Christopher R Taylor

You should probably regard Independent as similar to real world equipment.  Even if somebody makes a bunch of free equipment for Slashy Steve, it's still not something he gets to keep forever.  He just gets to keep it until it breaks, or he loses it, or somebody takes it from him.  It's just like a D&D character when your +2 longsword fails its save against acid and it melts away.  You should be careful about letting a player collect so many of these items that he's unstoppable, but one tipped over canoe later and Steve is swimming in the river and his swords are washing downstream.  It ain't that hard to take away magic items, particularly ones that aren't identifiably part of the hero's character.

The only way having a set default SPD for constant abilities (and movement, for example) would work is to have it be the highest speed, rather than set for everyone.  In other words, you pay for END on you constant powers on SPD 4, unless you have a lower speed than that, and it only works/is paid for on your phases.
 
One thing that I've been doing for a while is to use a set speed for independent constant effects.  How often does a fire burn you?  On its own speed (which I use 4 for usually).  So if you stand in a fire, you're burned at a set rate, rather than based on how often you move.  That way the Flash doesn't burn to death faster than Joe average.  And you can vary the speed for particularly intense or mild fires: this one is speed 6.

Great insights, and very true.  Over time, experience teaches you what will and won't work and what goes smoothly.  Sometimes a long fight is interesting, sometimes quick surprising fights are better.  I particularly liked the trick of starting up something that felt really familiar and kind of old hat, then introducing something unusual or interesting in the middle: the ground collapses, a Hunted shows up, the fuel tank explodes, the enemy suddenly surrenders -- what is their scheme???  And so on.
 
But keeping the battles so they feel like the source material is a very important thing to maintaining a sense of the genre.  If it feels wrong, people will sense it even if they aren't sure why, and that leads to dissatisfaction and frustration.

Taxi and Barney Miller still hold up really well.  So does Rockford Files, obviously

I comprehend the logical element to this and that the concept of an AE smoke screen costing someone more END per Turn because they have more phases that Turn seeming odd as they get the same cover (12 segments of smoke) regardless of SPD.
 
Using smoke screen as an example makes it seem a small thing though.  What about force field? That is a constant power.  I think that increased END usage is one of the things that helps keep the cost of SPD down to 10 points per point. 
 
I think that de-coupling constant powers from SPD might be something to think about in any future edition but some consideration should be given to what that means for costing (and not just for SPD).  I think, if constant powers were to cost END, by default, four times a Turn, then it is an advantage for most characters.  If I made my Energy Blast constant, does that mean it only damages four times every Turn, does it mean it damages every segment (with concomitant END costs).
 
What about damage shield? Does it only cost in a phase where someone gets damaged or does it cost every segment, or would it only cost four times a Turn?
 
I think that the benefit of the current system is a bureaucracy one.  Every phase you pay your END.  It is a simple rule.  It would be odd for a SPD 3 character using a constant power to have to spend personal END on segments 4, 8 and 12 while paying for the constant power on segments 3, 6, 9 and 12.... 🙂  We already have a game that carries a high bureaucratic burden, changing things that add to that burden with no compelling in-game advantages feels wrong...
 

Doc
 
 

There's a character who fairly regularly hands out huge power enhancements to people.  He's called Galactus.  He's got a big huge amount of Usable By Other powers that he can grant to his "heralds".  They keep those powers until Galactus decides he doesn't like them anymore, then he takes them away.  He's had a lot of heralds over the years, many of them quite temporary (often only showing up once).  But occasionally, a herald uses that as his excuse for an origin story.  Silver Surfer kept his powers permanently because somebody decided to build their Galactic Champions character on that concept.
 
Groundstuck Man can certainly decide to keep your flying belt, but that makes him a more expensive character.  If he's just some dude, well now he's had his origin story.  You just gave him his character concept (see the awesome DC character Booster Gold for an example of a hero who got his powers by stealing a bunch of gear from a superhero museum in the future).  But your character is now out a flying belt, so you'll have to get another one.  Perhaps the flying belt radiation caused you to mutate, and now you can fly naturally.  Or maybe you find another one.  Or perhaps you have to train extra hard to make up for the lack of flying belt, and during your offscreen time you become proficient in super-parkour, with like 15" of Running, Leaping, and Swinging in a Multipower to represent you bouncing off of walls and doing backflips in the air from building to building.  Regardless, you're very quickly back at full points.

A universal focus is self-contained.  Think of it like a gun.  Its disconnected from you, they can run off to the moon with it, and it still works, because the power is entirely in the focus.

Great insights, and very true.  Over time, experience teaches you what will and won't work and what goes smoothly.  Sometimes a long fight is interesting, sometimes quick surprising fights are better.  I particularly liked the trick of starting up something that felt really familiar and kind of old hat, then introducing something unusual or interesting in the middle: the ground collapses, a Hunted shows up, the fuel tank explodes, the enemy suddenly surrenders -- what is their scheme???  And so on.
 
But keeping the battles so they feel like the source material is a very important thing to maintaining a sense of the genre.  If it feels wrong, people will sense it even if they aren't sure why, and that leads to dissatisfaction and frustration.

Yeah.  Brett and both Watson (especially Hardwicke) were brilliant, absolutely tone perfect.  I think Jeremy Brett WAS Sherlock Holmes, alive still due to royal jelly experiments, he was that perfect.  Those shows were solid gold, even with the slight changes to the books.  Nothing better has ever been done with the character or the stories.

Great insights, and very true.  Over time, experience teaches you what will and won't work and what goes smoothly.  Sometimes a long fight is interesting, sometimes quick surprising fights are better.  I particularly liked the trick of starting up something that felt really familiar and kind of old hat, then introducing something unusual or interesting in the middle: the ground collapses, a Hunted shows up, the fuel tank explodes, the enemy suddenly surrenders -- what is their scheme???  And so on.
 
But keeping the battles so they feel like the source material is a very important thing to maintaining a sense of the genre.  If it feels wrong, people will sense it even if they aren't sure why, and that leads to dissatisfaction and frustration.

I did exactly the same. Playing the Heroclix game for some years actually took me back to the comics and how frequent it was for a couple of brick combatants to only land about three to four telling blows before one of them was KOed (Submariner#8). Agile dodging types, along with trained humans often got one punched if the Big Hitter landed. I came up with a set of loose rules about roughly what I was expecting from the various archetypes in things such as CV, damage soaking, SPD etc, so that they tended to play out to the source material. I'd played the game for years and realised that fights only drag on if you don't follow these kind of guidelines. That's just experience with the system though.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1984) and subsequent seasons (until 1994)
 
Adapted from the Conan Doyle stories directly, this series sumptuously brought the late Victorian era to life. But the really great part was that played by Jeremy Brett, who seemed to have almost literally stepped out of  the pages of the books and brought Holmes to life. His mercurial nature, his arrogance and ego, his amazing talent, his mastery of disguise, even his drug issues -- he was the Platonic ideal of an actor playing Sherlock Holmes. I sincerely doubt that we will ever see anything quite like it again.
 
In addition, David Burke and later Edward Hardwicke redefined film/TV portrayals of Dr. Watson. Holmes would not suffer a fool, and Watson was no fool. He was still a perfect foil for Holmes, but practical where Holmes was whimsical -- firmly grounded in reality where Holmes often lived in his own mind.
 
I cannot recommend this highly enough.

Taxi and Barney Miller still hold up really well.  So does Rockford Files, obviously

It has been called a history lesson but it is much better than Pearl Harbor.
Again those are real planes and this was a film that would not be made today on health and safety grounds. People were almost killed filming that particularly the scene with the airport being strafed by the Japanese and the fuel truck blowing up.
It also makes the whole thing believeable. The mistakes and second guessing.
It is one of the films I have on DVD and can watch again and again.

WKRP in Cincinnati (1978-1982)
 
This hilarious sitcom not only had a great cast, but proved to be a showcase for Loni Anderson's talents.
 
and as a reminder of how good this show was
 
"As God is my witness, I thought Turkeys could fly."

After the Thin Man, Shadow of the Thin Man, and Another Thin Man are also very good.

To this day I'd pay good money for a spray-can of Bat-shark-repellant. That stuff really seemed to work.

How many points would the equipment that the warrior has access to through coin cost?  Armor, weapons, horse, etc.  Is it equivalent?  Because he's not paying one single character point for that suit of plate armor.

Yeah I just never bother with END on NPCs, they don't last long enough for it to be an issue in most fights anyway.

If there are lots of goons encourage your players to use a good PRE attack to scare the goons into surrendering/retreating.  My players love making a big attack/show of their abilities and then give a command to the remaining goons that it is a good time to leave the field or surrender.  A good PRE roll is sometimes way more effective than an attack/damage roll.

To keep flying when KOd, the power would have to be Persistent, not just 0 END.  Without the character directing it, the flight normally ends.

A universal focus is self-contained.  Think of it like a gun.  Its disconnected from you, they can run off to the moon with it, and it still works, because the power is entirely in the focus.

Yeah I just never bother with END on NPCs, they don't last long enough for it to be an issue in most fights anyway.

A universal focus is self-contained.  Think of it like a gun.  Its disconnected from you, they can run off to the moon with it, and it still works, because the power is entirely in the focus.