Drachasor

Re: Skills System - Out of Synch?

Re: Skills System - Out of Synch? As far as I understand it, you only skip rolling for routine tasks. Something that is routine is quite different from doing something under neutral conditions. Take a Mathematics Skill Routine: Taking the derivative of polynomial, trigonometric function, or combination of the two. Neutral Condition: Taking a mathematics test in a testing environement. Formulating a new mathemtical theorem (of any kind or importance) in a relatively quite and peaceful setting with a suitable allotment of time. Physics... Routine: Figuring out the energy of a brick falling a known distance. Neutral Condition: Doing anything with physics out of combat, in fairly quiet environment, with adequate equipment, etc. This might involve something routine (see above) or your goal might be something else, like "account for the magnetic effects of Dr. Magnetron's magnetic field so a blast of charged particles will hit him when you fire it". A neutral condition is quite a bit different from a routine task. Routine is tying your shoelaces using dexterity (e.g. any *basic* task with the skill or check). A neutral condition says nothing about what you are trying to do. -Drachasor *The particles will follow a curved path in the magnetic field, depending on the charge of the particle, its velocity, and the field itself (direction and magnitude).

Re: Why is Strength so underpriced? You can say the same thing about most stats. +10 Dexterity (30 points) gets you: +1 Speed: 10 points +3 DCV: 15 Points (3 combat skill levels) +3 OCV: 15+ Points (no way to get this exactly, but it is between 15 and 24 pts--three 5-point levels and three 8-point levels) +2 All Agility Skills: 10 points That's 50+ points worth of stuff for only 30 points. You save a lot more points getting 10 points of Dex than you do with 10 points of strength. That's why how high you can buy stats is usually limited. Yes, you save points, but that's part of the reason you buy the stat in the first place. You still have to devote a good deal of points to either stat to get a good deal of savings. Sometimes it isn't worth the extra points you need to spend there that you could spend elsewhere on other abilities for your character. In this case you can save a few points buy just buying up PD 1 or 2 points and leaving strength alone. -Drachasor

Re: Power Build: "Portal" power That's what I get for skimming. : ( Oops. Yeah, as Zed-F said, the problem with Missile Reflection/Deflection is that there is no help against melee attacks. -Drachasor

Re: Help: Using Extra-Dimensional Movement as a defensive power In a Champions universe they just get superpowers though, right? : ) If one is near the center of the blast, then it is probably better to move the nuke. If you are a mile away then you need to defend yourself and moving the nuke might not be viable. Hmm, the teleportation gate method is superior then, since you can make another gate inside to take everyone elsewhere. Or you could have a transdimentional force wall that gives Life Support: Radiation. Put it in place before you come back. -Drachasor

Re: Aid...still broken? The transfer example has someone who has a maximum effect trasnfer of 12. The person drains 10 End from the target on his first phase. It says that later in the round he can only drain 2 more End "because the earlier Transfer remains 'in effect' for 1 Turn for purposes of determining the Transfer's maximum effect". That seems to indicate that the next turn he could boost his aid back up to the full amount (so if he used 10 and it faded 5, he could boost it up 15). Otherwise I guess one should take the "all points fade at the end of the turn" limitation for Aid, and just use up all of the aid bonus every Turn. Seems odd that a limitation would make a power better. -Drachasor

Re: Power Build: "Portal" power Here's an interesting idea for a Portal-Guy: Portal Protection: When people try to punch or shoot you a portal appears in the path of the attack harmlessly redirecting it. Area affect attacks and other attacks that produce an effect larger than a human head (or so) bypass this defense (another example is someone with sufficient Growth to have a sufficiently large fist). Disolidification (40 Points) Advantages: Affects Physical World (+2) Limitations: Cannot Pass Through Solid Objects (-1/2) Lockout (-1/2) Cannot use other Gate-like Powers (It would be nice to require a roll like Missile Deflection, but I'm not sure how much that would be worth). 60 Real Points (120 Active Points) Thoughts? (I realize the AP amount is a bit high for most starting games, but I think it might be ok for a gate-based character). -Drachasor

Re: Aid...still broken? Ahh, I missed that nuance Hugh, thanks. He started the first full turn 5 short of full Stun boost, so he can only recover that 5 for that turn. On the turn after that he can recover more. So if he is only taking 30-some Stun damage a turn, then he will take no real damage overall. If he takes 42+ damage each turn then it will start to wear down his real Stun (though that he will start recovering). However, if you lose all of your boost in a turn, then on the next turn you can gain the full boost (42 for 7d6) back. Since the "maximum effect" rule only applies for one turn. You could break it down by phase if desired, I suppose. Basically, as I read it: If the maximum effect of your Aid is M and you begin a turn with a boost of X, then the most of a expendable characteristic you can gain over the course of the turn is M-X. In the example you gave for the first turn it is 5 (42-37). For the second turn in your example though he can boost himself up to 42 Stun again since he began the turn with a boost of 0. That means that if you use up all of your expendable characteristic each turn then you can gain it all back the next turn. So for Aid to End 3d6 continuous, you can gain an extra 18 End each turn but never any more. In that case it seems like a properly made Endurance Reserve is far superior to a Continuous Aid End. For 30 CP the Reserve can have 18 Recovery (effectively just like the Aid) and a maximum of 120 End. You could also go with 20 Rec and 100 End which is superior in every way. Especially since it recovers even when you are unconcious and it also powers abilities when you normally couldn't. 3d6 End Aid, Continous is just like an extra 18 Recovery with an 18 End Container (at best). The one single advantage it has is that you can use your normal powers with that. Hmm, interesting. It seems Aid for Endurance isn't worth it at least. I don't think the Adder that increases the maximum effect by 2 for every character point you spend changes that. Maybe it is more worth it for Stun though, as there's no "Stun Reserve" power, though I suspect more traditional methods are best (defenses, recovery, stun increases). Interesting. It seems Aid might really only be worth it if you have a lot of allowed AP for powers, and then it can quickly become overpowered. -Drachasor PS. Thank your for your persistance and for spotting the errors I made, comrades (especially Hugh Neilson).

Re: Determining Gravitic Pull It's easiest to base calculations of this off of F=mg, where g=9.8m/s/s We need only concern ourselves with the acceleration towards the mass, which is g=9.8m/s2 You have to take into account the difference in distances from and masses between the Earth and the character. Now, the mass of the earth is Me= 5.9742 x 1024 kg The radius of the Earth is: Re= 6.378 x 106m So the ratio (Q): Q = Me/Re2 = 1.468 x 1011 So let "m" be the mass of the character, "d" be the distance from him, and "f" be the fraction of gravity you want. Then: (g / Q x m / r2) = fg So the mass of the character is m = f x Q x r2 If you are interested in 1/10 gravity at 2m, then .1 x 1.468 x 1011x 4 = 5.872 x 1010 This jives with the work previous people have done. Anyhow, I think the equation is fairly simple, and you only need to have one hard number: Q. Q = Me/Re2 = 1.468 x 1011 m = f x Q x r2 Again, where m is the mass of the character, r is the distance (in meters, and there are 2 meters per hex) and f is the fraction of earth gravity you want at that distance. -Drachasor

Re: Aid...still broken? To continue my rambling: End Reserve 30 pts: 10->Reserve for a Reserve of 100 pts 20->Rec for a Recovery of 20 pts Beats Aid End Continuously when (assuming you are using pretty much all your end in the battle--not sure how accurate that is)... 1) Character is knocked out or powers would otherwise be turned off 2) Character is Speed 1 (Speed 2 roughly matches), but such characters have other problems. 3) Short battles(?): Speed less than 10 for one turn or less than 6 for two turns; 5 for three turns; 4 for four turns; evens at about speed 4 on five turns; less than speed 4 on a battle lasting six turns; at 10 turns Aid End Cont. method starts beating the above Reserve on speed 3 characters--(I don't know how long battles last though). I think most characters have between 4 and 6 speed though. (At speed 5, btw, the Aid method has provided 300 End, assuming average rolls and that you use the Aid-granted End each phase, by the end of the 6th turn.--though I just realized my calculations including the dropping of 5 points at the end of each Turn, which wouldn't happen if you kept using all the bonus points--though I suppose a GM could rule that if you use all the points the effect ends, though I think that seem contrary to the rules, but they aren't explicit). Though, the Continuous Aid method has advantages in that it can provide a bit of end each phase whereas you have to wait for a recovery on a Reserve. Hmm. -Drachasor

Re: Aid...still broken?

Re: Aid...still broken?

Re: Aid...still broken? I was pretty sure Aid and other Adjustment powers ignored the maximum attribute rule.--ignore that I misread what you wrote (my apologies). The only limit for End and Stun aid that I could see is that if you End + Aid End is more than your normal Max End then you gain no End during a recovery phase--the same thing applies for stun. Not much of a hindrance, I don't think. Aid is pretty odd, I agree. -Drachasor

Re: Aid...still broken? Under the the descriptions for Duration, Adjustment Powers, Aid, and Duration Advantages: Continuous there is no mention of this. Some particular powers say something like this perhaps, but not Aid. One use at a time does indeed limit it. Consider a 60 AP power: 30 AP for 3d6 Aid to Endurance +1 Continuous (60 AP) (one could add self only if one wants) If you can use it more than once on yourself, say 6 times, then you would roll 6*3d6 each phase. True, you would be capped at an extra 18 Endurance, but that means you could count on having about 18 extra endurance each phase instead of adding an average amount of 10. (Any comments on this? Aid Stun and Aid End seem bad on their own, and you can have them continous for 60AP or less) Ahh, yes, forgot that. I'm new to the system so I make some mistakes here and there. Thanks for pointing it out. Hmm, interesting idea. However, Aid's section on adjustments goes over continuous including an example of losing 5 points from the max and aid kicking back in to boost it up again the next phase. Well, they say you can name a certain number of characteristics explicitely under the Variable Effect rules for Adjustment powers (and they include an example of boosting PD). Anyhow, thanks for all the input guys, I'm trying to make sure my character stays somewhat reasonable. The GM seems to be fine with things being somewhat unreasonable though (he helped another player make a character that has 60 PD and ED and a 12d6 attack starting out with 350 points)*. I think even with that though, the Aid thing would be bad....not sure about a continuous End Boost though. -Drachasor *Largely by allowing anything at all to go into Elemental Controls, I believe--and yes I did query him about that and how it didn't jive with the standard rules.

Re: Aid...still broken? Ahh, thanks for the responses. I know the limitations were a bit sketchy (but there are others one could replace them with, I think). I guess the problem is that we don't have an active point limit for powers. Hmm, is 60AP what most Champion games start with? -Drachasor

(Maybe I should of titled it "Aid: Still too Powerful?") I was working on my character for a new campaign (Champions), and wanted to give him a power he could use to boost himself--background is that he's a 5 dimensional being so this would simulate him tapping into his extradimensional prowess. Than I got this and it seems too broken to use. : ( Transdimensional Influx: Aid 7d6 (70) Advatnages (+3.5) Continuous +1 Variable Effect +2 (all characteristics simultaneously) Variable Effect +.5 (and all gravity powers simultaneously) AP: 315 Limitations (-2.5): Self Only -.5 One Use at a Time -.5 Cannot be Pushed: -.25 Extra Phase to Activate: -.5 Concentration 0DCV, unaware of surroundings to activate: -.75 RP: 90 Correct me if I am wrong but this is spending 90 Real Points to get about: ~+42 Character Points to all characteristics (normal and figured) +42 to all [insert character's special effect] Well, that's how it would be 99 times out of 100 it seems (you do need to activate it when you wake up, and might want to fiddle around so it has no visible effects) Seems better than using Character Points to increase your base stats, since it is much better and you have a crazy amount of Stun, Body, and Endurance that heal themselves quickly (not to mention a PD and ED of 42+). Did I do anything fundamentally wrong here? Clearly it explains why they increased aid to 10 points per d6, but it still seems like Aid can be crazy-powerful. -Drachasor

So, perhaps partly inspired by the previous thread I made on using extra-dimensional movement (and teleportation) as defenses, I was pondering this: Suppose a character could make little gates that hands and such could go through, akin to stretching, but used to to deflect and reflect incoming attacks on the attacker. Now, Missile Reflection/Deflection handles the ranged part of this perfectly, but the hand-to-hand is a bit harder. Here's my attempt at it: Missile Defense: 50 points (Missile Defense + Reflection) Costs Endurance: (-.5) Real Points: 37 0 points in Hand to Hand attack with Damage Shield for melee attacks (+.75) Linked to Missile Defense (-.5 since MD costs endurance) Variable Effect: Same special effect as attack....0 advantage? .25? .5? Real Points per die of damage: 6 or 6.33333 or 6.5 (I believe this matters) 10d6 Absorbtion of Melee Attacks (this valid? seems no more useful than physical or energy): 50 points Effect boosts Damage Shield (this valid?) Linked to Missile Defense (-.5) Aborbed Points do not last beyond attack(-.5?--akin to a constant power going to an instant?) Real Points: 25 10d6 Succor to Damage Shield: 50 points Linked to Absorbtion (-.5) Cannot maintain boost (-.5) Real Point Cost: 25 PD and ED, 30 points each, 60 total Each linked to Absorbtion: -.5 Only up to amount rolled by Absorbtion: -.5 Real Points: 15 each, 30 total Total Points: 117 Of course, this doesn't limit the damage output to no more dice than the attack...but I am not sure what sort of limitation that is (often it wouldn't be one, so it probably is worth nothing). Thoughts? -Drachasor

Re: Help: Using Extra-Dimensional Movement as a defensive power I just realized you could do the teleportation trick more straightforwardly with Extra-Dimensional Movement, though it can be a bit more expensive (you lose a -1 limitation). Extra-dimensional movement: To the same location in an absolutely identical except--22 points Typically this will be on the opposite side of the sphere. (Perhaps you need to define some sort of group of mirror universes). Increased Mass 6400 kg (6 tons)-- 25 points Advantages: +1 Area of Effect (10" sphere, can be larger if teleportation distance increased, but that's expensive) +1 Continuous +.25 Hole in the Middle (fixed size, one less than the circle in radius) +.5 Usable by Others +.5 No Endurance Limitations: -.5 Gate -.25 No non-combat movement -.5 Concentration (0 DCV) 47 * 4.25 = 200 active points 280/2.25 = 89 Real Points (slightly more expensive, since we lost "only to fixed locations"). It would be nice to add missile reflection to this (the shield would look like a mirror and anything that entered the portal would leave it in the same location in the other dimension), but that's very tricky to do. It would need to be at ranged, uncontrolled, with some custom limitations: only on attacks that hit the shield for reflection, and only on attacks that hit the shield at close to a 90 degree angle for reflection. Then it would have to have its own OCV stat to use (using the character's doesn't make sense). Would be cool though. -Drachasor

Re: Help: Using Extra-Dimensional Movement as a defensive power Hmm, here's the workup for a teleportation shield: Teleportation: 20"-- 40 points Increased Mass 6400 kg (6 tons)-- 25 points Fixed Location (opposite side of sphere): 1 point (or some other small number) Advantages: +1 Area of Effect (10" sphere, can be larger if teleportation distance increased, but that's expensive) +1 Continuous +.25 Hole in the Middle (fixed size, one less than the circle in radius) +.5 Usable by Others +.5 No Endurance Limitations: -.5 Gate -.25 No non-combat movement -1 Can only Teleport to Fixed Locations -.5 Concentration (0 DCV) 66 * 4.25 = 280 active points 280/3.25 = 86 Real Points Hmm, that would mostly do it anyhow, though someone outside could teleport inside, and senses that can detect things on the inside of the gate enclosure would detect people. Most indirect attacks wouldn't work, as they'd go through the gate, but some would. A Nuke's blast should pass right through the gate to the other side, without harming anyone inside it. -Drachasor

Re: How to build a tricky gimmick...? Hmm, here's something based on that idea: Side Effect: Transform "Add Desolidification" 2d6 (30 active points) Heals back Rec every Minute and Lockout: cannot use any powers until transformation is healed. I'd say this was a .5 limitation. If you use the EC too much then you become desolidified and can't use any powers for several minutes (in all likelihood). Depends on the character though. Perhaps some powers should be useable though. I think the faster healing combined with lockout cancel each other out close enough. This isn't quite what you asked for, but it makes the desolidification a nasty handicap. It also limits, fairly effectively, how often you can use the EC. Note, of course, that twice the body in unhealed points would need to be racked up. After that, I believe, all the points would have to be healed to undo the transformation. Depending on the Body the limitation varies in worth (and somewhat depending on Rec too). Thoughts? -Drachasor

Re: Help: Using Extra-Dimensional Movement as a defensive power Oops, that actually should be 32 points. It's travelling to a related group of dimensions, each point corresponding to your physical location. It isn't really one other dimension, since one bubble isn't connected to the others. I'd imagine that limiting the size of each dimension to the area of effect is a 0 point limitation. You can't use the power to travel anywhere (by shifting dimensions, moving, and shifting back), but that also means no one is going to bump into you in your bubble. Since they are different dimensions it also means you can have more than one person make such a bubble and you all go to different places. You can also change the size of the bubble (buying multiple areas for the power). I can see an arguement for a single dimension, but it just didn't feel right to me. In reality there are an unlimited number of such dimensions, each one as uninteresting as the last (and as far as special effects go for this power, they rightly shouldn't exist until this power brings one into being). This sort of applies to my situation in particular, since I am planning on this form of my multiform to have duplication (always on). 9 little beings with purely defensive powers to protect the innocents. I am thinking about giving them regeneration with resurrection, which can be stopped by moving the dead one far enough from the others. (As it happens I don't think this form would be humanoid...I was thinking about a bunch of, perhaps black, spheres that fly around). Anyhow, with 9 identical uses of this power they need to all be different places.

I'm making a gravity-based character (who has multiform because he's a 5 dimensional creature, including time). I wanted one of his forms to be purely defensive, to protect civilians and such. However, for some reason I want to be able to protect the innocent from a nuke--even though I don't think it will ever come up. This seems virtually impossible however, given the write-up in the equipment book (multiple 20d6 damage effects at ground 0). I ended up reading the Extra-Dimensional Movement power, and it commented on using it to make an impenetrable defense. Given some thought I came up with this: Gravitic Bubble (e.g. dimensional pocket) Space warps around the user of this ability, shunting the user and everything around him into a pocket dimension that is the same size as the area of effect. This dimension, once created, is completely seperated from normal space-time, and can only be viewed or accessed via abilities designed to look into other dimensions. The same applies for those inside this dimension and looking out. Cost: Extra Dimensional Movement 20 (Single [newly created] Dimension), +50 (Mass is up to 102,400 kg) Advantages: +1 AoE Circle, +1 Usable as an Attack (effect hits those around the user, no range, and those around him don't choose to go) Active Points/Total: 210 Naturally I'd have some disadvantages, but does this seem like a reasonable power use of the ability? I couldn't find anything that used an AoE for teleportation/extra-dimensional movement that wasn't a gate. Naturally Gates are quite different, as each person decides to go in or not. Do I need to add a way for those inside to leave, such as moving outside the radius of effect? Other thoughts? Thanks in advance. -Drachasor Edit: Changed base price of ED to 20 plus mass bonus.