DasBroot

The characterisation they went with for Drax helps cover any gaps... but yeah, the next Dwayne Johnson he's not (who is probably the best of the lot - and his acting is also only adequate. He's just so damned charming that he can sell any performance.

Mike Oldfield - 5 Miles Out I have introduced my wife to a lot of progressive, new wave, and true alternative rock over the years but when it comes to Mike Oldfield... like much of the world if it's not Moonlight Shadow or Man in the Rain she just doesn't get the appeal. Which is fine. Even for me the first listen through much of his stuff was often 'What did I just listen to?' ... but two or three listens in it usually flipped to '... I still don't know, but I like it!'

It's definitely easier to get a decent actor in shape than teach a decent bodybuilder to act.

I usually set a limit of 6 and see a lot of 4 and 6 as a result. One guy took a 5 and threw me for a loop, as I design villains with 3, 4, and 6 primarily. That unfettered phase 5 has been used to great effect (haymakers and recovery actions), forcing the enemies to have one guy hold their 4 to make sure this doesn't happen once they figure out what is happening. So I guess you trust the 'hail of dice' approach for keeping someone who holds their 2 or 4 to act in 3 and 5 in line?

Fair point about the worth with knockback inclusion. I guess it would depend on the DC of the game (and thus how much knockback damage someone would be subjected to) to get a real number for it. Being knocked 4 meters on average and it not applying is definitely worth less than being knocked 12 meters, and a lot less than being knocked 20+.

Pretty much. It's not like Linda Carter was 6'4 either. If you want a true to comics movie representation her solo animated film isn't bad to watch and she was in Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.

Two more episodes in... Ok, I'm finishing it. Despite one of my pet peeves (ebil gubber-ment) ... hoping for a trope subversion on that.

The entire premise to me has seemed to be a do-over or continuation of Enterprise. I think someone really believes in the idea that we want a pre TOS series... and that's understandable to a point: TOS and TNG were always referring to very cool sounding things that happened in that time frame so there are stories to tell. I hope they've figured out why Enterprise failed (inconsistent writing, cripplingly bad season arcs - the temporal cold war was just a BAD idea, in my opinion).

If certain fringe climatologists are to be believed they'll have to settle for encores. (Full disclosure: I do believe we've had an impact on the climate: Only a fool or a politician wouldn't. I don't believe that we've reached the tipping point where this season heralds the new normal for hurricane seasons to come. Maybe I'm an optimist after all.)

That's what 'Real armor' is for... and as written (requires maintenance, doesn't protect from falls, etc) I think a case could be made for applying it to natural PD (skin) if someone wanted to and slapping it on to more armors in general (one guy wanted it on his power armor but I ruled that Knockback was just like Falling horizontally and the Real Armor wouldn't help with that, either. Changed his mind pretty quickly.)

Two episodes of Stranger Things season 1. Not totally sold on it... but since my instinct after episode one was to check the time and say 'yeah, I've got time for another episode' I'll give it another one or two to catch me. (It's well written and acted, so far, but just might not be my cup of tea.)

Mark Knopfler - What it is

And just in case anyone has done something sensible and blocked every news channel.. North Korea fires another rocket over Japan http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41281050 And someone tried to blow up the subways in London yet again http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41278545

Fun scene aside... Shepard Book has some reading to do (heh). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule It's not fuzzy about kneecaps in the slightest.

Good point. I actually kind of like the idea of turning falls after a certain DC into killing damage as a general rule and having falling into 'soft' objects provide you with rPD or rDR over messing with reducing dice. Not sure I'd ever bother with it, but I like it.

Seems like a good time to repeat my Golden Rule of HERO character creation. It's universal - applying to everything from PC and NPC to followers, bases, and vehicles: When the stars align and your shtick goes off exactly as you hoped how much fun is it for everyone else in the game? Golden rule Corollary: The GM counts as being in the game.

I like the scale and I also once pegged 'true' terminal velocity at that same level... but that's kind of where it falls apart, as it make it really hard to kill a normal human (8 body, 2 pd, death at -8 = 18 body needed to kill instantly. Hard to do on 13d6) with a hundreds to thousands of meter fall. It *probably* will take them to negative body and they'll *probably* die shortly without medical attention but that's not an 'accurate' enough resolution to belly flopping naked onto concrete without a parachute from an aircraft, which is closer to the 'triple body confetti' mentioned (which the 30d6 accomplishes). Normal humans should have around 4-5 body, in my opinion, to fit better with the effects low end damage examples in Hero have on them in 'reality'.

That's really what the suggestions boil down to when this question gets asked (which is often). Invisibility with a 'blandness' special effect that doesn't work against magic spells. There are lots of other ways, too, like Mental Illusion damage shield, change environment that reduces peoples perception, etc... but they're all more pricey, harder to design, and accomplish the same thing: a character gets somewhere they're not supposed to be barring certain types of interference. Sometimes it seems we get so many calls for Obfuscate (http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Obfuscate_(VTM)) or Arcane (http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Arcane) that I wonder if someone might want to take a shot at creating it for an official APG.

Dramatic sense, genre convention, and a reluctance to have the opponents use it? Point one and two are fluffy points and subject to opinion (though think of comics - when the the last time you saw everyone in a team fight pile on one guy and completely ignore the other guys shooting at them - seems rather reckless): point three is where the danger lies. It seriously reinforces the need for everyone to be built to the same defense level because if the enemies employee this tactic the character that can get dogpiled is anyones. You, as a player, have to expect that you will be attacked by 2, 3, 4, or 10 to 1. With that in mind you should allocate many of your points to defenses, dcv, recovery, and stun. That leaves you with less points for your actual concept, no matter how you look at it, so the hope is that your concept is 'guy who gets dogpiled' (brick) If you're not the one picked all those points are sitting on your sheet wasted until it's your turn... which means that at least one of your team-mates is down and things are going poorly. The other alternative is that all enemies are idiots who ignore this tactic... they happily get knocked out one by one and leave your team with damage spread all over the place that will quickly be recovered from. It's how it was going to end anyways (the heroes prevail), sure, but by not matching the focus fire tactic they appear to be actively trying to lose. (Amusingly this might force the *players* to be the ones to come up with ways to break up a dogpile and get the foes to attack them instead - which might accomplish the same goal - except players are more likely to just throw a selective AoE Entangle and call it a day before going back to focusing, whereas a GM has to be careful to not make their players dislike the game by doing so constantly)

Another thing I played around with in Superheroic (before settling on 'forget it, first level of a non-combat skill is free. Have at it.*') was having Characteristic Rolls function like the Power skill ... if you want to pick a lock you get a free shot with Dex alone ... but if you find yourself doing it on a regular basis you should buy it. It still ended up being kind of cumbersome but it did work. *I'll admit this was for my own peace of mind as well as for players to fill out their skill list with what they felt were appropriate skills for their character (some have 30 or more, some have 2 or 3) - since nobody paid for Mechanic or Security I don't feel bad about not having them come up on a regular basis. Some skills that one player did spend points for extra levels in come up all the time as a consequence, though.

"I'm going dowwwwwwwwn in a blaze of glory...."

Choosing 'standard effect' on the 1d6 entangle will always give you 1 body at the cost of never getting 2. I always choose 'standard effect' when buying Flashes, Entangles, and even positive adjustment powers whenever possible.

Steve has ruled that the 'Target falls' element uses the 'Throw' rules and quotes a source I don't recognize (HSMA? Hero System Martial Artist?) http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/95990-leg-sweep-target-falls-clarification/ So Aunt May can no longer Leg Sweep the Hulk... let alone Giant Man (or Galactus).

Yeah, for every skill in the game you're better off with Summon in a VPP. 40 Speed Dial: Variable Power Pool, 25 base + 50 control cost, Powers Can Be Changed As A Half-Phase Action (+1/2) (62 Active Points); Limited Power Power loses about half of its effectiveness (Summon Only; -1); all slots IAF (Cell Phone; -1/2) 0 1) Outsource: Summon 200-point 200 point expert, Friendly (+1/4) (50 Active Points); Arrives Under Own Power (-1/2), IAF (Cell Phone; -1/2) Real Cost: 25 Bam. 200 point expert in whatever skill or skills you need for a half-phase action and a power roll You know, as long as the GM doesn't say 'the closest expert of that skill that you know of is in London, England. He'll arrive tomorrow." every single time you use the power. (If so you'll have to ditch the cool 'arrives under own power' limitation and become a necromancer or something who summons ghosts with the skills directly to his location)

Hi Steve, What happens if McDojo (str 10) successfully hits Manument (base str 30 plus the Enormous size template applied due to Growth) with Leg Sweep (3d6+target falls)? As far as I can tell Manument falls (somehow). Barring GM dramatic sense squashing it - is this correct? In more general terms are 'target falls' martial maneouvers governed by the same rules as Throw or Trip or are they unresistable? Thank you