Helimar

If a character has bought Invisibility to the sight group, can he be detected at all by a sight-based detect invisibility (from a magic spell in case it matters)? My current thinking is that since you are detecting the power invisibility, you would see a general outline/shape but not see the actual person? Otherwise it would seem I must define my Detect Invisibility in the Unusual group or it will be virtually useless, and in the unusual group it's actually more powerful than I intended. The character also has a sight-based Detect Magic, would THAT give the ability to detect just the outline? Helimar

If a character is between 0 and -10 stun, at the 'barely conscious' stage of Knockout, I realize that he takes double stun damage from attacks, but does that include STUN Drain? He currently has 10-20 stun stat left to drain, the reason he's out is from normal damage from another attacker, but he's being damaged by a continuous STUN drain poison. Helimar

Re: "Brick Trick" I believe he's more asking about a way to simulate a long lasting PRE attack, building it as Mind Control instead, based on fully cowing the target to the point where they will follow your orders for many phases if not minutes or hours in the case of normals. And FWIW I would give a +2d6 violence bonus for shredding a car or something in addition to the display of power (or call it an extreme display of power) for the purposes of intimidating normals, the implication is that he could easily do the same to them, or worse, and that kind of level of violence is not something a normal can get used to, unless your campaign has alot of active supers. Helimar

Re: A thought on armour piercing We currently have 3 penetrating attacks in our Fantasy Heroic game, one is a Stiletto, which is low damage, and str can't add to it (1d6 HKA), and the other two are magical spells, one magic missile-type and one that sprays the target with sliver-fine needles of energy (autofire). None of them are high damage. I definitely agree that plain swords should not have Penetrating without some unusual magic on them, a high quality sword that's kept very sharp is just a couple bonus DCs, a magical sword of sharpness might be Armor Piercing, but neither should be Penetrating. Oh, and I agree that I'd like to see a way to do something like this suggestion of Armor Piercing, but the problem is the AP campaign limits, which are almost completely universal. We had a similar problem recently trying to define a Holy Bolt type spell that only does damage to undead, but against them is pretty lethal, the AP limit ended up really chopping that down. The only way we found to ameliorate that is to agree that most undead have a vulnerability to Holy attacks. Instead of making the character pay for it, the undead has it as a disadvantage to balance out the fact they often have a lot of life support, or Automaton powers, or both. Oh, and they have a different "Class of Mind" so that standard charms and such don't work on them, only a Necromancer's controls work, and their controls can't work on anything living Helimar

Re: A thought on armour piercing Maybe I've been drinking too... isn't AP a +1/2 advantage currently? Same as Penetrating, and Pen is FAR more useful against hard targets (high defense, non-hardened). Pen is of course less useful the less defense the target has, but against truly hard stuff, it's a lifesaver, you can eventually nickel and dime the target to death, whereas with AP you might have to hope for a lucky damage roll. Helimar

Re: Desolidification or Tunnelling? Hmm, I suppose by the letter of the rules you are right, but as a GM I would definitely rule that if you catch on fire with a Sticky attack in an area, you stay on fire, reasoning to follow. Sticky essentially copies whatever attack is in effect on target A onto target B when target B touches the victim/area A affected by the attack. The Area Effect fire rages on, but now a new, NON-AOE version of the attack is burning on the unlucky target. Since it's now a targeted effect, it stays on the target no matter where he goes as long as no OTHER condition for extinguishing it is met, i.e. whatever the Continuous conditions are like dousing with water or fire-fighting foam, or leaving Line of Sight of the controller of the power. In addition, this new copy of the power is ALSO Sticky, unless a limitation is used to limit 'iterations', and that unlucky Target B can then 'infect' Targets C, D, and E with it, even outside the area of the initial conflagration (Target A). I love the smell of Napalm in the morning, Helimar

Re: Help with a concept The point here is that just being shot at repeatedly can wear down the field to the point that it becomes unusable without using ANY other power, so 0 End is not appropriate in any case, there should be some form of drain on the character, either his End reserve, his End, a side effect from being struck, Ablative, or something. This drain is faster and faster the higher powered attacks it has to absorb, as mentioned. IPE and trigger are not BOTH required, surely, since it is OFF until it is triggered, or ON and IPE until struck, one or the other. Given this second application technically costs End each phase even if he's not struck, I guess it has to be the Trigger, except for any 0-end levels which could be IPE instead. I personally made the lowest, most fundamental level of the field persistent, but I cannot recall a specific instance in the books where he was unconscious and the field still dimly glowing... I do remember he was hard to treat medically because of the bio-field, but considering he healed rapidly because of it (I built it as slow regeneration) and he was nigh on immortal because of it, he rarely needed medical treatment Helimar

Re: Question about the "spirit" of an EC There's no reason the DI, Movement power, and even some attacks couldn't go in an EC, they all cost End. To be honest if you have NO limitations except on the Healing, you're doing pretty darn well, just with what you've got there. If you can come up with even -1/4 of common advantage to most of your powers based on your theme (only when serving the god's purposes LEAPS to mind, and that's actually -1/2), you can do very well. If the GM doesn't think the god will be that limiting, he can reduce it to -1/4 and you still come out smelling like a rose... Helimar

Re: Two Annoying Power Builds Trackless Stride - OAF powder, Extra Time 1 phase, 1 continuous fuel charge lasting 1 hour that never recovers. With this you can spend time covering your tracks with the powder, for up to 1 hour before the powder is used up. Detect Intruder - Mind Link, Triggered by someone crossing the predefined perimeter, transmit only, only to deliver the warning alarm message, 1 continuing charge lasting 8 hours that never recovers, OAF scroll. You are voluntarily setting it up, so Mind Link is allowed, in my mind. Otherwise maybe Telepathy if the GM disapproves of Mind Link used in this way. If you want the warning to be audible, simply make it a Voice on a Trigger, set effect, etc. Helimar

Re: Help with a concept The defenses DO wear him out over time. Specifically the powers wear out the bio-field itself, weakening it and when it drops, it's gone for a little while. I chose to model this by simply using personal END as the bio-field, and increased END costs on the higher levels of the power to represent how it tires him out faster and faster as the power level increases. In the books he could not go hours and hours without any rest at all, unless he was doing particularly low powered stuff (20-30 Str, absorbing 2-4 Body attacks, stuff like that happening for hours at a time should be VERY rare in a Superheroic setting). As soon as stuff starts getting more strenuous, he wears out at a geometrically faster rate. Helimar

Re: Help with a concept I am actually playing my own version of Jack aka Golden Boy in his 2nd or 3rd campaign. I built his force field with exactly this advantage, a limited form of IPE. I built his strength and force field as having several 'levels', each of which takes more and more endurance, exhausting the field faster. Each level of the force field only activates if there's enough force in the incoming attack to require it to activate, which limits his defense adequately, because only Body damage (or the equivalent for Stun-only attacks) can trigger each level. He cannot CHOOSE to activate higher levels at all, or apply them. His strength is another matter, that is entirely under his control, but again, since the highest levels of his strength are x8 End or more it's basically extended Pushing. This represents that Jack can easily handle going for hours at a low power level, but heavy duty combat or taking a couple howitzer shells can exhaust his bio-field much more quickly. Some of this is probably not completely legal by the rules, but my GM likes the concept enough to approve things like auto-activating Force Field levels that are essentially NCC with no limitation for it. The very lowest level is persistent, so that has to pay for the "Fully IPE until struck forcefully (+1/2)" advantage. He also has a small disad for Distinctive Features simply because in a mutant-unfriendly campaign he simply can't hide his mutancy for long, especially in a combat situation. Sure, he can hide it for days at a time in normal interaction, but as soon as something hits him hard enough to represent 1 Body force, it flashes a dim golden glow (I think my GM was kind enough to say it had to be 2 Body to actually be noticeable, so I didn't end up blowing my cover for every accidental bump). I also built him with Physical Absorption which powers up his PRE and a flashing damage shield, all of which is pretty much SFX for him glowing more and more golden as the fight goes on. It takes several blows for him to reach enough power to even flash someone with no flash defense at all. Helimar

Re: Desolidification or Tunnelling? The rules definitely state that continuous AOEs work like that, the way you would have to define the Immolate attack to make it work after the character left the area is to make it Sticky. Once they have entered the area, they catch on fire, and the fire sticks with them after they leave. (visions of animals madly running around catching everything they touch on fire dancing in his head ) Helimar

Re: Help me build a shrinkable lab I hate to bring this up, but it was the first thing I thought of as a problem with building it as a vehicle, and building it as a focus has the same problem... What about all the shaking, rattling, and rolling the 'lab' goes through during just a jog through a park, let alone a knock-down/drag-out fight?? You need some way to inertially dampen the contents or you are gonna have one HECK of a mess the next time you try to use it, god forbid you're shrunken and inside it when someone else picks it up and runs with it... The X-dim movement/summon is the only way I've seen that would get around this. Oh, and technically the multipower isn't actually within the rules, because as Dr. A said, you can't put skills in frameworks. Not that I don't think it's a good solution, it is, very cost effective too, probably TOO cost effective for most scientists with more than two skills, we just have to deal with the splattered contents syndrome Helimar

I have recently been playing a character who has a bio-field which provides him with several effects, not least of which is strength. He has recently begun attempting to "tune" the bio-field to various effects to be combined with his strength, i.e. an Affects Desolid to allow him to grab a desolid foe. I have defined this new slot to his bio-field EC: Bio-field flux power-up: Aid 3d6, any [sTR adder] power one at a time (+1/4), Can Apply (Remove) Adders (+1) (67 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x5 END; -2), Activation Roll 11- (-1), Extra Time (Full Phase, Character May Take No Other Actions, -3/4), Costs Endurance (-1/2), Concentration (0 DCV; -1/2), Self Only (-1/2) This basically allows him to aid his (natural) strength to produce the advantage needed, and I was limiting it to Affects Desolid at first, perhaps 1-hex AOE or Explosion (shockwave) someday. I would then pro-rate any effect of my bonus strength from the other slot of my EC, of course. My GM is saying that that "Can Apply Adders" can't be used to get a new advantage I don't already have, only an -adder- like a force field could be Aided to add the Protect Carried Items adder. This seems VERY lame for a +1 advantage, but I obviously don't see the broken concept that you may have seen when you created the advantage. Is this illegal as he says? How would you do a power-up that allows me to add an advantage to my strength temporarily (costing a lot of END in this case, as it is part of my concept). The basic concept is similar to a Dragonball character standing there screaming and powering up his aura/power level to a higher level in preparation to fight a more powerful opponent. Helimar