Duke Bushido

Wrapped an adventure with the youth group a couple of hours ago. We had a two-session adventure playtesting a conversion of Judge's Guild's old "Break In at Three Kilometer Island" (now renamed Kilowatt Island, for aesthetic reasons, and a tweaked character roster to include at least one character actually capable of carrying out the goal of the "break in." Not sure why the original had neither powers nor gadgets to actually pull that off....). At any rate, it was a smashing success, though I will have to finish the write-up of it to include a couple of on-the-fly tweaks that had to be made for Players reluctant to actually look _inside_ of buildings... I love Players; I really do. I opted to this adventure for a number of reasons, not the least of which was I nabbed the main villain decades ago, redecorated her and gave her a few quirks that have made her quite popular with Players over the years (Lord Liaden: she is one of those who is a villain _only_ because of her methods type characters, and is in fact the very one I had in mind when I posted the comment on the other thread a few days ago). I took the name, extended the schtick-- why not just go ahead and convert the whole adventure, right? Skip all the way toward the dramatic showdown: the two-pronged assault has baffled the Players (not sure why; possibly because there has never before been a session where splitting the party actually made _sense_, so of course it's the one time they just couldn't bring themselves to do it. As Helen is making her getaway (sans Asmodeum and sans henchmen, no less), Kinetica has managed to use her superspeed and her desolidification to get into the rocket, and suddenly realizes that she is alone: her teammates are busy with villains as the rocket takes to the skies, and will soon be moving too fast for even Magnificent to catch it. Kinetica makes her way cautiously to the nose of the retro-50's styled escape vehicle, nervousness of her Player making her insanely overcautious. She finds her way into the control room, directly behind Helen who, without turning around, calls out jovially enough. "Welcome aboard, Hero! You're remarkably tenacious; you should be proud." Helen then slowly spins around in her chair, her hands laid flat on the arms of the chair. "Very few people have ever gotten this close to capturing me. How does that make you feel?" "Like I have made a bad idea, and I really need to figure out how to stay safe!" Helen smirks and laughs just a bit. "You know you'd actually be a lot safer six feet to your left..." "Okay. Thanks!" [moves six feet to the left] The entire rest of the group, OOC :"REALLY?! Really? Did you _really_ just do that?!!" Helen: "There... Isn't that better?" [presses a button and Kinetica _whooshes_ through the floor and out of the ship, plummeting toward the waters of Lake Campaign from 80,000 feet] "_I_ certainly think it is."

To be fair, I quit racing dirtbikes in my mid-thirties because my bones took longer to heal. I quit drag racing motorcycles in my early forties for the same reason.

Threest. It's numerative, sheesh.....!

That hurts a bit. for the record, one of my most favorite villains _is_ ultra-progressive, to the point that she create a new and useful thing (or steal a nearly-finished thing intended to make a bajillion dollars), gets copyrights and patents, then release them to the world. Her entire "vile plan" is to die comfortably, knowing she has helped to ease strife in her fellow man. It is her _methods_ that make her a criminal, and not her motivations. she is a fun one to throw at more sophisticated players; they have a real dillemma when trying to decide if they should simply stop her or capture her- you know: do we prevent her from stealing the research on tabletop fusion, knowing she will perfect it and give it away, or do we arrest her for putting a hole in the wall of the research facility and ensure that a trillion-dolllar conglomerate can continue its research into printing money unimpeded?

Some years ago there was a Master List of Disadvantages floating about the web. I am willing to bet that it is still out there somewhere. That may be what you are looking for.

Agreed. Because, accorsing to the internet, I am a college-age over-coddled white girl with a suede jacket and ugly boots.

Would That be the new Advantage from APG3: Usable as Abort? wait a minute- we might be on to something there.... :0

Deflect or Dodge would handle this, but the problem they present is the "I dissolved this item" SFX. When something is deflected, it still exists, and in the case if an explosive, it is still going to land somewhere and go off. I will have to think on that a bit...

I have a single-power NPC who has Desolidification UAA. There is an END reserve tied to it, etc- She has no other appreciable powers save a small Force Field with "phase shifting" SFX and a bit of life support (same SFX). Her entire Schtick is to sneak herself close to the heroes and quite literally _remove_ them from combat for about ten minutes or so. That turned out to be far more effective than I expected it would be, and led to a team of players suddenly deciding maybe trying a more tactical approach to combat would be a good idea after all. She has a sister who has Desolidification (Not-It cannot desolid herself; only others), a six-die single command Mind Control (Shoot me!) and a Change Environment (screw using Images to make light, and yes; I know the official rule, and no; I am not going to derail your thread by discussing it ) that illuminates her quite clearly and sort of obfuscates the area near and behind her. Her tactic is to get between combatants or in front of something or someone that shouldn't be attacked. She is a bit more fun (though not as hilarious) to use, if only because the Player Characters are better able to cope with her. I meqn really: when was the last time you bought "affects solid" for a character without Desolidification?

If we don't, we are going to have to rewrite a _lot_ of cowboy movies....

Dude, I am really sorry to hear that. I've been enduring it myself a lot lately with friends, coworkers (though to be fair, I knew most od them were morons), and family. On the plus side, though, I think can both look forward to the considerable reduction of our Christmas spending this year!

They used Morgan Freeman, too. "...Easy Reader, that's my name. Readin' easy, that's my game..." "Heavy, Man; heavy....."

Eh. I'd allow it as a spur of the moment thing, but I will also say that I am more "spirit of the game" and less "letter of the rules" than most folks. However, if it is something he wanted to do as a semi-regular schtick... Well, as others have pointed out, there are powers specifically for that sort of thing. Just remember though, that I would also require that he "attack" the grenade, since he is not using a deflect or block where he is countering his opponent's attack roll. That grenade is going to get some serious size modifiers...

James Bond"s doorbell: Dong. Ding Dong.

Nice to see you're still alive! We'd started to murmur things.....

Hunh. I thought I was the only person who did that.

That's where I went for a year or two myself. It isnt that I have any animosity towards the new editions; it's just that I have no interest in them.

Soylent what?

For what it's worth, most of my "caps" are starting caps. Players are expected to meet and eventually exceed them (if they opt to deepen skills instead of broaden them) with XP: that's what it's for. No one hoards XP (at least, not so far as I know). Story arcs and campaigns are pre-determined and designed to resolve before the Player Characters become actual deities. I don't know if that's what you're looking for, but that's how I do it. I don't do "campaign caps" in general because the campaign is designed to escalate as the Players increase their abilities, and there is a definite conclusion in mind.

Good. I _hate_ that they can infect sensible people, but the fact that stupid lunatic whackos are opting to put themselves in mortal peril sits well with me. There. I said it. I hate the resources they consume, but look forward to it being temporary.

For what its worth, she died in 1968 at the ripe old age of 92.

You could dig really deep and resurrect the characters Archie Comics bought and cant quite make catch on.

Eh- I think a middle ground can be reached where Spirits / souls continue to use the BOD stat, but rename it to something more appropriate (as they don't actually have bodies to damage). After that, when designing an attack, as part of declailring SFX, the character building the power declares if this spell /weapon /special Kung Fu attacts BODY or Spirit. That's assuming the need for either type of attack is relatively similar in the campaign, of course. Beyond that, devise an appropriate DEF (recommending EGO Defense made into a characteristic and- again, assuming roughly similar applicability, ciwted to match current defenses. This would allow the option to purchase Killing Spirit Attacks that would apply to Resistant Spirit Defense, etc. Moreover, with 6e and the equal pricing across the biard and abokition of figureds, no one suffers any undue cost burden or "bonus" for not havibg to buy BODY, etc. They are buying it, but it's "Soul" now. They atent buying PD, but they are buying "Spirit Defense," etc. For my money-again, assuming a roughly equal in-game demand for "kills flesh" and "kills spirit"- this is just the simplest way to go: everything is already in the system; you just rename a couple of things for flavor. However, it should be noted that I am a complete idiot and may have misunderstood this from the get-go. (nite: you _may_ consider soubling the cost of Spirit Defense relative to PD/ED, as a Spirit will not need to buy either. If you are in the "all points are equal" camp, anyway.)

There may be more recent rules about this; I don't know. But so far as I know, the most recent rules about these things are the supplemental rules in 4e's Horror HERO. Prior to that there is a brief discussion in AC and I _think_ in the 4e rules themselves (but I am not certain on that last one) specifying both the creation of things and characters completely lacking in certain characteristics, and that spirits one-hundred percent have no BODY score. It's essentially what the Automaton "Takes No STUN" thing grew out of. Of course, 5 and 6e, I have no idea-- that may not be around anymore.

Problematically, Spirits, Souls, etc-- don't actually have a BODY score. I believe the OP is looking for a way to "kill" those things that mimics the traditional damage-dealing of the in-place damage v BODY system.