Christopher R Taylor

Yeah, part of the reason the PCs do better than my villains is that I try to restrict myself to quick reaction, as if it were me on the battlefield. I mean, I'll do a write up ahead of time if there's a bit set piece battle (this is what they will try to do, here are their strategies) so I have it in my head, but I go with what is happening in the moment.  And I'm honestly not smarter than 3-6 other people so they tend to have poorer tactics than the PCs.

By the same token, you can normally shut off a UBO power - say, if Shirley ShapeShifter was impersonating your teammate.  But Shirley flies away with your ring...

Yeah I've done that before too, people just bail in a fight (or sometimes more show up), depending on the challenge, how long its taking, and what I wanted to do with the scene.  Ninjas rapel down the wall and crash through the window.  A guy shows up through the door.  A van drives up and throws the side door open, its got a minigun in it!  Or guys just "fail their presence roll" and run away.

You can make the game move faster during character creation.  That solves a lot of problems before they ever crop up.
 
--Certain types of powers, advantages, and limitations can slow down combat.  Summon brings more people into the fight.  Activation Rolls mean that you've got to roll extra dice before you see if an ability worked, and often there are consequences if it fails.  Drain and other adjustment powers reduce your enemy's powers temporarily, but they can return during the fight.  Avoid using certain character builds that make the game take longer.  Extra steps and extra record keeping are bad.
--The fewer things you have to keep track of, the better.  If Radioactive Rick is robbing a railroad, and your heroes are just supposed to show up and kick his butt, it's not important to give him a lot of special abilities that eat up your time.  He's a throwaway villain, allow him to behave as such.  Give him enough Endurance to last the fight.  Don't make his powers too complex, such as having a Force Field that he can alternate between PD and ED or something that requires you to think about it.  Don't give him a power that randomly activates on certain phases, or defenses that might turn off if he fails a roll.  All that stuff requires more time from you.
--Monitor your players' character builds.  If your player isn't all that familiar with the system, don't let him build a character he doesn't know how to play.  Variable Power Pools can paralyze a new player with too many options. Sometimes when you can do everything, you end up doing nothing.  Martial arts often modify combat values, and if a player isn't that familiar with them it can slow down the already slow process of figuring out what you need to hit.  A lot of complex character designs can leave a new player scratching their heads.  Make sure everybody has enough Endurance to run their character for at least a turn before they begin play.
 

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.

When I GM, I sort the enemies by DEX.  Having their phases noted on the top of their sheets, tracking their STUN and END on the sheet, and annotating Stunned targets, makes it quick to ID who moves next.  Anyone at  1 minute to recover can be removed from the stack. A d12 to mark the current phase is pretty useful as well.
 
Design NPCs so the math is easy - defenses and REC in round numbers, for example. 
 
The less you have to read the sheet, the better.  Note usual END costs (e.g. I know the Force Field costs 5, and an attack costs 6, so "11+move" at the top of the sheet saves looking for the END for each ability.  On occasion, maybe someone has attacks with differing END costs, but keeping it simple for most keeps combat moving faster.
 
While I do give enemies their recoveries, they are not often fanatics - if they recover (from Stun or KO), they may well decide to slink away rather than rejoin the fight (and if they can grab some loot before they go, so much the better).
 
For players, no, your character cannot look around at a glance and know precisely how far they are from each person on the battlemat - make a decision and go with it.  "Big Eddy the Brick will attack Pulsar - if he is within a half move, he'll stop and Punch, and if not he will just close to HTH range (or he will do a move through)" feels much more like real, ra[id combat than watching the player count hexes to half a dozen possible targets.  But the GM needs to play by the same rules.

They seem confused, though, even people who want to be fans here are panning it, and that has nothing to do with the lead actress' private life.  I mean its an easy way to get cheap political points but that does not seem to be the issue

Well, Legends accomplished that by almost completely shifting tone to a self-aware, almost campy vibe.  It stopped taking itself seriously and became nothing but mindless fun.  I don't see such a tonal shift in the future for Batwoman.  DISCLAIMER:  I haven't watched it and don't plan to.  The whole idea of a "strong, independent woman" who has to adopt another man's money, gear, and entire schtick to be a strong, independent female hero is too much irony for me.  And I'm a guy who loves strong female protagonists.  I just like independent women to actually be independent.

Hm just seemed like a reasonable response, pointing out that you have to work toward the best levels of balance and mathematical value you can.  You'll never get perfect balance, but just throwing up your hands and saying "its not possible!" is silly as well.

If for some reason your players are having a hard time adding their OCV to 11 then subtracting what they roll, you can give them a straight number on their sheet (equal to OCV+11) and treat it as a skill: 11-. 
 
Roll.  Tell me how much you made it by.

To me it sounds like a Drain Intelligence attack, powerful enough to take most people down to 0 INT.  
 
 
And at 0 INT the INT Roll will be 9- on 3d6 or a 37% chance of doing anything that Phase. So while the characters might make their roll and be able to take an action some phases, for the most part they will be "distracted" by what they saw the Magician do and can't stop thinking of it. So they might stare in wonder on their first Phase (failed roll), then force themselves to move the next phase (made their roll), then stop again and ponder what they saw the next phase (failed roll) and the phase after that (failed roll). And so on, until they slowly recover from the drain and their INT score returns to normal over a few turns and they get over what they witnessed. 
 
So maybe built like this: 
 
Befuddle: Drain INT 7d6 (standard effect: 21 points), Area Of Effect Nonselective (12m Radius Explosion; +1/4) (87 Active Points); OAF (magic tools) (-1), Target(s) must be watching/looking at Player (-1), Gestures (Requires both hands; -1/2), Requires A Roll (Skill roll (Magic tricks); -1/2), Extra Time (Full Phase, -1/2), Incantations (-1/4); RC: 18
 
(The area of effect (radius) with Explosion, is to simulate that the further away a target might be the less effective the power is because they can't see what is happening in detail)

The best way to help determine how much something should cost is to ask how much you would think it should cost if it was used against you.  You're playing a superhero, fighting bad guys, and one of them pulls out an ability that literally negates 8 phases of your actions.  That's more than one turn.  
 
How much do you think that should cost them to use against you?

The best way to help determine how much something should cost is to ask how much you would think it should cost if it was used against you.  You're playing a superhero, fighting bad guys, and one of them pulls out an ability that literally negates 8 phases of your actions.  That's more than one turn.  
 
How much do you think that should cost them to use against you?

The writing (which includes the overall creative/narrative direction) on these CW shows is about as consistent as the writing in comic books. Unfortunately, there is a lot more money (and more people's careers) at stake on a tv show than on a comic book. A publisher can just cancel a book and bring it back a year or two later if they find better writers. But for tv, you kinda get one shot at it and you had better cultivate your audience quickly or else you have to cut your losses and move on to something else.
 
When it comes to superhero tv shows, I want the plotting and characterizations and aesthetics to look and feel like the source material, and I don't really expect the quality of the writing to be any better than comic book writing. That's not a very high bar to set, but it is shaped rather uniquely, and so getting over it takes a little bit of finesse and effort. But it is quite doable. The fact that these CW shows rarely get over that bar cleanly is not the actors' fault, but mostly a failure of creative vision and decent writing on the part of the showrunners and writing teams.
 
It would appear that the CW sees enough potential in the Batwoman show to give it a full season order. Of course, with Arrow going away, they may feel they don't have much choice since there isn't anything else that is ready to step in and fill that void in the CW-verse. And hey, maybe Batwoman will be like LoT which sucked hard in the first season, but became watchable (or so I'm told) during the following seasons.

They seem confused, though, even people who want to be fans here are panning it, and that has nothing to do with the lead actress' private life.  I mean its an easy way to get cheap political points but that does not seem to be the issue

It depends entirely on the feel that you want.  To me, it seems like it might take away some of the flavor of the game.  I've never known using hit locations to add very much in the way of handling time, and as a GM I can say "He hits you in location 11 for 7 BODY," and let the player work out how much damage they take from it based on their defenses, armor, etc.  
 
Some GMs use flat values but allow players to used called hit locations.  Be aware though that you're not letting in a character who has bought +8 CSLs vs. Hit Locations, and always calls head shots.  

I never realized it was a house rule, but we always let people recover from being stunned in their post-12 free recovery

They seem confused, though, even people who want to be fans here are panning it, and that has nothing to do with the lead actress' private life.  I mean its an easy way to get cheap political points but that does not seem to be the issue

Luke said "it's not possible" and threw up his hand.
 
Is 1 pt in STR equal to 1 pt in DEX? Seems the numbers would say they would, but then why does DEX cost more?
 
All the arguments of "this stat does more/less than that stat, so it should cost more/less" seem to point out that a lot of the stat valuation is based solely on experience and usage. So, since most players/GMs got nothing out of COM, it went away and we got the Striking Appearance in its place.
 
And we have dry areas in stats where they do nothing except get us a little closer to the next skill break point.
 
Two different 450 pt characters are equal. Not necessarily balanced against each other, but equal. Equal in value. It takes a GM to sit and go over the characters to find the balance between them, based on his experience, expected usage, and opinion. And opinion is nothing to base a balance on.

On the same point Arrow fell apart because not only did they keep the flashbacks going after he got off the island, but now has flashforwards about a team of heroes less interesting then the Arrow's own team.  That's on the same level as the DC Extended Universe making Aquaman the most popular male superhero.  It's an achievement, but I'm not sure anyone will want to pick up the award.

Well Actions in Hero are a function of Speed. What about Drain Speed, Only To Remove Actions (+0)?

Why can't they dodge it?

If we do not believe balance, at least in a rough sense, can be attained, why bother with a point-based system?  If the points are not about balance, what is their purpose?  An environment where those with greater systems mastery can identify the bargain prices, and the best synergies, to design the most (over) powerful characters?

When I first learned Champs in 4th I didn’t understand the Base + Disadvantages. I thought you HAD to take the Maximum. ?

MK I Ironman for MCMLondon. by Redditor Facest4b