Christopher R Taylor

If we aren't fine with spending 80 points on defenses, he can't spend 120 points on Damage Reduction anyway, can he?

 

You are correct, I suppose, but I wouldn't want to do that or allow a character to do that, anyway.

Here's the thing, though.  a 60 active point Killing Attack is 4d6, that's an average of 14 body.  Your PD won't do jack against that.  So now that you've spent your 120 points to be protected from normal attacks, you have to spend another 252 points to ignore killing damage as well.

Now, I guess if your campaign is fine with that kind of spending okay but even at 2x cost, its still a huge number.  You're not really convincing me the price is right here.

Well, lets put it this way: someone with 30+ presence is a massively commanding force, but it takes a player with talent and understanding of the system to use properly.  Combine that with a presence drain ability and it gets even more potent.

The advantage of the tape measure approach is nobody is counting hexes any more.  I would love to have a big flatscreen under the figures and project the terrain and stuff like AE templates.  How big was that explosion?  oops...

The gyrojet bullet.  Neat idea, but really expensive and in most conditions draws a line to your gun in exhaust fumes

How far did you carry that test out? With 20+ PD/ED, resistant, how will this Defender ever be taken out against conventional, non-Automaton foes?

You have to keep in mind campaign limits for PCs as well.  Even at x2 cost, if you're fine with a PC spending 80 points on defenses (plus flash defense and whatever else like life support), I guess you get what you're asking for.

Actually a trick I found useful was to not change knockback from 5th to 6th edition.  So when it went from 2m inches to 1m... one meters, just treat it as meters.  So effectively knockback halved.

HONEY BADGER

This is the brawler/berserker character for fans of Wolverine.  By using Honey Badger, it taps into popular culture and keeps the theme going while being kind of fun.  He's your basic beat 'em up type.  I focused more on tough and fearless than regenerating, so its not too obvious a connection, and so it feels more like the Honey Badger viral video.  HB has a little bit of slowish regen, but mostly the character doesn't tire out or take much damage.  A 12d6 attack would do 9d6, reduced by 25% and 15, which means the average 42 stun and 12 body attack turns into 9 stun and no body.  Falling out of orbit (20d6) becomes 30 stun and 0 body - still conscious and not even stunned!  So I might have overdone it, the character can be nickle and dimed down but nobody is going to hurt HB very badly with any ordinary attack.  Losing the damage reduction would make HB easier to run and a bit less invulnerable but conceptually it works for how badgers are built (hard to hurt, can turn in their skin etc).

My concern with him is that he's a little complicated for the GM to deal with.  Damage Negation plus Damage Reduction makes HB really durable and hard to put down, but its a bunch of stuff for a newbie GM to figure out in combat.  Plus he has Martial Arts and Combat Levels, which means choices rather than straight up "hit em til they fall down" straight forward combat.  So I'm pondering how to handle that.  Maybe strip the Martial Arts and levels and just give him damage and a higher OCV, then add in the martial arts and lower the raw damage to represent skill increase but not damage increase.

BASE STORY: Honey Badger has always been tough.  From a young age, this caused the durable HB to become fearless and bold, charging in where others held back.  This naturally led to a career as a firefighter and rescue worker, the crazy one that the rest are amazed by.  But that wasn't enough for Honey Badger, who loved to help people and save lives, but was faced with a more awful danger than fires; criminals and supervillains.  Honey Badger learned to fight from a variety of sources, from mixed martial arts teachers to boxers to a man who learned to survive in the worst Russian prisons.  Now Honey Badger takes to the streets to protect especially young people and children.  But HB has drawn the attention of those who hate and fear mutants, and has to avoid their attacks as well.  Unfortunately, the fearless determination and refusal to back down can cause Honey Badger to become a bit too fixated in combat and lose their mind trying to defeat an enemy.

MALE VERSION: No additional story

FEMALE VERSION: Its not easy to break into the man's world of fire fighting as a woman, but Honey Badger demonstrated so much strength and endurance and such a fearless approach that she quickly was accepted and is one of the most award winning firefighters in The City.

The story should indicate the reputation of being a killer, I agree.  Toxxyn isn't but has been branded as one; thanks for reminding me.  I wanted an "unfair treatment" element like Spider-Man puts up with from the news, but something different.  In this case, because of something in Toxxyn's past, cops and the public remember that supposedly there was a murder but it isn't true.

the problem with 20DC of damage negation is that its 100 points, which is way over what I'm trying to put the active cap at and breaks the character's cost.  20 PD makes the fall from any realistic height in the game survivable, if painful.

I really should have split out the stats in the write up for Vulcan, though, you're right.

Good thinking, I'll make sure of that.

If you don't move to 6th I strongly advise borrowing a few of the changes:

• Area effect cost, extremely well done and flexible
• Damage Over Time advantage, somewhat complicated but solves massive problems from previous builds
• Restructuring of Transform costs
• Change Environment concepts and additions (such as choking)
• Some of the new sense modifiers like Adjacent and penetrative instead of N-Ray
• AVAD and ACV advantages, much better than previous attempts

And yeah I use a modified Champions Universe, with my own timeline and stuff added in and some left out (like Detroit being obliterated).

Powers Booth is great in any role, I don't even care if it makes sense.

To be honest, I wouldn't allow this.  I get the concept, but what you're doing is building in a limitation that lowers cost considerably, then finding a way around that limitation with a power pool and I just don't like that at a gut level.

TOXXYN

OK, so its a bit of an Image/Iron Age 90's -name, but it has some charm and should appeal to some players pretty well.  Toxxyn is the Spider-Man type, the agile fast sort.  I built Toxxyn around a Jumping Spider as per the suggestion of Steriaca and so no webs but lots of jumping ability, and a poison-concept physical attack so its a spider concept without being a Spidey clone (and a lot less complex than the web build).  Toxxyn is built to be able to fall long distances safely (that 30 PD plus breakfall = can fall from orbit safely) and has 360-degree vision instead of spider sense.  Hit hits hard (9d6) but can do the 5d6 poison-based AVAD as well.

ALL STORY: Toxxyn was a Taxi Driver who was driving a strange guy in an obvious disguise through The City when the fare opened up his briefcase and out rushed this green smoke that filled the cab.  The fare laughed and shouted something about how they were all going to pay, then passed out.  Toxxyn pulled over and bailed out of the car, but felt no ill effects.  It turned out that the fare was a mad scientist who meant to set off a chemical attack to punish the City for refusing Toxxyn a grant, but the spider venom-based bio weapon was not properly designed and seemed to have no effect.  However, it did do something: it activated Toxxyn's latent genetic abilities, and gave the character fantastic jumping spider powers.  Now, Toxxyn uses their amazing powers to fight crime in a spectacular manner.  Unfortunately, early in Toxxyn's crime fighting career, while chasing a criminal he fell to his death just as Toxxyn was reaching for him, and cops below thought he pushed the wretch off the building.  NOw, cops and many on the street think Toxxyn is a lethal vigilante, but this character avoids killing at all costs and hates the idea of it.

No distinction between male and female stories here.

Right: combat stats are more expensive.  REC is probably too cheap right now because of this, it maybe should be 1.5 per point but the math is funny that way.  I think END is too cheap right now as well.

Its a problem, and related to the way players tend to avoid vulnerabilities as a complication as well.  The genre is now "I can't be hurt, hulk smash" most of the time now.  This is why campaign caps and careful examination of characters is a good idea.

The low DCV thing you can teach players not to do with some strategically placed AVAD attacks.

Every time I've run a convention game I had pre-made characters and a pretty straight forward scenario.  Nobody had any problem with the system, as they were already fans.

I get that the speed chart isn't perfect, but it seems to me the variations introduce more problems than they solve.

Exactly. Its especially good compared to the alternatives out there in gaming today.  I still haven't seen a system I prefer over it.

My personal take is this: if you are going to remove something like the speed chart, what value is added?

 

Its not really any more simple if you use any tool at all to keep track.  And variations of when people move is an excellent way to represent skill and swiftness in combat that is simply stripped away by removing the speed chart.  Even in games where all speed values are very similar (most heroic settings) you can still get a feel for combat ability through one point variations.

I think the problem with most Hero combat is that few players take advantage of the tactical opportunities.  It ends up very regimented because people are not willing to block, delay, dodge, and set up an attack.  I understand why: waiting between phases is frustrating and feels like you're missing out.  But doing so would make combat a lot less predictably timed.

Behemoth.hdc

Got much experience with military and chains of command?

Personally?  No.  But I'm aware that nearly every military on earth not just allows, but requires soldiers to refuse orders that are crazy or evil, like nuking Manhattan.

Most Dex skills are pretty critical as well.  Its one thing to be witty at parties, but it has real game impact to unlock a door or sneak up behind a guard.

Not saying it was correct, just logical.

The pilot would not only know nothing about the tesseract, but he would know that the aliens are coming from a hole in space in the sky, which nuking the city is not rationally going to harm.  Logical?  To nuke Manhattan?  On the hope that somehow by killing 10 million people this would maybe stop an alien invasion from the sky?  Not even close.

The hydra one is a more likely possibility, although blowing up NYC isn't exactly their style (especially since a lot of their leadership was, you know, in Manhattan).

Because he was following orders?

Not only is it standard doctrine to disobey idiotic and immoral orders, but the orders made no sense.  Plus, he was under direct orders to not nuke Manhattan.

How was nuking a densely populated major city going to stop an alien invasion from a portal in the sky far above the city in any case??  The entire sequence was so that Tony could be a hero and "learn a lesson" from Captain America.  It was weak writing, even if it was exciting to watch.

I think the problem some people have is that then they're not sure how to handle odd distances, like say someone with a 7m half-move. Do you round down to 3 hexes? 

That's not any different from having 2m hexes.  My half move of 15" is 7", do I round down to 6?  Do I put him halfway across the line?

I'm reasonably sure Tony dies in some contrived heroic fashion (like the Avengers film when for no sane reason some demented pilot launched a nuke at New York City).