unclevlad

So here's the concept. Character name: Gemini. Obvious power: Duplication; he splits into the twins. The power in question here is a Teleport, with the limitation Only to the other Twin. So Castor can teleport to Pollux, or Pollux to Castor. But that's it. Side point: they also have a full Psychic Bond Mind Link, should you think that relevant. EDIT: Yes, this also means that when NOT duplicated, the power can't be used. I'm thinking it's a full -2. Other opinions?

It's comics. Continuity is fluid. If I recall the Marvel Universe wiki on the quinjet...you're both right. But actually, both are combinations of tech genius and WEALTH. Stark and T'challa clearly both have 15 point wealth perks. BUT, this is also a difference between the game universe and the comics universe. The comics universe has no concept of points, so there is no concept of "paying for" something with points. Nope; it's gotta be cash coming from somewhere for the materials, land, system components, etc. That's why actually having some level of Wealth is helpful even in the gaming universe, because the concept of points is only on the player/GM side of the fence. Having the money is very handy for story consistency.

Base or tactical vehicle where you put in the points...no, you don't need Wealth. The points subsume that. Besides, something like a Quinjet can't be priced. They can't exist in our world. And if I remember the Base rules, location aspects play a role in the point cost. If it's the gadget pool where points have been paid...same thing. I'd rather see points in Inventor, or Contacts related to picking up components, than basic wealth. If you're talking buying routine, mundane stuff, then real-world limitations apply, such as availability, traceability, and legality.

Looking at that aspect in the Fate system (it's online)...the ideas aren't bad but the framework's quite different. One point that's there...money is never an actual mechanic, it's an excuse to make the mechanic plausible. For example, pulling off a bribe. Mechanically it's a skill roll; the money part says you have that as one of your bribe options. Need to get to Paris to talk to The World Class Expert...money just keeps the game moving forward, letting you buy plane tickets. I think a problem might be that the abstract notion of "money" doesn't cut it. What is the point of the perk/ability? What does money/wealth mean in-game? In Hero, that's actually genre-specific...so well of course the rules are unclear as all heck, You also get into a conflict, in supers, with the "must pay points for everything" aspect. Taken to extremes, that's just ludicrous, but it creates the big gray area between Everyman gear that you want players to have, and items that should cost points. What this really comes down to is that "what can I do with Money?" doesn't have a fixed answer. It's something a GM needs to address. It's dependent on genre and style issues.

Sidebar. In a fantasy campaign...change it from being armor to being defensive bracers. These *can* be worn 24/7 without the onset of Odious Personal Habits. edit: secondary thought, defensive bracers are quite appealing for many types. No weight, not as obvious, no movement restrictions. Even if these aren't codified as game hindrances, it's still the kind of thing that should be appealing to a character.

Yeah, ultimately it's a wonkin' big Side Effect. I'd throw in +10 CON too. I"d not use a 10d killing attack, as that's overkill. Unless the intent's to just flat-out kill the person and there won't be a chance for a healer to save his butt...then 10d is fine. I wouldn't use a Transform; it says subvert, not becomes. So it's more like Mind Control. Last, these both have their own conditionals. The killing attack may not be active until the armor's worn in combat (read: absorbs some of the damage from a blow) or maybe after 24 hours of total wear. The mind control or transform, from what you said, is more like weeks to months. Which maybe says, do it as a Mental Transform, and set a VERY long Recovery Time. Like a year. (If the mind transform is once a month, then recovering 5/year means never, without taking the armor off.) There's a logical downside here. You are saying the individual quite literally NEVER takes the armor off, or it kills him. So he's wearing it in the shower? In bed? That suggests a different route: a Dependence (armor must be worn). Separate staging...the dependence doesn't kick in for 4-6 hours, but once it does...it's once a turn. At least the 3d6, and I'd have no issue if you said it's 3d6 doing Body from the get-go (not just after going unconscious). Dependence --extremely difficult to obtain dependent substance (well, ok, here that's saying it's hosing you, and there's no other way around it) --3d6 does Body (+30 points) --6 hours before initial effect, but 1 turn afterward. Call this a -5 overall. And the demon subversion thing could also justify tossing in an Addiction. The damage starts when the demon feels pain on its own, as he's being pulled back to his home. It ends when that happens...perhaps 5 minutes. Another aspect is, doing it like this allows the creation of an obsessive/addictive behavior...the wearer likes to take it off to clean and inspect his armor, which is like petting the belly of the puppy to the demon.

It's not even so much about resources but about choices you make. Where do you shop for food...Wal Mart and the discount grocery chain, or Whole Foods, Trader Joes, and Bristol Farms et al.? When you eat out, where? Fast food, the feeding troughs like Golden Corral, a national chain like Olive Garden or Chilis...or a little hole in the wall local place that's not at all expensive but is really good, all the way up to a Del Posto or a Michael Mina? When you're thinking money, it's how much do you have, and when you do A that means you can't do B. When you're thinking lifestyle, it's the choices you make, which are not necessarily linked to cost. Understanding the distinction might take practice...which of course implies having enough money to be able to practice, and the opportunities to make those choices.

The grabber also needs some time to react, IMO, even if it's a different phase. A has B grabbed on 3. On 4, B tenses, preparing to leap. Where to? If it's 15m UP, then A can let go while and fall a few meters...no biggie, probably. But if it's to jump 2m backwards into that cactus or wall...A doesn't have time to react. Plus, trying to grab someone you can't really contain physically is generally a very bad idea, so I'm not inclined to make this a freebie. Make it part of an Abort action? Sure, because now at least it's costing A his next action.

No, true enough. That's where the whole notion of "lifestyle" helps because it's largely independent of the vagaries of local costs. Note, too, that's a family of 4, and that's pre-tax income. It's not explicitly stated but I think safe to assume: the wealth levels are after taxes, and considering the expenses of a single person. Even so, $100K for me in the Southwest, is rather more than $100K in Honolulu, NY, or San Fran. NOTE: it's only largely independent when you've been to places like Corning, California. A very nice little town, but......not much there. Not when I was there a few times in the 80s anyway. I mean, if an Applebee's is the height of fine dining, well, there's probably no such thing as a luxury lifestyle.

Another way to put it...and I wrote a bunch of stuff before recognizing this...Lifestyle focuses on how you're using your money in the everyday world. Not the money itself.

The point is, saying it's "lifestyle" says it's already allocated, rather than in the bank. Think of it as the inventory of a store rather than the cash to buy the inventory. No, it's not a big difference, but it is a mindset difference.

Lifestyle means the money is already out the door, not that you have it to do whatever you want with it.

Shadowrun used Lifestyle. It ended up with some indirect benefits, but security was a significant issue and that's where it tended to come into play. But, you actually had to make the money, on your runs, to maintain it. Something else you could do is tweak the wealth levels, then say that no PC can have more than something like 10 points...because the commitments inherent in a 15 point wealth perk preclude actually being a PC. And, a 10 point Wealthy is $5M a year. Again, presumably after taxes. And with no job commitment that can't be pushed aside easily. (And this is before reconsidering the levels, as was pointed out.) I'd rather there's SOME cost for this, especially with starting heroes. Otherwise, it's something most characters are gonna take. Why do street level when you can do penthouse? At the very least, there should be a limit to just how high you can go for 0 points...especially for starting characters, who are generally younger.

Mmm...stupid rule, for this. Means there's darn near nothing that's "minor" with Transforms. At least with regard to people. I suppose that's why there's Aid and Healing, I guess.

Perhaps 10 point Transform? Remove Stunned condition?

The current notion of "rich guy things" is...insane. I enjoy nice watches, which gives a hook into ultra-rich peoples' toys. Such as: https://www.hautetime.com/boeings-747-8i-vip-jet-first-class-reimagined/88035/ OK, that's more likely corporate, just due to sheer SIZE. (4500 square feet of cabin space!) https://www.hautetime.com/gulfstream-g650er-impressive-business-jet-reaching-new-heights/86837/ https://www.hautetime.com/oceanco-jubilee/87517/ Or news about a car like this: https://www.bugatti.com/chiron-sport/ You might have heard about the Rolex Paul Newman Daytona watch that sold for $17M. Yeah, well, in the high-end art world, that's midrange. Look through sales at a Philips or Christies and what looks like total junk will go for $2M. $100M is *not* the province of the classic masterworks by any means...modern pieces will sneak in there. It's crazy. Granted, in our games we like the super-duper custom planes that are doing a few Mach, but that's...complicated. Googling for commerical supersonics...first, there are none. Some have been worked on, but none finished. One big reason why? It's illegal to exceed the speed of sound over the US. If you want a Quinjet or FantasiCar...you kinda need a Reed Richards or Tony Stark hanging around. And some pretty intense government connections, I'd say.

And you can now buy minor amounts. Remember that 1 point gets you $100K per year, and that should be net, i.e. after taxes. That's allowed to be something completely separate, and it's plenty to live quite nicely. By the same token, I agree that as long as it's not being abused, it's something that can be a freebie. And, note that there are potential complications; money inherently draws attention. Truth be told, I'd prefer this to saying it's a modifier on a roll to access gear. There should be better ways to handle that; it's one big reason for Contacts, for example.

You've seen bootleg scans. These won't be bootleg. Project Gutenberg's books are often scans of the originals...because we're talking manually printed. Sometimes they're pretty poor; but if the work's put in, the readability can be very good. The size...they might be large, yeah. Eek. Got 4 gig on my Kindle, got 16 gig on my iPad, got Google and Dropbox accounts to stash this. I'll grant that size may be an issue WRT file load times, but other than that? Nah. One big thing with the playtest doc is, he's aiming for significant simplification, which IMO will be helpful. I've been goofing off developing character ideas for a Drew Hayes Super Powereds universe...total of 5 books. Only origin stories are Mutant, and Tech Wizard. Even the latter is rare among Heroes; they tend to be on the sidelines in a support role. And generally, every character is fairly well themed. It's been fun. Some in Hero, some cases, tried to use GURPS. With both it's very easy to get lost in the weeds of all the options, variations, and what-all. And that *can* devolve into the character being buried in the numbers. Easily. Simplifying the rules doesn't prevent that, of course, but his emphasis in characterization first helps. And it's going to be quite a bit different. He's probably going to go with Endurance issues again being front and center. He talked about killing attack issues; we went back and forth in comments on it...that one of the major problems is simply the killing damage dice. It's one of his YouTube videos, with our exchange of comments below. So there's going to be some qualitative differences that may well *not* be applicable to full-scale Hero.

Yeah, I think this is handled on a case by case basis when there's no points involved...like normal clothes. If points are involved, then the rules say each form has to pay the points. Literature and comics go both ways. Werewolves, for example, often trash their clothing, especially in a hybrid form that's usually rather larger than human; but a shapeshift spell often just says the clothes et al. just disappear while transformed, then reappear. Note that this applies to things on the shifter when the shift occurs...a cell phone sitting on the table never transforms. Fnally, you'll see "shifter clothing" quite a bit, and that's generally a freebie. Cuz this covers the Growth and Shrinking types. GMs may do this just to avoid adding an implicit Complication onto these. Now, that said...if the Shift is a curse like Lycanthropy...then trashing the clothing is more fitting.

Well at first I was thinking you'd need it to sift through the signals, cuz they all look the same. If you capture the phone's ID info in advance, you might get by without it. I'd still say, put it in to monitor a call just because there's so many conflicting calls. This isn't like a tap on a landline, it's more like following a conversation while inside a stadium full of cheering/jeering/talking fans. I will grant, I prefer to take a narrower view, and to say, put the points in.

OK so the tech approach. Radio Perception with Discriminatory. The tracker can call the phone, well in advance, to get the identifying characteristics. Finding it initially might take a while. Once it's found, you can pretty much keep the lock. One thing here is, I suspect this would drain the phone power rather quickly, which would be noticeable, and the phone powering down would break the lock you have. And yes, this can be done......but. "Find My Phone" apps work with the phone in standby, but IIRC, NOT quietly. The phone will buzz, ring, or whatever, so the user's gonna be alerted. Bypassing that becomes a hack...or says, OK, your tracker found/bought info to exploit security loopholes, so this tracking doesn't trigger alarms. You can't stop the battery drain, and you can't stop the user, if he's looking, from seeing the activity on the phone. But I can buy an advanced hacker finding an exploit.

To track, Radio Perception is the obvious basis. After that it's a matter of special effects. The quasi-Mentalist approach would be Mind Scan, Mind Link, Mind Control, all affecting phones rather than minds. The tech basis would be Radio Percept and Transmit, with Discriminatory (to find the right signal out of the sea of numbers) and Targeting (to track the signal to the phone). The hack is basically no different from hacking a computer over the internet. Note that probably the Radio Percept/Transmit might need Invis Power Effects to trick the phone to accept the credentials you need to get into the OS and actually do the hack, but if you think that's overthinking this...that's fine. Remember: the phone user will have a direct indication that he's receiving data. I would think there's some source materials that gives some decent examples of hacking a computer. This shouldn't be easy or quick.

Active Points 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 3 2.40 2.50 2.57 2.63 2.67 2.70 2.73 2.75 4 2.80 3.00 3.14 3.25 3.33 3.40 3.45 3.50 5 3.00 3.33 3.57 3.75 3.89 4.00 4.09 4.17 6 3.50 3.86 4.13 4.33 4.50 4.64 4.75 7 4.00 4.38 4.67 4.90 5.09 5.25 8 4.50 4.89 5.20 5.45 5.67 Hope that comes out. Top row is active points at full strength; left column is # of charges in the clip. The intersection shows the total number of full charge equivalents you get from the clip.

The more general math is gonna be similar to eepjr's, I think, but lessee. P = active points in the power at full strength. Then, after N shots (where N cannot exceed P/10), the total power released is N * P - 10 * (N * (N-1))/2 or N * P - 5*N*(N-1) So the charges "lost" becomes (5*N*(N-1)) / P And the overall value of this custom Charges limitation is based on the total number of full strength charge-equivalent uses per clip. This is easy to spreadsheet. The Side Effect approach works when the power isn't on charges.

My bad. The OP has that this power is already limited to a 5 shot clip. Missed that, it's a tad buried. And maybe I was being sloppy and jumping ahead. Then the declining aspect is pretty minor. 75 + 65 + 55 + 45 + 35 = 275 active in all 5 shots. Given the flat 5 charges, the total active points in the 5 shots (where the full power shot has N active) is 5N - 100 So if N is ~ 50, you're getting 3 shots' worth. If N is ~ 100, you're getting 4 shots. 75 means 3 2/3 shots, call it 4 shots worth.