: A city? Everybody knows what a city is. Skyscraper? Every body knows what a skyscraper is. Traffic noises? Gang fight? Everybody knows..... Takes a but longer to expkain the violet-hued,four-dimensional,foliage of the planet crosgave. Actually, no! Believe it or not, there are a lot of typos,because I was using a phone. :rolf: I mentioned it just a few lines in. My computer is dying, and no longer rwcognizes the existence of this website, so if I want do do anything over here, I have to use the phone and plan on being all day about it. That's right! I had forgotten- that is where the expanded Foxbat and Friends line up began (not a fan). And that is the oicture of Leroy done by our buddy Scott, if I remember right. Lookin' good, Amigo! Pedant.

If anything you havw read has helped, well that's why we post. Now I _really_ did not want to revisit this, but there were a couole of T-form things I had failed to point out the first time, and you raised a couole of other points in your reply. So here we go! I havent used Followers (the mechanic I mean; every cult has followers, as do a lot of goons) in years (just dont see the need for the mechanic that tells me who and what my NPCs are (remember: as the GM, all NPCs are technically "my characters," even if someone else designs them (such as DNPCs or followers) and what they are going to do. Accordingly, I can't be super-specific with details here (don't want a bad memory to steer you wrong), but keep in mind that the more powerful a follower is, the more expensive he is. I believe the newer rulws make multituses of followers less expensive, but you still have to buy that one. The book sort of stops with something akin to: feeble, normal, competent, slightly powerful, as powerful as you, more powerful than you-- stuff like that. We're I the GM, I would likely continue this chart, using similar cost steps, and build significantly more powerful than you, a lot more powerful than you, way more powerful than you- and so on until we hit the level of power you are wishing to bestow. Now I like the idea, and it solves the problems of who pays END, how long does it last, how far away can we he move, etc, but it does so at the cost of being totally out of your control (because your follower is an _N_ PC. ). So if you are planning on bestowing Krypronian-level powers, it is still going to be pretty brutal, cost-wise-- or at least, it should be, and it would be at my table. There are _zero_ problems with this. You have already paid for powerful followers, they need origin stories, and "my boss was getting his butt kicked by some superheroes, so he pulled me aside, waved his hands and said "there! Now go defend me!" Honestly, just the idwa demonstrates that you really have a solid grasp of rhe separation of mechanics and SFX: mechanically, there is no difference between sending your super-powered devoted follower or sending the devoted follower to whom you have given superpowers, so why not? You even save the actions it takes to grant superpowers, and they are permanent! Well done! I rather like it, actually, consider the entire idea stolen. Remember my last post? Sont worry; I totally understand if you didnt want to read it. ). Remember where I said T-form was "problematic?" Yeah; rhe rules don't help much, either. "Never use T-form to do what something else can do; if two or more powers can do it, then use the most expensive power." Well for a sizeable chunk of the powers in this game, T-form _is_ the more expensive way to do it! For example: Blast 2d6 (avg 7 STUN; 2 BODY. You can use this power to turn an ordinary citizen into someone who has taken a significant wound. Deduct 2 pts of DEF (normal person, so ED:2). Half of his STUN is gone, you did it in one shot, and it cost you 10 pts. To do this with T-form, you have to get ugly, because you have to roll a total equal to his BODY score to change him from "healthy guy" to "guy with 5 pts of STUN missing." You want to do that in one shot, buy several dice. Way more expensive. But no; that duplicates something else. Once the rules advanced beyond "something no more useful than a corpse," T-form just became a hot mess for dodging rules, so it had to get more and more special ones to keep trying to stop that. (And No; I have no solutions; sorry). At the end of the day, T-form is somethinf that you _must_ work out between you and your GM (or you and your players), because every table is going to handle it differently enough that anything we tell you isn't going to hold any real value. I mean, we can tell you the rules, but I have already mentioned the difficulty in agreeing which rules apply where. For example: I think most of us have long held that understanding, but again: dont us T-form to duplicate another power (apparently even if it is the most expensive option?) Does it? Penguins and ostriches have wings. That is to say that T-form can most certainly change "human" to "human with wings," and I will straight up tell you that I think most of us would accept a T-form build that "grants the power of flight by giving the target wings," or at least we _should_, because it would typically be the most expensive way to grant flight to another PC (Pcs tend to have more BODY than to normal folk). However, T-form can't duplicate another power, so you have to have Flight Usable by others. Honestly, you don't even _need_ the T-form: wings is a long-accepted SFX for the power of Flight. They are just going to happen. (Plus, you can add the limitation "restrainable," making the power cost even less than T-form, in full defiance of the "use the most expensive option rule," but completely obeying the "don't use T-form to duplicate other powers" rule.) It doesnt matter where I draw it personally because the system does it long before Superman- infinitely before Superman, actually, since Superman is an infinite. I am not trying to confuse you if you have been reading old threads: conversationally, we tend to say things like "Suoerman is an absolute" and HERO doesn't do absolutes," but technically, we are saying,it backwards: the HERO System does absolutes _extremely well_, actually. Absolutes are all it does: Buy Duplication and you get one duplicate. If you want more, you buy them in finite additional groups. A STR:30 will throw X amount _exactly_ Y distance, modified be these specific modifiers. One of the minor complaints by those not familar with HERO is that it "stiffles creativity because it is so exacting." That isnt really true, but you have to play it to realize that what it offers as a system,to precisely measure the ability of one character against a similar abikity of another. Even damage in HERO is predictable: we lnow the average STUN of a single die is 3.5 and we know the average BODY is 1. We also know that the karger the dice pool, the closer to average we are going to roll. Not absolute enough for you? Then chose the +0 modifier "Standard Effects" to know precisely what the result will be every single time. HERO can safely claim that it models absolutes far better than almost any other RPG in the history of the hobby. What HERO absolutely _sucks_ at is infinite. Makes sense, though, because of "Plus One." When You know precisely what your power level or ability score is, then you can add to it. You still know what it's after that, so you can add to it again. Numbers are infinite, meaning that there is no point at which you cannot decide "hey! I think i'd like a plus one!" Superman, the Hulk, and probably some others that I am unfamiliar with are infinite. They seem to have no upper limit. They might hit that "I am just not strong enough!" Moment, but that only lasts for a quick round of angst, then they punch a hole through a the planet and they are on their way as if nothing happened (Though Superman _may_ have the decency to marvel at his newly-revealed power level, while the Hulk.... Has a Hulk..... Gad. Remember That Superman is an infinite. Fortunately, there are acceptable ways to model infinite without having to figure out where you are going to get infinite points. You have to ask youself some questions: Do I want an exact copy of this infinite power? Do I want to be the most powerful at X in the universe? Do I want to be the most powerful at X in the campaign? (Note that these are not the same,questions) Do I want a more reasonable version of a character that I really like? That last one is easy! Take the things you like about the character and build a version within campaign limits. I have a player in the youth group playing a Superman pastiche named "Magnificent" (sometimes Magnus. Long story). He told me that he like Superman, but he wanted a version that "made sense." We probed that, ans essentially he was after a character like Suoerman whose powers and abilities more closely-matched what they claimed be: super strength because he was from a high-gravity world (whereas Superman appears to have been from the singularity that birthed the Big Bang), and a few other abilities like laser eyes and flight because he was solar powered and able to use -- look, it doesnt matter; if you just want a campaign-legal version of the character, accept that he cannot be infinite and build what you like. Thw other options arent actually rules, I dont think (unless they have made it into 6e, which I dont play), is sort of a community-consensus. Alas, they only work if your table uses recommended guidelines like campaign limits, etc. If you want to be the best at X in the campaign, then get GM permission to start right at the campaign limit. Good GMs will either make sure that their villains adhere to the same limits or will tell you up-front that you may periodically bump into a villain who exceeds it, but that he has gone to great pains to ensure that you can defeat them, and that you can figure out how. Great Cms say that, and stick to it. _If it is the case_ that the GM plans for you to meet a villain who exceeds your power level at X (where X is the particular Schtick you are wanting for your character's "number 1 in the world at" thing- strength, speed, gadget-making; whatever), then talk to your GM about exceeding or at least meeting the level of that character. Also remember that your GM may decide to ler you grow into it instead of starting at relative god status, suggesting that you start on the high end, and devote a portion if your XP to getting to where you want to take the character. He may also not allow you to start higher than a a particular NPC for a reason. Perhaos you can talk that through, also. Now being the bestest ever in a campaign is one thing, but hiw about the entire "universe?" This is very much like the 'best in campaign" option above. This is dor those groups who use the same,characters across many campaigns. As before, talk with the GM to start at the campaign limit; barring that, find a benchmark- the fastest character (NPC or PC) and ask about exceeding (or at least matching) that character. The difference here is growth. As PCs (and NPCs) earn experience, their abilities increase. Quite often, this means the campaign limits will rise as well. You have to make the commitment to continuously allocate XP to keeping Ability X (which, for whatever reason, seems to almost always be STR or SPD) at the very top. It helos to "prespend" a couole of points every now and again to push over the limit. Remember though: just because the GM let you start at the campaign max if STR:50 and you have been steadily socking a few points into STR and now you have STR: 70- well, that doesn't mean you have STR:70. You dont have that until the GM says you so. What it dows mean, though, is that when the GM raises the uoper limits, you arent lacking- or at least, aren't lacking as much. This doesnt sound like much, and to some,it sounds,like "wasting points," but the fact is that so long as you are maxed above, you are the ultimate; you are the unlimited. You are the infinite. Any time the cap rises above where you are-- your right back to absolutes. If You maxed SPD at the campaign limit of 6, and didnt bother tossing another point or two here and there as you and your friends play for the next eighteen month's, and the GM raises that cap to 8-- you still have a 6. As HERO excels at absolutes, not only do you absolutely have a six, you are absolutely two levels under the cap! No; I am not saying keep buying SPD so that you will have a 10 when the cap goes to 8. Typically, this is something I allow the "essence of X' characters to do: the Hulk can spend a few ooints over the limit on his STR. The Flash can soend a few extra points on SPD and a bit of movement over the campaign cap. Why? I am not going to let him _act_ over the limit _in most cases_. I might set up a shiwboat moment to let him enjoy being "the best," but in general, He is the only guy that can toss a few points over the limit. That way, when the limit is raised, he is still _absolutely_ the best. He doesnr have to trsin to get better- to catch up to the limits; he was already so far beyond them..... And as to Superman: sink everything into a VPP. Never stop tossing your XP in there. Done. Superman.

That was a paraphrasing from the piece you posted, where the author discusses the inspirations for the bit of fiction and ceeating poisonous foods via transformationn.

Eh. Realistically. I could have written that in a 2e-style two or three paragraph blurb. It just happens that I really, enjoy writing reactions. Hyperbole. And dialogue, so I indulged myself. It dedinitelt wasnt work, and,it certsonly wasnt hard. The idea popped up fully formed; I just have to decide how much od it is worth writing down: Pete the lab aasitant was helping Professor Astounding- the man who was granted incredible engineering prowess by exposure to the mysterious Zeta Rays of a meteor secured ar a secret research facility. Pete had been wearinf rhe headphone portion of the Professor's discaeded psychic amplifier while working away on the control circuuts of the Professir' new Time Window device. A burst of Zeta Rays passed through Peteand rhe Professor and through the open Time Window and into the ancient past, for a moment linking Pete via the irradiated psychic device to Arthur Pendragin, whose spiritual essence was pulled,into the future and into Pete's body while Pete was senr in the other direction, and is now the king of the medieval brittons. Five sentences? I get it: you dont like it. You dont like the shared origin thing. I get it: I dont like it either; I went on at great length as to why I dont like it. When you are a kid, eating greens is hard. Makinf your bed is hard. When you are older, being wrong is hard; not falling in love with the first girl who is nice to you is hard. You get older still, and not telling off the,boss is hard. Selling your first car is hard. A bit more age, and gerrinf in dights is hard. Lying is hard. Eating greens is way easier; not mistaking decency for love is easy; parting with a clunker is easy- They were always easy. What made them hard is that you really didnt want to do it from the get-go. And that's fine when we are talking an origin event ir shared origins. It's your game; dont use thibgs you dont like. Everyone here knows you write, and everyone here is one-hundred percent confident that, if you wanted to, you could tie any origin or powerset to a unifying event or a shared origin and make it work. We have all seen that there are parts of the game that confuse some people: New players in particular. Don't make it scarier or more challenging for them by using "it is hard" when the only hold up is "I don't want to." I don't want to, either: I am with LL and his "gonzo" power sources. (Though I admit: the one abive about 'an event" that created all the supers at once and the single dimensional traveller... That would have rocked if it came to pass that the traveller breaching the barrier is what caused the event. Deciding he was just delusional seems like kind of a cop out to ensure the setting is more importsnt than drama). Either way you do it, have fun.

I once heard it said id the money is coins, it's fantasy; if the money is credits, it's sci-Fi. I don't exactly agree with that, and nit just because my Traveller money is called Coyn. But I like a challenge, and your example intrigued me- you know: a "how would you make this work" challenge. So let's try this: Professor Astounding had given up studying the meteor years ago. Even after a hundred years, so little was known about it. He had been one od the rare fortunates outstanding enough in his field to merit being sought after for the continuous research project. Most governments had teams working the thing, but some givernmenrs feltnit was important to have a big presence, all the time, and the US had been rotating people from every branch of science in and out of the project for over eighty years. All for squat. Take the same,measurement ten times, get ten results. Perform the same experiment a hundred times, get a hundred results. It was infuriating, it was frustrating, and if he were to be completely honest with himself, it was beyond terrifying. The one thing everyone had silently agreed upon before queitly asking to be moved off the project was that they has spent the oast eighty years proving that everything they knew and understood about the universe was wrong. At least, it was wrong in the presence of the meteor. No one had ever managed even to formulate a hypothesis as to why. At First it was great fun- seeinf wild and impossible measurements (he remembered being quute fascinated that his first measurements and experiments- even using his own equipment-- somehow "proved" that the meteor was seven years long, four thousand pounds wide, and had a negative volume- that is, it took up far less space than it filled. Oh yes- lots of laughs, lots of shared head-scratching, amd lots of jokes and gags, and peomises to one day make sense of this thing. They never did. No one ever did. No on did anything more that begin to make themselves very uncomfortable with their ignorance, even when they were once considered absolute masters if their field. They would slowly start to question themselves, then the universe, and would eventuslly shake or spook themselves so badly that they simply _left_. Richard Astounding had done just that. The meteor was kept in a colossal dome that had been built around the impact site. There we're fourteen doors- each of the investing nations insisted in having their own door, after all. In practice- well, everyone here was either a scientist or low-level soldier on security duty, so things were pretty lax. You went into what ever door was closest and did whatever you needed to do. Professor Astounding's pushed-me-to-far moment came when the philosopher arrived. The Italians had sent him; Astounding never did find out (or really even care) why. He had all but given up, and was actually looking forward to the day he would rotate out: he had been having so many great ideas for new machines and new devices. It qas probably the end result od aharing so many fields of science so freely, but he could _see_ so many new technologies in his mind's eye, and just somehow understood how to make them work. He was done with pure research; he would rotate out of here in two years and head straight for the private sector. If he lasted two years, anyway. The meteor was really getting to him. He had begun to think he might get the big bonus and even the contents of the betting pool (which was now over a million dollars cash for the first man to last ten years), but lately... Every time he worked with the meteor, he understood just a little bit better that nithing he took as truth was even close to truth, and it unsettled him, badly. His watch beeped and he headed for the dome. His latest experiments with the florouscope would be completed in a dew minutes; he might as well soend rhe afternoon recording for posterity the mockery they made of the universe. He stepped inside, and saw rhe Italian standing near the meteor, rubbing his chin (Astounding noticed that contrary to the stereotype, it was a smallish and well-shaved chin) staring _through_ the meteor- or at least, rhe space that it (maybe) occupied. Astounding knew who the man was- he had been here seven weeks now-- but had never really met the man. "Professor." "Professor," the philosopher returned, affably. "So what do you think of our little green rock, Professor?" "Is it green?" He asked without sincerity- as if by route: a habit from years of teaching. Then he paused and genuine confusion and an intense amasement took his face. "Is it green?" He asked again, this time sincere, serious, and uncertain- io is that easier for me? I had heaes it was green, and it is beautifully so, but it seems,to sit here _exactly as I saw it in my mind..." He trailed off and walked a few paces left, observibg a new angle, then twice as many paces right, perhaps to balance himself comically. Who could digure a philosopher? He stayed, even more intently- "woukd it appear bkue had my,mind already imagined it as blue before I for here? Could it have been larger ir smaller or uglier-?" He rurned to Astounding. "Thank you, Professor... I have a new thinf to wonder, and I must detemine how to test this...." He dell back into his silence, and Richard Astounding turned to his insteuments and his computer. "You're welcome, Professor, but don't put too much stress on yourself. Your experiments won't tell you anything." "They already have, Professor! Please, come with me, if you will humor me!" Not having anything else to so, and grateful for the distraction from his unnervingly sensless readings, Richard happily obliged. The Italian began to walk slowly around the meteor, oointing out this feature or that, commenting on his goals here, why he was here, what he hoped to learn. At one point, he stopped and asked "this fissure, can you tell me what is on the other side if the meteor at this point?" "Yes; it roughly lines up with a large some-like area of glassy smoothness, as if a gas bubble were going to rupture ans rhe at one cooled,bedire it could." How do you know this? "Well, rhis fissure,lines up with the French door. If you through a string around the meteor at this point, it laps the bubble. Also, if you come through the Chinese door, you are looking directly at the bubble; you can see the two doors line up across the chamber with one another." "And which door do you use, Professor? I presume have access to the American door, and the French and Chinese doors as well?" I use whichever door I am closest to when I need to get in. We arent guarding nuclear launch codes; sexuritt is oretty lax amongst scientist who all have the same goal. Why?" I was curious how you knew what the other side ofbthe meteor looked like. I know that it wasnt bwcause you had walked all the way around it." " Hunh?! Of course I have!" "I assure you that you did not." "How?" "Because I have been trying to do so for the past eleven hours. I cane in the Italian door, next to the American door through which you entered. Thus far, no matter how long I walk, I get no further than halfway to the door on the other side of your door, Professor, and as long as you walk with me, neither do you..." Astounding snapped,his head out toward the wall of the dome. Sure enough, he was oriented with a point on the wall halfway to the French door- the nexr door down from the American door. He glanced at his watch. The Italian was a smooth converamsarionalist: they had bee walking and talking for over an hour, and he hadn't even noticed. "How is this _possible_?!" I do not know, Professor, but talking with you and many others, I cannot help but conclude that this meteor landed here to seal an of mankind in some sort of Klein bottle..." Astounding went blank while years of research and results scrolled through his mind, and his knees weakened. Almost- that was almost... Abruptly, he exxused himself, turned on his heel, and took the forty paces back to the American door, though which he left without slowing. He crossed the compound in the same hurried but not running stride, andbhe did not alter hsi pace or the length od his stride until he reached the Admin building, where he tendered hisvresignariin, and demanded an immediate-as-possiblle return to the States. Well this is a hundeed times longer than it needs to be, so let's shorten it up a bit: The fortuitously-named Professor Astounding was given a subtle but powerdul- syperhumanly powerful- boost to his ability to conceptualize and cross-reference his own knowledge that allowed him to become the classical "super scientist," able to vreate fantastic machines that defied science itself- perhaps he gained more understanding of the meteor than he believes he did. Skip some more. Good ol' Pete. Pete the lab assistant; Pete the intern from Daniels University. Pete who wants to be an engineer and who won some sort of internship lottery and ended up with an internship for the world's greatest engineer: billionaire Professor Richard Astounding. So let's condense this a bit more: Suppose the Professor is working on his newest invention: a window through time. A loop antenna that would literally open a small portal through time. That part had been ridiculously easy. He was working on a means of fine tuning it now- a way to dial in a specific place and time. Right now, it was all a matter od the earth"s position at the selected moment versus the position of the equipment in the here-and-now; this did not meet the goals of Professor Astounding. Pete was in charge of soldering up a few circuits for the project. Pete decided he needed a magnifying glass to help him, but that left him,in need of a third hand. Looking about the half-finished projects in the lab, he discovered one project that featured a ser of earphones and a pair of antennae. Perfect! He could hang the magnifying glass from an antenna and keep his hands free. So there sad Pete, studiously workinf away next to Professor Astounding, a man who, unbeknowst even to himself, was a lightning rod of sorts for repeated melysterious Zeta Rays from the meteor half a planet away. There sat Pete. Wearing a set of antennae of his own. A set of antennae that were a necessary part of Professor Amazing's Telepathy Telephone. With a final flash of insight, the Professor made a dozen quick changes to the hardware and the wiring and,deftly plugged the Time Window antenna into the control panel that Pete was still tinkering with, and was nearly done. That flash of insight came from the largest flare of meteoric Zeta Rays to which Richard Astounding had ever been exposed. That ray had come straight from the meteor, of course. It passed through mountains. It passed through houses. It passed through trees. It passed through Pete and his Telepathy Telephone headset; it passed through Professor Impossible, and it passed through the time window- Anyway, bippity bippity boo, Arthur Pendragon is now in the body of Pete the Intern, reborn in a strange and exciting new world. How he convinced the Professor to fish Excalibur through the time window is a whole different story. How's that?

And even then, T-form was transitory: dispell, defined circumstances, or healing back meant it could not be permanent. That is what Create was for. Why didn't we keep Create? Sorry- that is off topic; ignore it.

Quite right-I was seeing "disabled' and reading "restrained." Sorry about that. I am a bit pressed for time, but I will go so far as to say that yes; T-form will do it, but it is not the most practical method, since for the same cost and mechanics (accrue BODY), you can render them unconscious / dead, taking all of their appendages out of play.

"Be not afraid!" I seem to recall they tend to ooen with that.

'Tis neither fresh nor new, but still attacks with the vigor of having found a novel pastime... It is as old as the stars and repeats as a racing pulse, yet still attacks each day as if 't'were discovering our agony for the first time, and has never been so delighted before. (At least, from where I sit)

Is this not covered by Grab? Or maybe a skill Wrestling? Seriously, though; wasnt there discussion some,time back about using Grab for this?

Okay, let's get started.... First off: Yes; you have been given some excellent advice. Don't doubt what you are hearing from everyone above; what they are saying is rock-solid, and I have no desire to counter anything they have told you. There are some,things I would like to add that you may not have hesed yet, or that you may be starting to figure out on your own. First up: T-form is... Problematic. That is, in terms of the game's entire history, a relatively recent development, in as much as it only started to become problematic in the 4th edition, when its usage options were expanded. When first introduced, the power's write up included a phrase that never appeared again, but struck me,as an interesting and solid) guideline, paraphrased here: If you can buy a power that let's you kill it, there is no valid reason not to have a power that let's you turn it into anything else that is as useful as the dead thing you could have otherwise created." Words to live by. T-form first appeared in one of the two big 2e supplements: Champions II or Champions III (Champions IIV for you stickers). I think it was Champs 3, but it doesnt matter, really. The important part is that there was a ckearly-defined purpose for the power, and a clearly-defined guideline: it's a killing attack with a novel approach to killing things, and they don't have ro stay dead. Then 3e brought us a lot of specialization in terms,of,"how to use the Champions rules to play other genres." 2e started that but "Espionage" flew under a lot of people's radar.... So I guess _technically_ it was the most successful secret agent game,of all time! Fantasy HERO brought us "Create" as a magical ability- a power. It brought us other neat stuff, too, like the ability to burn XP permanently enchant things, but,I have a diffixult enough time staying on a single,tooic as it is, so ignore that for now, okay? 4e kind of folded those two together- Create and T-form, I mean- and it didn't do it terribly well. This is a common problem with pushing together two not-the-same things, and we were so bad at learning this lesson that we would go on to find Instant Change into T-form (despite it not fitting at all mechanically) and tearing Transfer in half and forgetting ir ever existed, then cobbling power builds that linked Srain and Aid and assuminf a bastardized version od Standaed Effects meant that the Aid just haooed to roll Whatever the Drain rolled. And I am doing it again.... T-form became problemaric in 4e because Create was folded into it: we could target "the air" and transform it into.... Whatever. Well, we tens to think that air has no BODY score, so you have to figure out how much air it takes, and then....- you know what? Just digure out how much BODY the rhinf you want to make has, and roll that much BODY against "the air," and call it good. You have crea- uh... _Transformed_ the air. (Oh, and this works in a vacuum, too, even though technically,"nothing" has, by default, no BODY score at all, but mechanically, you are targetting the BODY that will have always eleven in the thing that-- look, just roll some dice until total matches what you need, okay?) Interestingly, it takes GM fiat to make items creates this way permanent, since they should either begin to heal back to normal immediately, and / or there is some sort of player-dedined trigger event that restores "the air" back to air. Create hd no such problem: items,Created were permanent by default; itwms transormed we're transitory by default (and I believe still are, even now). Now there _is_ an upside to this: id the party is earing Created food, they will have to periodically stop for... I believe the Europeans call them "comfort breaks." The party eating air T_formed,into food does not: "when all nutrients are absorbed, the food becomes air again." There is no reason you cant just fart on through another two hours of forced marching, right? Additionally, there was a sketchy-at-best idea,that bevame immutable law: cosmetic, minor, and major T-forms. Not only were these things some,of the most poorly-defined distinctions in RPG history, they were never changed from their first implementations. Don'r believe me? Spend an,evening running through the search function looking for "what grade of T-form is 'idea X'?" What you will typically find is that the folks here- some of the longest-term HERO players and GMs on the planet-- dont agree. By the timecyou get to twelve or thirteen responses, you will have at least one vote for each category. What might have been better? Well, making Create a separate Power would have been great (it dowsnt exist outside of 3e's Fantasy HERO; that function was shived roughly into T-form, and hasnt worked without a fiat or other rules bend since. The simples,solution would,have been- assuming you were Hell-bent to jam Create in there, to have declared "for a 20-point adder, you can create a permanent thing from,nothing, and here is how it works. Or go for,broke: if a Player wishes to buy the healing back to a level that exceeda the reasonable life expectancy of the thinf to be Transformed, then that T-form,is permanent. (Gid help you if you want to Transform a rock. Or a Greenland shark.) Still, even that is a _tiny_ bit of fiat. Either way, permance would now have some ort of mechanic, right? Then you have players who want to buy the,adder,so they can permanently transform someone into a slug for whatever reason, keaving then no chance to turn back (which I am remarkabke okay with, since a slug isnt-- game-wise, at least-- any more useful than a corpse. What would I have likes to have seen? Honestly, I am not the biggest fan of T-form there ever was, particularly,after twenty years of 4e builds using it as one leg of the Trifecta of Cobble (the others being Desolid only vs X and EDM,to the dimension where everything is the way I want it). But, since no one asked: how about 15 pts per die, period. Possibly an adder for permanence (_not_ what I want: I would like to see Create and Instant Change folded back out of it). Do you have an idea that somehow limits this power? Maybe all you can do is rearrange make-up or change people's clothes? Well how about you and your,GM,get together amd work out a campaign-appropriate value for such a limitation, the way you would for limiting almost any other power? Sure: we can say "well, technically, going from 15/die to 10/die is a -1/3 limitation, and sure; that's pretty close. It also only exists _here_, as the -2/3 limitation that drops it to 5/die only exists here. I dont have an,issue with that, personally, but I am kind of surprised by how many other people don't. The biggest value to calling T-form a flat 15/die and,you fold working out your own limitations and values is that we don't have to agree what is worth what, and we can,sort of pretend "cosmetic" and "minor" never hapened, which I suspect would lead to less confusion overall. Want to T-form something into something worth _more_ than a corpse? Two options: either use a create-like build (especially if you are after permanence) or declare something like Characteristics Maxims: every point of BODY to be added costs _2_ BODY on the side instead of one. It is still not permanent, mind you. I know the knee jerk reaction is "but that is what Major T-form does," but I am tslking about getting rid of vaguexguidelines and examples and replacing them with an actual one-size-fits-all mechanic like every other power has and letting Played and Cms limit (or advantage) the power they way they see fit. I am betting we would see some truly interesting T-form builds, too. Now, more solid advice that you received: the rules state that you must use the most expensive option. Eh.... That is a tough call. I say that because I have a (likely false) memory from some years back of someone pointing out to me that there was an edition that did not state this- a more modern edition than I play (2e here), I mean. (Though technically, 1 and 2e did not state this. We dis it anyway to enhance the odds of GM approval. What GM doesn't love personal sacrifice in the name of character development. Now let,me,tell,you something else,that the rules say: Any power with an advantage is not the orifinsl power; it becomes a whole new and unique power. To give you an example: Flight: useable by others. That means that you have the abikity to grsnt other people the power of flight, at least within certain parameters. It does not in any, way, shaoe, or form mean that _you_ have the power of flight. Remember the rules say that onve you advantage or limit a power, it is not the same as the original power. Now let me tell you how many tables I have sat at,that play it this way: 4. Four tables, and three of then are my own. "Usable by others" not depriving the character of the power (unless he also,has a soare copy of the power laying around) has become the most ignored,thing,in the game. It is so ignored that years ago I house ruled an advantage's advantage: "selectable". Any power advantage or limitation whose value is modified by Selectable means that advantage can be toggled on or off as a zero_phase action. Dont want to blow up,bystanders? Put Selectable on your explosion. Nor my,finest moment, but at least,they were paying,_something_ for effwctively having two different powers: the power of flight _and_ the power of granting rhe power of Flight. Ultimately, if you want you ground-pounding teammate to fly, then you should buy the power to grwnt him flight. The confusion, I think, comes from foci: when Orville gained the power of flight, he did it through a gadget that allowed Wilbur to fly, too. (Now as Orvilles entirely in control of the flight, one could make a solid argument that this was better defined as "Flight: useable as Attack, but no matter where you go with it, people seem to see Orville has still keeping his flight even when he wws sharinf it with Wilbur. I maintain, however, that the _focus_ had Flight; useable,by others, one,other, simultaneously, with perhaps a limitation showing only one guy was in charge. If Flight: useable by others allowed you to use the power yourself as well, then at some point since 1980 we would have seen some version of the limitation that said "unstable on others _only_. Thus far, we havent. So far, we haven't, I maintain becaue that is built into the "an advantaged power is a new and different power" rule. Look at useable,by others before you decide T-form is wrong for you. Swe the built-in restrictions? The range, the had-off, a) that? The fact that while Kenny is using it then you can't give it to Mikey? That's kind of a shame, because Mikey likes it. If there is something,in those mechanics that does not let the power work the waybthatvyou encision it, then that is _not_ the build you must use, because it is not creating the correct power. If It _is_ doing what you envision, _and_ it is more expensive, then you are required to use it. However, it may just be that the mechsnicsvof T-form are the most correct thing in the game for your idea of how this power works mechanically, and no othercbuild works or could be modified to work the swmevway, then T-form is the only correct build, and as the most expensive version,of,itself, it is the build that you should use. Moving on, though: Go with the most expensive build is correct, but remember to go with the most expensive _correct_,build. This doesn't get enough airtime, at least not here, it doesn't. That is probably because most od us are Cms, and make assumptions about what our converarional partners already understand about the system. Pay attention, now, because even though I agree with what you have been told above, I am about to explain why it is wrong as often as it is right: I want my buddy Kenny to be able to fly. I buy Flight: useable on Kenny. To keep up with him, I buy an equal amount of Flight Look, it is late, and somehiw I scrambled,this reply all up- I expect because it is so easy to lose my place when I can only,see,thirty-five words at a time,and have to constantly,stop of editing autocorrect failure, it is stuoid easy to get lost. Just rwad it until it makes sense; I am asleep where I sit.

Same here! My GM experience has proven that players are just much more into their characters and the game overall when they get to decide things about their characters. This goes to origins, too, Dont get ne wribf: we have sone mini-camoaigna with aome sort of unifying theme throughiut the characters- origins, power sources, SFX (did one where everone was some sort of Psion, for example. Fir what it's worth, they hated it: over half my players, I discovered, never play mentalists because they detest them) to the "you all wake up, a group if strangers strapped naked to medical beds. You here alarms and see oanic. People in uniforms,and medical gear are running pel mel outside the drosted windows od the room, barking orders and tring to organize. In the distance, you _think_ you hear gunfire" thing (same,game, actually). But those are the exceptions. In general, anything goes. If it is too far out there, well, so long as you have a reasonably serious character and,you have a reasonabke commitment to make the game sessions, I will find a way to jam it into the universe. Like I said: that's from experience. Unless we are doing full-on group if amnesiacs with related powers; who am I; what us my purpose? stuff in a 4-sessions or less game, someone always ends up with a slight sulk that they couldnt have X in their background or Y kind of powers. Now the _actual_ reason that I have always done it this way, even from the get-go: Lord Liaden's "gonzo" is the most source-material accurate thing there is. One guy made a deal with a demon. One guy got computer chips put in his head. One guy had an alien mother; one had a Lemurian father. One is a modern day sorcerer; one fell from a plane and forgot to die. One is a gun-toting lunatic, and another is a mutant, while still others are sentient robots and forgotten mythical races and high-tech geniuses and exrradimenionsal beings and time travellers trapped in the here and now. One guy was part of a supersolider project and one smoked poisoned,cigarettes. Why? Becauase,it is source-material appropriate, and-- Well, you guys all know by kniw that I was never a comic book kid, and I down nit develop into a comic. Ooh adult. Superheroes is ahead of fantasy for me, but it is not my favorite genre. The honest truth is that it was absolutely impossible for me to call out even ine thing as somehow being sillier than all others. There you go, As for limiting a source of power, I have no doubt that you can find something that you like. That works. It works well, actually. If You want to have a history od super Heroes, then back back it up. The comet struck fifty years ago. A hundred years ago. Whatever. And it's random bursts of Zeta photons are responsible for super powers to this day. Not at all, Sir. You want a powered armor type or a firce field belt of an anti-grav generator or a time displacement cannon? No problem. The actual,super-power was the intellectual genius that allowed the creator to concieve of it: the intwllect to both graps the inspirarion and see it actualized. Want a brick? Same thing: zapped by comet juice, his muscles became more efficient, more sense, mire massive- a brick. Remember that the power source is nothing more than an enabling device; unless it doubles as an END battery, it is just an origin. It doesn't constrain power types or special effects unless you want it to. Ahh..., I jumped the gun on that. There is no reason that the power source, whatever it is (gonna run with comet here) didn't land here a thiusqnd years ago and only becomes active as the plot needs it to. Your not limited to an area, either. Use zeta photons or peruvio electrons or dimensional ripples-- None of these things have to be continent-wide energies. They can be a single finger-sized beam. They travel through solid matter, and can reach you all the way through the earth. Miraculously, it only has enough energy (this time) to strike the character straight in the pineal gland, and Voof! Superpowers. Would have been way cooler to find out that it was his brwachinf the dimenionsal barrier that caused the White Event, I think.