JasonPacker

Thankfully, most of GURPS options are around Piercing attacks, and based on the size of the piercing object, to determine a wound modifier. But even there, bullets are piercing.

But surely you could apply the same Armor Piercing to the Drain - making the defenses less useful. And apply Variable Special Effects to the Blast and not see any such reduction in defensive potential.

I'm new at this, but how is Power Defense being cheaper than every possible drain any different than PD being cheaper than every possible physical attack, with different special effects?

I'm fond of really arrogant civilizations or peoples who even go so far as to have a rating scale. A Class V being independently invented FTL and is capable of possessing psionics, while a Class I may have a rudimentary grasp of abstract concepts, makes tools and uses fire (if appropriate to their world).

Maybe it's just me, but the Limitation for extra time seems to be too good to be true - you're not brewing these on the battlefield, after all, but more often than not during downtime. Somebody walk me through why that's limiting enough to warrant dropping the cost of the power so significantly?

I often feel that there's an inherent need amongst many players to maximize defenses. A conscious or unconscious desire to play it safe, to put themselves in the character's shoes perhaps, or to identify with them, and to want them to have the best protection that points will buy. Especially in a situation where you have a feel for what the worst they might encounter is. If you know most enemies are going to have 12DC attacks, then 24 resistant defense is enough to ensure that normal (not AP) attacks can't ever do BODY damage - which is a nice place to be if you're trying to keep your character alive. Add in the defense-like nature of things like a high CON or STUN, and Bricks are probably the most prone to this sort of defense focus.

I would only observe that IME Ironclad is also a fairly puny brick defense-wise - almost what we'd call a "demi-brick. In the 30 years I've been playing Champions I've seen plenty of MAs with PD and ED in the 23 range. We didn't usually consider someone a "true" brick until both his PD/ED and CON were in the upper end of the 20s or low 30's and/or he slapped on some Damage Reduction. His STUN is good, as is his REC, but he definitely suffers from low defenses. On this I agree 100%. While in our campaign our brick comfortably rules the roost damage-wise with 17d6 (85 STR), her defenses against ED attacks is actually slightly lower (31/28r) than our primary Energy Projector, and the EB is our second most powerful on the attack. But the EB falls vastly short in the CON and STUN departments. Your observation of the result of damage caps mirrors our experience precisely. When we started our MidGuard campaign in 1992 we imposed caps (12 DC) and every single PC did 11 or 12 DC's. When we relaxed them with the release of 5E the damage range spread from 10 to 15 DC's. Currently it's from 9d6 (The 9d6 character can also apply AP or PEN advantages to the 9d6 by burning triple the usual END, so the effective low end is probably around 11DC.) to 17d6. Everybody seems happier with this spread. This actually makes me very happy. I've always felt that setting those sorts of caps tended to impact the game in negative ways. I suspect it must help to have rational players who aren't out to break things to help make this happen. Do you have a 'power band' that you advise, or do you just let the chips fall where they may?

Doctor Who - all seven seasons of the modern edition, over a span of about three weeks. Moments of brilliance in there amongst the still-cheesy monsters and time travel shenanigans.

FATE and Hero are so different - I'm not sure if there's much there to convert. I guess I can see it as an insider's guide, but I suspect I'd lose most of the mechanics.

I think I'm leaning in Lucius's less tongue-in-cheek direction. For most strikes, a simple -1 for only using the dominant hand, -2 only to maneuvers that would normally use two (throws, for example). Perhaps a higher penalty if the off-hand is literally tied behind his back, due to the reduced range of body motion, or maybe not more OCV penalty, but a -1 to DCV. If he ties his *good* hand behind his back, -3 OCV makes sense, maybe with that same -1 DCV for actually tied.

Well, I'd have figured that they'd be considered optional rules, and not forced on anyone. But the game does have a history of using hexes, so it makes sense that they may have been considered at some point and discarded for a particular reason. I like the idea of facing rules because it lends a certain air of realism (I know, I know, sacrilege) to assess penalties based on sighting and relative position, perhaps to penalize the use of a shield when it's out of position or the like. I'm not a fan of just abstracting that sort of thing into the attack roll.

I see your reasoning behind the lack of need for facing rules - you're looking at things in terms of what you can do during non-phase segments. While I don't think I'd allow for Surprise from a run-around attack, aren't you making it more difficult for speedsters to do their thing, by getting around behind the badguy and making it harder for him to defend himself? Or even for a skilled swordsman to sidestep into an advantageous position against his opponent, weakening his opponent's ability to respond?

Out of curiosity - any historical reasoning for why there are no facing rules in Hero? Seems like it would make sense to at least have a notion of how one is facing, for visibility, for avoiding being surprised, and that sort of thing...

Out of curiosity, how does that work? If you're SPD 2, and have +1 SPD, only for abort, when does that extra phase occur? Segment 8?

I think I have to agree with BigbyWolf on this one. If you spend half of your actions recovering from your other actions, you're paying a pretty steep price for them. And if you do so by having a really high SPD, you've really paid a high price for it. That, paired with the prohibition against aborting to an action in the same segment you've already acted, seems like it's fair to me.