Crusher Bob

Hmm, could you add a linked change environment to force people to make a DEX roll or fall down when you hit them? It's a 3 pt Change environment to get -1 to DEX rolls, and linking it to STR makes it 2 points. The ice sheet change environment says that just causing a penalty to the roll is enough to force a roll, so it looks like it would work? It does give you a non-martial arts alternative to forcing people to fall down when you hit them.

Hmm, you could try some adding some Ōkami, drive back the darkness with art. Search for new pigments and new animals to make brushes from. Domesticate the first dogs and gain power over the Sun. Defeat, cow, or befriend the spirits of the new lands.

Um, most people rich enough to be PCs should be able to pretty much go armed to most places. Most laws that prevented the PCs from walking around armed would also prevent the locals from walking around armed. And the locals want to be able to walk around armed, since there probably aren't any actual police.

Last character of the Inhumans Design Highlights Action heroes who wear power armor [Focal] Balance Notes DC: High (12) (OCV vs DCV, targets ED, NND (ED Resistant Protection that Costs Endurance), drain STR) CV: Medium (7) DEF: High (30/16 with unusual targeting sense) SPD: Low (4) [Focal] is a United Nations Spaceguard (like the US Coast Guard, but for Earth and Lunar orbit) officer. Well, a very junior officer. But right now, he seems to be the highest ranking Spaceguard officer around. Earth was being invaded and the Spaceguard was tasked with doing SAR for regular navy ships. The Valiant took a hit to it's wormhole drive and somehow ended up in orbit of a different Earth. It's still Earth, but it's missing almost all of the technical advances that made allowed interstellar colonization possible. Plus all sorts of little things are slightly different. For example, every here drinks fizzy 'cola' instead of fizzy coffee. Different Anatomy [Focal] has undergone considerable genetic modification. For example, his skin isn't coffee colored because of melanin, it's coffee colored because it has rhodoplasts (red chloroplasts) in it. His eyes are slightly bigger than normal, and his retina are put together backwards. His muscles are more like a gorilla's than a normal humans. Any sort of medical procedure is going to present all sorts of difficulties. A good dose Herbicides will tend to make him very sick. He also likes to sleep under a grow lamp, or just out in the sunshine. Spacer habits Having extensively trained for operations in space, [Focal] exhibits what might be classified as a form of OCD in normal people. He'll almost always hold on to the scenery with one hand, unless armored, or other wise anchored to something. He won't put things down, where they could float away and damage something if the artificial gravity failed. He'll compulsively tidy up anything he sees lying around. Where others will make gestures with their whole arms, his will be made with just his hands or fingers. Resident Alien As someone with no identity on this Earth, the right thing to do was contact an immigration lawyer and see about becoming a legal immigrant. This was of interest to both NASA and the FBI, who both wanted you to undergo extensive debriefings. But your citizenship application got fast-tracked, so it wasn't all bad. How do you find out about crime to stop? Criminology. Contacts. How to you get to where the crime is? Able to fly around 45 mph. Access to megascale teleportation via team base. What sort of stuff do you do outside of costume? Attend open mike night, recite poetry. Play games involving little models of fighting sailing ships. Argue about the real significance of the battle of Cannae. Go out socializing with [Galatea], because she can quickly distract anyone from any little knowledge gaps you display. Debate about your poetry with [Pooka]. Occasionally get dragged into tech head talks with [Hadaly]. Try not to look at the things that [bitrot] finds to look at on the Internet. Get called in to give yet another presentation on spacecraft design. Built in weakness(es) Lots of power tied up in foci. Character Design

Design Highlights: The Small Utility VPP Transformations [Pooka] Balance Notes: DC: Medium (10) (OMCV vs DCV, targets power defense, PD) CV: High (9) DEF: Medium (25/12 with unusual targeting sense) SPD: Medium (5) Pooka looks like a dog (a golden retriever) all the time. But, due to the powerful glamours he's surrounded by, most people find this unremarkable. They instead tend to slot him into 'ethnic minority'. So, for example, he'll be arrested for 'driving while dog'. And when he goes into a restaurant, he's refused service because he's not wearing shoes or a shirt, not because he's a dog. If the GM thinks it will be funnier, characters with high EGO, high mental defenses, or high 'magic resistance' may be less affected. Pockets Pooka has pockets, even though he is a dog. Other people find it almost impossible to notice that he has pockets, or that he has anything in them. So he never has to take the change out of his 'pockets' when going through the metal detector. The security might hassle him anyway. He was walking while dog. The glamours that confuse his identity don't work as well on recorded media. So people listening to recordings of his barking find him impossible to understand (unless they understand dog barking, I guess). So any communication he does over the phone has to be done using a voice synthesizer. When he goes to his job at the newspaper, he wears half moon glasses. Mostly because he likes to look at people over them with his soulful doggy eyes. When he wants to be a hero, he takes off his glasses. He looks totally different, really; we swear. Those who still leave saucers of cream out for the pooka (or maybe just the cats) or do various other things 'to be kind to the good folk' will generally receive his assistance. Though he can't do things like mill their grain, spin their thread, card their wool, or bless their fields anymore just means he has to be more creative. A few families have avoided accidents because their car has been uncommonly lucky. How do you find out about crime to stop? How to you get to where the crime is? What sort of stuff do you do outside of costume? Built in weakness(es) Character Build Sample VPP Powers

2nd character of the Inhumans Design Highlights: The Lego Brick multipower The danger of Unified power Why Hand-to-Hand Attack is a terrible power [Hadaly] Balance Notes: DC: Medium (10) (OCV vs DCV, attacks ED, flash defense) CV: Medium (7) DEF: Medium (23/15 + 10 mental defense & unusual targeting sense) SPD: High (6) Involved in a terrible accident, 'Hadaly' was given a variety of experimental cybernetic augmentations. Since the people were developing the cybernetics for military purposes, 'Hadaly's' 'ware is a bit more high performance than you would expect. She is somewhat famous for being one of the first people to publicly receive extensive cybernetic augmentations. She now uses her money, fame, and contacts to agitate for the rights of AI and heavily cybered individuals. Her cyberware is soft and flesh colored, but easily identifiable by visible seams, etc. They are about as easy to conceal as extensive tattoos. Hardsuit The 'hardsuit' is not so much armor in the conventional sense but is instead more body expansions and attachments. It's not really usable by anyone else without them also having the same class of cybernetic mods and being about the same size. Note that the hardsuit is (Only in Alternate ID) instead of a focus, so it can't really be taken away once put on. How do you find out about crime to stop? How to you get to where the crime is? What sort of stuff do you do outside of costume? Built in weakness(es) Character build

You could wear a bambeson, of buff coat, or something. And carry some sort of sidesword and maybe a buckler.

The problem with that, of course, is now 'everyone' needs acrobatics. Alas, there are too many ways potentially available to make focus firing someone very attractive: flash, legsweep, an entangle that takes no damage, large PRE attacks, etc Once you get someone to 1/2 or even 0 DCV, the incentive is very strong to have everyone pile in and finish that person. Attacks against them will be close to twice as effective (assuming you hit a normal DCV target around 1/2 the time). For example, if you want your mooks to win things for the bad guy, give them (2d6 entangle (one body (-1/2), 0 DEF (-3/2), AOE: 4m radius, accurate (+1/2)) (30 active, 10 real points)). The mook holds fire until just before the boss goes, reduces a hero to 0 DCV, and the boss hits the hero for (big damage) -1. [edit] A 1d6 entangle is even cheaper, but has 1/6 change of producing no body on the roll result, 2d6 is safer, failing only on 1/36.

And here's the next team, with more design highlights Team: The Inhumans Averages DC 10 CV 7 DEF 25 SPD 5 Range REC 12-18 STUN 30-50 Resistant DEF 10+ Team Scope: Very Large City (New York analogue), some national level, minor international 1st Character: [Galatea] Design highlights VPP as infinite slot multipower Unusual Senses Escaping entangles with teleportation Position Shift [Galatea] Balance Notes DC: High (12) CV: Medium (7) DEF: Medium (23/12 + 10 mental defense and unusual targeting sense) SPD: Medium (5) Found by [Memory Keeper] during an archaeological dig several, where she appeared to be a statue of the Goddess Nike. He became aware of her nature when she began to make comments on a screening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. An ensouled statue [Galatea] is actually an animated statue, though her near perfect shape shifting can make this very difficult to notice. When sleeping, she takes on a little of her inanimate nature and can be very hard to wake up. When she doesn't have any reason to sleep in a human form, she will often drift into a statue as she goes to sleep, the form of the statue having some relation on what dreams she will have. As she never had a human identity, she has no paperwork, no birth certificate, no drivers license, etc. Memory Problems [Galatea] is immortal, but she loses her memories of the past. She can clearly remember things that happened until around 10 years ago, and begins losing memories older than that. Anything more than 20 years old will have certainly be forgotten. Events in the past that left a major emotional impression will often come back as 'nightmares' when she sleeps. But because she is only able to dream of the actual event and the extreme emotion, without any other context, these dreams are usually very disturbing. She is now aware of her loss of memory, and fears losing her current identity. She is trying to stave this off by 'storing' her memories in [Memory keeper] and periodically reliving them. Songs of the Soul The animating spirit is so strong that it is able to effect severe changes in the world within 16 meters of 'Galatea'. Because some of her 'first' memories involve early Disney movies, her current way of effecting these changes is through singing. 'Past lives' had different additional VPP limitations, but the 16 meter range doesn't change. A monster from the past [Galatea] had several other identities in the past. Some of them had reputations so terrible that anyone discovering an animate statue that can effect things within a 16 m radius can set of both extreme paranoia and/or bloody revenge. After all, the statue is a consummate actor, so anything it says not remembering is not believable. Sample terrible pasts: The original terracota warrior, [Death within ten paces] As Qin Shi Huang's chief assassin, [Death within ten paces] killed a lot of people, and their extended families, and the villages they grew up in, and their little dogs too. (VPP limitation: focus of the moment: an edged weapon) [The Weeping Angel] Really, the less said about [The Weeping Angel], the better. It might hear you. (VPP limitation: when not being observed, yes blinking counts) How do you find out about crime to stop? How to you get to where the crime is? What sort of stuff do you do outside of costume? Built in weakness(es) Character Build Sample VPP powers

Another use of trigger is to reduce the action cost of 'drinking the potion' (or whatever), if you set the trigger activation to 'zero phase action' or 'action takes no time' then you can set effects off without having to take one of your actions.

Well, you can: Left them get multiple actions in the same phase make them reroll any duplicates or use the computer to select (speed) items from the numbers 1-12

Since getting the formatting just so is a bit of work, does anyone have any comments on the format? Have at least another 4 characters to post, with more design highlights. IS sblocking everything a good way to keep the apparent post length manageable? Did you see anything in the characters you feel should be called out as a good example or design highlight? Anything that you feel is a bad example of character design?

Last member of the 'A'-Team Design Highlights: The variable slot multipower Only in alternate ID Safe Landing Selling back normal movement Aphelion Balance Notes Varies with allocation of variable multipower slots DC: Varies (low - high) (OMCV vs DCV, targets PD, has telekinesis) DC: Varies (mid - high) (20/15 to 30/15, has unusual targeting sense) DC: Varies (low - high) (8 - 12) DC: Varies (low - high) (4 - 6) A physicist, working at Campaign city's particle collider. He was studying the [Arachne] incident and trying to recreate the events that led to it. Hopefully this time, with less screaming. The Eschaton and immensely powerful thingy (alien, god, future entity, etc) became worried about clever monkeys poking the Devourer of Worlds with sticks, and visited [Aphelion] to give him a stern talking to. The Escaton charged him with preventing other clever monkeys from poking the Devourer of Worlds. It imbued him with telekinetic liquid metal, which is some for of sufficiently advanced technology, to help him keep an eye on said clever monkeys. [Aphelion]'s first actions as a super powered being were to call up a psychologist and say, "I've just had one hell of a hallucination." However, sufficient testing, and some worrying results at the particle collider finally convinced him to cause a convenient fire at the lab, destroying the records of the [Arachne] incident, along with his research notes. He's abandoned his job as a high level research physicist to take a job as a high school physics teacher. He's not very good at it, but none of the kids were there to learn physics anyway, so it evens out. The weapons manufacturer, Technodyne Defense Systems is very interested in why exactly a suspicious fire would break out at Campaign City's particle collider and a prominent physicist would quit at almost the same time. [Arachne] has the 0 point complication: Watched by Aphelion, since she is associated with the Devourer of Worlds. Appearance: While not quite a spherical physicist, he certainly qualifies for 'pear shaped'. When transformed into Aphelion, he looks like smooth metal ball roughly 60 cm in diameter. How do you find out about crime to stop? How to you get to where the crime is? What sort of stuff do you do outside of costume? Built in weakness(es) Character design

Design Highlights: The Movement multipower The Brick tricks multipower Don't neglect DMCV [Aspirant] Balance Notes: DC (high) 12 (OCV vs DCV, attacks PD, NND: hearing flash defense) CV (high) 9 DEF (low) (20/13) SPD (medium) 5 [Aspirant] came into her powers very early, so she has been dealing with the women of steel, men of tissue problem for some time. The mental control she has to use to keep from destroying things with her super strength is considerable. On the other hand, this same discipline gives her a lot of experience with other uses of super strength. How much of her 'milk and cookies' persona is her true self and how much of it is just another facet of the tight control she keeps herself under is left to the player. But it certainly produces some odd results when it combines with her cynicism. How do you find out about crime to stop? How to you get to where the crime is? What sort of stuff do you do outside of costume? Built in weakness(es) Character Design:

Design Highlights: The small multipower The fixed slot multipower Mental Speed CV changes of Shrinking and Growth Large PRE attacks [Arachne] Balance Notes DC: High (12DC OMCV vs DMCV targets PD, EGO/mental defense) CV: Medium (7) DEF: High (7/7 + 6DC damage negation (28 equiv) with 10 mental defense and unusual targeting sense) SPD: Low (4) [Arachne] was a normal high school student, who was on a field trip to Campaign City's particle collider to 'see some real science done'. Unfortunately, the scientists at the collider picked this time to accidentally punch a hole into the underverse, where the Devourer of Worlds lies dreaming. [Arachne] emulating the Dutch boy of legend, attempted to hold the hole in the universe closed with her hands. This lead to her being stuck in the hole, rather like a cork in a bottle. Being in the shadow cast be the sleeping Devourer of Worlds has radically changed her physiology and given her access to several different powers. While her changed physiology is permanent, any force which disrupts the hole into the underverse or partially pulls her out of it also disrupts several of her powers. Floating teleport locations would normally be set to [Aspirant] and [Athenian]. This way, if the team needs to go somewhere fast, [Athenian] can use his megascale movement to get there, [Arachne] can teleport to wherever [Aspirant] is, and then gate them both to [Athenian] without any targeting problems. [Aphelion] also has megascale movement, but he normally doesn't let [Arachne] use him as a teleport destination, since that means she could, you know, show up one night and eat him, or something. How do you find out about crime to stop? How to you get to where the crime is? What sort of stuff do you do outside of costume? Built in weakness(es) Character Design:

And here's the first four characters, with their design highlights: Team outline: The 'A'-Team Averages DC 10 CV 7 DEF 25 SPD 5 Ranges REC 12-18 STUN 30-50 Resistant DEF 10+ Team Scope: Large City (Chicago analogue), mostly local, minor dimension hopping Special notes: A variant of high energy physics called 'Scary Physics' will be related to certain Lovecraftian elements (example story: From Beyond) 1st Character: [Athenian] Design highlights: Controlling Points Spent on Skills Stun Resistance PRE Resistance Teamwork skill Slow to change VPP Triggered Movement [Athenian] Balance Notes: A member of Campaign city's local government and a superhero. In play, some combination of speedster, martial artist, and power armor character. How do you find out about crime to stop? How to you get to where the crime is? What sort of stuff do you do outside of costume? Built in weakness(es) Character design: Sample VPP point allocations

Here's a more formal writeup of some of the previous character design stuff I've done, with more explicit layouts writeups of things like the campaign averages I was expecting, the stun avoidance table, and various other rules and example tidbits: Design Callout: Forced tradeoffs, not campaign limits It's normal for a champions campaign to set limits on things like the DC, CV, DEF, SPD, etc of the characters. I don't much like this way of doing things because it's almost always possible for the people who are good at character creation to be able to meet all of those limits at once, while the people who aren't good at character creation end up greatly overshadowed in play. The way I prefer to do things is to give a list of 'averages' for the campaign for DC, CV, DEF, and SPD and then allow the hero a free 'advance' in one of those categories. They can then trade off subtracting from one category for a reduction in another. Category 'steps' are as follows: DC: 2 CV 2 covers both attack and defense (so if 7 is the campaign average CV, then an average of 9 would be 'high') DEF 10 points (or advancement of 5 in PD and 5 in ED SPD: 1 Example: averages: DC: 10 CV: 7 DEF: 25 SPD: 5 Then legal a character could be: A more in depth writeup of this sort of system, can be found here. If also normally follow their suggestions such as highest special defense / 4 is added to your DEF total when computing your average DEF; you can only have 2 out of 3 of (Power Defense, Mental Defense, (Flash Defense and/or an unusual targeting sense). The stun avoidance table: This table should show the DEF + CON totals you need to avoid being stunned as a % chance. For example, if you want to avoid being stunned by a 10 DC attack 90% of the time, you need a CON + DEF total of 42. Rules comments: Weak entangles are too strong (some) stat Drains are too strong Things you should be able to answer about your character How do you find out about crime to stop? How to you get to where the crime is? What sort of stuff do you do outside of costume? Built in weakness(es)

Another way to do it is roll your speed in d12s. The numbers that show up are the phases you act it. Example: speed 5 guy rolls 5d12: (1, 4, 8, 10, 11) so those are the phases he acts on. This takes away the ability to know exactly when the other guy has phases coming up, and trying to exploit that. This rules may change the value of DEX/lightning reflexes, since it changes how likely you are to be acting in the same phase as different speed people, but not sure it's that big of a deal.

It's also that detects are typically not useful 'all the time'. For example, the fact that you have an alternative targeting sense only matters when you can't see the target clearly. So the fact that you can power up your alternative targeting sense only when you need it is not really any less effective than having the sense all the time. For pools that you can't switch quickly (e.g. only change in given circumstances, powers take hours to change, etc), this isn't much of an issue. But for high speed swapping VPPs and multipowers, it doesn't work out so well.

Huh, I always thought that the 'rank' style fringe benefits only gave the explicit benefits of that rank, not the 'implicit' benefits. So the 'Head of state' fringe benefit is supposed to also be enough to let you generally boss that state around, as opposed to just making you impossible to arrest, baring war, and stuff like that?7 [edit] And, I'd assume, that the 'ranks' would map roughly to he levels of wealth? So Rank 1-5 Local power Rank 6-10 National Power Rank 11-15 International Power So Local Union Man might be rank 3 or something and National Union Man might be rank 6 or 7. And a particularly effective US President would be rank 12 or 13, and a Bruce Wayne who decided to skip all this silly mask wearing stuff, he was going to cure malaria and end world hunger would end up rank 11 or 12? And, I dunno, Darkseid, would be rank 15? [yet another edit] And how would this interact with contacts. For example, if I have a contact with the local police: (11-) 2 points Useful skills 1 point Contact has access to major institutions 1 point x3 Organization Contact That's 12 points spent on just being able to get the local cops to go the extra mile for you. When you could pay, say 4 points for rank, and be a very important officer in the local cops, what does the 12 points for the contact get you?

How do you represent a character's influence over a particular section of society? For example, 'everyone' comes to Bruce Wayne's parties, and he could talk to them and they might consider his opinion on whatever he was talking about. In theory, that sort of thing is different from being wealthy. For example, we could imagine Union Man, whose secret ID is an important figure in a major union and wields considerable political influence even though he doesn't have a lot of money. We don't really want to write: contact: the mayor of campaign city contact: various members of campaign city's legislature contact: the governor of campaign state contact: various members of campaign state's legislature etc on Union Man's character sheet In addition, Union Man would be able to exert some influence on the Mayor of Campaign city, no matter who they were. That is, even though Union may may have a personal relationship with the guy who happens to be Mayor, if some other guy got elected mayor, Union Man would most likely be in the (new) Mayor's office the next day, telling the (new) Mayor how things were going to be. This seems to call for a perk similar to wealth, we'll call it 'influence' to show what sort of stuff you can accomplish. The fringe benefits like 'member of the nobility' or 'head of state' don't seem to actually give any power. For example, if you are a member of the nobility, you might not have to pay certain taxes, different laws might apply to you, etc. But there seems to be no direct way to represent your ability to exert influence.

One of the big things to get used to is that base stats no longer effect figured characteristics. So up to 5e, just adding STR, DEX, and CON was generally a good idea. In 6e, you don't really need to do that anymore. Sonic forcefield. I'd think that lasers and generic energy blasts would be much more common in a superhero game. And you be pretty much pasted by any opponent that happened to have them. Defenses look a little low, in the 'average' champions game, 12 DC attacks will be pretty common, you'd get pasted by 12DC energy blasts, since your force field generally wouldn't apply, and you'd be stunned around half the time by 12DC physical attacks. In addition, changing your force field DEF to make is cost END also makes it non-persistent so it turns off when you get stunned. Think the 'extra loud flight' should be modeled like this: Side effects: (-1/4) minor side effect (~15 points (example effects: flash vs. hearing, change environment, AOE blasts) (x2) side effect always occurs (1/4 less disadvantage) Side effect doesn't effect the character For a total of (-1/4). And note that the side effects will generally be bad for you, so you'll break windows and deafen little old ladies, not break Evil McEvils Glasses as you fly by. On the plus side, you wouldn't have to pay points for the flash vs. hearing anymore, so you save 3 points there. AVAD resistant flash defense so should be worth (+3/2) unless you mean for 'Sonic Ear Blast' to be a NND with the protection being 'resistant flash defense'. Though AVAD (just regular Flash defense) (+1) is probably reasonably good.

The 'problem' with a lot of alternate World War 2s is that the authors to assume that the historical events of WW2 were the 'most probably'. That is, if we rewound time and let WW2 run a few more times, then the actual outcome of WW2 would usually look like the historical outcome. But I think that's pretty far from the truth. As an example, I think the quick fall of France is probably an outlier, rather than an expected result. The UK can't be invaded in 1940 or 1941 because Germany has neither the landing craft nor the ability to supply an invasion force. Even if Germany could have somehow landed Winning WW2 is pretty much about boring things like how many ball bearings you could produce, and how much you can replaces horses with trucks so you can move more spam to the troops, not about how many Tiger tanks you could field, nor how quickly.

Huh, sounds like Sixth Column without the satire. Probably the worse for the loss.

It's possible to (greatly) reduce sonic boom noise with aerodynamics. A long (and specifically shaped) needle like nose, careful air intake design, and engine location all seem to matter. Of course, an aircraft designed for this sort of thing means all sorts of compromises in things like performance as a fighter aircraft. It would also interfere with the aerodynamic modifications you need for reduced radar cross section (i.e. 'stealth'). If you still need reduced RCS, there are (even more expensive and not well developed) ways to do that, such as plasma stealth. But even if you were Mr. Fantastic enough to design such an aircraft, I'm not sure if anyone would even be able to build it for you. I guess if you have a completely shape changing aircraft, or do stuff like generate your aerodynamic shape with force fields, then it's much simpler. Example: