Checkmate

Re: First time making a character would like some advice That looks pretty good, very survivable. I would have probably halved the END on the Multipower rather than raise the END and REC, but I haven't done the math to see which is cheaper. You may want to let her know that she may be disappointed in non-combat scenarios with her. I would try to fit in at least a City Knowledge on top of her Streetwise.

Re: First time making a character would like some advice Something I forgot to mention was END. Assuming your GM won't let you walk around with the Damage Negation on all the time, you're going to run out of END QUICKLY. In Phase 12 (all combats start at Phase 12) assuming you turn on your Negation, and attack, you'll be down 17-18 END. You get 10 of that back at the end of Phase 12 so you'll be down say 7. If you attack your remain 3 phases (assuming you don't use an 8 END attack at all) you'll be down 28 END for a total of 12 at the end of Phase 9. Phase 12 Attack you're down to 5 END, end of Phase 12 you're up to 15, which means by Phase 6 you're completely out of END. That's less than 2 turns. If the GM does let you run around with Damage Negation on, that only gives you 1 extra Phase so you'll be out by Phase 9. Again this is a starting character, you don't need to throw around 75-80 Active Point powers. You could lower that to 60-70 active points, and still be very competitive. A 4d6 Armor Piercing Killing Attack is BRUTAL. 1 in 6 times you're going to roll a 6 in the Stun Multiple. If you roll an average Body roll (14 Body) that's 70 Stun, now add Armor Piercing on top of that... Ouch.

Re: First time making a character would like some advice Here's the problem you're running into with the conception, you're a cat, but in order to survive you need superhuman stats. I think you need to decide which way you're going to go. Is it going to be a normal cat, or a superhuman critter. Here's what I'm talking about, you have a 2 STR which I suppose could be considered Cat-like but you have a 10 PD. Mike Tyson (in his prime), could hit this "Cat" as hard as he could, and on an average roll, the cat would barely feel it. You're claws are still wrong, you've bought Hand-to-Hand Attack again (which typically simulates a blunt instrument). What you want is Killing Attack- Hand-to-hand. You also don't need Constant or Persistent on it. You're 6 DCV Always On isn't a limitation (and not entirely sure even legal). You could probably add Constant and Persistent to that to make it more legal. You've spent a ridiculous amount of points on Flight. While there are no "Levels" like in other games, these are still starting characters, I would seriously consider cutting this back (I would cut it in half to 20m). The other thing you could do, is since it's all based on TK, you could add the Unified Power limitation to pretty much all your TK powers. Why does your 80 Point Multipower cost 90 points? You have a TON of Body. Champions games, heroes rarely take body. You could drop this considerably and still be fine. If you take any of my point saving suggestions, I would increase the SPD to 5 if not 6 and probably up the DEX, PRE (pretty hard to impress a cat), and EGO ('cause their strong willed).

Re: First time making a character would like some advice Ah I missed that... Although when you consider that any time the cat uses its MP to attack, it only has 2/2 Defs, a 10 doesn't seem that high.

Re: First time making a character would like some advice The first thing you want to do is make sure your GM is okay with a PC who's a cat. Personally as a GM I'd veto it. It just causes way too many complications. I mean why would a cat stay with a group of people? How does a cat talk to the group without the proper lips, tongue or vocal cords. You have to think like a cat with a cat's motivations making it very difficult to run a group centered game. That said, I'll get to some of your questions: OCV is used to hit with everything except mental powers. You have a 16 DCV most of the time*, making the cat extremely difficult to hit, which can certainly make up for the lack of defenses. Assuming your GM says 90 Active Point powers are okay (which is A LOT) assuming, your powers cost 9 END. Assuming you use your TK every phase, you'll be out of END in 2 Turns, I don't think that's going to be enough. You have your Claws defined as Hand-to-Hand Attack, now besides defining a sharp object as a HA (it would typically be a Killing Attack) you've made it Persistent, which really makes no sense at all. Add to that, that you've just spent 8 points to give yourself a 1.5d6 attack. That equates to about the damage you'd do if a regular person picked up a cat and threw it at you. To put it into game mechanics terms: If you tied up Aunt May (from Spiderman) and kept hitting her with this attack, it would take you over 2 Turns to knock her out (assuming she has a 2 PD and 20 Stun) Uncle Ben would take you over 11 Turns (assuming 3 PD and 20 Stun). Guess that's a long way to say "That's a completely useless power" Nightvision: Why go through all that trouble with Skill Levels, when you can just buy the enhanced sense "Nightvision"? What makes the Force Screen inherent when none of the other TK powers are? 90 Active Points are HUGE attacks, talk to your GM early to avoid a lot of wasted work. *You don't have Defense Maneuver which means at the start of combat (or before combat starts) you're Skill Levels with DCV aren't assigned yet. You can't assign them (meaning get the benefit of them) until it is your turn on Phase 12. If anyone goes before you on Phase 12 you only have a 10 DCV, which is still pretty impressive.

Re: Complete Newcomer to the System I would highly recommend the post Jordan books. All that waiting for something to happen FINALLY pays off.

Re: The move to FTP Not really. All you need is enough players to make a profit. There are TONS of games out there that don't have the player base of WoW but still make a healthy profit. Here is the link for the matrix of what Gold gets vs what Silver gets: Clicky

Re: Campaign Concept Source: "No Ordinary Family"

Re: Complete Newcomer to the System You know you've really fallen into it when you watch TV and movies and are figuring out how to stat it in Hero.

Re: Is Defender the new Seeker? I don't know, some of the "art" in 5th ed supplements was downright awful (Hidden Lands leaps immediately to mind). I also think that's the best picture of Solitare and Quantum. I don't know, I wasn't a huge fan of the Fuzion system mostly because of the character creation system, but I absolutely love the setting. Yeah my book fell apart on me too.

Re: Review some 5ER characters for a new GM? The background, by necessity I imagine, is pretty generic, and I would assume that the player is left to fill in the rest. The interesting part is the lack of knowledge of where his powers come from. Another cool twist is the job/power-set mix. You wouldn't normally see the large brick filling the Detective Role. I think that's an interesting twist (Ben Grimm in trench-coat and fedora shadowing the suspect) For complications, the Husband who was "ratted out" to his wife by the detective goes to the same place to get powers to get even, would certainly be an interesting adventure, and a moral quandary if you want to play it like that ("It was one mistake and you ruined my whole life, I lost my kids and my wife." or "The F.B.I. asked me to go undercover when a Terrorist cell asked me to help, the woman I was in the hotel with was an F.B.I. Agent!") Taking another look, I agree with Hugh, he seems underpowered compared to the 350 point characters in CKC. I mean look at Bulldozer who's only 290 points. He has slightly lower PD/ED (24/24) but he has a 20 REC, and something I missed on the first pass, Bulldozer has a 30 CON compared to the Brick's 20. Bulldozer also has a 20 DEX and +3 with HtH. If this were my character, I think I would get rid of some of the defenses, and pick them up with XP. I'd probably drop Hardened, Power Defense and both Flash Defenses. I'd raise his CON to 28 and going by what you said, (DEF's rather that DCV) go with 35/35 PD/ED. If I had points left over, I'd start adding in the stuff I dropped. If you don't like the idea of PD/ED that high, give a slight bump to DEX. I think you're trying to add too much to a "level 1" character I'm too tired tonight, but I'll go over SS tomorrow. My initial impression is he's a glass howitzer. I think he's going to be a lot more effective in combat that you think he is... as long an no one hits him.

Re: Review some 5ER characters for a new GM? Not bad, and it's really hard to judge without seeing the other characters, but using the "standard" Champions characters from the books as reference this is what I see: His DEX is pretty low, but you've spent 21 points on CSL's. If you take 18 of those points to raise the DEX to 20, this would give you 7 CV, then take the other 3 points and take +1 w/Punch, Grab, Disarm. To compare what you have, with my suggestion: Your Way: you would have a max of 10 OCV with Grab or Disarm but a 5 DCV. You'd have a max of 8 OCV with any HtH maneuver, but again a 5 DCV. If you went defensive you'd have a max of 8 DCV against HtH attacks, but only a 5 DCV against ranged. If you tried a Grab or Disarm with equal emphasis on OCV/DCV you'd be 7/7, with any other HtH attack you'd be 7/6 or 6/7 My Way: No matter what you have a 7 DCV against HtH and Ranged. With, what I assume, will be the most common HtH attack (punch) you'll have an 8 OCV, which is the same as yours, but you'll still have a 7 DCV. So with a punch grab or disarm you'd be 8/7 OCV/DCV, with any other HtH attack you'd be 7/7. Results: The only times your way is "better" is when you go full DCV your way is +1 DCV, but you are -2 OCV and your way doesn't protect against ranged attacks. The other time you come out ahead is full OCV on a Grab or Disarm you're +2 OCV, but your -2 DCV You could put your Entangle and Tunneling in a Multipower, wouldn't really save you points now (I think it comes out 1 point cheaper) but future XP would make this easy to increase. You gave the character the ability to walk along the bottom of the ocean, but no way to breathe down there. For skills, I would give up the Forensic Medicine, this isn't really a detective thing, Criminology would do most of what you want, and maybe a PS: Cop. I would make Shadowing a full skill though, especially if his early gigs were following spouses. You've spent 4 points to increase Concealment and Criminology. You could drop those skills back down and use 3 points to buy a Skill level +1 w/Concealment, Criminology, Deduction (or some other skill). On your Disads, you have Public ID and Requests for help, as a GM I would see that as double dipping. I'm excited to see the rest

Re: Is Defender the new Seeker? Here is the Seeker from his bio: Here is the color pic from the back cover. He's a gadgeteer so that's where the jet pack comes from, it's not on his sheet. Here is Quantum, Solitaire, and Defender from the cover. This is probably the best picture of him:

Re: Supergenius from Fringe **SPOLIERS** Aww this one's easy EDM... It was a joke, it was just a joke, don't hurt me...Arrrrrghhhhhh..

Re: A Boy Scout - First HERO System Character Looking at your stats, I would have done some things differently: STR is okay, but I HATE half dice (your punch would be 1 1/2d6) DEX is in a weird spot. Combat Value = DEX/3, and DEX based Skill Rolls are (DEX/5)+9 and remember you always round up. If you dropped DEX to 8 you pretty much have the same CV and Skill Rolls. Now, DEX also matters for intuitive so you'd go before all the chumps who went for the break point, and that may be worth the 3 points to you. INT is wasted. An 11 INT may make you feel better, but mechanically speaking it does absolutely nothing for you. Again, skill rolls and perception rolls are (INT/5)+9. You'll see no difference unless you go at least a 13 in INT. COM there really is no reason to drop it one point. HD may keep track of the half point you save (not sure if it does or not), but honestly you're just making yourself uglier for no real gain. SPD, I think even kids should be at least a SPD 2. I picture a SPD 1 being an 80 year old grandma. Just to make sure this doesn't confuse anyone, in 5th ed. an Overall Skill level is 10 points. In 6th ed. it's 12 (I assume).

Re: Complete Newcomer to the System To expand on this some (because this really is the most important thing to wrap your head around when you're building characters), when you think about a character, don't just describe what the power or ability looks like or where it comes from, know what it does. For example, don't say "I want a character with really long hair that the character can control" That doesn't really help. I mean do they just make their hair stand on end, or are they able to grab things with it? If they can grab things, is it stronger than the arms? Can it be used as a whip? Think about what you want the power to accomplish, then think what mechanic will allow you to accomplish that. This probably won't be a problem when you're first starting out, but it is something to keep in mind as you discuss with others. I'll tell you a story about how this point was driven home to me: I've been playing Champions since the mid 80's and generally it was with the same group of people. A few years ago I started with a new group and we were creating characters. Mine was going to be a brick, we had a power armored character and a Medic type. I had the lowest Physical Defense and Energy Defense of the group, and a 4 SPD. In my experience, with the group I played with, I would have gotten creamed, and I was a little bummed that the GM made me stay like that (still think he should have let me lower the COM ). When we started playing though, I was the one that could probably take the most damage. With this group, the SPD's were generally lower, and my character had a high Recovery (20 to be exact). At one point I was down to 10 STUN, but the next Phase anyone acted on was Phase 12. My phase 12 action was to take a recovery, then I got my end of Phase 12 recovery, and just like that I was back up to 50 STUN. So if you looked at my character by itself, low defenses low speed, you'd think he'd be a goner. However in that environment, where everyone had low SPD's allowing his high recovery to have a greater effect, he really was a tank.

Re: New to 6E. Wow! Amazing system I'm with Killer Shrike, but I might keep it a bit simpler. You want to "wow" the players where Hero shines, and that's removing classes. Let's pretend that your other game was D&D. Go to your players, and ask, if they could play any character in D&D, what would they play? If they come back with "Human Fighter", prod them, ask them "What about a Centaur Shaman" or (gods forbid) "Drow Ranger"? Now in the D&D world Centaurs and Drow would be much more powerful than a Human Fighter, not in Hero. With the point buy system, everyone comes out pretty balanced (with GM intervention of course). The Centaur will spend most of his points on Characteristics, and be pretty light in his Shaman skills. The Drow would spend a lot of points in his special abilities (Faire Fire, Darkness etc.) while the Human Fighter would spend most of his points on being a Fighter. Also explain that there are no restriction to what "Feats" you can take beyond being able to afford them. Anyone can learn as much or as little magic as they want. When you create the characters you want to keep hammering into them not to think about the restrictions of D&D. If they want their Wizard to know Fireball, Magic Missile, and Cure Critical Wounds, you can do that. You can make a Character who is a Paladin of a Chaotic Good god of Weather and give that Paladin weather related powers, and he doesn't have to be played as if he's Lawful Good. The second bit of advice that I give all newcomers is Hero Designer. This is the software character creator. In my opinion the only thing more important than this is the core rule books. This should absolutely be your next purchase. A lot of people write it off as being lazy, but there is no better way to teach yourself the character creation system than this software. You can read the rules throw it into Hero Designer and check it out, and reverse engineer the math. I feel it is absolutely crucial. The third piece of advice, and one you seem to have grasped is coming to the forums. We are all here because we like Hero System, and we want it to succeed. If that means helping out dirty noobs like you, well that's what we'll do Seriously we are generally a pretty helpful bunch and we love to discuss rules and ways to accomplish something. If you have any problems with anything from campaign ideas to character builds, stop on by.

Re: Campaign Concept Source: "No Ordinary Family" I think I remember that show. He worked for the government and couldn't tell his family he was really alive... Am I close?

Re: SPEED Beyond 12 Wow I can't imagine anyone ever needing a 12 SPD, let alone going beyond that. I mean if you're creating your own world, Like Dragonball, why not say that the average "Dragonballer" has a 4 SPD? Someone twice as fast as the Average Mega-Super martial artist? Give them an 8 SPD.

Re: Telepathic Hearing If you do go with the Detect, I would also allow anyone aware of your ability to "whisper" their thoughts, or make it harder for you to detect even if they don't have Mental Defense. That power is just huge compared to the cost.

Re: Special Effects M16's haven't been fully automatic since the 80's (with the A2), except in the Navy, we use what they call the A3 which is an A2 with an A1 Trigger Group allowing full auto, just an F.Y.I. As far as the build, the problem I have with it is that an untrained user would VERY accurate with the weapon using your build. The reason the Military uses a 3 round burst is because trained personnel can usually put 3 rounds on target, anything more than that and the gun becomes unwieldy. I think the rules for Autofire, as is, perfectly represents what happens. You rarely get all 5 shots to hit a target unless the shooter is very good, or the person being shot is very slow. It also removes Missile Deflection.

Re: About hero Central and PBEM You don't really need the Admin (Dan Simon ) to get on Hero Central. Just register and it will send your password to the email you provide... Unless you aren't getting the email. If not I would check your Spam box. If you check your side first ('cause Dan is gonna ask) and still don't get the email you can probably PM on this site. His user name is Simon.

Re: Champions the New Millenium using HERO System 6th Edition Campaign In a perfect world it wouldn't matter how many points each was made with, everyone would just have fun with what they have as long as everyone gets a chance to shine. In a real world we know that's not the case. I know it would bug me to have people started on different point levels. This is what I would do: Go back to the beginning. Create the Champions from the book as starting characters, make them all 400 points. Cut things off or lower the power level on the ones that are over, add things to the ones under. Once you have everyone at the same starting point, give the players their XP. If you've kept track over the years, great give them what they got, if not, well fudge it, or just give them all the same amount.

Re: New Product: The Crossroad Blues Maybe it's what he's the master of that's the secret.

Re: Is Defender the new Seeker? I don't mind Nighthawk, I've always been a fan of G-Force, Battle of the Planets, Gattchaman or whatever it was called.