Christopher R Taylor

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I realized that such people are approaching the story from the perspective of a gamer. I.e. "If I was playing this character, what would I do to win? What are the gaps in the plot, the tricks of the system that I can exploit so my Player Character comes out on top?" Which if carried through to the entertainment they're participating in, would result in a very brief, dull and uninteresting story. 

It could be.  But its hardly unreasonable to expect a character who could fly in Issue 17 to fly again in issue 18 when they encounter traps on the ground.  If this causes the story not to work, that's not because of unrealistic expectations of a reader, but poor writing on the part of the comic book.  Things have changed quite a bit, I agree.  Back in the Silver Age, readers were less interested in continuity than gee whiz fun.  Today, people have read, and played games, and talked about it and won't put up with what readers used to.

But I don't really call that a problem for anyone but lazy and unimaginative writers.

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Not sure I ever finished it, as we're talking 5 or 6 character sheets. 

Yeah he had 6 character sheets: one for each element and one for his normal form which was sort of a ninja.  Unfortunately because of the way multiform worked in 5th edition (and as far as I know still today) basically he ended up with 6 different characters all of whom are weaker than every other character in the game for the dubious advantage of variety.  And since he had no control over which element he'd show up as, the advantage was even more questionable.

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Frankly, Vlassic Traveller is our preferred system for westerns for pretty much this reason.

Mmm pickles.  Seroiusly though, some systems do lend themselves to more lethal combat than others, although if you use the optional rules for hero like hit locations, disabling, impairing, bleeding, etc its quite lethal as well.  Particularly given the lack of resistant defenses (unless you're Clint Eastwood in A Few Dollars More) and mortal level stats.

yeah the translation thing... they kind of did it to themselves, I don't blame companies for not wanting to trust them to handle their product.  AI is not going to be as good as a quality, talented translator but it can be at least as good as these guys changing the words for their own agenda.

The What If comics were driven by readers, mostly.  People who wrote letters or talked to writers.  They asked you "know, what if..." and then Marvel would make it happen.  Sometimes the fans were the writers, who came up with their What If scenarios.  Stuff like "what if Annihilus killed Sue Storm?  (hint: never make Reed that angry).  None of the What If TV shows really seem to be that kind of story.

yeah I had a player build a guy who couldn't die and had takes no stun.  He regenerated and was impossible to hurt.  But, that was so expensive that he didn't have a lot else going on, he was just unkillable.  He couldn't break out of entangles, he couldn't see if he was flashed, if he was knocked back too far, he took forever to get back into the fight.  It worked.  I mean he ended up in lava once and got hit by a truck because I never had to hold back on him, but that was just part of the schtick.

For me as a GM, those kind of characters are what makes me interested and try to build something great for them.  The multiform guy who turned into Chinese elements.  The mentalist who could grant other people mental defense.  It gives me a challenge to come up with interesting scenarios that give those players something to deal with.

From what I've seen, Orm look a lot more like Aquaman than Jason Mamoa.  Its too bad they didn't trust the character enough to go with the comic book version.

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In the HERO System Advanced Players Guide 2 there exists a specific Extradimensional Space power.  If you already have the APG2 I'd recommend that power.

 

It does not say so but the description of Extradimensional Space implies that its for items, and the user cannot climb inside.  But again, the rules do not explicitly state that.  I think this never made it into the main rules because its a unitasker: its a power with only one real utility, like Instachange.  At least, I cannot think of any use for the power other than "allows you to store things without weight." 

The rules strongly suggest it be attached to a focus (like a sack or a folding framework, etc).  There are no rules for putting other people into the space, or using it on yourself, or how you can get out again.    The closest that comes is this section:

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The GM defines the nature of extradimensional space for his campaign. This includes such issues as whether it has air, light, heat, or geographical features; whether characters can be trapped there, enter it voluntarily, or survive there

Which is kind of a throwback to old Hero where you didn't have 3 pages of details explaining every possible aspect of the power and its interactions with other elements in the game.

Base plus extradimensional adder on the base, plus extradimensional travel is probably the cleanest way to do this, but with GM permission you could probably use XD Space.

The only Resnick story I have read is one I cannot remember the title of, but its about the most evil man in the universe who is hired to deal with a problem only he can.  It was well written and very interesting when I read it in high school.

Call of Cthulhu is kind of a beast of its own; the simple system works really well for that setting because its less about mechanics (let's face it you're hopeless in combat anyway) than atmosphere and role play.

It was an offhand suggestion on how to make a surface impossible to cling to: because its not there!

Applying desolid to something else is ridiculously expensive and technically you cannot affect a thing that is not a power with modifiers.  If you really had to twist the GM's arm, you could apply it to the Body of the wall as if its a base but come on, really?  That's why I said it as a goof.

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Technically you would need to affects real world.

What would you buy the advantage on?  The paint?

Would a desolid wall have to take affects real world so that people couldn't just walk through it?

It usually doesn't take a lot to turn clinging off, its only 10 points for base STR, and how many characters buy more than that?  Still, its going to be fairly expensive to get a suppress AE surface big enough to reliably shut off clinging immediately.

Change Environment might work, but it would allow a roll, maybe STR roll at a penalty to stick.

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DC had some lovely Perez work, but I don't think it was commissioned specifically for the game beyond maybe the box cover.

Well when you have some 70 years of art piled up it seems wasteful to commission new work for interiors

Cop Hater, the first 87th precinct book by Ed McBain.  Its of historical interest as the first police procedural book but isn't particularly gripping as a book.  Its not bad, but it is far from the best of the series, and McBain while inventing this genre is learning his way through what does and does not need to be explained or described.

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Too many cooks have pissed in the Black Adam stew to salvage the character, at least not without a long cooldown time and probably yet another reboot that sticks this time.

I think that's pretty true about almost all of DC (and much of Marvel too at this point).   Consider just Wonder Woman who keeps being rebooted and remade and reimagined etc.  In my mind Perez did the best with her in the 80s but it wasn't that long after he left the title they rebooted her again.  Its the curse of fans wanting continuity while wanting things to be fresh and liking big events.

I was never impressed with SuperWorld, but it had great Steranko art

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The OP posited an AoE Healing.  As it does not have Range added, it would be a 4 meter radius surrounding the character.

Sure, but a proposed build included a blast/heal combo

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If I cast a Fireball straight up into the sky, with no one there to hurt, won't it still explode into a burst of flame? 

To bring it back to an older comment, this is why you need no range on the blast linked to heal.  Because the heal still goes off if the target is out of range, it just doesn't affect them, but it still goes off -- it still costs END, etc.  Its like swinging a sword trying to hit a bird up in the sky.  You still swung, you still attacked.  It just didn't hit.  And the Blast could hit the distant target unless you buy No Range.

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Reading Does Knockback under RAW, you would count the BOD like a normal attack.  But then, RAW would not allow "Does Knockback" on Healing either

 

Sure, but the rules as written state that if a power doesn't normally do body, then you count it as a normal attack.  This would mean healing -- a power that does not normally deal body -- wound calculate any theoretical knockback it does by counting the body on the dice as if it were a normal attack.  So while the rules don't normally allow you to buy does knockback on healing, they do describe how you would do so, if you did.

Yeah I liked it okay but Black Adam is a tough sell because he's the bad guy.  I mean, he was just generic bad guy for like 60 years until someone decided to turn him into Dr Doom as slikmar says (kind of like how they made Aquaman more interesting by swiping Namor's story) but even with the "protect your people" storyline, its still difficult to do a movie around him.  He's not especially heroic, even with the movie attempting to do so.  The Justice Society had a point: they were right to try to stop him.

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Somthing I find funny, is in all these comments I don't think anyone addressed my original question in how Knockback is supposed to work RAW with healing. Is it ment to be like we are doing it? That is using the body healed to Knockback someone.

I did a while back: roll the healing, count the body as if its a normal attack, use that for knockback.  Good luck getting any.

DC has a real problem of great characters poorly executed.  Although I don't know as I would consider Blue Beetle to be in that mix, at least not this one.  I don't know the character well enough to decide.  My Blue Beetle is Ted Kord.