Christopher R Taylor

I just wanted to make sure I was not overlooking anything. Thanks all. If you want to be really technical about it, they should have no hit locations (it doesn't hurt an animated skeleton any more to hit it in the pelvis than the toe) and life support (no, that poison gas does not bother them), and maybe something to simulate being made of thin bones so arrow attacks are less likely to hit, etc but... you don't need all that unless you're a completionist.

Typically automatons require repair rather than healing: zombies, robots, constructs such as golems, etc. Vampires and such have their own healing mechanism (regeneration and healing when lying in their coffin, etc). In any case, NPCs usually don't worry about healing Body, its a very long-term thing.

There's an X-Men character called Forget-Me-Not who has that power. People just don't remember him, but he's in lots of their adventures helping out and doing stuff that later seems like luck or some amazing coincidence. Its a great concept well handled in the comics. He does heroic things but gets no praise or notice.

I usually buy automatons to 0 CON, REC, and END, then buy all their abilities to 0 END Cost. You can't push then, but usually they're mindless anyway so they won't have the willpower to push. Its a whopping savings of 18 points, so it doesn't exactly pay for any of their very expensive automaton abilities and life support but its a bit of a cost offset.

Looking over Victorian Hero, looks great, nice layout, tons of info. I especially like the mentions of Carnacki, a very forgotten obscure supernatural detective. I enjoyed the short stories I read of his adventures. There were several ghost detective types but Carnacki was the best. If you liked Western Hero, this is a great companion, they both are set roughly the same time period, but from different perspectives. I'm still going through it but great first impression and lots of great content so far.

Its an easy mistake to make. But when you write tens of thousands of words, you're going to make errors, and people who've never even tried find it easy to pick on that kind of thing. You know what professional editors say is an acceptable number of typos in a manuscript? About 3 per 10,000 words. They say that it is basically impossible to have a perfect manuscript unless its decades old and has been gone over constantly. A book like Victorian Hero has nearly 200,000 words. It drives me nuts when people nitpick stuff like that. Think about how many tens of thousands of errors multiple passes of editing caught, not the couple you spotted.

*yoink*!

Well, my thinking is that this is a complication that non-mutants do not suffer from, and that is a drawback that mutants face. Plus, it gives a specific mechanism to represent someone who can be tracked where others cannot.

I think that is how I build mutants in my Champions game but its been so long since I ran anything or looked at my notes, I can't recall. A physical complication "can be detected as a mutant" could cover the mutant finding machines. Infrequently, slightly? Maybe? Its not like being detected means you're instantly in jail or dead. And it isn't likely to come up a lot in most campaigns.

Yeah you can build it with entangle in 6th edition as well. Its a nasty effective power on most player characters. Mind you its not really stunning, but it can simulate that with instant.

Yeah Darkness is perceptible, so the scanner would pick up a void, interference, and out on the street people might notice something around you like an effect that is blocking the detect.

Well my concern with this idea is that this means you're distinctive to your fellow mutants: they have the negative reaction to you as well. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Yeah, again without more details than the rules give its up to the GM how to interpret this stuff. Does not distinctive in some cultures mean a country you can go to or a region? or does it just mean "among your fellow mutants"? Or a special school run by a bald man? The only way to really judge is to based it on your idea of how it works or to look through examples of characters and try to figure it out through that.

Yeah in a typical mutant detection campaign its a really bad idea to be discovered as a mutant but it takes special gear, which is a push -- and then there is the "not distinctive in some cultures" has to play in as well; not only will some people simply won't care if you're a mutant but mutants won't care. To me that looks like: Mutant: Distinctive Features (Not Concealable; Always Noticed and Causes Major Reaction; Detectable Only By Technology Or Major Effort; Not Distinctive In Some Cultures) And that's 5 points. I mean obviously Nightcrawler's complication is different than, say, Marvel Girl's but that's the baseline. That section "not concealable" is the key in this discussion; can you buy a device or take a power to cover up a distinctive feature that cannot be concealed? Sadly um, the rules don't actually say. No, seriously that huge two volume set doesn't actually say what makes a distinctive feature "unconcealable" or how that prohibits the use of things to hide it. It sounds odd to say that Mutants cannot conceal their mutanthood but that's covered by the detectable only by tech or major effort. Basically that means (to me at least) that its only possible to detect being a mutant in this complication with a device, but if you have that device you cannot hide your status from it. To some degree we can figure it out: this is a feature so distinct and obvious that even a disguise won't hide it. The Thing, for example. Having a gigantic pair of wings on your back (although Angel folds them away pretty amazingly well!). Spock can hide his ears under a hat or a cheesy 80s headband. A dwarf cannot hide how short they are without some extraordinary effort and device (two dwarves in a trench coat). Groot cannot hide that he's a tree even with Ben Grimm's fedora and overcoat. But its not even touched on in the rules, its just referred to. And obviously a power purchased to conceal something will, even if it cannot ordinarily be concealed. Invisibility can make a really distinct glowing amazing thing not visible (Ben Grimm being made so by Invisible Girl). Images can conceal a dragon, despite being 60 feet long and made of scales.

Even if you don't go completely over to 6th edition, there are a bunch of good ideas in the rules worth splicing into an earlier version

See, he probably thought he was losing that effort, but it was actually a hidden win

Removing complications is a tricky thing to do in the Hero system, you either buy em off with XPS or eat it. You can give people complications with Transform (and in the APV I you can temporarily give them to someone with a change environment) so in theory transform could remove a complication as well. Invisibility to a detector seems a valid in between step to me, its vs an unusual sense and there's nothing in the rules that says you cannot target a specific use of unusual sense (you cannot buy it against ALL unusual senses).

Chris Goodwin posted what I was thinking, its damage negation / damage reduction with an activation roll. If you really want it to be based on the player's roll, then you can add that as a side effect: does not work if attacker makes DEX roll, -1 DC of DN per x points DEX roll made by. I have to add though; I cannot puzzle out exactly what the DEX roll is meant to simulate. Is this supposed to be some Gun Fu move where you do Kung Fu as you shoot? How does being particularly agile result in a reduction of the UFO's protection?

sounds like something I should dig up

Never heard of the SHADOW book

Yeah that's what I usually do, use adders to offset costs

I miss the palindromedary Also in 6th edition in the Advanced Player Guide I i think, it has a Stunning option for Change Environment, you can hit someone with it and it stuns them unless they make a successful CON roll. The only problem I have with the build is that you stay stunned until you make a breakout roll which I think violates the basic concept of stunning. CON Roll penalties are pretty cheap to stack on.

You can use the "Adders" option to put in single categories, not bother with re-coding it. Unless you're doing an extremely heavy computer science -focused campaign where it is incredibly critical if you understand unix but not Apple OS, for example, it seems excessively fiddly and complicated to do so, though.

If you want a character to just appear to be different things, like the octopus, its just flat out shapeshift, use touch for how its shaped (and thus appears to be formed as) and sight for the colors and believable in pattern etc. Stretching allows a character to "ooze" through smaller openings, basically you can fit through any opening the size you can make yourself small enough to fit through: So basically you can fit through small openings by stretching to be longer, for example. It takes 5 points to be able to do this, each 5 points a doubling you can stretch to. Shapeshifting allows you to shrink or grow your form slightly, so you might be able to use that to fit through something slightly smaller using that. Desolidification would work to allow you to fit through anything, stack on some limitations like how it doesn't protect from damage and cannot pass through solid objects and it works.

If you wanted, you could also add in the maximum amount of bonus damage your martial arts totals into the naked advantage cost. "STR+Martial Arts damage 45 points" Then you can have your armor piercing area effect punch. But be aware of this rule: Advantages are not optional. So your punch is ALWAYS area effect armor piercing. Sorry miss hostage. Sorry about your cafe Mr Grocer. Sorry about the Batmobile. And GMs be very cautious with this kind of build, it can crack your campaign's structure and limits very quickly and cheaply.