Hadmar von Wieser

Should be real cheap once you get the 1/5 cost break for a computer and then slap OAF on it.

I strongly disagree on combining Computer and OAF.

Computer like Follower, Vehicle, and Base is a -4 Limitation. Meaning "you can use this about 20% of all scenes and situations", because you almost never can take it with you.

OAF, on the other hand, means: You can take it with you in every scene and situation - but someone could stop you from. That's -1.

A smart phone is a textbook example of an obvious and accessible focus, but no follower. A follower that follows you all the time is no limitation.   

And those jargons and argots all have the same problem and characteristic: They are constantly evolving. Because everything that becomes COMMON can be understood by guards and victims and spys and judges, too. So the inner circle keeps on exchanging words and mincing new expressions to confuse all but those that are with them constantly. Those you can trust.

We all know the same effect from youth slang. The moment everyone in your gang is calling it "cool" or "super", the teachers and parents start to call it that, too, so they can connect to you. But you don't want to be connected to them.   The younger ones desperately try to model themselves after you and use it - but when the kids call it "cool", it isn't cool anymore. And even worse: everyone is getting older, and when they finally turn into grown ups, they are traitors by definition. That's why swag already starts to loose its swag and why Gangnam Style isn't Gangnam anymore.

And now combine that with you not loosing your cool but loosing your head if the wrong persons understand you. Than you get an idea about why Thieves' Cant is not just different in Lankhmar and Sanctuary, but also different from Lankhmar's vocabulary 20 years ago.


 

And by the way: I still believe that modern grenades shouldn't be 2d6 RKA Explosion, but 3d6 RKA Explosion. That still means only 50% instant kill on point range (for normals).

Sadly there is much factual documentation on what grenades do in a crowd - and 2d6 might not even have been in realistic WWII. Most modern grenades are considered to have "effective casualty-producing radius of 10m" or more, to use that cold militaristic jargon.
http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/army_board_study_guide_topics/hand_grenades/hand-grenades-study-guide.shtml

And here is a typical case of "half of them dead instantly":
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3442628/

 

I disagree. If a character wants to ensure that the effect is dependable, the character would buy it on the character's own sheet with a Limitation.

 

like, perhaps, Ghost Rider and his motorcycle.

Good point.

I have always thought the book builds for grenades were pretty wimpy compared to real life, tho they're pretty close to how grenades are usually portrayed in most fiction.

I agree with bigdamnhero: movie explosions regularily use blasts directed upward. So you get that slow moving orange fire ball (which is from petrol, not military explosives) and all that earth raining down. You do not get lethal forces radially expanding and endangering your stuntmen. 

Which of course is the general idea and effect of explosive ammunition: killing people all around.   

So it depends on what you want:

In most games I go for the cinematic effect, so I go with Nolgroth's approach: fewer dice rolling, more impressive FX.

If I play a hardcore tech military or sf story then I want that autofire rain of 1200 km/h shrapnel on EVERY spot around the explosion. Even if this means 5 minutes of rolling until we know how the car looks after, the hostage, the four heroes, their equipment, and the three mooks.

BTW, if the Surfer can Transofrm a dead world into a lush, living world, how is it he could not make lush, living worlds with no intelligent life and prepare a sumptuous buffet for The Big G?

Because of the "size" of Power Cosmic involved:

Galactus is Power Cosmic incarnate. But he has to devour whole worlds' life force - which means this life force is at least one form of Power Cosmic.

The Silver Surfer was created with a small PART of Galactus' Power Cosmic.

So even if he expends all HIS Power Cosmic this will not be enough for one meal of Galactus.

Or to put it less epically: If you create a Tamagotchi, it does not contain as much energy as one chicken with french fries.

My thoughts on PRE: Some vehicles obviously give the user a bonus on PRE. Stepping out of Batman's Tumbler, everyone looks cooler. Even Commissioner Gordon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0-nkpmjrI8

And of course Kirk and Piccard are much more impressive with the Enterprise in orbit about them, obviously following his commands.

Most of this is covered by the usual PRE modifiers.
But if the player insists or just wants to be sure he can depend on the effect, then he should be able to buy some more PRE or Striking Appearance on the vehicle, with an appropriate limitations, don't you think?
 

It was one my adventure for this years One Page Winter Contest here in Germany. I included the german version, too, for the other odd German who might frequent this forum.

The other odd German would be that odd Austrian here.

Though I downloaded the english version. Nice and compact miniature scenario.

Let It Rain Frogs! Curse one river delta (up to 2000 km) to be covered with slippery amphibians
CHANGE ENVIRONMENT: -3 to all DEX Rolls or Fall down (5), Area Effect Cone x 1.000.000 (+6), Continuous (+1), 1 Continuing charge: 1 year (+1), Sticky (+½), Difficult to dispel x 4 (+1), Personal Immunity (+¼)
Extra Time (1 day, -3½), OAF: The Staff of Seth (-1), Incantations: The Verdant Curses of Cothuggua (-¼), Gestures: Find an island in the stream, squat, and start croaking (-¼), Concentration (0 DCV, totally unaware, -½)
Reasonably common way to turn the power off: Kill the mage (wherever he is after 1 year) (search for someone all frogs avoid) or break the staff (wherever he is after 1 year).

(As you can see each spell is a whole adventure with a plot for some heroes - although they first have to find out how to break the curse.)

Wicked Weed and Tumbley Thorns: Curse 1 town or fortress with unextinguishable plants 
1d6 ENTANGLE: 6 DEF (10), Area Effect Radius x 1000 (+3½), Continuous (+1), 1 Continuing charge: 10 years (+1½)
Extra Time: return for 7 days (1 week, -4), OAF Expendable: 1000 thorns stuck in 10 living children, removed, and cursed afterwards (Hard to aquire, -1¼), Incantations: The Elegy of Desolation (-¼), Gestures: Sow the thorns in all 4 directions (-¼)
Reasonably common way to turn the power off: Burn the whole areal! (burns 3 days)
 

Here is some classic stuff (4 E rules, mythological examples) I used in a campaign in the 90s:

Black Sky and Blood Rain: The whole land is covered with low hanging black clouds and you can't see anything due to of the blood trickling in your eyes
DARKNESS vs. Sight (10), Area Effect Radius x 4000 (+4), Continuous (+1), 1 Continuing charge: 1 year (+1)
Extra Time (1 day, -3½), OAF Expendable: 20 pairs of night gaunt's eyeballs, soaked in one dark elf's blood (Hard to aquire, -1¼), Incantations: The Obsidian Recitations of Ry'yÄ (-¼), Gestures: walk a 40 kilometer circle and bury the eyeballs every 1 kilometer (-¼), Concentration (½ DCV, -¼)
Reasonably common way to turn the power off: Find the eyeballs, burn them, wash them with holy water, or bless them and bury them with proper Goddess of Death's rites
 

And one very different example: the net trap. In my opinion the main reason why people can have so radically different conceptions what a net does.

Here is the most famous scene that came to my mind: One of the first scenes of Lost (2004): Jake and Kate walk in the first trap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGA6J3JM6J8
Longer version how they got in there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYntwsl_qg4

We got another 2m radius Area of Effect. But as the net does not have to be thrown (it is layed out to be walked in) it is very strong. Not much chance to cut it even with the Ranged Killing Attack they have with them. (How do you build that? 7d6 ENTANGLE defends against most average gun damage throws?)
AND: Because they are hanging, the net gets uncomfortably, even dangerously close. No using STR. Almost no using DEX. Not even thinking of haymakering anything.

This is the textbook example of "What does Accessible Focus mean?"
Jake can't access his own Focus. Kate can, though with a big DEX malus.
Kate even discusses that Jake has an additional negative modifier for using it (his angle).

But the net has one Vulnerability ...

Still, even back on the floor, they clearly are out of combat and will need non-combat time to cut themselves out.

 

By comparison: Another of the most famous net scenes: Conan the Destroyer (1984), Intro scene. "How not to recruit a barbarian"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3If0rjk76I
 

We have half a dozen attackers with 4m and 8m ENTANGLES.
Probably 5d6 or even 6d6, because you could not cut those with a simple dagger (without STR).
Those are 1 charge, recov.
Only can used from horse (or by giants).
We get a comparison when the thief is netted: not much chance to use all your STR and DEX below that monster, isn't it?
Conan still is able to slash one with one attack (Broadsword with ful STR, probably haymakered, because he has time while it is coming). But even he could not use the atlantean blade if that Entangle would have hit him.
And: Conan uses a OAF disadvantage we did not mention up to now: can be grabbed so attacker falls.


 

Let's check this against "reality", that is: movie scenes.

Here is the famous trident-and-net-fight from Spartacus (1960):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCLyLBrugD0

The retiarius is using a rather standard net: 2m Radius (although it does not cover more than the opponents upper half); medium thickness strings (no fine fishnets, no heavy ropes).
 

First observation: The retiarius is throwing he ENTANGLE three times against Spartacus, almost every second phase he has. The net obviously has no charges and can be reused.

Spartacus every time is able to use his full STR and his full DEX. Only when he is netted the first time, he seems to have a OCV malus, but that obviously comes from the fact he gets attacked at the same time; after blocking he just throws the net off (casual DEX?).

After the foot netting he is able to slash the full net with one attack; and while he is swinging widely, that still is no haymaker. Just using his whole STR.

My conclusion: All your addenda and special rules seem accurate. But the original idea of charges on a net suprisingly does not hold.

The main problem with gods is that us modern people lost contact with nature and so somehow can not understand ambivalence.
Just look at "mother nature":
She gives us everything we need to eat, encourages us to breed, wants us to multiply and strive. So she obviously is a goddess of good.
But she also gives us the wolves, the cholera bacterium, and the maggots eating our dead. So she obviously is a goddess of evil.

The reason is: She loves the wolves as much as us. She wants the cholera bacterium to multiply, too. And she is as happy seeing the maggots breeding - even if we are still alive while they do it inside us.

Our ancestors understood this because they had to live with it. Storm is good if he brings the rain your crops desperately need. Storm is evil if you wanted to reach that harbour and now get blown away. So Zeus is good and evil. Fire is nice if the night is cold and the wolves are circling out there. Fire is horror if it takes your house in midwinter. So a fire god is good and evil.

Itzpapalotl could be a total terror while still talking like a mother.
Killing a few hundred peons in the fields because she wants to make more humans. New ones.
Seducing a male hero as a beautiful woman and transforming into a skeleton witch the moment she receives his "life".
Killing a woman because she is not strong enough to give birth to a big and strong child (Caesarean section is cheating). But then making that woman's spirit her favorite servant sent out to kill more people.
She could start killing gynaecologists and surgeons.
She could burn down villages because she wants to breed more butterflies, moths, and bats to carry her influence into the world.

And of course if you piss her off she uses SUMMON: beautiful iron butterflies with claws. To cut you to pieces. For the maggots. Because you look more beautiful as a patch of bloody earth where something new will grow.
 

Yes, I do not really understand how this works, too.

But great you brought it up. I'm just building CATWOMAN for my Justice League Campaign. And many sources imply she has unbelievable luck.

So I could buy Jumping, Requires A Roll: Luck - for those daring escapes and saves from falling to death.
 

+5 with Dodge, Escape and Dive vor Cover, Requires A Roll: Luck - for those moves when she gets away from area attacks that even hit the BATMAN.

Regeneration, Requires A Roll: Luck - for those Nine Lives.


Anyone ever tried this rule?
 

When I am playing scenes like this I stress the different and even alien kind of sensory input.
You can see every single hair on a mouse from 30 meters above.
But you could not recognize yourself in a mirror.
You can see kinds of white a human cannot see (ultraviolet) and the world is radiant and shiny even when it rains.
But you cannot discern between a creature and the tools it is using or the clothing it is wearing. You can't even tell horse from rider. (It's a centaur with a bow arm to you.)
You have a bit of magnetic awareness and a lot of discrimination for aerial currents. So you much more "feel" where a creature is in relation to your path of flight (in a way we can feel surroundings with our skin even if we close our eyes).
Your abilty to triangulate distances and vectors beats every engine of war engineer's ballistic algebra. Within tenths of seconds.
But apart from that you are rather dull, always hunger, and seeing a mouse or fish gives you an hormone rush that almost compares to being horny.

You might find more inspirations here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_intelligence

On the other hand it could be an effect of "life force".
The Character snuffs out the first foes living lights, gaining Mana (in the original mythological sense of life force by success), which makes him even stronger and faster. Especially compared to a foe similar to the one just vanquished.

That sounds a bit far-fetched to me. But of course you could build a fantasy world around this.
"The force is strong with this one."
"Necromancy and biomancy just are two sides of the same mystery."
"Those experience quantum particles come running so fast he just breaks through nature's laws."
"The gods favor the strong ones."

They ancient greek had a strange concept called Pneuma (magic breath): The gods created mankind by breathing their breath into them. Heroes are so strong because their hero's chest can contain more Pneuma. So Achilles and Hercules can slay mere mortals by the score just because they breathe more divinely.

From that idea it is not so far to the concept: I inhale my fallen foes divine breath, gaining strength, and being able to storm on, windlike, to slay the next small-breasted weakling.

Let's look at the logic behind the SFX:
Why can you attack a guy for free when the guy in front of him dies?

Surprise, I'd say, is the obvious explanation. Foe #2 believes to be in safe distance and suddenly finds he isn't.
So the actual trigger is not "Foe #1 dies" but "Foe #1 falls down shockingly fast creating an opening for the attacker".
Following that logic the first opponent does not have to be dead, he does not even have to be mortally wounded; the deciding element is he is so fast and brutally out of the fight that his partner is shocked and does not react to loosing his cover.

That somehow reminds me of the infamous Jack Reacher bathroom fight scene where Reacher takes one guy to knock out the other one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE0oDPBslUs

I still am not clear about the SFX:
The trap creates Zero G? Or 1 Gravo negative (upwards)? So how high do you fly?
Or does the trap create a gravitational center 3 meters above ground so the victim is drawn there and left hanging?

Buy INT back to 1 to 5.
For every point of INT you can use one word. The other characters will understand your words, but will only be able to use those they bought themselves. Your name does not count to the limit.

Gronk, INT 4, STR 16: "kill", "eat", "beast", "fire"
Moo-Moo, INT 2, PRE 18: "love", "good"
Pom-Pom, INT 4, 6 pts. in Mechanics: "fire", "stone", "stick", "build"
Hoarse, INT 6, STR 5, but 9 pts. in Healing and Divination spells: "beast", "fire", "run", "good", "danger", "tomorrow"
Krom, INT 1, STR 15, BODY 12: "kill"
 

I like that character concept.
But in my experience most fluctuating power level characters are not much fun for the other players and the GM. You do not want to have a partner who half of the time is a DNPC you have to protect and save from everything enemies dish out that are a challenge to your full power level. And you do not want to have a scene stealer the other half of the time who somehow managed to work around the campaign's max levels.
And it might be even more extreme with this character: Depending on your campaign's rhythm you might have him/her at his low for two or three full game sessions and at full superiority for as long.

How about you make him/her as resilient when the moon is dark, but less active and confident? Perhaps (s)he is moody at new moon and his/her powers pacifistic? Clairvoyance, healing, aid - those are typical moon godesses' powers.
But at the full moon his/her powers are more radiant, offensive, charismatic? Lighting up the world, defending the weak, banishing darkness. Moon beams, spheric force fields, teleport, PRE attacks.
That way the GM does not have to balance and rebalance every scene and the other players do not have to carry the full impact of Moonchild's power fluctuations.

Not as a direct answer, but as a brainstorming input: I have a running gag in my campaigns with imps and pixies and gremlins and the like keeping telling the players there are imp gods, too, and they are called Loll and Roffle.

As you already approach the topic using Ars Magica and World of Darkness:
To me the most important aspect about this setting is the paradigm conflict. Faerie World and Modern World BOTH are created by rewriting reality. There are no more fairies today because we wrote them out of possibility. So when they come back the whole story as much as every single spell is a fight between two dimensions and their reality.

The traditional weakness of Fairy Magic is iron and salt. That is because those old stories come from the stone age. And even in celtic times people felt that they slowly where killing "them" with their technology.
Magic can be terribly convincing. But so can be a blade between your ribs. Or a bullet. Or towers built from iron bars and molten stone.

So the most important question is: What gives Glamour the power to start rewriting reality again after all these years?
That IMHO should be your question - and the question the players will have answered in their story.

 

Cassandra, perhaps this is of interest to you:
When I am planning a campaign, I take great efforts to give different Non-Combat Movement exclusively to characters, so the players have their personal scenes and moments of glory.

I give the motor bike to Black Canary. So Arrow does not get a car and has to ride with her (giving us lot of chances for funny inter-couple role play and gender switched gags).
But he can have the Arrowplane (that gag from the 70s was so bad I had to keep it).

Raven and Zatanna both have a magic teleport. So Raven gets the Combat Teleport and Zatanna the Non-Combat Teleport Usable With Others. Zatanna can get the team everywhere (and everywhen) with Extra Time, Incantations, and from the magically right starting point. But only Raven can get the JL into the hellish dimensions where her father resides (and consequentially several main scenes are set).

Atom has a Teleport, only along electric lines, and the terrible power to jump INTO almost anyone below New God physiology. So while Raven might travel into souls and Zatanna into minds, only Atom travels into bodies. (We will have a special adventure where Zatanna expands Atom's SHRINKING to the whole team so they can save Superman from a Kryptonite nano-bot infection.)

And I forced Batman to buy ALL vehicles from the last 75 years: x16 Vehicles (+20), including the Tumbler from the movies, the Whirly-Bat, the Bat-Rocket, the Bat-Hovercraft, the Batsubway Rocket and other weird stuff from the 60s, with a huge discount of "You are crazy-prepared and a rich kid, but you use most of that stuff only once, usually wrecking it dramatically (-2)". And all that to cover up that the campaign needs him to have the Batshuttle to let the team reach the satellite when the teleporter is broken oder conquered by aliens. 

So, all in all, larger Non-Combat Movement is more of a group power evenly distributed to single characters using it for the whole team.