Kenn

Re: Teen Champions PCs vs Minuteman. The question I have, are there other groups of PCs, using your specific copy of the Champions Universe? Lots of people use the Champions Universe setting, but your Champions Universe has your group of PCs on it. That makes it unique. Unless there are other groups of PCs who could, theoretically meet this group of PCs. If you alter the Minute Man, in a contained universe, it shouldn't matter. Unless you're afraid your players will say "boy on a good day, Defender wouldn't do as well as I just did" or something similar, it shouldn't matter becaus ethey'r ethe only ones who might know. If you share this specific world with anyone, then you should discuss the situation with them, as you probably don't want to alter the tone of his game.

Re: Superfluous Powers Whether Armor is Force Field with Advantages or Force Field is Armor with Limitations gets pretty funky. 10 PD 10 ED Force Field is 20 points (active and real) and costs 2 END to maintain. 10 PD 10 ED Armor, costs END (-1/2) is 30 Active points and 20 real points and costs 3 END to maintain. But, add a @ 1/2 END advantage (kicking it up to 37 active and 25 real points) one gets that END cost down to 2. 10 PD 10 ED Armor (with no modifiers) is 30 points (active and real) and has no END cost and is Persistant. 10 PD 10 ED Force Field, @ 0 END cost (+1/2), Persistant (+1/2) is 40 points (active and real). Essentially, if the defense is persistant, make it armor - it's cheaper. If it costs END, make it Force Field, it's cheaper.

Re: Martian Manhunter Question and other oddities During the silver age, the 4.5 light years between Earth and rann would be paltry to Superman, who regularly traversed the galaxy. Post-Crisis, he lost the ability to travel at superluminal speeds. During the Infinite Crisis he apparently regained the ability, as the Supermen flew Superboy to Krypton's star system (some 50 light years away) in a matter of minutes. Amen.

Re: Martian Manhunter Question and other oddities Eventually, Dr. Strange (Adam, not Stephen) got a lift from Hawkman and Hawkgirl (the silver age Katar and Shayera Hol), but after not too long fell back into his zeta beam habit. Maybe he just didn't know Superman or GL* well enough. On Rann he was a big deal. On earth, he was nobody. * Except Flash nominated him for JLA membership.

Re: Thoughts on the Speed Zone If you have this ability in a Teen Champions campaign, can you only go 20 mph, as it would be a School Speed Zone?

Re: Martian Manhunter Question and other oddities I've not read many of the early J'onnz solo stories, but in the silver age Justice League stories, his flight abilities weren't powerful enough to get him home to Mars. Of course, I don't know that he ever asked Superman or Green Lantern to fly him home either. I think it had to do with him having been in exile from his own society, even before he was brought to Earth.

Re: Life Support for Robots I think the consumption of electricity is better reflected through various powers and physical limitations. A robot doesn't eat food. It wouldn't affect the food stores. Your robot should switch to Linux instead of DOS.

Re: superman His telescopic vision and his extended hearing should not be in a multipower together. I don't know if I missed it or if you didn't include it but there should be Ultrasonic hearing. I'm not sure the idea of Superman maintaining an 80 STR under a red sun is accurate to the comics. Silver Age he went from Super to normal (say 15 STR) like that under a red sun. These days, its more of an extreme STR drain. Also, the STR not working vs magic is a little vague, but that's probably because his vulnerability to magic is written differently all the time.

Re: More Help Please His sidekick, Weakforce, gets laughed at, though.

Re: Genres HERO GAMES may want to avoid (intended to be humorous) Naked Advantages HERO (formerly known as Nudist HERO)

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues Yes. I know.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It Either remove the armour pirecing, or cut the number of dice down in the hand-to-hand attack. Without the move through or passing strike, its already the equivilant of a 16.5 DC attack. As I understand the "standard Superheroic campaign" power levels, you're already well over. If you cut the hand-to-hand attack down to just 3d6 AP HTH, then the just-stand-and-punch move will be 6d6 AP or the rough equivilant of 9 damage classes. Not great, but not bad either. But this is a speedster, who's forte is movement. Which means he shouldn't be great when he's standing still. But when he moves and does his 11d6 AP passing strike he'll be awsome, and his 14d6 AP "sacrifice" move-through will be spectacular. The way a speedster should be.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues They're going to have a hard time getting into the mindset where, in a fight, holding an action is usually a good thing. The differences in game, particularly combat mechanics are very different. They're going to be used to saying "okay, I use one action to parry, and the other one (or two) to try to attack." In Hero, that description would be stretched over six-to-twelve (or more) segments, and each little part resolved as it comes up.

Re: All Scots don't have 17 str! The loss of damage classes represents the fact that melee weapons do damage because the muscles are used to swing the weapon. Same mechanics are why your kid brother doesn't hit the baseball as hard as your big brother using the same bat.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues I think you just convinced me that the lack of a specific Attack of Oppotunity rule is one more of the strengths of HERO.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues What are "attacks of oppotunity"? There are rules for suprise attacks and rules for attacks when the target is considered out of combat. I would think most attacks of oppotunity would fall under one or the other or both of those cases. As far as going around someone, the ease is largly based on what they are doing. If they're activly trying to prevent someone's passage, they they're going to be standing their waiting (holding an action) for the person to try, and when the person tries they'll engage in some combat action to stop them (grab, strike, what have you.) If the person being gone around has already attacked that phase, or has a lower dexterity than the person moving around them, then yes, getting past them isn't that difficult. The thing to remember is Hero System combat is based on a second-by-second, blow-by-blow passage of time, noticably different than the way combat is declared in D&D.

Re: Power Defense I'm with Mr. Neilson. I rarely see it used because so few character concepts call for it.

Re: Napalm vs. Tanks I think the problem comes from the more-or-less exponential nature of the system. The 70 STR brick is 4096 times stronger than the average 10 STR cop. But his punch is 7x as many dice. +12 DC for something 4096 as powerful. That works out for +1d6 Killing Damage for every 8 times increase in power. With that kind of scaling, there's going to be variences.

Re: Does your GM play too? When I first began GMing, the person who'd been my GMing mentor had had a GMPC in the group he ran, so it was very natural for me to include one. I got rather annoyed when the team elected the GMPC the team leader... By about the 3rd session, though, one of my players took a turn at running the game, and having the GMPC around made it possible. This was all back a few years (Reagan was still President.) It wasn't that long before other players (the one who tried in the third game, and my GMing mentor, and others) were all running campaigns on the same game world. That's how the RC Universe was born. Today, 19 years later, there's been 110% (mentor guy left in 1989, came back a few months ago) player turnover, but the campaign's still going. The GMPC is still there. Lots of ex-PC NPCs that I can rotate in or out as needed.

Re: The Use of a Focus for Teleportation...? She said a focus, but I'm not sure if she means focus, in general usage, or focus the Hero System game mechanic. The most direct way would to buy floating locations with the focus limitation on it to represent the "homing" device, and then use the teleport multipower that OddHat described. Other options would get clumbsy quick (like actually building a 1 freq. radio transmitter, and having the appropriate sense to sense the mechanism.)

Re: The Night of the 1001 Character Pics…

Re: Superman Returns Score The score in Superman II happened shortly after Superman gave up his powers. BTW: Anyone know, in "Superman Returns," how long was Superman gone, and how old is Lois' son?

Re: Genres HERO GAMES may want to avoid (intended to be humorous) Fornicating Furries Hero (a la "Fritz the Cat")