Victim

Re: Iron Champions They might also be a pure military team. They probably wouldn't really be involved traditional super fights, because they're over in some foreign country, aren't really accepted supers outside military bases, etc. But when something huge like a Tak attack goes down, then the city might call in the national guard so to speak.

Re: Green Lantern Object Creation... Summon, slavishly loyal, various types of objects.

Re: The Invisibles Writeups Well, I can easily understand your approach. The problem with my ideas is that they essentially suck. My way, you save points by taking less Dex, then spend a bunch of points to buy back some of the benefits of Dex (and other minor flavor stuff that quickly adds up) but not all. Less effectiveness for about the same amount of points. Maybe a better idea would be to keep the super Dex, but do "No CV, -1/2" or something on the last ten. The kid can buy it off as he learns to fight.

Re: The Invisibles Writeups I was thinking around 18-20 Dex and 4 SPD. I was thinking that tricks relating to super speed would make the difference with the Dex and eye hand stuff. Buy Acceleration advantages and movement skill levels for stopping and turning on a dime. Rapid Senses and some PSLs versus movement will make some part of his super speed act like a person in normal speed as far as penalties go. I'd also remove some of the Hand Attack and replace it with autofire. He didn't seem to do a whole lot of damage in his stand up fight on top the hover-shredder, even when he hit the agent many times. That seems alot like the effect of an autofire attack versus (comparatively) high defenses.

Re: The Invisibles Writeups I don't buy Dash's super Dex and SPD. I don't see his base CV as being anywhere near his parent's level. It looked like he had to abort to avoid being hit by that agent. And in terms of combat actions, he mostly just used movement - he didn't really seem to have a high speed. I'd probably give him lots of movement, but lower dex and spd than his folks.

Re: Jane's Superhumans

Re: Supers without costumes Not that I'm a comics expert or anything, but I thought that traditional costumes evolved because they were easy to draw?

Re: Shield of Confusion You aren't making a MPA because Damage Shields are continous. Once turned on, they work automatically. Of course, with this interpretation, you couldn't turn on both damage shields at the same time because that would be a MPA (activating 2 attack powers in an EC at the same time).

Re: GM's "rights" Well, what I perceive the problem with "auditors" (and some other parts of the process) is that it sounds rather hostile and argumentative. Look at the word being used. The most immediate associations are going to be tax audits, and now accountants checking (or not checking) corps for fraud. Is this really the connotation you want? Not having done Global Guardians, I can't say for myself what the audit process is like; perhaps it's being misrepresented. But it sounds like the emphasis is "Change this unless you can justify." Rather than focusing on seeing the justification or intention first, then working out necessary changes. I'm not saying you shouldn't have some control what goes into your game. God knows, I've seen a number of very stupid character ideas that have been rejected. But the process seems perhaps unnecessarily unfriendly. Granted, that may be intention, to weed out unenthusiastic players.

Re: GM's "rights" Other issues might be the player not carefully reading the "appeals process" for character audits and thinking he just got hit with hard and fast rules, misinterpreting the tone of auditor, or simply not liking the (apparent) thought processes or imagination of the auditor.

Re: GM's "rights"

Re: Multiple Power Attacks: Abused? Another thing to watch out for might be characters built with 2x equipment for +5 points, and then using the extra stuff in a MPA. Legal as per the FAQ.

Re: Cinematic Gun Combat: "Give me that." What about making your attack OIF: gun of opportunity, and then multiple power attacking with a Dispel versus foci? Essentially, you shoot them and keep them from using the gun.

Re: Are you Judge, Jury, and Executioner? Where can the FBI rules of engagement be found? I didn't find them searching on their site, and general Google searchs are flooded by discussions of Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Re: Are you Judge, Jury, and Executioner? The tone of the game was more Bronze/Iron than anything else; almost all super powers do lethal damage by default. To be fair, the character in question has had problems with "incapacitated" foes getting back up. In his last mission, he Ko'd one enemy who quickly recovered from the non-lethal version of his attack. Others on the team nailed their primary target with powers that kept him from acting for a short time, then claimed to have him ready for capture. Those powers lasted pretty much until the team got the villain outside the building where they had planned to contain the battle. The main villain was recaptured with some difficulty. In other words, recent experience told the character that his group's non lethal options were unreliable. Nexus, the threat was by no means neutralized, however, your analogy is still appropriate. Essentially, 2 full hero teams clashed with 4 villains against the backdrop of 2 gods fighting. The battle went something like this: ---------------------------------- PC fails to get bomb away from villains. The guy that dies successfully uses mind control on her (order: kill your friends). NPC speedster climbs onto the nerve gas bomb. A whole bunch of ineffective attacks and misses follow. An NPC on the PC team uses a Drain Body on the enemy brick; it doesn't kill him, but leaves him more vulnerable. NPC heals another NPC. Another miss, then someone whipped up a gadget to do something to the bomb. The PC brick badly injures the enemy brick. The character in question tears the mind control guy in half. The now formerly mind controlled character blinds the last healthy enemy, then the enemy brick is knocked out. A hidden enemy withdraws. A lot of people waste actions in shock or by yelling at the killer. The last enemy surrenders, but is knocked out anyway. ---------------------------------------------- While the situation and tides of battle up to that point strongly favored the PCs (massive numbers advantage, one enemy badly hurt), the battle wasn't really certain. The PC group, with one exception, ranges from very vulnerable to mostly vulnerable against mind control. With mind control on the right one or two people, it's a whole new ball game. For example, if the mind controlled victim got off her original MC'd action, several characters and the nerve gas bomb would have been blasted by lightning, Flashed, and EMP'd by her super MPA. However, the character did choose to his more lethal attack over his equally damaging subdual attack. Still, most of the other characters use the same type of attacks. Also, given the difficulty of actually killing someone, a "lethal" attack is more likely to just injure - most of the time, actually killing someone requires a seperate coup de grace. Probably the only reason the target ended up dead was because the character's HtH damage shield acted as the finishing strike.

Re: I just can't get into Cosmic Level play Well, since mundane, low power gadgets like handcuffs often run over 50 AP, a 50 point VPP is kind of small. IIRC, the Fred writeup for handcuffs is actually like 80+ active. Maybe part of the reason you run out of points is because you make inexperienced PCs. A more experienced version of a character is likely going to have several things: a wider array of skills from useage and experience (knowledge skills, group skills, assorted handy tricks), better skill and combat (they made me learn how to aim after blowing a whole through that building), presence defense, additional power stunts, and then perhaps secondary powers or devices to help avoid crippling weak points.

Re: Looking for HERO stats for: "Bullseye" Shouldn't Bulleye's attacks be IIF. I wouldn't exactly call a paper clip an obvious weapon.

Re: Plot device or by the rules So if a character has incredibly strong mental defenses, his mind gets switched too? Or what if the PCs can't stop the planet destroying bomb, but siphon off much of it's power?

Re: Simulated D20 Evards Black Tentacles I'd go with Summon too. It seems the best way to reflect the spell's limits on the number of tentacles and reach.

Re: New Player + Speedster = ? Just focus on basic manuevers and movement powers. Dex, SPD, and probably CON as well will eat up tons of points. If you build him with Combat Luck, instead of normal defenses, Move-by attacks become less of an issue because the character will have only a handful of PD.

Re: Sand Powers Touch ranged entangle and suffocation (NND) attacks.

Re: M&M: this is a Nightmare? Yeah, well you're supposed to spend Hero points to avoid dropping on a poor damage save, or to recover from Stun conditions to jump out of the death spiral. That's why characters get them. The save mechanics and hero points work together.

Re: M&M: this is a Nightmare? I'd imagine the difference is largely due to color vs B&W.

Re: M&M: this is a Nightmare? While powers are capped at PL, stats modifiers, feats and certain manuevers can all add to damage above the normal limit. So damage will often vary from +10 (blasters) to +15 (bricks), not including any special manuevers or extras. Characters with skills like bluff or taunt and the feat surprise strike can do extra damage quite often, and some charactes will often combine All out attack+Power Attack to get extra damage at the expense of defense. In HERO terms, most characters might be doing 12d6, the brick doing 14d6, and lots of characters have skill levels or talents that could add to damage in certain conditions. It's more variable than it sounds. There's no active point limitation persay, but maximum ranks are limited by PL. A PL 10 character can only have Mimic +10, but is able to take many different extras for it. I've done things like take 10+ Area extras and as many flaws, producing a character with a power like this: Nuclear Girl. [stuff] Radiation Powers: (source=mutation) 2/rank +2 (18 pp) Radiation blast: EB +8 L (radiation) Power Stunt: EB +8 L (rad) + many area extras - many flaws [~10000 ft rad]

Re: M&M: this is a Nightmare? That depends on how you build characters, actually. Most characters I see (or make) tend to have one larger, multi-effect power (like an EC). A Flight+Force Field+Energy Blast+Energy Field+Energy Control power costing 6/rank. Then you need 4 extras on mimic in order to copy the power, so the effective cost of mimic is much higher than you might expect.