LoneWolf

I would not put everything into the multipower. You are not really saving points by doing it and it will slow down the game. With the way it is setup you have to figure out wich powers are being used each time. Most of the time the best bet is to put you attacks in a multipower and purchase the rest outside it. I am also seeing a lot of unnecessary and duplicate power. If you want to carry people just use your own flight and use TK to carry them. Having flight and flight along surface is paying twice for the same ability. Having barrier and resistant protection UBO is basically the same thing. A lot of GM’s are not going not going to like a character who adds extra defense to other characters, especially if they have any kind of defensive maximums. Taking unified power on a multipower is questionable. I believe that if you do so that means any drains actually have double effect. Both the pool and the all slots are drained at the same time.

About the only way I see this being able to be done is if the character can only mimic a single power, and can only mimic up to a certain power level. Even so that would be fairly expensive. I would probably do it as a 60 point cosmic VPP (No skill roll required and can change as a zero phase action) with a -1 limitation only to mimic a single power less than 60 points. That works out to be 105 points. The character could choose any power of the other character that is 60 point or less and gain that. They take all the limitations on the original power. Since the only thing they need to check is if the power is not more than 60 active points it will not slow down the game. Since they can change the pool at will this would even allow them to mimic a multipower. Technically you are not mimicking a multipower you are just changing your VPP each time you would normally switch slots. Anything more complicated is going to be a nightmare and should be avoided.

One thing to keep in mind is that while the concept is cool the implementation may not be as much fun as the character think. To keep the character balanced and playable requires putting limits on what the character can do. Often this means the character turns into a less powerful version of what is copied. Just because the character touches DR Destroyer does not mean they are going to get all his powers. What it comes down to, is can the character afford to buy all the powers the other character has. Even a multiform will not prevent that. Mimicking Bulldozer is fairly simple, but the character is not going to have the points to mimic DR Destroyer or Firewing. The other thing to consider is that this concept has the ability to ty up the game. Using a VPP or Multiform is probably the way to go. But that means that the character may have to create a character on the fly. This often means that the game is stopped while this character figures out what powers they end up with. Do you really want to pause the game, while the player writes up a new character? This could happen multiple times in a combat. Personally, I would be very hesitant to allow this and would only allow a player that knows the system inside and out to do so. Even then I would put limits on how long they can take.

Now that I have a better idea of what you want I think all you really need to do is to use the luck rules from the APG. Having your opponent reroll his attack roll has the same end result as increasing your DCV. Both decrease your chance of being hit. The rerolls are actually more efficient for a couple of reasons. The first is you only need to use them when you get hit. If your opponent misses you anyways you don’t need to active the power. Second is that since the new roll has to be “better” than the first it actually has a better chance of working. Since the player decides what is rerolled it is completely under the players control. If I were to assign a value to requiring normal luck, I would probably consider it to be equivalent to NCC, so worth a -2 limitation, adjusted for the amount of luck. Someone with a lot of luck might end up with a -1 limitation. Using the luck from the AGP I would say it is worth a -0. I have a character with 6d6 luck and that is usually enough to last almost any session. The majority of the time I have at least one roll unused.

Is DCV the only luck based power you are purchasing? If so purchase +3 DCV with the limitation 4 charges for 7 points. To me luck can be used for a lot more than just DCV. Since overall levels can be used for anything including increasing your DCV, using overall levels allows more versatility. Instead of buying each thing your luck can affect separately buy one power that can apply to everything. 3 overall levels with the limitation 4 charges cost 18 points and can be applied to almost any roll. About the only thing it does not apply to is skills that you only have a familiarity with. To be able to apply the luck more often increase the number of charges. If you have multiple things your luck can do putting them in a multipower and applying the charge limitation to the multipower might work. Skill levels are normally not allowed in a multipower but check with the GM to see if they would allow it. The problem with using luck level for a limitation is by default you only roll them when the GM decides to. This means your access to the power is so random it could be worthless. If you use the luck rules form the AGP you will have levels available so often it is probably not worth a limitation. My advice is don’t link the luck power to luck, use it as a special effect and build the power the way you want them to function. If you want your luck to run out use charges or something similar.

The APG rules I favor are fairly simply. At the beginning of the session you roll a number of dice equal to you luck dice, and count the BODY. Each BODY allows you to reroll one roll. If the reroll is not better than the original roll you keep rolling until it is. So, if you roll 5 BODY at the beginning of the session you have 5 rolls you can tell the GM to roll. The way we do it is if your body is more than 3 the rerolls can be other characters rolls, otherwise you can only reroll your own rolls. There are a few more variants in the AGP but I find this one to be the best. If used carefully it can be very powerful. Someone with a large amount of luck can really have an impact on the game, especially if they can alter rolls of others. Longshots in your favor occur much more frequently and low chance rolls against you are a lot more difficult to make. High probability rolls are not affected as much, but still shift in your favor. If you want to have something that always increases the chance of you succeeding just buy overall levels. Put whatever limitations you want to make luck work the way you want it. I already suggested activation roll if you want some amount of randomness. If you want your luck to be something that you can run out of use charges. Skill levels look kind of mundane on paper, but they work surprisingly well for luck.

I agree that the standard luck is kind of boring and often does not seem to be that impressive. I have used the optional luck rules in the APG for a couple of characters and that seemed to work out a lot better. Being able to have some control of when your luck is used is a big part of it. Normal luck is more something that happens to your character instead of something your character does. Used properly it can have a really dramatic impact on the game. It was on several occasions the reason we succeeded. If you save the rerolls for when things are really close it can be very helpful. Once in a Fantasy Hero game I used it when the attack on the main villain missed getting a critical hit by one point. Since you have t roll better on the reroll that guaranteed the hit was a critical hit. I had a precog in a champions game the used as his main power. The precog was actually changing the future but the game mechanics I used was luck. He had the whole mysterious vibe going and had a physical limitation he could not tell what he saw in his visions. He would give the other characters cryptic advice that often did not seem to make sense. When the other character followed his advice things usually worked out better. After a while the other players would usually do what he wanted them to.

Since anyone can grab two people just by using your other hand, I don’t see why someone with TK could not do the same. I would say you are limited to two targets and do have to pay END twice. It may also be appropriate to reduce the STR by 5 like you would for a one-handed grab. If you want to grab more than two people, you should buy the TK with the advantage area of effect selective.

If you want the luck to have a chance of running out, make it a jammed roll instead of an activation roll. The limitation Jammed on a 14 or less that has to be made each phase is a -3/4 limitation. The way it would work is every phase you want to use the power you need to make a 14 or less roll. If you fail not only does the power not activate you cannot use it for the rest of the session.

The big problem with shapeshift is that the name they chose does not actually do what it says. It would have been better to call it something else and call multiform shapeshift. If you really want to change into something else, you don’t use shapeshift you use multiform. Alter Appearance would have been a much better description than shapeshift. It is counter intuitive that if you want to be a shapeshifter you don’t use the power called shapeshift.

With the shapeshift you are not altering the tracks, you are altering yourself, so you leave different tracks. If I have shapeshift vs sight and someone takes a picture of me in a different form the picture shows the altered form not my true form. In this case there is not picture but the tracks I am leaving are not those of my true form they are the tracks of the altered form. If I change my feet to that of wolf to both touch and scent the footprints and scent, I leave are those of a wolf not a man. The shapeshift does not need to include sight looking like a wolf does not affect tracks. What the OP wanted was something that lets him leave tracks of something else. Shapeshift seems the best way to build this. The way I would build this would be shapeshift to touch and smell groups, Any shape for 17 points. You could reduce it to a limited group if you were only able to leave tracks of a certain type of creature. I would say if the person tracking you made his roll high enough, they might realize that there is something wrong with the tracks.

Yea the PRE attack is probably going to be used from the beginning. A high enough PRE attack will probably result in the opponents taking up a defensive posture and not rushing past him. I think that even the targets PRE for the PRE attack should be enough to prevent the opponents from doing anything that is going to reduce their DCV much less halving it.

In the early Avenger issues Wasp was not forgotten she was ignored. She had no real attack powers, so most supervillains did not pay any attention to her. When your attack is NND with the defense being resistant defense almost anything with superpowers will ignore you.

A naked 5 shot autofire on 4d6 HKA with the limitations OAF and suppression fire only costs 12 points. Suppression fire is a half phase maneuver so can be combined with the optional guarding rules. This will allow you to make an attack on anyone moving through the area. If they ignore you and try and move past you they are at ½ DCV. The suppression fire means you can attack every segment, not just the phases you go in. It also means you can attack the character once for every hex they enter. The only limit is you cannot hit more than 5 times (or the number of shots fired).

One thing that might work is using a block maneuver instead of an attack. Since you can continue to block as long as you keep succeeding you should be able to block multiple characters. Combine this with the guarding rules and you can stop multiple opponents by continuing your block. If you have a higher SPD, you can use a sweep maneuver after they have been stopped and then return to a guarding action. Let’s say you are have a SPD 4 character facing multiple SPD 3 opponents. In 12 you start a guarding action with block as your declared action. You can block anyone approaching you. In phase 3 you use a sweep maneuver to cut down those you have stopped. In phase 6 you go back to guarding with the block as your held action. They approach you in 8 and you use a block to stop them. In 9 use another sweep to cut down your opponents. In twelve the cycle starts again with the same results. This assumes that the opponents are going to try and attack you because to ignore you would put them at half DCV. To pull this off you will need a high enough OCV to hit and block and be able to deal enough damage to take out your opponents. While the rules are not clear if a block would stop someone trying to get past you, I would allow it in a game I am running. If you do need to build a power for this, consider an autofire attack. Simply use the suppression fire option to be able to attack anyone who enters the guarded area.

One of the examples of change environment in the book is a locking spell which is written up as a -6 to Lockpicking rolls. I have also seen change environment used as a cleaning spell in serval editions. In both those cases the targets is being changed from one state unlocked/dirty to another locked/clean. The way I see it transformation is mainly used for when you can target something individually. Change environment is better suited for things you cannot target. Keep in mind that the tracks are more than just foot prints. Tracks could include the scent left behind by the creature, plants being pushed out of the way, or things dropped by the creature. So if I am using transformation what am I targeting? Is it the ground or the bushes pushed out of the way, or is it the things the creature dropped? Shapeshifting is more about leaving a false trail not changing an existing one. You alter yourself so the trail you leave is different from what you normally would leave. If you include other sense groups someone tracking with those sense groups would think the tracks are from what you want. With it you could leave the tracks of a wolf instead of those of a human.

Actually there are some rules for this. The optional guarding areas and ignoring opponents and interposing are in book 2 in 6th edition. Something similar was in the ultimate martial artist for 5th edition, and I think the 4th edition Ninja Hero book also had them. Guarding does not actually prevent someone from going past you, but if they do they are at ½ DCV. Interposing is basically taking a penalty to DCV that becomes a bonus to OCV is the person attacking attacks what you are defending. Both of them use a held action. While these do not prevent someone going past you they do put anyone who tries at a big disadvantage. The penalties for doing this should be obvious so anyone trying to get past someone who is guarding an area is going to know they are at ½ DCV. If you are guarding an area and the opponent moves up to attack you instead of ignoring you they are at full DCV. Knowing that ignoring you is likely to get them hurt or killed will often be as effective as actually preventing them from moving. A group of experienced combatants used to working together can probably get around you, but that is often the case in real life.

The reason I suggested an activation roll is that one of the best luck based powers I ever created was simply 3 overall levels with an activation roll of 11 or less. This gives the player control over what the luck effects, but at the same time allows for some randomness. 11 or less means the player can count of the luck about 62.5% of the time. Throw in about 6 dice of luck with the reroll option from the APG and 2 levels of combat luck and you have a very effective luck-based character.

Why would change environment not be able to change the tracks? The book specifically lists a -1 to a characteristic Roll/and or related skill Roll(s) as an option. In this case I am defining it as a in -1 to the skill tracking. It also specifies it can create any other noncombat effect of equal magnitude listened in the table. If I can have a change environment that cleans and tidies up a room changing tracks should be allowed. With the shapeshift you would not necessarily have to change your feet and shoes to what you want to leave tracks of. You are changing them to something that will leave tracks of what you want. Think of boots that leave the tracks of an animal. They had something similar to that in one of the Fallout video games. In both cases I could see a GM requiring the player to have the skill tracking and use it as an opposed skill to determine how good the tracks are. This would replace using disguise in shapeshift.

It will depend on exactly how the spell works. Shapeshift would work fine if the spell allows you to alter your own tracks. If I change my shoes to that of a woman’s high heels and walk I will leave tracks a woman’s high heels. This would be shapeshift to the touch sense group. Shapeshift touch allows you to actually alter your body, but only redistributes your weight. Adding the scent group would allow you to leave the scent of the creature you are imitation. The Imitation adder may be a good idea. It would make it very difficult to spot that the tracks are false. A limitation only for leaving false tracks may be appropriate. Change environment would be more appropriate for a spell that can alter existing tracks or even create ones where there are none. Change Environment can give a penalty to a skill roll, so just buy it as a penalty to tracking. You will probably need the long lasting adder for or the alteration will only last a short time. If you want to be able to change the type of tracks left you will need the varying effect advantage. That could be anywhere between a +1/4 to a +1 depending on how much you can alter the tracks.

If it is an item creating false tracks change environment is probably the best way to go. If you just want to obscure the tracks you could allow someone with the tracking skill to cover the tracks using an opposed skill. Basically the person trying to cover the tracks makes a tracking roll, the person trying to follow the tracks takes a penalty on his roll equal to how much the first person made the roll by. With a minimum of a -1 penalty if the first person makes his roll.

I prefer to use the alternate luck options out of the advanced players guide instead of the standard luck. Specifically, the one where you roll your luck dice and count the BODY and get to reroll a number of times during the session equal to the BODY you rolled. By being fairly selective on what is rerolled you can be really effective. Since you have to roll better saving it for when you almost made it makes it really reliable. I have used that on several characters in both Champions and Fantasy Hero. The Champion's character was a precog, so the special effect of the luck was not actual luck. He saw the future and would change something in the past when he wanted to change the outcome. He had enough luck that he could affect others. From a game mechanic point I would decide I wanted to use one of my rerolls and the roll would be rerolled. In game I would give a warning or change something before the event happened without getting into too much detail of what I changed. It might have been a cryptic warning before the event happened. It could be something like a warning for another character to check their gun earlier in the day when I wanted a reroll on a failed burnout roll. For a luck-based character buy some luck using these rules, but use the activation roll instead of requires luck for the other powers. This will get you a really effective character that is actually lucky. Buy a few overall levels as well with the special effect of luck. They don’t get any limitation and work like overall levels, but you can get fairly creative is the actual reason you succeed. When a character misses you because you put the overall level to DCV they slipped on a banana peel just enough miss hitting you.

How many dice of luck do you have? The more dice of luck you have the less of a limitation it will be. You also might want to reconsider this. Luck is most often used when a character is at a disadvantage or in a bad situation. In earlier versions of the game, it specifically stated to only use it when the character is having a hard time. The general rule was rolling luck when the player was having bad luck, and unluck when he was having good luck. Personally, I would use a normal activation roll instead of a luck roll. This would give you more control over when it activates. This would allow the character to be lucky more consistently. The idea of having power based on the level of luck seems like a good idea, but in reality, it makes for a very unreliable character. If your concept is the character alters probability in his favor so always seems to be lucky the activation roll is going to work better. If the concept is weird stuff happens around the character the luck level could work.

One thing I would bring up is that some limitations are not really limitations they are simply special effects. The whole idea that a power is limited by the mind of its user in not a limitation it is a special effect. The GL rings are a good example of this. The ring may be limited only by the imagination of the user, but that is not a limitation that is a special effect of how the ring works. In the hero system you pay for what you can use in the game. If you have a power that has is theoretically has infinite power, you still only have to pay for what you can use. Different characters may pay different price for the same power, because the game mechanics are different. For example, two different green lanterns may pay different prices for their ring. The ring may be physically the same, but because one can use it better, he pays more for it. The value of the limitation is based on the character purchasing the power. So, if the limitation does not limit the character purchasing the power it is considered a -0 limitation. Prior to 6th edition this might be an acceptable limitation on a VPP with the GM’s permission assuming the limitation would actually restrict what the VPP could have in it. Limitations on how you spend your XP should never be allowed. If this is allowed any power or stat the character does not intend to buy up will have a limitation on it. Do you really want characters putting a -1/2 limitation most of their abilities?

This is something I would be very hesitant to allow. I could see allowing it on a VPP or a multipower, but only if the pool was significantly higher in points then the cap. If the character can use the full point of the pool it would not really limit them. If I have a 60 point pool and can only use 60 points that is not limiting me in any way. For a -1/2 limitation the character should be limited to using no more than 2/3 of the pool, a -1/4 would allow you to use about ¾ of the pool. Anything more would be a -0 limitation. Allowing it on anything else should not be allowed.