Ockham's Spoon

Re: I Spent the Last 5 Minutes Defusing WHAT?! A bomb is a bomb. One kills, the other blinds, but they all look pretty much the same on the outside. If you want to give the PCs a chance to figure out which is which, do a PER vs. Concealment roll or something similar and save yourself the headache of all that extra power write-up.

Re: Open ended damage Based on the White-Wolf system (which I have never played but I get the gist from your post) here is an idea for you, more for inspiration than anything because I haven't thought through all the ramifications but maybe they will get you closer to the feel of the WW system without running into the problems of open-ended damage. As pointed out, against an unarmored opponent even a relative small attack can be pretty vicious, but almost everyone has armor which can seriously blunt the effect of many attacks. In most of the games I have played in we assume armor covers everything, which is unrealistic except maybe for stone golems and such, but it makes life easier. For people who want the granularity of sectional armor, you can use hit locations, but you have already stated you don't like those. So instead, mandate that all armor has an activation roll (run-of-the-mill infantry might only have it on 11-, while full plate mail might be 16- or whatever). But now let players use skill levels to drop the activation roll if they want instead of increasing their chance to hit directly. You can also rule that for every 2 or 3 points a To-Hit roll is made by, the armor activation drops by one. Then let players buy defensive skill levels to raise their own armor activation roll. This will mean PCs and master villains won't be getting one-shotted so much, but lower level grunts and some big bruisers can be eliminated with a good hit. It seems to me that DCV should somehow factor into this style of armor activation; maybe the activation is based on a DEX roll or a "DCV" roll - might need to give that some thought. Alternatively (if you don't mind rolling more dice) you can make two attack rolls, one to see if the blow hit and a second as a To-Hit vs. Armor Activation roll, like a "Skill vs. Skill" roll; if the To-Hit roll wins then then armor doesn't activate (or maybe the attack becomes Armor Piercing and the armor isn't completely bypassed unless the To-Hit roll wins by 3 or more). The players can use skill levels for either hit roll, but not both at the same time. Both of these methods are still going to end up placing a high value on OCV, DCV and combat skill levels but not in a way that will penalize the PCs too much. And if it becomes too unbalancing, you can just increase the base activation roll for most armor so that bypassing defenses becomes a less likely event.

Re: Undead Labor: why not? Honestly I think most people would have trouble getting over the ick factor of having dead things working for you, even if they weren't related to you in any way. Most people instinctively shy away from dead stuff, and magically animated dead stuff would just be that much creepier. There is a reason necromancy is by default considered evil. You might be able to make a good case for dangerous jobs where they are out of sight (mining, sewer cleaning, etc.), but consider also how much blue-collar workers love getting replace by robots. At least robots are efficient and technologically cool, where as undead are less skilled and repugnant. I think it would take a lot of coercing to get people to accept undead labor.

Re: Need help with race names The problem with naming them with their own language is that it will be difficult to pronounce or represent with a Latin alphabet. Consider the city of Beijing, which used to be known as Peking, but neither of those names are phonetically quite right because our alphabet isn't equipped to handle the true pronunciation. So in the end the name is going to be corrupted one way or another, either because "English" speakers have their own terms for the cat people or because they just can't pronounce it right. Far from being a problem, this should give you justification for calling them almost anything that makes sense to you. If you like the Latin sounding names, consider that the cat people might have kept them, the same way Americans took Uncle Sam and turned him from a joke into a national icon. Sometimes people take pride in how far they have come or want a reminder of the way things were before so they don't let it happen again. If that is the case, the cat people may have adopted their "original" names as both a mnemonic and as a way to thumb their noses at their oppressors.

Re: Open ended damage I will throw out some house rules I have used to good effect for a while just in case they appeal to you. First, any To-Hit roll made by under half lets the player roll twice for damage, taking the better of the two rolls. Players like this because a solid hit tends to have better damage. As GM I like it because it mostly affects low DCV mooks, which makes things more cinematic as the low-level thugs get cleared out more easily but the heroes and master villains are less affected. In a superheroic game, this tends to penalize low-DCV bricks though, so be warned. Second, any natural roll of 3 is max damage. For what you are trying to model, you might make a roll of 3 an instant kill. Third, any To-Hit roll made by +12 or more is max damage (or instant kill depending on the circumstances), the rationale being that a -12 penalty is what it would take to hit someone in the eye with a knife, not unlike your example of the throat-slitting. It doesn't happen very often so it isn't unbalancing, but it has added some nice color to the combats.

Re: Custom Limitation I might allow a -¼ limitation for this, but the description of the power sounds like the player wants the limitation to save points, not because it inherently represents how the power really works, so before I would give any limitation the player would have to be able to explain to me why the mentalist can Transfer high EGOs but not low ones.

Re: A specific spell system... If I were to model this, I would keep it as simple as possible. First, have everyone power their spells with an END Reserve. The REC on the Reserve is dependent on the amount of plant life in the area. For "presevers", that REC is fairly small. For "defilers" that REC is large, but it must be activated and it has a Side Effect: Change Environment to kill surrounding plant life (you might have to play with the AoE on this to get the right feel). The real cost for the REC on each time of magic will likely be similar since the defilers get the Side Effect limitation, but you could adjust that as you see fit.

Re: Autofire Blocking Good point on the PSLs; thanks for the input. Well I just got 6E Martial Arts Handbook, and the rules for making an Autofire Block are right in there. In fact it gives cost basis for all combat manuevers you might want to put naked advantages on. And you do have to buy the naked advantage separately for each manuever you want to use it with. So I will probably go with that. Although if the player wants to buy CSL's for to represent autofire blocking, I'd let him.

I just wanted to get some input on how others would handle this situation: I have a player with a speedster martial artist who started with an Autofire as a naked advantage for his Martial Strike. The Martial Strike with STR and extra DC and such is 8d6, so the 5 shot Autofire (+½) has a real cost of 20 points. So good so far. In combat the speedster was fighting a swarm of foes and decided to block. Now the player contends “Hey if I can Autofire punch, I should be able to Autofire block too, so that there aren’t any cumulative blocking penalties for the first 5 blocks.” Now that has a certain logic to it, and I don’t deny that the character should be able to perform such an action conceptually, but the question is how to pay for it. For the sake of game play I let it slide, although I made him pay END on his STR for it since he had to move so quickly to perform the maneuver (he didn’t have a Power Skill like Speedster Tricks, which in retrospect would have been a good idea). But for future applications of this ability I want it priced fairly, so how would you do it? Does having Autofire that covers your STR justify Autofire Blocking? Would you make the character pay END for it even though Blocking is doesn’t normally cost END? Should the Autofire be purchased with an advantage allowing use with multiple maneuvers? Or perhaps a Multipower with naked Autofire slots for different maneuvers? How would you price a Block for a naked Advantage? Should the speedster just buy PSL to offset cumulative blocking penalties? And now just to make things more complicated, suppose the speedster had a naked Selective AoE advantage for his Martial Strike instead. How would you handle an AoE block?

Re: 5th Ed Paratwa I'm not familiar with the source material, but if I understand correctly I agree with AmadanNaBriona and would go with Duplication that can't recombine. Add a Mind Link between the duplicates since one mind controls both. Then you can add a Limitation to the Duplication (or maybe a Complication to the character) that mental attacks against either body affect both bodies. You don't need a third "mind" entity unless the mind can exist independently of the bodies.

Re: Things I May Have Forgotten The "easier to perceive" = "easier to hit" I think applies to laser-guided missiles, because the missile is designed to lock onto the laser signature. It does not make the target easier to hit in melee or with other ranged weapons not designed to home in on the laser spot. This is of course different from a targeting laser on a gun, which just indicates to the shooter that the gun is pointing in the right direction and offers no bonus to anyone else. For a farie fire spell, its magic so you can have it do whatever the heck you want with minimal rationale. If you want the spell to give a bonus to PER and to attacker OCV and attract insect swarms and make the target float off the ground, etc, then build it that way, but they are all independent effects related only superficially by sfx.

Re: Remote control vehicles? I didn't think Summon could be used to get a specific individual (or vehicle in this case); has that changed? The Computer with a program (Proceed to Batman's coordinates) seems like the best option to me. That said, if a player really wanted to use a Summon for this I would probably allow it.

Re: Making Screaming Skulls I think Arc Esu has the right idea. Make the sfx work for you here and just build it as a Blast with a few bells and whistles.

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Voidwalker is great; it conveys the emptiness of his form while maintaining enough detail to keep him from looking flat. Excellent work. I am surprised the monitors made such a difference. I prefer the deeper colors of the second in each pair, although I lose a little of the detail in the second thief pic as though the brightness setting on my monitor is a little too low (both pictures are terrific btw). The first pic in each pair looks slightly faded or washed out by comparison.

Re: Things I May Have Forgotten Both Kraven Kor and Doc Democracy have a better way to model the DCV penalty than my Growth build, but you might want to add Images to reflect the bonus to PER rolls against the target if that is an important aspect of the power. Or maybe the GM can just say that any power costing END is visible, so the bonus to PER is just a given.

Re: Things I May Have Forgotten There is probably an better way than this, but it suddenly hit me so here is is: Laser Spotting: 25pts Growth, 0 END, Useable As Attack(+1), Ranged, Only for purposes of applying PER and DCV penalties (-2). Net effect: -2 DCV, +2 for PER against target. Real cost: 25. I'm not sure I have the UAA value right under 6e, but something like that. If you wanted a Farie Fire or phosphorus attack that was fire and forget, then you could make it continuing charges instead.

Re: Anyone using 1 pt per Dex in 6E? I would say that the price for various CHA might not be quite right, but I wouldn't say anything is broken. Besides which I think it depends on to some extent what genre you are playing (and who you are playing with). I have had fantasy games where STR was 2:1 and that worked just fine, but building the Hulk with STR priced like that would be somewhat punitive. The argument for decoupling skills from CHA altogether does have some logical basis. But for my tastes it makes good "game sense" that your really smart character is just inherently good at INT-based skills or that your high DEX guy masters agility skills easily. In the real world practice is almost always more important than innate ability, but cinematically heroes are just good.

Re: Mad Skills I don't see why you couldn't use the Skill vs Skill roll as is and assign the cliff you want to climb a "skill" roll if you like that flavor, or pre-assign it a RSV value. But that is just a slightly different way of saying "No hand-holds in this cliff, so it is -3 to any Climbing roll". To me it is similar to the difference of computing whether someone hits in combat as OCV+11-DCV = To Hit Roll or doing it as OCV+11-Dice Roll = DCV you can hit; both work it just depends on which you like better. The "damage" for skills is an interesting concept, and I can see application especially where it may take a while to puzzle a problem out or slowly convince a person of your position or something. But I think it would just be extra paperwork. It would be easier to say "To complete this task you must make 3 successful skill rolls, the first at -2, the second and third at +1" or whatever.

Re: (5E) Origami summon build Summon is good if these constructs are supposed to stick around a while, otherwise the Multipower with slots for specific effects is the way to go as mentioned above. If you do keep a Summon ability, I would suggest modelling the summoned creature as a regular animal (from the Bestiary) with Automaton powers tacked on (you might have to adjust defenses). That will keep the creature from being too powerful and save you from having to write up lots of summoned creature stats. Finally, if you have a copy of the Bestiary, you might check out the paper golem, which is an origami automaton that might be appropriate.

Re: The Scaling of Damage Reduct Nice idea for incremental Damage Reduction, but I think that The Main Man makes a good point that for "low level" DR, it is probably easier to model it with Damage Negation. The only problem there is if you really intend to buy full DR at some point, in which case switching the mechanics between the two might cause some continuity problems since they differ in subtle ways like how they handle Knockback and whether they are affected by Negation Reduction.

Re: Looking for suggestions: 600 point 6E Champs, new story arc: Ancient Astronauts Well since you opened up the whole religion can of worms... Nowadays lots of people have pretty amazing belief in God (Allah, Jehovah, whatever) based on pretty scanty direct evidence (guess that's why they call it faith). If I were an alien being wanting to be worshiped, I would start performing miracles left and right, but only to benefit my "followers". Now lots of people would still see these aliens as invading and enslaving the planet, but there would be plenty who would see them as saviors and "true" gods and hence be loyal converts (and remember converts tend to be the most zealous of people). So now ask yourself, if you become a loyal follower of Shiva and the gang, and Shiva cures your cancer for you and maybe gives you superpowers to boot, are you wrong to worship him? If your soul gets assimulated into Shiva when you die, isn't that a kind of eternal life with your god? Can the heroes fight Shiva's followers without being accused of religious bigotry? What does it mean to be a god, and what are the rights and obligations of any given deity? Do modern gods compare to Shiva either in spirituality or efficacy? If modern human religious are so great, how come there is so much suffering in the world? The comparison is pretty stark and interesting to ponder. This could make for some interesting role-playing, but if it muddies the water too much you need to make sure you have some strong evidence that the aliens are truly scum that are just using humans for their own twisted ends.

Re: Gravity power If this only affects the character with the power, then buy it as Flight, Only to simulate gravity field (-¼). Very similar to Only on a Surface, but it lets you jump and such without restriction, although doesn't let you walk on water.

Re: Rocky's One-Hit-KO Punch GAZZA you are so on the money there; the big guns always come out first. The problem is that it doesn't cost much more to use the big guns than the small ones. The solution is to put limits on it (extra END, charges, Concentration, Side Effects, etc.) so that it does not behoove the character to use his megablast or whatever at the drop of a hat. The idea of "only useable when STUN is less than 10" seems a bit artificial to me; other Limitations could dissuade use without being quite so arbitrary. Consider the Haymaker; the extra 4 DC is great, but it comes with some serious drawbacks so you don't usually open a fight with it. Model the "last ditch" powers like that so that the player isn't likely to use it unless there are no other options.

Re: Rocky's One-Hit-KO Punch

Re: What support DNPCs do GMs make for their games?