Bartman

Re: Re: Danger Sense Question Two questions then: How would you define Spiderman's DS? I can't think of what Sense Group it would go into. How would you define Venom's invisibility to that DS? He doesn't seem to be invisible to anything else except Spidey's DS.

What I think is funny is that 30 is what my first GM established as human maxima back in the mid 80s. I have never viewed NCM as any sort of hard and fast limit and have usually had one characteristic above 20 in most fantasy etc. campaigns I have played in.

Don't like it? Then get you own... um... persuasive avatar.

Well it was off the top of my head. She doesn't have much of an impact because it is mainly Defender's story and because she was a late addition inserted at the last moment. I may make some revisions anyway as I got the James' numbers wrong. I made Defender's oldest kid the IV when he should be the V.

If it is 'realistic' campaign a low 20s skill roll will allow the character to accomplish all but the most audacious and rediculous feats. This is likely the max anyone in the real world could achieve. In a 'cinematic' campaign a mid to high 20s roll would allow the character to regularly accomplish normally impossible feats. A -10 is the standard minus for 'impossible' skill uses, like using breakfall to survive falling off a 50 story building, or McGuyvering a 4d6 flamethrower out of a random assortment of garden tools. In a 'fantastic' campaign where the characters achieve the impossible on a regular basis the sky's the limit. Just decide what kind of campaign you are in. If no one spends more than a couple of extra points on any one skill, a roll in the 20s will leave you as the best. If everyone routinely spends lots on individual skills, a roll in the 30s would likely be required.

Well I'll try Defender. Defender will eventually have kids. He can do no less. When one is a member of a long line of adventurers, keeping the line alive is nearly as important as being an adventurer. He won't marry from within the team though. Those relationships will always be the ones which got away. Instead he will meet and fall for some woman with a very strong personality. She will have to be a wild success at something, although not necessarily metahuman. His kids would almost certainly keep his personality and continue the tradition. So lets go with this. After several encounters Defender falls for Lady Blue. A torrid on-again off-again relationship follows, eventually resulting in her getting a pardon due to heroic acts involved in saving the city. She is also placed in witness protection, due to the amount of dirt she is able to dish on various former partners. They marry shortly after. Over the next few years they have thee boys. And Defender goes into semi-retirement shifting from leader of the Champions to mentor and backup member. However to protect his family, he keeps his heroing identity secret. His oldest son, James IV, is groomed to take over the family affairs. He develops a rather cynical attitude about the families history of public works, and develops into a greedy business type. Not really a bad fellow but not cut in the same mold as his forebearers. His second son, Robert, becomes the playboy Defender always played at but never really was. Unfortunately he falls into the wrong crowd. Although he doesn't relly have any skill for criminal work, he climbs in bed with the mob, where his society contacts make him a useful tool for those with the skills. By the time he realizes what a mess his life is, he is at a crossroads. He can either embrace it fully and become the mobster he has been playing, or he can attempt to redeem himself. His third son Christopher, ends up with all the brains of the family. It is thus no suprise that he ends up being the only one to uncover his parents' pasts. By the time he enters Millenium City University he has been able to copy his fathers armor while making a number of 'improvements' to it. On his 19th birthday Defender flies into the skies of MC again. At this point his parents realize what he is doing. After a brief but intense confrontation the torch is passed. Christopher isn't his father though and takes and even more steady and cautious approach to crimefighting. He proves to be a better scientist and detective than his father. But he never equals the first Defender in combat or leadership. And his brothers remain important NPCs throughout his career. Hows that?

A decade ago I had a character with the ability to project an image of himself up to a couple hundred miles away. He could then act through this image. I bought it as a big Clairsentience with sight, sound, smell and touch. To that I added Images, and Telekenesis with fine manipulation. These of course had to be bought with highly increased max ranges, no range mods, invisible, and indirect. It was a whole lot of points for not a lot of utility. I'll see if I can find the writeup anywhere for you.

Re: Cafe Press Question Well I took a quick look at their products. I for one would be willing to pay a couple bucks over their 'vendor' pricing on almost nothing they have.

True but it is generally better to just take a normal shot. Looking at just normal stun, a high shot will result in: x2 stun 17% of the time, x1.5 stun 9% of the time, x1 stun 33% of the time, and x1/2 stun 42% of the time. Rounding is why this equals 101% Head Shot isn't much better. It gives: x2 stun 33% of the time, x1 stun 17% of the time, x1/2 50% of the time. Frankly I would rather just make a normal attack than take a minus to my OCV and have the average damage of my attacks reduced. Now in some cases like a 10d6 EB vs 40 Ed it make sense to go for broke as the average attack is going to do 0 stun anyway. This is why I don't really find called shots unbalancing. In general the average damage a hero is likely to do is lowered rather than raised.

Yep. They add flavor and depth to combat, both of which I find to be good things. In the campaign I am currently in, only one player has tried a called shot. The biggest equalizer is how hard they are to pull off. It is what, a -8 for a head shot? My current character with skill levels can achieve a 10 OCV and that is only on about half of his attacks. He would have a 50% chance of hiting a 3 DCV character. Most villians in this campaign average about an 8 DCV. I haven't tried a called shot because I would either have no chance of hiting or the targets are normals and the extra damage isn't necessary.

Exactly. If I wanted Forgotten Realms I would go pick up Forgotten Realms. I certainly wouldn't have used a generic 'store brand' that just duplicates the whole thing.

It seemed too generic, broad and flavorless to me. Got your Norsemen, Mongals, Arabs, Pirates, and native savages? Check, check, check, check, and check. Got your generic medieval kingdoms, good, evil and disfunctionally neutral? Check, check, and check. Got your completely impossible haven in the evil kingdom? Check. Got your impossible magic locations, super cooled glaciers, ultra high mountains, and really deep canyons? Check, check check. Got your good demi-human kingdoms, one each for Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits oops I mean "Halflings?" Check, check, check. Got your rough territory filled with evil demi-human tribes? Goblins, Orcs and Trolls. Check, check, check. Got your ancient fallen empire to provide magic items and mysteries. Check Got any originality? Um, nope. Got any depth? Nope again. Got any reason not to just pick up Forgotten Realms and adapt it? Nope.

Rune: He would know about the satelite and figure that was the real threat. He would teleport into space and probably die trying to destroy/misdirect the thing. If push came to shove he would interpose himself trying to absorb as much of the beam as possible.

Back in the day... The Seven Horsemen and VOICE both worked well for causing extreme unhappiness among players. Both are powerful groups who are quite willing to leave heroes' bodies in their wakes. They would have to have 100-200pts added to have the same impact they had in the late 80s, but properly played most teams should be quite wary of them. I've also used a group of homegrown assassins/terrorists/mercenaries to great effect.

Lord Liaden got it exactly. In my case I'm trying to create a bunch of conversions from the Silent Death minatures game. The character in question is actually a fighter. In the game they have a weapon type called torpedoes. They pack a big punch, but unlike every other weapon in the game they are represented on the board. Every other weapon is a roll to hit then roll damage combination. Torps though have an independant movement rating. They also have a defensive value, damage reduction and hits (DCV, Def and Body in Hero terms). They target independantly and act over a number of turns. They even get a coordination bonus if several attack a target simultaniously. They can be jammed (flash or maybe even dispel summon, I haven't decided what works best), spoofed with decoys (images), dodged, and shot at with the ship's weapons. They can even be attacked with other torps. And all of this is vital to the flavor of the game. A simple RKA can't duplicate these effects nearly as well as a summoned automaton can.

I wouldn't necesarily disagree with either. And if someone brought a Human Torch clone into my campaign with a ranged martial arts package I wouldn't complain either. But for my money I say all three just have CSLs. For example I have read in several issues of Spiderman an opponent commenting on the combat style Spidey has. I haven't read similar comments about Supes or the Flash. Instead they get comments about their raw power/speed. It's just a flavor thing for me.

I agree. The only ones without some sort of advanced combat training are those who rely entirely on powers or some shtick related. Virtually every X-man for example should have several 'commando training' manuevers. Spiderman has his spider-fu. The Batman extended family of course shuld have 30+pts in several forms. Etc. The only exceptions are people like Superman, who has so much raw power and speed he hasn't really trained in any particular form; Flash who has such raw speed no one is qualified to teach him; and pure blasters like the Human Torch who rarely engage in HtH combat and are more likely to have developed straight-up levels.

Interesting. I hadn't thought about that. The effect is that he will be carrying them. They could very well be defined as having been summoned 'back at the lab' so to speak. That saves points as well, one charge vs four. Thanks LL.

The problem would be that the character could fire four missiles. Then he could wait for them to all explode/ be destroyed at which time he could fire four more. And he could do this several times, four sets of four for a total of 16. With only x1 summon 4 charges he could only summon one at a time. That would be appropriate for some guide by wire construction where the character could only control one at a time. But I want all four to be fireable at once. With a x4 summon 1 charge he would have to fire all four at once or lose whatever he didn't fire.

Here is a quick Excel calculator I just whipped up. Just enter in the time and G's and the distance will be calculated for you. It has no error checking and uses simple Newtonian math so for high numbers it will return nonsensical info. As long as velocity reads below about 2 AU/hr you won't have enough time dilation to worry about. Above that you're going to start getting really wonky numbers. Disclaimer: My last physics class was about 10 years ago. I believe the calculations are correct. But if I really screwed something up someone let me know and I'll fix it.

Neither of these work. You can't autofire Summon because it specifically doesn't allow you to summon more than the max you could summon at one time. For example. If a necromancer can summon 16 skeletons that is the max he can have at any one point. He can summon less. He can summon more to replace those that have been destroyed. But he can never have more than 16 at a time. Duplication also won't work. These missiles come from the fighter not another missile. Once the first missile has destroyed itself against a target, duplication would prevent the character from summoning any more missiles. Summon has a built in adder that allows me to summon more than one at a time. Thus the x4 in the writeup. This allows me to summon four or less missiles with each use of the power. The four charges allows me to use the summon up to four times, which allows me to summon one missile at a time. and the -0 disad prevents me from summoning 16 missiles total. My question is, it there an easier way to do this.

I have a slight conundrum. I have a character who is going to carry a small number of missiles, four to be precise. I have already decided to have automatons act as the missiles and use summon to 'activate' them. The problem is I want him to be able to fire them singlely or as a group of 2 to 4. Here is the power as I have it now. Can anyone think of a better way to do this? 70 Summon 300-point missile, x4, Slavishly Devoted (+1) (140 AP); 4 Charges (-1), No more than 4 missiles total (-0)

This is so character dependant I'm not sure how to even begin to answer that. That said here are a few options. Mentalists: Mindscan + attack. And if a mentalist gets a good lock on the character it doesn't matter how fast she runs, she can never escape him. Blasters: A good number of PCs are going to have options which allow them to return fire, even if not quite as powerfully. And if they don't now, expect at least one of them to want to add a slot to their multipower after a couple of encounters. Speedsters: She better be real fast, because some of these guys can cover 7kms a phase once they get going. Detectives: She also better not have left any evidence (shell casings etc) or she will be getting a visit from someone at a time and place not of her choosing.

Nope, 35pts resistant pd. It halves to 18, which is more than the 15 body of the attack. And even then he also has regeneration so he doesn't worry about taking body. And he has enough Stun and Con that he can take anything but a x5 stun multiplier without being stunned. Now he couldn't do it indefinitely. In fact he probably couldn't take a third shot. I realize this is higher than many campaigns but he isn't at all unreasonable in the current campaign. Heck I've seen a teammate take three 20dc attacks without going down. I don't know what his exact stats are but I figure he has to have defenses in the 40s and 100+ stun. Therefore my statement that it wouldn't particularly heroic for this character to do so. However even if the attack was an 8d6 RKA x2AP linked to a 10d6 transform living character to dead character, he would happily take the fall for an innocent. I as a player would be a bit sad. But there is no better way to 'retire' a character than by saving an innocent.

Re: Feedback & A new "What would your charater do?" Rune jumps in front of the mayor no questions asked. Of course even a 4d6 RKA, x2 AP won't do any body and is highly unlikely to stun Rune, so this is a bit less heroic then it might otherwise appear. He would then wait for his teammates to find and eliminate the threat.