Ockham's Spoon

Re: Grabbing then Calling Shot I think your calculations are basically correct and it is always going to be hard to do a placed head shot on a struggling victim; that might not be wholly realistic but it is good for game balance. To make the neck bite a more viable attack option, you could use penalty skill levels already noted above, and that might be good for the snakes you mentioned if that is their primary form of attack. For vampires, their victims are typically depicted giving up the struggle making it an easy hit. You could simulate that with Mind Control or just a high PRE. You might also just buy the bite to reflect the fact it usually targets the neck. So the basic bite might be 1d6 KA, but then buy +1d6 KA, Must Follow Grab, Full PHA, to reflect the fact hits to the neck do double damage. That way you don't have to mess with hit locations at all - it is just built into the sfx of the power.

Re: Limitation on Recovery for Long Term Endurance I like this idea. Admittedly LTE requires a bit more book-keeping than an END Reserve, but you are right about it being more dramatic for the wizard to become exhausted rather than just run out of spells like an archer runs out of arrows. The latter is a throw-back to D&D of course but most fantasy literature I have read doesn't work magic like that at all, because it isn't as dramatic. The "Spell Capacity" talent is a nice work-around to avoid ridiculously high END wizards. Repped.

Re: Subtle Fantasy A class taught by Ursula K. Le Guin? I don't put much stock in celebrity, but that would have been awesome. The Wizard of Earthsea was the very first fantasy novel I ever read; it set a pretty high bar.

Re: Alignment makes perfect sense

Re: Alignment makes perfect sense Absolutely. And I have had some D&D characters that were great (and some HERO characters that were sadly flat). However, I think the HERO system of Complications generally does a better job of leading players to define their characters, hence my belief that the HERO Complications are an improvement to the Alignment system; you will just have to forgive my earlier hyperbole.

Re: Subtle Fantasy You make a good point. But I have a much better grasp on what technology can and can't do and why. If you don't understand how things work, those questions come up; I answer them for my kids all the time. But Rowling wasn't available to ask how magic was supposed to work, so I am left in the dark. To be fair, a treatise on magic theory would have been difficult if not impossible to work into the story thread, but I suspect it was never as well-defined as the books' plots, even in Rowling's head.

Re: Alignment makes perfect sense

Re: Here be dragons... or Dragon? Ouch! Clever, but ouch!

Re: The Birthday Suit Boogaloo? As I don't imagine this coming up much, I think it would be the GM's call, kind of like how many extra dice a player gets on a PRE attack for a "good" soliloquy. Penalties for embarrassment would probably depend on the psycholocial make-up of both the naked character and the viewers. I wouldn't think they would be terribly significant in any event unless the naked person is fighting a caustic slime monster or something. I think this would also depend a lot on the tone of the game. I mostly I see it being played for laughs, but if this is something like a prison-breakout/torture scene the impact would be different.

Re: Subtle Fantasy Oh, don't get me wrong, Rowling is a gifted author and I certainly enjoyed her books (mostly). But because she never really defined how magic worked I was always left wondering why more problems couldn't be solved with magic.

Re: Subtle Fantasy I enjoy reading all sorts of fantasy, but for RPGs I prefer a low-end fantasy because too much magic tends to send things spiraling out of control. I think high fantasy is harder to run properly too because when magic can do anything, why not use it for everything? I don't mean the character's in particular (though this can be a problem). If you are king and want a new castle, do you hire an army of masons or a wizard with a stone-shaping spell? Why grow crops if magic can supply food? The speed and power of calvary is nothing compared to a fleet of magic carpets or a wizard with a AoE Windwalking spell. When magic reaches this level it fundamentally changes the society. And if it isn't used like that, there better be a good reason why. This was my biggest problem with the Harry Potter books. Why the heck were the Weasley's always harping about how poor they were when they could have just used magic to do whatever they needed? Who needs a house elf when you can wave a wand to accomplish the same task only faster? Maybe J.K. Rowling had some logical magic structure in her head, but to me it seemed pretty random in the books.

Re: Aid vs. Time Limited Bodkins Odds note importantly that for self-buffing buying characterisitcs as powers works well, but Aid has the advantage of being useable on others. The fact that DCV costs double to affect with Adjustment powers does skew some power effects. If you adjust multiple characteristics with an Aid, the RAW state the ratio has to stay the same as when you bought it (unless you put advantages on it). To get around awkward numbers of dice, we house rule that to say that the ratio of the total rolled on the dice has to stay the same, but you only roll one set of dice. So in your case DCV just always gets twice as many points allotted as OCV and DEX. You will want to make sure, of course, that you get a roll of at least 20 (5 to DEX, 5 to OCV, 10 to DCV) or else your OCV and DCV aren't going to benefit.

Re: Alignment makes perfect sense I always figured Alignment was a sort of a way to help a player define the character; a precusor to the vastly superior Psychological Complications in HERO.

Re: Aid vs. Time Limited First, what Xavier said: Time Limit is for 0 END powers. Second, you can't restore lost Characteristics with and Aid; you need Healing for that. An Aid to STR will offset any STR Drains the character has been subjected to, but all the Aid points will fade whether the Drain has run its course or not. Third, you don't have to roll higher than the previous effect to increase the benefit from the Aid (unless you are using the Boost option). For a 2d6 Aid, that means with an average roll of 7 points, you will only need two applications to max out at 12. Of course if you roll poorly it might take several rolls, but odds are you only need to roll twice. If you want predictability, use the Standard Effect rule and you get +6 STR every time you use the Aid. I kind of think that Aid is the "proper" way to build this power, but I admit that building Characteristics as powers is often a simpler route, so if the Time Limit works for you, go for it. The point difference is trivial, so it isn't really breaking anything.

Re: Superpowers and Ethics It is a good starting point, and you cite good examples. But I would suggest that "legal" and "ethical" are two different animals.

Re: Superpowers and Ethics Let me first stay that I pretty much agree with Clonus that Mind Control prevents free will and therefore is generally unethical to use at all, except when stopping criminal behavior, in which case it is just a mental version of using physical force to restrain an individual. In fact for most ethical situations involving Mind Control I think that you can answer the question just by making the physical analogy. But here is where it gets muddy for me. Is it ethical to Mind Control a psychiatric patient to take their meds? You are forcing them to do something against their free-will, but for their own good. This seems particularly relavent in RPGs where many villains are mentally unstable. If the patient is uncontrollably violent without meds, it seems reasonable. But what if the patient is just a kleptomaniac? Or maybe they have a pathological fear of water and so never bathe which leads to them becoming socially ostracized and ultimately homeless? Where do you draw the line and who gets to decide? As Roy points out, grey areas in ethics are often lack of information, which is why we defer to experts in the field in many instances. But that also assumes those experts are ethical themselves. Michael Willrich in his book "Pox, An American History" describes how at the turn of the last century police and health officials rounded up blacks and immigrants by force in order to vaccinate them against small pox, often at gun point. Sure it was for the greater good (and shockingly ham-handed) but was it ethical? Health officials thought so and they were the experts in the field at the time. Would it have been any better if they had had Mind Control available to them?

Re: Free no character point equipment simulating not very powerful powers Since he paid for the Wealth perk, I wouldn't have a problem with him using his teleport to grab stored equipment. But you need to define what constitutes "mundane equipment" and when it crosses the line to "combat affecting power". A torch or lantern? No problem. A pair of handcuffs? Maybe. Bullet-proof vests and sniper rifles? Don't think so. I would suggest you have him write down a list of all the equipment he wants to stash, and then decide what is reasonable and what isn't (this also prevent any arguments mid-game over what he may or may not have in his store room). If he wants the high end-stuff, he is going to have to build a Multipower or VPP for equipment that he has at his beck and call. Until he has the points for that, he is going to be limited to more prosaic equipment.

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition? That is (was) a big problem with COM in my mind. To take an extreme example, lizardmen might have a low COM to a human eye, but they might be quite gorgeous to another lizardman. Who defines beauty? Granted there are usually some societal norms, but those can change significantly between cultures. Throw individual preference into the mix and COM becomes a rather arbitrary stat. That said, I see no problem keeping COM if the players like the flavor, and just granting one level of Striking Appearance for each 3 points spent in it. Or you could define it as a Perk, 1pt = Cute, 2pts = Beautiful/Handsome, 3pts = Striking (and grants 1 level of Striking Appearance), 4pts = Gorgeous, etc. There are no mechanical effects except for multiples of 3, but that isn't so different from having a 14 INT instead of a 13 even though the extra point doesn't give you a bonus to any INT-based rolls. Its just flavor.

Re: Damage Negation: how much?

Re: Icons: The Chrysalis Phase Gradual change is how I would be inclined to do it too, but the thread title made me think they would be emerging from their suits like a butterfly from its chysalis. So what happens to the suits as the wearer absorbs the powers? Do the suits lose power, or can someone else pick them up and start their own transformation?

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition? COM was a sfx: you are good looking. It could function like Striking Appearance as a complimentary roll sort of thing, but then it was acting just like PRE anyway, making it redundant, so dumping COM made sense. But COM is not the same thing as Striking Appearance strictly speaking. I have known people who from a photo you would not describe as exceptionally attractive (average COM), but in person they definitely had Striking Appearance - it was all in the attitude and body language. Conversely, I have also known people who take a great head-shot (high COM), but in person are too aloof or cold to be attractive (no Striking Appearance). In 6e you can still be beautiful (just sfx of your appearance), but not a hottie, or vice versa, or both. That said, if I had been doing the conversions I probably would have granted Striking Appearance to most high COM characters unless they were specifically described as cold fish.

Re: Icons: The Chrysalis Phase So can they buy off the OIHID limitation on one ability at a time, or does it represent a one-shot metamorphosis? Because if it is the latter, you might save some book-keeping headaches by just giving the heroes a lump of XP all at once when you are ready for them to leave the suits behind. That lets the metamorphosis be plot driven instead of accounting driven, which IMO would be good.

Re: Limitations on Combat Skill Levels - same as the attack itself?

Re: Limitations on Combat Skill Levels - same as the attack itself? Yes. What is the point then? Conceptually he doesn't become less skilled because it is dark. This is no different than a sharpshooter who has the same skill with his rifle in air or underwater, even though his rifle won't fire underwater. Practically there are differences too, or at least there can be. Maybe the levels apply to all his ranged attacks and only Photon Blast doesn't work in Darkness. Or as I noted above he might ultimately buy off the limitation on Photon Blast, but then his levels are still useless in the Darkness until he spends points there too. It is a matter of what you want the character to be able to do now vs. later, how you want to spend XP to develop the character, but most importantly why the character is a good shot.

Re: Damage Negation: how much? Hugh is right, it depends on what you want. Damage Negation is better for stopping STN to keep a character from being knocked out but somewhat less effective against BDY, so if you want a character that is tough but not armor plated necessarily Damage Negation is a good pick, e.g. Wolverine would get Damage Negation, Collosus would get high Resistant defenses. As for how much, I think I would base it pretty much on the cost. 30 points will buy you +10 PD/ED Resistant Protection or 3 Levels Physical and Energy Damage Negation, or some combination thereof.