Christopher R Taylor

If the stretching is bought through a focus the focus not the character takes the damage. I could see allowing the same thing on some other stretching with the right special effect, but that is going to be a GM’s call.

OK I have not forgotten this project, its just kind of on the back burner. 12 adventures are finished but for the art and maps. I have a couple covers done and several I'm doing homages to classic covers I love. This is for What Rough Beast, and its based on a Boris Vallejo cover for Famous Funnies. Still got to clean it up, do coloring, titles, etc. But it was fun to do. Most of the covers I am able to use work done by someone more talented than I done for Hero magazines.

OK I have not forgotten this project, its just kind of on the back burner. 12 adventures are finished but for the art and maps. I have a couple covers done and several I'm doing homages to classic covers I love. This is for What Rough Beast, and its based on a Boris Vallejo cover for Famous Funnies. Still got to clean it up, do coloring, titles, etc. But it was fun to do. Most of the covers I am able to use work done by someone more talented than I done for Hero magazines.

OK I have not forgotten this project, its just kind of on the back burner. 12 adventures are finished but for the art and maps. I have a couple covers done and several I'm doing homages to classic covers I love. This is for What Rough Beast, and its based on a Boris Vallejo cover for Famous Funnies. Still got to clean it up, do coloring, titles, etc. But it was fun to do. Most of the covers I am able to use work done by someone more talented than I done for Hero magazines.

FWIW you have my permission to use any of my Haymaker content.  (I'll PM you my actual name.)

I like the concept, although I could easily see states like Texas and New York trying to conquer nearby states to make a nation

What is the an unexpected thing that has happen in your Champions games? I am thinking about having the following happening to the United States as part of the backstory to the setting.

A villain causes a character known as Fallout who is a walking Bio-Nuclear Dynamo explode just like a 10-megaton nuclear bomb in the center of Washington D.C. when all of the government is in Washington D.C. at the same time.  For a while nobody knows who caused the destruction of Washing D.C. and the United States government.  I would see that in the end the United States is gone and each state is now its own country like Texas was at one point.

The reason special effects and how to swing them is deliberately left somewhat vague in the rules is so that each GM and gaming group can decide what they do and how and why. Its going to vary based on the type of campaign, the tone of the game, the players and what they like, the story the GM wants to tell etc. So its flexible, and detailing everything in the rules would not only hurt that, but make the game painfully over burdened with a system already in my opinion overburdened with too many specific examples of how to do everything.

I think you have it wrong. The test for impairment is damage done to an area before or after hit location multipliers, not before or after reductions due to defences.

Doc

But what skills, on paper, he needs are all a decision by the GM.

In most of my games, PS: Scientist will allow that character to earn a living as a scientist. That means enough knowledge and lab skills.

Scientist is pretty broad, so I will apply penalties to specialist stuff.

Now PS:Physicist would get few penalties for physics stuff but could attract more penalties than the Scientist for chemistry and biology stuff.

It is the GM, not the rulebooks, that decide what skill, and the specificity of the skill, the player needs on the character sheet.

As I said, in some heroic level games I might indulge in skill details. Rarely in a superhero one.

Doc

The rules do say that if someone consistently use a free ability and get benefit from it, you probably should get points for it. This is going to depend, of course on the setting etc. So lighting your cigarette by using telekinesis to agitate molecules, not gonna really need a point expenditure. Using your fire blast to create a bright light in the eyes of a target once is probably fine, doing it again probably requires buying a flash.

A device I have used before is to have a character with 3 or 4 speed, then add +3 or +4 speed only for combat. So they move around and act out of combat at skilled human level, but in a fight they are tactically brilliant and have incredible combat reflexes. Your recoveries, skill levels, movement, etc all are at the low speed.

Its highly recommended to use speeds that match up well like 3+3 so you move on 4, 8, and 12, but can act in combat on 2, 4, 6 ,8 10, and 12, with the three boldfaced phases the ones you can do anything on.

Same with 4 and 8 (3, 6, 9, 12 - or - 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12).

That makes it much easier for you and the GM to figure out when and how you act.

Having played and GM'd games for decades, this is a very true element that occurs more than one might think. I've had players tell me they're removing a power/skill because it's never used, which is fine with me. If we run into a situation where a character doesn't have a skill -and is now needed- and it makes sense for someone to have it, I just roll with it and tell them "Buy the skill right now." Boom, done. It's never caused any problems and it shows the players that you're not being unbending.

If you are going to allow this my suggestion would be to drop the extra SPD from +7 to +3. This will give him a 6 SPD and cost 17 points. It also makes it a lot easier in play. On 4, 8 or 12 the character can activate the extra SPD which then allows him to act in 2, 6 and 10 for one turn in addition to his normal phases. Activating a power is a zero-phase action so he still gets his full phase when he boosts his SPD.

Probably a better way to build this would be to have the speed be always active, but they can only access that, being limited to the slower speed. In other words, the character has 10 speed all the time (and pays for it) but put a limitation on the speed that they only move at 5 speed (for example) unless they activate a charge allowing them to act on the additional 5 phases that turn.

So the character is always 10 speed but is limited to only using 5 of those phases each turn (effectively holding and not using the other phases each time) unless they activate their device. Probably a ½ limitation? I strongly recommend for the sake of sanity and mathematical function to make sure the speed is an easy transfer between - that it is a lower speed that shares all its phases with the 10 speed. This way you are avoiding any speed change mechanics (technically you're not changing anything, just using phases you normally do not) and don't have to mess with any confusion about what phases you act on.

This would have to be a continuing charge because otherwise as Lonewolf notes it would only act for one phase.

According to the 6th edition rules, you start your changed SPD at the beginning of the next turn (optionally you can take a zero phase action on your phase and change it, if the GM allows this). Another system (5th edition I believe) is to wait until you have a shared phase, and the speed changes then (this always works on phase 12, if not sooner).

Look how large an increase that is. Remember, we're never at the fastest end; the least amount of time to execute a skill is a half phase, per page 55...but per the time chart, there's no separate step for this purpose, so it's a phase. So 2 steps on the chart means it takes a full minute. For anything even slightly time-consuming...1 turn would jump to 5 minutes.

I'm mostly assuming skill rolls in the 12-, 13- range...if they're even better, then 2 time steps becomes even more punitive. Note that we're assuming the skill can be re-tried...so if we just allow, say, 2 attempts using the same time frame...a 13- succeeds 5 out of 6 times, so to miss 2 more in a row? 1 in 36. Even if we assign -1 to the 2nd try, and -2 to the third? 12- then 11- both failed is about 1 in 10.

And this is just talking about my 1-step suggestion. 2 steps on the time chart is enormous. Also note, this really won't come into play that often.
a) You're making rolls. As pointed out, that should only happen when there's a consequence for missing.
b) OTOH, it has to be a skill that can be re-tried, logically. Security Systems? Most likely not...failure triggers the alarm.

Note that you can impose some other consequences. For example...Lockpicking. Make your roll by 3? No evidence the lock was picked. Make it on the nose? Someone can tell but it isn't obvious...the scratches on the tumblers, for example, are fairly discreet. Miss by 1, then take the extra time? Oh, they're gonna be pretty clear, as long as anyone looks for em.

Last point...consider how your character would act here. It's picking the lock. The character trying to do it say, it's a breeze...translated as a phase. Oh, well...10 seconds pass. It's still locked. How agitated are you? 20 seconds pass...whoa, this is taking TOO long. 30 seconds.... 40 seconds.... Dang it, forget this!!! SMASH!!!!!

Another option for missing by 1 would be something like "it's trickier than you expected...you feel like it's close, but it'll take a bit longer." Taking more time is a standard skill mod. This wouldn't work in all cases, but it's a straightforward option. OK, yeah, you could do this for missing by 2, say...but that's 2 steps on the time chart, and that's getting to be pretty significant. It's still plausible in some cases. By 3...3 steps on the time chart is getting a little excessive. We're going from 1 turn to 20 minutes. There comes a point where the character shouldn't have the certainty he can execute the skill, and start looking for alternatives, for verisimilitude.

Probably a better way to build this would be to have the speed be always active, but they can only access that, being limited to the slower speed. In other words, the character has 10 speed all the time (and pays for it) but put a limitation on the speed that they only move at 5 speed (for example) unless they activate a charge allowing them to act on the additional 5 phases that turn.

So the character is always 10 speed but is limited to only using 5 of those phases each turn (effectively holding and not using the other phases each time) unless they activate their device. Probably a ½ limitation? I strongly recommend for the sake of sanity and mathematical function to make sure the speed is an easy transfer between - that it is a lower speed that shares all its phases with the 10 speed. This way you are avoiding any speed change mechanics (technically you're not changing anything, just using phases you normally do not) and don't have to mess with any confusion about what phases you act on.

This would have to be a continuing charge because otherwise as Lonewolf notes it would only act for one phase.

He really needs to assess what he means by "illusions". Mental Illusions exist in the mind of the target. This could be an entire dreamscape. Megascale would allow him to target everyone in that MegaArea.

Images are perceived by everyone who could perceive it if it were real.

Maybe he really wants a Change Environment effect to create this quasi-real Building or even MegaScale cityscape.

Charges normally last for the characters phase, so you would need to use a continuing charge with minimum duration of 1 turn.  Changing SPD is a really complex and often abusive power, so I would recommend being very careful about this.  My first suggestion would be to have it last longer than a turn.  This way it can be activated before combat and last through the combat.  If you do allow it to be changed for only a turn, I would limit it to phases where both SPDC have an action. 

My reading of the power (4e-p87) is that normally the maximum Active Points of a power that a character can transfer (regardless of number of times power is used) is the highest number on the dice total. In your example a 1d6 Transfer of CON would allow for a max of 6 AP or 3 CON. This might require multiple uses of the power if they don't roll a 6 first try.

The adder of +X to Maximum is only to raise the upper cap that power can transfer. So in your example the player would be able to Transfers a total of 16 AP (8 CON) with the power. 1d6+10 = 6AP+10AP for 16 maxium. But they can only Transfer in 1d6 chunks. So the character would need a minimum of 3 uses of the power to hit the limit.

The rules do say that if someone consistently use a free ability and get benefit from it, you probably should get points for it. This is going to depend, of course on the setting etc. So lighting your cigarette by using telekinesis to agitate molecules, not gonna really need a point expenditure. Using your fire blast to create a bright light in the eyes of a target once is probably fine, doing it again probably requires buying a flash.

There's a continuum here. How many free abilities should one player get for picking an SFX he can leverage?

To me, SFX should have benefits and drawbacks. Does that fire blast also ignite things you did not want to destroy? How predictable is the character's ability to set things on fire? Should the player who chose Fire as a special effect just get extra damage over time for free? What freebies does the player who chose a Magnetic SFX for her blast receive that is equal in game benefits?

The more the ability is leveraged in the game, the more I think it should cost points. Note that the Hologram was initially described as "just basic shapes" - suddenly it can create an accurate image of a specific face. So can it also be 8 meters across, 3 meters high and fully opaque?

The reason special effects and how to swing them is deliberately left somewhat vague in the rules is so that each GM and gaming group can decide what they do and how and why. Its going to vary based on the type of campaign, the tone of the game, the players and what they like, the story the GM wants to tell etc. So its flexible, and detailing everything in the rules would not only hurt that, but make the game painfully over burdened with a system already in my opinion overburdened with too many specific examples of how to do everything.