Christopher R Taylor

I really liked Cloak and Dagger back in the day, but there's no way she's gonna have that costume on TV.

Its going to depend on the setting a lot. Do you mean for a high fantasy setting, a pulp setting, a medieval low fantasy setting, an urban fantasy setting, a Champions game? Each one will have different sorts of approaches. The high fantasy game will generally have tons of spells from a huge list, that they are only able to access some at a time, especially if you want to go the D&D/Vancian route. Low fantasy will have fewer spells but all tend to be available at any time, of low power. Champions wizards usually have a power pool because they can do basically anything. For Champions, I find a multipower with basic effects along with a few outside the multipower for constant use (defenses, for example) is usually fine. You'll find that you don't actually use most of those weird special powers very often like tunneling and sending a message to someone 100 miles away in a whisper. You can limit your character to pretty specific stuff like an energy projector, then add some strange things in like teleport and telekinesis to make it feel more magical. Throw in some foci that influence but don't determine your power -- lower END cost, make the spell roll easier, eliminate limitations such as gestures etc. That way the character can still function without their goodies, but is weaker or more limited. For example, Bob the Wizard has a bunch of useful effects, but all of them require a magic skill roll (modified by the active cost), gestures, incantation, and concentration. But he has a ring that makes the Requires Skill Roll no longer adjusted by active cost, an amulet that makes his spells not require concentration, and a wand that eliminates incantation. All of this is built with naked advantages. The key to making a wizard, though, is to focus not on what they can do, but what they can't do, and what makes it seem and feel magical. Putting some apparently arbitrary restrictions on magic (say, you can't heal, or you can't fly, or you cannot summon, or even something like spells won't work on people wearing x amount of metal or with religious devices) makes a big difference to making it seem magical instead of just Silver Surfer cosmic power. Also, making the spells seem like spells rather than powers helps. Standard magic limitations like gestures, etc help. But so do fancy names. Dr Strange does the same basic flame blast as the Human Torch, but its the Crimson Flames of Dormammu, not "Flame on!" And giving the special effects more magical seeming designs makes a big difference as well. Don't make it a bolt of lightning from your fingertips, Dr Thunder does that. Make it a bird that flies overhead and breathes lightning on them. Don't teleport with a "bamf", open up a circle in the air ringed with glowing runes and step through.

Is he killing people off this season? Or is the trailer just misleading?

Yeah his reboot of Superman was really, really great and truly definitive, just like his Fantastic Four reboot.

In editions up to 6th, its Transfer, continuous. In the new editions its drain/heal or aid, maybe DOT.

You'll notice though that I never say "the rules say this," I always frame it in terms of "this is how things should be." Then when people respond with "the rules say this" I respond with, "that's nice, but this is the way it should be."

Well I'll keep in mind you aren't interested in discussing anything about how the rules might change, or should be different, since that doesn't seem to even be an option to you. It would, but as a GM, I would say that character doesn't get any limitation for gestures or incantation, since they're limitations that don't actually limit them.

With all those advantages he's probably not doing gigantic damage. He's likely more a nuisance than a killer, so having him around nibbling away at targets is likely acceptable in your game. If its not, take a look at the active points you're allowing vs the defenses on the enemies. Also, if there's an invisible sniper, Area Effect helps find them, so the bad guys should try that.

That's because I'm not. Houserules are what people do with their campaigns to adjust rules to fit their ideas. What I'm talking about is whether the rules as written make sense and ought to be that way. Should darkness vs sound negate incantations? Or should that make no difference? Should another ability stop them instead? Not "here's how I do it" but "should the rules be the way they are written, and could it be done better?" See Hugh's comment about absurdity and probably being wrong. I see gestures and incantation as parallel limitations: each requiring excessive sensory activity to make a power function. Both should function in parallel manners.

Yes, Tasha. I know. That's how its done in Hero. Which is why I asked should it? Because strictly speaking it ought not stop incantations to merely be cloaked in a field of inaudibility. It should only work to actually silence the character in some manner, not make them impossible to hear. See, the problem we often run into on these boards is when someone speculates if things could be done differently or better, and someone else inevitably quotes the rulebook like a scripture reading as if that solves the issue.

Based on the trailer Part Two is more of his amazing ghost-like ability to walk straight in the front door and shoot everything that moves. I'm starting to think the Russian thing about Baba Yaga was just to scare the kid, not because John Wick was in any way remotely stealthy.

I had a lot of fun playing a character called Zoo Boy, a sidekick from WW2 that could turn into any American animal. In truth he could turn into any animal, but his psych complications made him only choose American ones. He got pulled into the future by a temporal storm and was really out of place in modern America.

I'm certain that's where they came from. Here's where we run into a problem. Because in D&D they have a silence spell that causes people to be silenced, not inaudible. I know that sounds the same but its not; darkness is merely an area where a sense doesn't work (hearing in this case), not an area where you cannot speak. Darkness vs sound can be a sonic emitter that makes it impossible to hear anything else -- darkness is very aggressive in that its clearly perceptible and obvious what's causing the blackout. So should darkness stop incantations? It always has in Hero, because it seems like the proper build, but is it? Or would another build make more sense? I struggled with this building my Codex, because the concept of a loud area silencing casters just didn't make sense to me. But there isn't really an easy or obvious alternative. In 5th edition, where there was both Suppress and Steve's notes on buying senses and basic abilities for points, you could actually build, literally, a silence effect: Suppress speech. That's not exactly kosher in the new rules.

Could just be as simple as DCV: they just don't want to harm her so they swing wide. An enormous presence attack to get people to not bother you could work, too.

One of my favorite characters is Captain Invincible, who I play up larger than life with a huge booming hero voice. He's basically dumb and easily fooled but has all the defenses possible, hardened at least once, etc. He's nearly impossible to hurt, just not much on offense at all.

The way you want to read this rule, you're saying gestures stop working when nobody is looking or they're behind something. That's just plainly not how the limitation is meant to work.

the active point value of a 10d6 Ap attack is pretty huge for many campaigns, so I'd be careful with that, and there are some concerns about the damage total based on advantages added to Strength (as a GM you can easily rule that an armor piercing attack is not normal, so you'd need the added advantage to armor piercing which greatly increases its cost).

You don't need to -- as others have noted you prorate the advantage into your strength damage like with killing attacks. However, if you do buy the advantage on your strength, you'll get more bang from it.

This is an accurate statement, but it does not, I believe reflect what the rules are saying. The rules do not mean "gestures must always be visible to everyone or they do not work" but rather "gestures must be of a nature that is ordinarily visible and distinct." In other words, as Whitekeys notes about the pistol vs steampunk device, they have to be a motion that is not only able to be restrained, but clearly doing something out of the ordinary to all observers. If everyone closes their eyes, thus rendering the gestures not visible, they are not negated. If you're behind a crate, blocking off vision of your gestures, they still work. If you're in a darkness field, you still gesture. In other words, the limitation is not based on the capability of others to see what you're doing, but upon the kind of movements you're making. Which brings us to incantations and the same concepts. Just because something blocks off your incantations somehow (a soundproof room, a deaf person, a more enormous sound overwhelming your voice) does not mean you did not incant. Again, its not based on the capability of others to hear you, but upon the kind of sounds you're making. If you are actually prevented from making any sounds, then you cannot use incantations - which brings us back to my basic complaint that "darkness vs sound" does not necessarily mean you cannot and did not incant, it just means nobody could hear you do it. The same with invisibility. Again, I'll state for the last time, that if someone regularly and routinely has the ability to become inaudible (invisibility vs sound), then I'd rule their incantations to be of no limitation value. They have taken a limitation that does not actually limit them. See I'm trying to approach this from a rules toolkit perspective, not a "how its always been done" or "this is how it works in other games" perspective. What do the different components mean and how should they interact?

Instead of leveling everyone up all at once like I have before every expansion I'm tightly focusing on one character and working on him. He's getting revered in every faction and working on the fox mount quest finally (got an invite in a box in Suramar at the end of the "train our army" scenario).

Indeed, which is why I'd say someone who is regularly inaudible would get no limitation from incantations. However, there's nothing about invisibility vs sound that should cause them to not work, any more than gestures while invisible. Remember, seeing Joe the Wizard start waving his arms around in complex patterns means he's casting a spell, and people respond to that by the visual clue, its not just restraint.

That's not exactly accurate. I said their attacks are invisible when adjacent to or attached to the character. Any effects at any distance becomes visible. Someone shoots an arrow the bow is invisible, but the arrow becomes visible when it is away from the bow and the character, for example. Its a question of the personal effect of invisibility being negated or not. I say its not negated by attacking, whether you have a focus or not. Your invisibility makes you invisible. Its like having inaudibility, you can still use incantations (it doesn't make you mute, just inaudible) but nobody can hear them because nobody can hear anything they do. As a GM I'd be at best skeptical of a character that bought both -- if its a constant or regular thing, those incantations lose their limitation -- but tha'ts how it works as I see it. Its just like gestures and invisibility. Just because you have gestures doesn't make your arms suddenly show up when you use a power that requires them.

For most definitions, just an area effect with selective works fine -- or even without selective. What's really the difference between an area filled with energy, and an area with energy that arcs between to strike each target? It gets a bit more complicated if the damage is reduced after each strike, though. You could probably use an explosion variant; full damage first target, -1 DC for each subsequent target.

You have to break the power down into what it does. Does it hit a bunch of people in an area? Does it hit a limited number of targets? Does it hit targets and weaken each time it hits, over a time period? Once you have the basic concept down you can start to design it. For me the toughest build was one called "sparks" from the Might & Magic series: the spell in play fired off a dozen or so lightning balls the size of tennis balls into an area like a fan in front of you. Each time one hit, it did damage, and they would bounce about randomly for a few seconds. If you could pin someone in a corner, you'd hammer them with the whole basketfull, but usually it would only hit once or twice on each target. Because the balls were bouncing around you had no guarantees anyone would be hit, but you could concentrate them very powerfully on a target in a contained space so they would get hammered. Its a sort of uncontrolled autofire, with no idea who's going to be hit or how many times.

I've always required a mounted combat familiarity to fight from horseback (1 point), and you only need a riding roll to do any non-standard combat maneuver, to do something fancy, or to control the pet after a presence attack etc.