Kevin Schultz

Re: Point Efficiency vs. Concept IIF can also be considered "really hard to figure out". For example, a traditional OIF battlesuit can be removed from a character in 1 Turn, assuming the PC is unconcious; appearently, the emergency release mechanism is located where anyone can see it. In contrast, anyone wanting to remove someone from an IIF battlesuit would have to make a relevent skill roll to figure out how to get them out; probably Mechanics or PS: Battlesuit Design. Alternately, the circumstance needed to identify the focus would be "extra time", as it takes extra time to undo all the latches. As such, Tony Stark's suit is probably IIF, rather than OIF - threre's no big red "EMERGENCY RELEASE" button on his back, after all.

Re: Point Efficiency vs. Concept Which probably falls into the "It wouldn't help against things I regularly expect to get hit with" argument, which seems fine if you don't have an abstract and linear PD/ED game mechanic to deal with. (kevlar really wouldn't help all that much if you if you got hit by a 8-ton bank vault door, but in HERO it would.) So I suppose for some characters it's an issue of game mechanics being a bit too good for some things.

Re: Point Efficiency vs. Concept Assuming you take Breakable as an aspect on the Focus, sure. That's by no means required. (I mainly design 'em as IIF, as most costumes that would provide enough coverage are essentially bodysuits, and thus impossible to get someone out of without SERIOUS effort.). To get around the "hey, it's real! It should shred!", I'd say that it shreds for dramatic pruposes (and maybe you need to make armory rolls afterwards to keep it in good condition), but doesn't loose essential protective purposes. So, yes. I'm arguing both sides of the coin: kevlar is common enough that I feel most modern characters would have to justify NOT having it, but I don't feel the need to have it be particularly REALISTIC kevlar; cinematic versilimitude is just fine for me. EDIT - also, if your average attadk is 12d6, you could probably justify wearing the DEF 14 version of kevlar; I was using the less-defensive version (without ceramic inserts) as a way to avoid hitting the campaign caps. The campaigns I'm currently in have an average attack of 8d6. (40 active)

Re: Point Efficiency vs. Concept I'd argue that it's not in genre, because the genre started with people like Superman, who get hit with #7 - they really don't need it and/or it won't work for them due to the power of what they're getting hit with. Alternately, you have people like Batman, who originally probably had #1 (too agile) going for him, but current versions of him DO wear kevlar. EDIT - and due to the fact that the genre elements were invented when decent modern body armor didn't really exist. That's kind of like arguing that superheroes shouldn't use cellphones because it's not in genre for them to either. In context, I believe at least one version of the X-men uniforms were kevlar-lined; at the least, I believe unstable molecular fabric is more durable than (say) cotton. In that sense, it's another way, in addition to combat luck, to justify not having your one-trick pony get one-shotted.

Re: Point Efficiency vs. Concept Re: the suit and the power - I usually design most of my characters like this, actually; I like to have 'layered' offense and defenses, as most of my characters don't just start out freshly mutated (or whatever). They usually have a year or two worth of experience before they start fighting crime. Thus, rather than a "why are you wearing armor", it's usually "why AREN'T you wearing armor?" Really. Most bricks in the 40+ range could easily jack their rPD/rED up by at least 10 by wearing a simple breatplate; or, they could go online and buy a suit of kevlar+inserts for a couple hundred bucks, and increase it by 14. Don't carry a gun? Well, you've got a CvK. Totally understandable. But you aren't wearing armor? What, do you have a CvA, or something? Reasons I can personally see for not wearing armor: 1. Powers prevent it - you've got an energy field or something around your body that prevents it. Optionally, if you're a high DEX-based character, it could reasonably constrict you. 2. You're too poor - Fine if you've got the disadvantage, of course. Kevlar does cost a couple of hundred bucks. 3. Body type too strange - you're a giant lizard or something, and no one makes it in your size. 4. Secret ID prevents it - fine for a completely reactive hero, who only responds to crime if they come across it in daily life; but for someone who pro-actively seeks out crime, having a decent suit of kevlar-lined spandex is a wise investment. 5. Bad for your image, 'cuz it looks tacky - well, ok, I suppose this would work for someone who is completely narcisistic... 6. Utter confidence in your defensive powers - aka "I don't need it". Which is fine until someone comes along and blasts you, at which point the character (probably) would realize that they DO need it. But if you designed your character at or near the campaign caps, you're stuck with finding a reaons not to put on armor. 7. It doesn't work for me - I suppose a reasonable justification for some types of defensive power is assuming that if you've already got a PD/ED of 20, then you're already harder than steel; slapping on a layer of kevlar really won't do much good for what people are shooting at you with. My own assumption is that, at the least, most superheroes have access to rPD8/rED8 kevlar-lined spandex, and design characters on that assumption to avoid hitting campaign caps.

Re: WWYD if you could recieve ONE super power Required rule-breaker response: Physical transformation: Anything into Anything Else. 2nd required rule-breaker response: cosmic VPP semi-serious response: yeah, probably complete life support (Inherant not being really required, so you could turn it off anytime you wanted.)

Re: Populations and Genetics At some point, I'd say that, assuming there is a genetic basis for superhuman powers, within the next 200 years, the worldview of Transhuman Space starts coming into play - genetic modification to one's offspring become commonplace, so the fact that some supers are immortal aren't that big a deal compared to the hundreds of thousands of people who are immortal via 'normal' science (if only reproducing the immoratlity aspect of a posthuman).

Re: Quick Question about Karate Sticks Further note (from someone who studied it for a year or so) - the stick is usually considered a training weapon, or something used because you don't have your sword/machete handy; the common side-weapon is the dagger, which was common enough to be considered a tool and thus not really legally prohibited. How does Nightwing grip his sticks, anyway? I was taught there were basically 3 schools of thought on it - gripping it at the base, one fist up, or 2 fists up. The last one was considered rare and not often used, but some styles justified it by doing a lot of what we would consider pommel-strikes.

Re: The First Static was originally a part of the Milestone universe, which was a comic book company that published through DC - it was originally created with minority viewership in mind. (I really liked some of the Milestone series - Xombi was the one I collected.) It was originally not part of the DC universe.

Re: WWYYCD: The Rally Jake the Troll is, as a troll, vaugely nordic; however, he's also fairly heavily Catholic, and as such finds stuff like this pretty darned disgusting. The good part of that is that the Klan tends to be extremely conservative protestant, and as such they'd consider him to be in line with the Whore of Babylon. Note that Jake is also, technically speaking, neither human nor white. He's also 16. Thus, they wouldn't probably ask him. Assuming his parents even let him NEAR the rally, he would sit in the front, directly in front of a klansman, and MOCK them for hours on end, up to and including pretending to be flamingly gay in order to critique their wardrobe. If it was during the day, he wouldn't go. His main form that doesn't turn to stone in sunlight appears to be an extremely attractive woman of norse decent. He doesn't want to be in anyone's naughty Aryan dreams that night. Shinji Miromoto is a foreign national living illeaglly in the US. He's prime KKK target material, and definately wouldn't be asked. If he knew such a rally was going to be in the city? He'd avoid it.

Re: WWYCD: Registration I'm guessing the points are as follows: There are already NPC heroes/villians in many people's games that could do the system hacking, right now, without any additional tweaking by the GM. Further, even using the point system as an EXTREMELY rough guideline to how common a power is, the ability to superbly hack a database is much more common than Tako's ability to melt you with his brain. (or whatever the world-ending power de jour is.) In the superhero genre, the government has already shown itself incapable of actually dealing with metahuman threats effectively. The governement has shown that it is not the most sophisticated purveyor of technology in the world - such agencencies tend to be private citizens and/or despots who control nation-states. Combining those four points, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the government will not be able to successfully deal with the (say) 10-15 cyberempaths, superhackers, techno-shammans, rogue AI's, or alien intelligences capable of waltzing through the database any time they choose. Yes, this is essentially the GM's call. But it's also the GM's call to maintain backstory continuity. And introducing a plot point like registration, although intresting enough, in many gameworlds simply wouldn't work without significantly revamping a good chunk of the story elements that made up that world. Now, if a GM started out a game world with this alrady in place, with the government in firm control of technologies that would prevent such a hacking and/or such powers don't actually exist and/or the government has reproducable, in expensive Iron Man-like technolgies to play with, then sure. But dumping such a registration act on a running campaign set in a traditional comic book universe will, IMO, garner the response that you're seeing here.

Re: Black Mask Side Effect: Noticible Feature: Mask Motiff (can't be hidden, obseravable using simple Deduction skill roll) on a 5-point group of skill levels (Master Villian skills) Thus, all of his capers planned using those skills will have some sort of Mask motiff, thus identifying him to anyone who can perform the simple Deduction skill roll.

Re: WWYCD: Registration RE: database security - one simple test of the security would be to simply put a unique set of placeholder information in it, and have heroic cyberempaths attempt to gain access to it. Assuming there is at who is on par with the villianous ones, it would be a fairly simple test to set up. It's probably go somethign like this: DESIGNERS "OK, we've got the CyberShamman here. By his own admission and by evidence docuemented by PRIMUS, he is actually less capable of system penetration than LAZARUS-5, our current benchmark of cybernetic villiany. He's been given permission to try to hack our test server, which we've opened up on a secure network." In all likelihood, they'd just ream through any traditional security in existence. The only way to keep it secure from this kind of stuff would be to have what amounts to NetRunners or AI's, monitoring the data in cyber-time. EDIT - and, even assuming you COULD get a database that was secure against all known types of cyberempaths and/or AI's, at this point you've got technology that can meaningfully shut down a magic or psychic super. Which is fine, but that means that you're drifting fairly far off of superhero land, and much more into sci-fi/ShadowRun v2.0 territory.

Re: WWYCD: Registration

Re: Sentinel Robots Yeah, but they're NPC's - ultimately, going through the exercise of writing one of 'em up is really just to get the numbers for how much damage they do, how hard they are to hit, and (roughly) how much of a challenge they pose to a group.

Re: Creating a prophecy My personal favorite thing? Call it something gibberish (ie, using an ancient/fictional language) that translates into "Nameless" or "that which is unnamed". Not because of anything particularly nasty about it, but because no one actually thought to name it before they had to start talking about it. Kind of like an ancient code word for a beta product before it gets released, only the marketing department couldn't think of anything better... Kevin "Vista sounds fine, don't you think?" Schultz

Re: WWYCD: Registration Sounds like a move from Silver Age to Bronze or early Iron. As such, the response isn't really dependent on the character, but rather the player's response based what sub-genre the character is designed for.

Re: Cops, what would it take to run? I think the issue is that many players don't design their characters with the idea of needing innate strength of will and discipline. My (somewhat snarky) suggestion? Beat them over the head with low-level presence attacks until they buy up their defensive presence. As I consider this in-genre, pretty much every character I design has something along the lines of the following: Heroic Will +10 PRE (Defensive Only, nonpersistant, linked) +5 Mental Defense (non-persistant, does not grant mental awareness, linked) +5 Power Defense (non-persistant, linked) Otherwise, exactally what you're trying to avoid occurs - something scary happens, and immideatly all the PC's run away. Which, obviously, isn't very heroic.

Re: WWYCD: Mirror Universe Jake the Troll - gets a laywer and tuns himself in. Assuming some sort of bonded telepath organization exists (ie, laywer telepaths who can read your mind and verify that what you're saying is the truth), then he'd get that org to help him out. Shimji Miromoto - his own evil twin would probably be someone 'raised on the side of truth and justice' who is now working for the side of evil, but only just barely. As such, there really wouldn't be much difference between the two of 'em; light grey vs. dark grey, as it were. He actually DOES have the skill to build such a device, but definately not the resources. The bonded telepath solution for Jake wouldn't work, as Shinji's mind is poisonous to other telepaths; so, he'd probably make the best of things, set up some sort of vigilante organization, and over time build up the money and resources to build the portal. The only worrysome point is if he knows that his evil twiin is on the other side; however, even that isn't all that big a deal, as he knows the likely outcome of such activities, and they really aren't all that evil.

Re: New Weather Character: Ideas Please Another option is to go the other route with limitations, and have the "Only in extreme weather (-1) limitation on many of them. However, that might make your character uber in their environment, and useless outside of it. Hm...other thoughts: 1. Predict Weather (Clairivoyance, Precognotion, To predict the weather only -2) 2. Weather Omens (Clairivoyance, Precognotion, RSR [Augury]) 3. Weather Sense (Detect Large Class of things [Weather], AoE Megascale, Sense, Analyze, Descriminatory) 4. Rain of Frogs/Fish (Transformation - Target into Target with Wierdness Magnet) 5. Blessing of Rain (Aid, BODY/CON/STR, plants and crops only, Extended Duration (1 growing season), AoE Megascale)

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Welcome to the Jungle - Guns and Roses

Re: I need a function! The Key of Grobach is a reference to a style of non-eucledian music used by Deep One cults to summon their moist lords to the surface. Anyone hearing a song written in the Key of Grobach must make an EGO roll or loose 1d3 SAN points, and be made permanently tone deaf. Next: The Bridge Under Troubled Waters

Re: Real-world artifact suitable for gaming In other words, it was someone's doodle book.

Re: The Last Word Factoid - called so because it was thought to be unlucky, and would curse the theater that was putting it on. However, that's a cart-before-the-horse observation. In fact, Macbeth is one of the more popular plays. Therefore, if a theater puts it on, they're likely to make money. However, you don't want to put it on too often, or else you'll loose the appeal. Therefore, you only put it on when you NEED to make money - ie, when your troop is in debt and needs some cash. However, if your troop is in debt and needs cash, that means other things are likely to go wrong - sets break due to lack of maintenence, people quit because they haven't been paid, the water gets shut off, etc. So, really, it's the other way around - things are about to get unlucky, so you put on Macbeth. Kevin "This factoid brought to you by my friend Kerry, who is a 3rd generation theater lighting technician" Schultz

Re: Best Superhero Magic Supplement GURPS: Religion is also very nice, but mainly from a world-building perspective. Kevin "Prayer is what we do: magic is what they do" Schultz