Jhamin

I am running a 6 year old campaign with characters running from 425-450 points. We started at 250. By the time FREd came out we were up to the four hundred teens. Bumping up the average to 350 still left our characters well above average.

The over arching concern with Only in Hero ID is this: Can your enemies or situation prevent you from switching identies? IF they can, you get the limit. If you can change instantly into Hero ID and there is no reasonable way for them to stop you, then it is not worth a limit. It is just a neeto special effect.

I have actually turned the Psychophants from the old "Pyramid in the Sky" adventure module into a third tier race in my games. (poorly named I know...) They are a race of Psychic Vampires that is largely hated and reviled across most of known space, but their entire race lives in multi-kilometer long city ships with their legions of slaves/food stock. They capture PSIs from other races and repeatedly feed off of them until their minds burn out after a few years, then they are used as slave labor. Psychophants don't have borders to defend and can just activate the Fold Engines if they detect a dangerous force appraoching them. They are the vile cockroaches of galactic society. They don't have alot of friends, most races hate them for preying on psychic members of the species, but if you don't have Psi Powers they don't see you as food and are more than willing to sell technology that can't be legally obtained elsewhere or evern repair damage to your ship that looks suspicously like it may have come from galactic patrol weapons.

I got my copy at my FLGS in St. Paul yesterday.

As for horses (how is this for hijacking a tread?) I know that in my neck of the woods, both Minneapolis and St. Paul have horse police. MInneapolis only uses them for parades and such. St. Paul has them out patrolling the streets down town. (or at least they did when I worked downtown 2 years ago)

If the four "big" attacks are all equally common, then a defense that only protects against one would only help you 25% of the time. I would call that a -1.

Having Captain Chronos show up in the year 3000 isn't even a matter of him surviving. He claims to come from several thousand years in the future, so the Galactic Champions period would also be ancient history for him. Perhaps another great chrisis will happen in that time period, forcing his intervention?

Re: Iron Man for Champions I am a HUGE Iron Man fan and I would say this is a freaky good translation of the Iron Man of this era into Hero System. When you are reading these, just bear in mind he has converted the really old school iron man from the sixties & seventies. The alchaholic, frizbee hipped "classic" iron man comes a few years later.

You can also draw on the ever-popular Egyptian theme for cat characters, they are pretty strongly identified: Pharoah - Catman Brick (almost has to be the team leader) Mafdet - Egyptian goddess in panther form. A good stealth/ninja/mystic type. Then there is the everpopular priestess of Bast for your team sorcerer

Mobile: Arrangement means that you can carry the focus around, but is has to be precisely setup to work. Example: a series of power crystals that have to be arranged to form a perfect pentagram before they will open a gate. VictorVon, which Herosystem books are you using? This may help us narrow down where to point you.

Sorry if we are jumping all over you. Most of us GMs have had to train ourselves to spot abusive character writups before they make it into a game. I know this character is setting off my cheeze alarm something fierce. The whole "everything in my body is an IIF because you can diable it" would not fly in 95% of the campaigns I have ever heard of. But that is my problem, not yours. As with all things, if your GM is on board, then all is right with the world. As your GM has expressly told you to do with IIFs then you are by definition in that other 5%. I stated earlier that if a player came to me with an android PC then I would probably have him take a Physical limit to represent being shut down. A character from High Tech enemies is built in exactly this way.

Your campaign may vary, but in most games Electricity is considered a "common" attack. Very common is reserved for things like "hand to hand attacks" or "energy blasts". This would reduce the vulnerabilites values to 20. Now lets get to the real issue. You are buying all of your stats with FOCI? All of them? Is your GM on crack? Sorry, I know it's only what you were told to do, but this sets off my cheeze alarm something fierce. If somebody steals my arm I'm not as strong? Duh. By that argument can I get a limit on my str that reflects that if I don't work out all the time I'm not as strong? IMO this is better represented with a physical limit along the lines of "modular body can be disassembeled (Infreq, Total)".

Well... First off, you can only put powers that cost END into an EC without special permission, so STR might be OK, but the Con and defences would be illegal. Secondly, if you put stats into an Elemental control then they don't affect Figured characteristics. That tends to dull the point savings by quite a bit.

Re: Strike Force Strike Force is rapidly approaching "Holy Grail" status for alot of Hero Games fans. If you were playing when it came out or found it used somewhere it is a treasured part of your collection. But good luck finding it. I know I have been searching for about 6 years.

I've heard both terms used interchangeably.

Ah, but the trigger was set to "when he is below 0" so there was never actually a phase when he was down before it went off. I ended up with villains firing off stupendous coordinated attacks several phases in a row to max out his aid while preventing him from recovering before they could bring him down.

I would be one of those. The Mutant Files is a weird book, but that was probably inevitable. It is very much a Champions version of the X-Men circa 1990. Lots of angst, conspiracies that go to the very top of the government, and power levels that would make most GMs blanch. Ever notice how an individual X-man would go to town on a horde of guys that the entire Fantastic Four would consider nasty? That is what The Mutant Underground can do to guys the 4th Ed Champions would find challenging. European Enemies, was just sad. Not a lot of imagination. Lots of national stereotypes, and some serious math and rules errors. Hard to defend as a good product. I will not try. High-Tech enemies was half great. It had a couple of great "theme" mercenary teams that could hold their own with the player characters in a fight and even be used as central villains. It had a pretty decent cyborg team that can be a great moral counterpoint to the "tech is the way" attitude some gadgeteers have. (Cy-Force really makes more sense if the Cyberknights from Allies are NPCs, the best part of that book IMHO). It had a moderate (and superfluous) master villain. The book also had a realllly lame set of space aliens (how are they high tech again?) and one of the worst Matilda May characters I have seen in a gaming supplement. I have used characters from Mutant Files & High-Tech extensively in my game. The teams had relationships that went beyond "A likes B but distrusts C" and connections into the larger world. It was easier to see them as part of a larger superhuman community than it was for characters from alot of the other enemies books. I also likes how strong the concepts and themes of the characters were. I think High Tech enemies still boasts the only super villian team that actually looks like a team. (The Deconstruction Company, anybody know if there character art was ever made avalible anywhere?) To be honest, I was suprised to find out how many detractors these two books had.

That's what his claws were for. Did I mention I came to hate this character?

I'm not trying to be short, but it seems like some things need to be said. First off, I wouldn't put that kind of faith in Herodesigner. It applies the rules, but doesn't arbitrate them. There are still "best practices" to be followed. Heck, even CKC has several villians with powers bought in a way that need GM permission to be legal. Secondly, I don't know how much more we can help. The way most Hero Players I know would do this is with a VPP, this is precicely what VPPs are for. The advantage you are trying to simulate didn't make it into the last edition of Hero system. let alone the current one. It has basically been out of the game for at least 14 years. This advantage gave you a lot of utility for very little cost and (i suspect) was removed for that reason. Simulating it in 5th will either be expensive or require house rules. That being said, either go with a bunch of Naked advantages (a multipower is probably pushing in IMHO) or Variable Advantage with limits. It won't be perfect but it will be as close as you are going to get.

Don't most powers come with that by default?

Yes, "only" 24 stun. That was one of the ways he convinced me. Problem was this character had a huge recovery & Ok defences & damage reduction. The bad guys were luck to knock him down to negative stun at all. Once they did, he popped right back up & usally took a recovery. In play the effect was that he got close to a full recovery as soon as he went below 0 stun, no matter how far down he was or when his next action was. It wasn't so much that you couldn't put him down, it was that he wouldn't stay down. Ever.

I had a player with a Werewolf character. His schtick was that he worked like the movie were wolves that ignored most of what wasn't silver and could keep getting back up. Among his other powers, he had a 4d6 aid to Stun with a Trigger set to go off when he was knocked below zero stun. I came to hate that charcter.

This is a dangerous path to tread. Especially if you are buying a way to regen stun when you are in GM discr land. Some plots just require that the PCs go down from time to time. If your PC never does then the GM can never use those plots or the bad guys will be forced to just kill the PC. I had a player with a power similar to this, and Aid to Stun that was triggered when he went unconscious. It was ugly. Hmm. Where was that thread about powers that should never have been approved......?

FREd actually says that you need fine manipulation before you can use maneuvers. So this isn't even a "some GMs" thing, it is in the system. And Agent X, the Damage classes are exactly what has me worried. The character isn't finished yet so we will see how he comes out. I keep reminding myself that martial maneuvers are supposed to be able to work with advantages like Armor Piercing, so TK with maneuvers probably isn't that bad. I also remember seeing find weakness on Ironclad for the first time and nearly spitting up my Diet Coke. Just cause it's scary doesn't mean a superhero can't have it. After all, what GM let Spider Man's player buy a power that makes sure he will never be suprised or blindsided? This player is catching me while I am in an expansive mood, so we will see how it goes.

I suspect that you are going to have to wait until the third Matrix movie comes out in November for the RPG to come out. If the third one was anything like the second I suspect that alot of our notions about how things work will be upended and lots of new factions will emerge.