Psylint

Re: Is Leaping too Cheap? Interiors. Leaping is of very limited value in places with low ceilings. Leaping is ballistic, i.e. you can only go from point a to b point directly, whereas running, flight and swimming all allow a character to weave through obstacles. The other issue is, what would you do? Make each inch 1.5 pts? Leaping isn't as useful as flight, as flight is unbounded in the altitude it can attain, can hover, etc. As to which is better overall, you have to look at the circumstances, it's hard to creep with leaping, it's essentially worthless inside buildings. So I'm okay with it. Your mileage may differ. Peace

Re: Calling all lawyers--Supers and unique legal issues How does the law accomodate Secret ID's 1. Stars do it all the time, they adopt pen-names, stage-names, etc. They are legally granted the ability to sign contracts as those names, be paid, etc. and keep their original birth and hopefully secret identity. Generally, it is a crime to represent yourself as "someone else", but the law has adapted to the particular needs of celebrities by allowing them this freedom. 2. We see it with "secret agents." Remember the case of the CIA employee not so long ago and whether or not the Vice President or members of his staff "outed" the employee. Divulging the identity of a secret or covert operative of the intelligence service is at a minimum a felony and can be treason. I suspect that any law concerning superheroes and secret identities would work in a similar fashion. You really don't need to "mind wipe" folks or any of that, just keep it compartmentalized and limited to "need to know." For the longest time, the fact that the US had satellites that could gain information on the surface of earth was a tightly held secret known by just a few, until President Carter disclosed it. (Fortunately, he was President at the time, and so at least arguably had the power to do so legally). In general, though, if you want something to be secure, you don't put it on a computer. It's just too easy to move, copy, transmit, and gain access to information on computers, particularly in this kind of scenario when you would expect to never need it in the usual case, and if you ever needed it once, it would almost always then become declassified. That is, normally, the supers would all play nice and their would be no need to know who they were "really." If something came and they didn't "play nice" and you needed to know who they were really, one would expect in the normal case that they would be convicted of something pretty heinous and therefore no longer entitled to the Secret Identity protection or executed or imprisoned for nigh unto eternity. It would be only in the rare instance where someone had made a seemingly valid, but ultimately invalid claim against the super that you'd need to use that secret identity information more than once. Peace

Re: Calling all lawyers--Supers and unique legal issues 1. Passive or active telepathy wouldn't make a difference as far as admissibility. A person under the Constitution has an absolute right to the sanctity of their own mind. Mind you, a "passive" telepath is less likely to be criminally or civilly liable for "mental trespass" but there's no way in Heck that the Constitution can mean anything at all and telepathic evidence be allowed. Not only is it a completely unreasonable search, but it would, in a sense, be a case of compelling the defendant to testify against themselves. Absolutely, Positively, No. If there were even rumblings of a less absolute stance it'd be a toss up between getting the first plane the heck out of dodge and started the Revolution! 2. Yes it is invasive to "overhear thoughts" if I wanted you to know the content of my mind, I'd tell you. 3. Why can't a telepath read body language? use deduction, etc.? Because they can't be trusted. It's not a credibility thing as much as a reality thing. Can you decide "I'm not going to see the color orange for the next several minutes?" Of course not. Anyone who is acknowledged as a telepathy would have huge credibility issues if they tried to claim "Honest, I didn't read his mind, I observed his body language, tone, etc." It just won't happen. The problem isn't with the result, determining credibility is something we all do everyday, the problem is with the method. Confessions, even accurate ones, that are procured through the use of torture are not admissible, because we as a society have decided and declared that torture is not acceptable. That's the whole "fruit of the poison tree" doctrine. Besides, one's analysis of body language, tone etc. to determine credibility (can't use veracity or truth, because at best this only provides you with a sense of whether or not the speaker believes something to be true; they could in actual fact be wrong) isn't evidence of a crime. At best it is extremely weak character evidence for the proposition that X is or is not being honest and therefore is or is not credible. Furthermore, the two aren't even comparable. At best body language gives a probabilistic estimate of motives, credibility and other fuzzy stuff "I don't know what it is, but she's hiding something." Telepathy on the other hand gives you "God, I'm glad I killed that son of a... I need to pickup bread after this interview ... I wonder if Raul will be at the club tonight... Does this guy ever shower?" When you talk about the admissibility evidence you're really talking about Due Process. And Due Process is a constellation of Constitutional rights that is unsurprisingly enough, about Methods (or Process) not Results. A confession gained by subtle persuasion is fine; a confession gained through cutting off pieces of anatomy while administering electrical shocks to the sexual organs is not. Whether the confession was "true" or not is irrelevant. Of course, the more likely result is that any verifiable telepaths who would be heroes would be impressed into service by their local nation state and deemed Highest Level security assets, and probably be "secured" that is to say imprisoned better than nuclear weapons. And likely controlled by those telepaths that figured, "I can either take over the world, or die to the torch and pitchfork crowd... decisions .... decisions" Peace

Re: Attack Advantage vs. Damage Reduction Hugh's analysis is pretty spot on. Damage Reduction almost never pays for itself, unless there are a lot of attacks that really break the damage norms by a whole lot, or there is a low and hard cap on resistant defenses. But that may very well be the case. If the campaign is designed such that even non hardcore melee types can still whack something with a worm-eaten chair leg and do something, then the rDef of targets might very well be a lot lower than what one would expect based on point costs. Even a squishy energy projector in a 350 supers game is likely to have at least 10 rpd, but if whimps with chair legs can hurt 350 pt dragons, it probably has only 3 or 4 rpd. Heck it might only have 4 pd, if you want the extremely dedicated chair leg wielder to eventually club the dragon to death (provided of course that said whimp can hit, stays alive etc.). If normal defenses are capped at 4 pd, then Damage Reduction becomes a lot more valuable (admitted only because of the artificial restriction of more cost efficient alternatives). I suspect that this is the case, that there is a hard cap on defense and resistant defense and it is very low. Remember Hugh, that Mister E may be trying to replicate some of the hack and slash games with which most of us are familiar. In those games the +5 sword of striking does the same amount of damage to "+1 creatures" as "+4 creatures." It might make things really cludgy, the + 5 sword of striking now looks like xd6 HKA, +.5xd6 HKA vrs. targets with 25% damage reduction only, + xd6 HKA vrs. targets with 50% damage reduction only, +1.5xd6 HKA targets with 75% damage reduction only. as opposed to: xd6 HKA, +5 weapon. It seems clear to me that if Damage Reduction is as wide spread as I think it is, then characters should pay for "+ness" Peace On the other hand: it also seems that in that genre that shall not be named, the effect of the +3 resistant-ness is that weapons of lesser value that +4 cannot hit. So what you'd be looking at may be DCV levels instead. Resistant to +1 or less weapons == +2 DCV Resistant to +2 or less === +3 DCV etc. Then the +5 sword of striking looks like: xd6 HKA, linked with +5 OCV with sword attacks Which would make "+ness" a lot easier and less expensive to model. You could still have the Damage Reduction limited by "+ness" if you wanted. Alternatively, you could provide each of the creatures with 100% Damage Reduction, doesn't work against "x +ness" and just have a convention that "+ness" is bought as OCV levels to the focus, +1 "+ness" per +1 OCV. That's probably the best construction to model the genre that shall not be named.

Re: Calling all lawyers--Supers and unique legal issues Answers: 1. Probably, provided that there are no "supers laws" that change the current state of the law. The Supreme Court has blessed the use of technology "to extend the senses", telescopes, parabolic microphones etc. So if a law enforcement officer is our in pubic, e.g. on a public street whilst on patrol, they could use a telescope to spy on you in your house through your window and if they observed evidence of criminal activity, then they would have probable cause. In this case, Doppler could use a "plain view" argument that the initial receipt of the information was lawful, and there's a strong argument that words of "Kill X, and I'll pay you $100,000" and "Okay thanks, let me count it" is probable cause. Remember the threshold for probable cause is really quite low, and in event Doppler would probably do an investigative stop instead and that is based on "reasonable suspicion" as I recall, and that's a really, really low threshold. There are cases where "he looked furtive (shifty like he was hiding somethin') , was known to me to have a history of violent prior convictions" has been upheld as a basis for such a stop. 2. The violent priors are mostly irrelevant and would be generally at trial as "prior bad acts" prejudicial to the interests of justice, unless and until the defendant brings "character into question." It could be used, however, as part of the evidence to get a search or arrest warrant (in practice search warrants are pretty much rubber stamped by magistrate judges ((a fair number of them don't even have law degrees in my jurisdiction). At trial, the money is evidence that is admissible as it does tend to support Doppler's claim of what he witnessed. 3. Telepathy. Any unconsented to use of telepathy would be an unlawful search, and an independent crime of the telepath. The Constitution provides that the people should be secure in their homes and their persons, there simply is no way for unconsented to Telepathy to be used at trial and keep any semblance of the Constitution. 4. Telescopic eaves dropping is all ready a legal tactic, as is using certain forms of N-ray vision (cops do fly overs all the time with infared cameras to look for "Hot spots" that indicate pot growing houses). The same with parabolic microphones. 5. Detect Lie would only be permitted once the standards of the community changed. Either the scientific community comes to a "generally accepted consensus" that Detect Lie works and is accurate, or it's simply not admissible. 6. Precognition will never be evidence, because by definition the crime hasn't happened yet. The Minority Report notwithstanding. 7. Retrocognition would have the same issues as Detect Lie and would need to establish itself as a generally accepted technology. 8. Mind Scan? It'll sure help to find folks, but the only way I can see using it as evidence is to have the Scanner testify as to the whereabouts of person x at time y. This would be admissible as testimony, though it causes credibility issues and might be stricken.

Re: [Character] Cougar (I) Revised Good show QM. I really think endurance is the way to go for the "new to the powers" bit. Besides, from my perspective you've got endurance to burn. As far as the CV guidelines, I'm guess that 12 is the absolute cap? Hmmm.... So the multipower is essentially a replacement for martial strike, killing strike, martial dodge, martial escape and martial grab. Hmmm... maybe a gravity based character? That might do it. Dunno, gotta lay off the caffeine. Cheers

Re: [Character] Winter I agree that Cougar probably has the advantage. (I had had Snow Storm (the Darkness) Usable as an attack, which might have swayed things a good bit, but I decided that was too munchkin even for me). The combination of aoe entangles and darkness effects you might just have a hard time finding me, but I don't think I can put you down as you shrug off 12 normal dice pretty easily, and I don't think there's a chance you'd stay stuck long enough to haymaker. I have a full writeup with disadvantages and the lot, but I could never get HeroDesigner to work. I'm doing well if I can get email to work, and was using Excel spreadsheets for characters for basically ever. I appreciate the offer, but I can't really use it. However, if you want to full write up, and you can read Excel, I'd be happy to send it to you. Peace P.S. I regret my ignorance of all things Russian (though I had some vague recollection of an extreme plurality of names endemic to Russian literature). I'm afraid that in any campaign I run, the Russians were conquered by the English in 1647 after stomping Gustavus Adolphus changed the naming conventions and the language. I mean, i like Champs and all, but learning a new language that doesn't even have the same alphabet is a level of dedication I'm not willing to make. Cheers

Re: [Character] Cougar (I) Revised Agreed with Casual. He looks a lot better, and if he's not the hardest hitting thing since the A-bomb in the campaign even better. He's an interesting character. I'm not sure if you call him an overly muscled under skilled martial artist, or a super fast brick that needs to hit the gym . On the "faux Invisibility" I'm not sure. In some ways, it's a lot more useful than a straight invisibility, but I wouldn't call it "horrific" by any stretch. I know some GMs just don't want to deal with certain powers like invisibility, danger sense, telepathy, mind control etc. And in their games, that's their call, but I don't think it's really that bad, in practice on a combat level it's rather similar to a bright fringed invisibility anyway. I hope you don't take my criticisms too seriously, as they are idiosyncratic. I mean just because I couldn't think of a decent antagonist/set of tactics, etc. to challenge the character doesn't at all mean that no one could. I mean look at Zl'f, imagine trying to hit that? She's got tons of Speed, Velocity, CV, etc. but she doesn't hit like a brick more than once (that 30" velocity move through really might sting a little, but she's as like as not to knock herself out doing it). I tend to balance "total offense in a turn" with "total defense in a turn." This tends to force me to make my high Dex, high Speed characters really fragile and cumulative plinkers rather than heavy hitters. Like I said, I'd like to see Cougar and Winter in a ring. Peace

Re: Attack Advantage vs. Damage Reduction Still confused, It seems that you're convinced that limitation is the route to go, well then there's no need for a special "Suppresses Damage Resistance" power for Independent OAF (presumably one of a kind "gawd" weapons). If Big Monster A is immune to weapons +3 and below, by your chart it has 75% resistant damage reduction lim. power not against attacks from weapons +4 or greater. Then to "pierce" the damage reduction, you just have to qualify the Independent OAF gawd weapon as a "+4 or greater weapon" This is kinda Ultimate Energy Projector territory where they talk about adders or even advantages for certain sfx because they "win" more often against other sfx. I dinnah have it, but you might look at that for a guide. If damage reduction is at all common, and it seems like its essentially everywhere in your campaign, then it seems that the different levels of "+ness" could reasonably be give advantage or adder values. Think of it this way, if Armor Piercing, in the main, negates half of a target's defense and is worth +1/2; and damage resistance according to this level structure is essentially everywhere, then the "+ness" that results in negating approximately half a target's defenses should be valued at +1/2. So going by that, I do something like this, assuming a 350pt campaign: New Power Adder/advantage "+ness" +1 ness; The lesser of 1/4 or 10 pt. adder to any attack power. +2 ness; The lesser of 1/4 or 15 pt. adder +3 ness; +1/2 +4 ness; +1 +5 ness; +1 1/2 or +2 Why the escalation? Because a target with 75% damage reduction is almost impossible to kill, and the damage reduction is likely to be essentially all of their defensive power. For +1ness and +2ness I might even go lower on the adder cost, depending on the campaign. From memory, those things that are only "immune" to +1 and +2 weapons tend to be mown over anyway so avoiding the Damage reduction on such mooks isn't that big a deal. Being able to cut down demons and dragons with immunity to +4 and +5, however is a big advantage. Peace

Re: [Character] Cougar (I) Revised I'm with whoever about dropping many if not all the activation rolls. As to the Grace KB resistance, you do realize that you have a Dex Roll at -15 (75 active points in Dexterity/5). I don't have any objection to Missile Deflection per se, but putting it into a multipower is definitely "doing it on the cheap" as it is an action you can abort to, even if there aren't any points in it, it's not really limited by the ultra slot, or even the pool reserve, that is to say, a Missile Deflection in a multipower plays (least as far as I can see) absolutely no differently than one purchased outside, except it costs less. I'm not calling munchkin on it, but if it were my campaign, I'd make the pool allocations stick, so that if you wanted to be able to missile deflect you'd have to leave points in it in between phases. I'm not really seeing the limited to close range and vulnerability to area of effect attacks. He's got 30 STR, so he can pickup and toss motorcycles and maybe Mini Coopers (unless you're campaign has a house rule that you can only throw things that you can lift with casual strength). I'm not sure about your campaign, but with 20" of lateral movement and speed 7, not many of my antagonist could stay at range for more than a phase or two without devoting all of their phases to running away. As to the area of effect, if 12 DC's is the convention for single target attacks, generally you're facing a max of 9 DC's in AOE. 9DC's would average about 30 Stun, of which you'd take 15, shrug it off with your Con of 30 and STUN of 45 and move on. He is vulnerable to all of the things that traditionally foil High DCV characters, Darkness, Invisible opponents, Flash, AoE, Autofire Entangles, Change Environment/Curses with CV penalties, AoE telekinesis, mental powers generally. In some ways, Cougar is clearly a brick. He's spent well over 2/3 of his points on characteristics (particularly if you discount the background stuff, contacts, KS, etc.). He hits like a brick, around 90% of the time, and has enough layered defenses, rpd, high DCV, high speed so more opportunities for extreme DCV, missile deflection and "invisibility." Personally, I'd prefer Cougar with +6d6 Hand Attack straight out, rather than the multipower, but that's just me. Same thing with the KB resistance (either it's a nigh automatic 16- roll or an impossible 1-) but that's more an aversion to die rolling than anything else. I'd also ask you to design 2 antagonist for Cougar, at least one of which has a significant chance of winning a "straight up" fight (i.e. if both characters were in melee range, acted intelligently with the exception of increasing the range). Right now the only antagonist I've got in the stable that might have a good chance, other than Psilint who's too vicious for words, is Winter. But she has Darkness and 2 aoe Entangles (granted the big one is melee ranged) and was otherwise specifically designed to deal with High Speed, High DCV targets. Actually, that'd be an interesting match up. I'll think on it, maybe I can find a good antagonist for you. Peace

Re: Universal Translator and Cyphers I'm with Clonus. While a universal translator wouldn't know in Balbanto's example that "The Cheese is Refined at Midnight" meant "Meet me at the Opera House at Seven" the universal translator should be able to understand the cheese part even if it was "Le frommage est fabrique a minuit." (sorry early, my french is off today) or if it were in binary 0110100100111010010111100010101010010100101001011101010100101010100011111 or if it were in Pig Latin "He-tay Heese-Kay is Efined-ray at Idnight-may" He'd have no idea about opera houses, 7 o'clock or meeting, but he'd get that there was something about the cheese at midnight. D'uh... There it is, should a universal translator be able to under the content of a message in "Pig-Latin?" if so then at least some cyphers are fair game as Pig Latin isn't a language but a simple substitution cypher. Peace

Re: [Character] Cougar (I) Revised My only concern is that you have an awful lot of defense. DCV 12, invisibility, forcefield including the exotics, full missile deflection and a normal rpd of 21? Assuming that you're in a campaign where 12 DC is the convention, this guy is really, really hard to bring down. Area of Effect attacks are highly likely to bounce off the 21 DEF, single target ranged attacks are going to be very hard to land, get through the invisibility, missile deflection, and still isn't likely to stun the character. He's got tons of offense with the 7 speed and the 12 OCV (assuming that "normal" CV's are 6-10 and speeds 4-8). In hand to hand, he's likely acting first, still really hard to hit, can hit like a Bolt from the Blue with the Killing Attack. With that much speed and dex he can afford to block or dodge quite often and still get a considerable amount of offense in. From my perspective 21 rpd/red is brickish resistance (but given the way it works, 25rpd is, for me, clearly brick resistance as primary defense territory), and 12 CV is near the top of "Artful Dodger/Martial Artist/Dex as primary defense" land. Add all the other defenses, the high Con and the relatively high Stun totals and you have an absolute defensive beast. Combine that with an offensive juggernaut with multiple capped-out damage attacks with both high speed and high CV, and other useful combat and non-combat abilities: flash, darkness, invisibility, teleport (and its attendant immunity to most entangles), "detective skills" and I begin to wonder: 1. What kind of antagonist can I use as a challenge for this guy? Right now the only one I can think of is a mentalist, and most players absolutely hate them (I think folks really prefer being unconscious to being in the thrall of a supervillain or tripping out on a mental illusion). 2. Where's the space for other character's abilities to come to the fore? He can't lift jumbo jets, but he can pull cars off people, he's sneaky and stealthy, can do a passable dark detective/super spy gig, he probably scythes through mooks, and many villains aren't going to last much longer. On the other hand if the damage convention is more around 18 DC's then the perspective changes. I still think it'd be a little on the overly defended side, but at least it wouldn't the combination of extreme defense and extreme offense in one character. Cheers

Re: Attack Advantage vs. Damage Reduction Confused. You want to have Independent OAF's with attacks that limit Damage Reduction? It still seems to work better as a limitation. I mean any Independent OAF you wanted to avoid Damage Reduction could just have as sfx or whatever "treated as a +6 weapon" or what have you. I simply don't understand your chart at the end. Is it to imply, "things that are "immune" to weapons less than +1 have 25% resistant damage reduction" or that you're creating a new power called "+1-ness" which is a free floating adder to an attack power the effect of which is to do an instantaneous suppress of the particular target's damage resistance power to the 25% resistant damage reduction level?" Honestly, it seems a confusing way to go about things. In most campaigns I've been in Damage Reduction is rare, perhaps because it yields such funky results. In fantasy or dark champions campaigns it's limited to important antagonists that need to both bleed and last a long time. I suppose you could have something like "Armor Piercing Lim. Power only versus targets with the appropriate Damage reduction." or have xd6 of the attack power of the Independent OAF with the Limitation only versus targets with the appropriate Damage reduction. Cheers

Would you allow a character with Universal Translator to get the sense of an encyphered message? For clarity, a cypher is a system of substituting symbols for other symbols, e.g. 313, might be a cypher for DAD, where 3 = D and 1 = A. By contrast a code is when the meaning of a word has a private or special meaning, like "Eagle" the traditional code name, least as far as Hollywood is concerned, for the President of the United States. Peace

Re: Attack Advantage vs. Damage Reduction Sounds like a limitation instead. e.g. I monster have 25% Physical Damage Reduction Lim. Power. not against +1 or better enchanted weapons -1/2? -1? Peace

Re: Nova Blast (sanity check, please) Ah.. point Talon, I see. Something else occurs to me, why not a big old 1 charge Aid? then you could put it in the multipower, though it'd take two phases to execute. xd6 Aid Multipower Reserve + Nova Blast slot simultaneously +1/2, and then add a Nova Blast Slot u. Nova Blast xd6 Explosion, Personal Immunity, ...... Just a thought, if you want to keep it in the power framework. Peace

Re: Calling all lawyers--Supers and unique legal issues Ha. There actually was a case brought in Louisiana against "Satan aka Beelzebub aka the Devil aka Lord of the Flies..." The presiding judge noted that the plaintiff had failed to serve the defendant with service of process within the jurisdiction and tossed the case. So precedent requires that the complaining plaintiff comply with the service statutes and common law of that jurisdiction. In the main, this means that they have to physically deliver a copy of the complaint to the defendant in the jurisdiction or at least his/her or its last known address in the jurisdiction. It might be argued that Banducci might be able to leave a copy of the complaint/summons et. al. at the "discrete offices" if Banducci can establish those offices as NeoMephisto's "place of business within the jurisdiction." Of course if Baducci could get the winged demon messenger certified as a process server in the jurisdiction, that could work too, provided the defendant was served in the jurisdiction. I suppose one could make arguments about Federal Service of Process and air planes being similar to dimensional jumps, but that makes my head fuzzy. As to venue: The standard venue rules would apply. If the contract were made in Victory City then chances are that the appropriate venue is Victory City. Mostly venue rules are based on convenience and incidence. Where did the activity complained of occur? and Where's the evidence including witnesses. If contract was made in the jurisdiction wherein Victory City resides, and was breached in Victory City, and all of the witness and other evidence of the contract and its breach are primarily located in and around Victory City; I'm betting on Victory City. However, contracts for "immortal souls" like contracts for the sale of human beings, indentured servitude, cash for sex, illegal drugs, etc. are unconscionable and unenforceable. Some jurisdictions go so far as to declare them "void ab initio" meaning that the agreement purporting to be a contract, was never such. So, if the plaintiff were suing for a breach "failing to deliver the agreed upon immortal soul" a court would have no trouble dismissing such a case as a matter of law on summary judgment. (In federal court, the plaintiff's attorney would also likely be subject to Rule 11 sanctions for bring a frivolous and unsupportable lawsuit). Your best tactic to recover the immortal soul, would be to analogize immortal souls to sex in the engagement ring cases. In those cases, there have been some folks who have at least argue that the "legal fiction" that sex is not part of the consideration. This is based on the general fact that withholding sex is grounds for annulling a marriage, and at least some states (at least when I last checked) still required that the marriage contract be consummated by a sexual act between the parties. It'd go nowhere, but you might have fun positing it around the water cooler in between Torts and Property. An alternative, even shakier tactic, would be to argue that the "contract" was really a will. And in that case, the courts generally try to "preserve the testator's intent." Under those circumstances the unconscionable portion of the testament, the immortal soul, might very well, in some jurisdictions, be "blue penciled" out allowing the plaintiff to recover the other "bequests." A stronger alternative would be if Baduci failed to pay NeoMephisto for "services rendered" to sue in "quantum meruit" for the value of such services in a court of equity. Of course, such services would have to be "conscionable" and otherwise legal (i.e. you don't get to sue folks who stiff you on the murder contract, but you might be able to sue them for the value of the gun you loaned them). Failure to perform, i.e. withhold goods and services due another under a contract, is often a material breach, but that's about it. It's really hard to prove duress until it literally involves putting a gun to someone's head. Even if this breach would result in the other parties absolute financial ruin, it's still just a breach. Besides, duress is a defense assert for a breach, that is to say, you breach your contract because you were under duress at the time of formation and therefore your consent wasn't valid. Grand examples of duress: "Sign me to a record deal or I'll blow your head off" Shotgun weddings Ransom demands of kidnappers, terrorists, etc. What you're probably looking for is "necessity" that is to say are the circumstance dire enough that the needy party can convert the property of the other to his own use and plead necessity in his defense. Traditional necessity defense: Jack moors his boat to your dock because of a freak violent storm despite your "No trespassing sign" There was a case where a guy blew up thousands if not millions of gallons of petroleum during the Second World War who claimed necessity because he thought the Japanese were invading and he wanted to deny them war materials. As I recall, he won. Peace

Re: Nova Blast (sanity check, please) I don't think you can "multiple power attack" with two attacks that have the Concentration limitation. I also think you'd be better off just building it as a straight power. I'm guessing you're looking at 100-160 active (depending on how much explosion you want and how much "personal immunity") You can get that down to 17- 25 points pretty easily, 1 Charge -2 Costs End -1/2 Concentration -3/4 Extra Time, full phase, delayed phase -3/4 No range -1/2 Endurance Cost x2 -1/2 You could add in more endurance cost, and/or side effects and bring the total cost even lower. Side Effect 4d6 END drain (always occurs) -1/2 or the more aggressive Side Effect 5d6 END and STUN drain (always occurs) -1 [assumes an Active Cost of 160ish] Peace

Re: Urban Fantasy Recommendations Steven Brust Agyar is one of my favorites thought it does kinda bleed into gestalts. Perhaps Storm of the Century by Stephen King. s'all I got

Re: Been there done that? Thanks Wyrm, I had thought about using a VPP, but got caught up on the "no skills, no 0 end powers in power frameworks" bit. Y'know in some ways the increased detail is great, but when you want to model "fugitive" type characters, it's really easy to spend well over a hundred points on just "background" skills. I was also thinking about doing something bizarre like: Access, Cosmic Mystical Database of City Area Knowledge I miss the Man in Black ((rep as soon as I can))

I'm thinking of creating a Coachman gestalt character. Sort of the incarnation of the Traveler. Anyway, part of his schtick is that he's been everywhere is immortal etc. Unfortunately, buying City Knowledge for each an every municipality in the world would be cost prohibitive. I was wondering what y'all that of a construction like this. Talent: I've been everywhere, Man (apologies to Johnny Cash). The character has literally been everywhere, many times, and knows all the routes to any place of interest, anywhere in the campaign world. Detect Route 10 [Large class of abstract things] for Int Roll 10 pts. +1 to Int Roll for 1 pt.

Re: It sneaks up on you? Good points Sean, On the other hand, it's often hard to get Ego +30 results without either tons of dice or cumulative effect. So even to get a Mind Control effect to get a target to believe a statement that does not contradict reality under direct observation and believe it "natural" the Mind Controller has to generally come up with around 12 dice of effect assuming the target is Ego 10 and has no mental defense (Ego of 10, +10 for effect, +20 for "remembers as natural" =40, average roll on 12d6 = 42). And that assumes that the target also continues to fail his/her breakout roll, which in the average case would start at 11-, move to 12- in a turn, 13- in 5 turns etc. So even assuming you hit and make an average to above average effect roll, the attack is still likely to come to nothing 62.5% of the time (as the target gets to make a breakout roll before suffering the mental effect)? Seems unfair to me, frankly, even Roll with a Punch only halves the incoming effect and takes up your next attack action to boot. Unfortunately, for balance purposes, mental powers are all or none. Either the effect is made or nothing happens except your target gets tipped off. Is the possibility of controlling another super powered character more powerful than 12d6 of energy blast? Often not, because that possibility is extremely remote, generally involves the Mind Controller rolling near max effect possible and the target rolling abysmally poorly on the breakout rolls. I'm not sure if cumulative mental powers are that ineffective. Granted that it often takes 2 and more often 3 hits to get the effect, but with "Speed of Thought" that's a lot more doable (essentially a character doubles their speed with half of it as "only for mental actions"). In that way mental powers are at times slightly more effective than NNDs (assuming both are used at the "damage cap" for the campaign). The real killer is Mind Scan. I'll just sit here in my Fortress of Invulnerability, find your pathetic psyche and blast away at it from orbit or deepest, darkest Nowhere, eventually I gotta roll all 6's right?

Re: It sneaks up on you? Both are good ideas, I guess I just misunderstood how cumulative and target awareness of being attacked worked. I had thought that a target of a cumulative mental power became aware of the attack when first hit with it, even if the mandatory effect hadn't been reached. Apparently that was just a misread on my part. Thanks again.

Re: It sneaks up on you? Wow. I guess that makes some sense, after all you would sort of get the same effect by just a really large DC attack of the same sort. Many thanks. ((Rep as soon as I can)

I'm trying to model a mind control or mental illusion effect that "sneaks up on you." The device is a slower acting hallucinogen. So I'm thinking that cumulative effect, no conscious control, continuous and uncontrolled are all called for, but how do you model the sneakiness? I'm fully prepared to accept that "it can't be done" because it'd be over powered, but any thoughts? Thanks