Gnome BODY (important!)

Yeah yeah groundhog's not happy, but is it Spring yet?

The logical followup to "You get what you paid for!" is "You don't pay for what you're not getting". If Perk: Black Belt isn't coming up, I'd personally ask the GM if they could push it into the spotlight a bit or cut me a price break. The GMs in my area are pretty agreeable about this.

It's a very particular philosophy that I don't personally agree with, partly because of what you said and partly because my group includes a bunch of people who lean heavily on prefabs or "Here's my concept, can you make this character for me?".

No, there's also a 2-point Skill Level for a Characteristic Roll. Not anything based off that Characteristic's roll, just raw rolls of that Characteristic. For example, +2 with Dexterity Rolls would make the character better at winning initiative ties, but not better at Breakfall or Acrobatics.

Ah, I misunderstood your question! The Martial Arts system doesn't really have the granularity to represent that beyond "Horse-Fu just only works when you're ahorse. Or when you're a horse, but we don't talk about those practitioners.". It's a perfectly valid thing to do, to say "This Martial Art needs a mount to function", but there's no particular rules representation you're going to find for it.

My opinion is that you'd be better off attaching the "Only while mounted" to whatever power he uses while mounted, or to the OCV he uses for the maneuver. Something like Deadly Blow's "Mounted Combat Master" option. Currently, aiming is represented via the Brace maneuver and the Set maneuver. It should be fine to buy 2 point CSLs or limited OCV "Only while Braced" or "Only while Set". PSLs are explicitly only to cancel penalties caused by factors external to the maneuver and its attack options.

Everyone knows how to drive, for free. Everyone is assumed to have a civilian ID vehicle, for free, unless specified (though relying on your car for superheroics may cause you problems). Does it make sense to then charge for the ability to legally drive? God no. Same logic for PSes. They bought the ability to practice [profession]. Does it make sense to then charge them again for the ability to practice [profession] legally? God no. Passport can be interesting though. See, not having a passport (and not having somebody in the team who can double as a private jet) can cause problems getting to another country to fight supercrime. Interesting problems, ones that can be fun to play out interesting solutions to. But I still wouldn't charge people points for it, I'd just say "Hey, do you have a passport? Like, listed on your sheet or as a logical consequence of your other things listed on your sheet? No? Man, it takes weeks to get one and that's too long. What do you do?" and then assume they have one after that plot arc is over. Generally speaking, my "Do I charge for fringe benefit" test is "Will having this thing give this particular character an interesting advantage and does it not follow logically as a requirement to use something else they have and does it give them the benefit even if nobody else on the team has one?". Only if that comes up yes do I expect points be paid. Driver's License and Professional License fail the second clause. Passport fails the third clause.

The massive DCV penalty doesn't really fit with how charged shots work in the games, though. You're actually a little better off defensively if you rely on charged shots, just because you spend less time needing to move in offensive ways. It's a question of ease of implementation versus fidelity to source with no "correct" answer.

You can manually edit the text of power writeups in HD.

I worked on a MMX game for HERO, so I've been down this road before! I built Charging as a custom Adder: +10 per "level", half price for each additional "level". Charging let the user spend an attack action to give their next attack +2 DCs and +2 OCV, stacking up to a maximum number of times equal to the number of "levels" of Charging purchased for the power. You can't hold a charge indefinitely (though for a Turn or two lying in ambush is fine, if you can deal with the glowing and noise) and if you're Stunned or KO'd you lose the charge. So the megabuster might be 8d6 Charging 2. Spend one Phase powering up and now it's 10d6 and +2 OCV. Spend two and it's 12d6 and +4 OCV and going to hurt. Under the hood, this is built as +2d6 and +2 OCV from 2 point CSLs (14 AP) with a "Delayed Use" Advantage (+1/4) and the Extra Phase (-3/4) Limitation. I built the VWES as a Multipower of a character's buster (generally, though some characters based it off their gimmick weapon instead). Every slot had its own set of Charges, but other than that there wasn't any real unity. Instead of charging points for the slots, I was going to just give one PC a boss weapon after each boss retired. The PCs could choose who got the weapon, but once somebody owned it that data was locked to them.

A flat penalty still means that a better shot is more likely to hit what he was aiming to not hit. I think that the flat OCV approach is the way to go, just not with 0 OCV. Somewhere in the ballpark of 2 or 3 should make hits on 1/2 DCV cover (such as a Grabbed hostage) decently common while leaving full DCV cover safe. Actually, now that I've typed that I can see the argument for 0. A normal is CV 2 while Grabbed, so OCV 0 is decently likely to hit a Grabbed normal but it's below 50%. But it also can't really hit a competent combatant serving as a Grabbed hostage. Hmm. I'll have to think on this one.

This is where the approach of "Bury it in Limitations, then buy them off" comes into play. 20-30 CP is a lot. Let's start with a upper-end power that clocks in at 30 AP. Now let's call this super-special maneuver a work in progress, and stick it with 1 Recoverable Charge (I can only try once per fight), a 13- Activation Roll (I generally do it right), a Minor Side Effect that always occurs (I hurt myself a little to do this), Cannot Use Targeting (I'm learning to do it at all, I'll stop aiming wherever-I-can later), and Extra Time: Delayed Phase (I can't do it fast yet). That's -3 worth of Limitations and brings it down to 7 real cost. That's easy enough to grab a few sessions in and rip the Limitations off from there as I learn what I'm doing. Once I've trimmed the Limitation pile down and am happy with how it's performing, I turn my points towards picking up the next maneuver.

Why does Man-Bat have to deal with every issue personally? Why can't he yell "Egads, somebody [verb] that machine before [horrible thing]" and trade places with his nearest teammate? What sidekick? Where the heck are you getting these things from? I feel like I'm wading through a field of strawmen.

No, not really. Spider-Man for example went twenty years of publication before Venom showed up and gave him a recurring foe immune to his spider-sense. YOU picked sonar, and have now wonderfully checkmated yourself. I specified an exotic sense. Yeah, that works. I don't see how any of this cares about Man-Bat's sightedness. Yelling "Get the red one!" tells the red one to dodge just as well as pointing at him. How does any character know who to attack? What relevance does this have? I ask again, is Man-Bat getting solo play while the other players sit on their hands and wait for the GM to let them play the game they showed up to play? I ain't his player, I dunno. Maybe he's the cautious type. Please retract your insult to - well basically everyone I've ever seen GM. They did a damn fine job. I certainly can't speak for everyone, but that's not what I'm thinking most of the time I put a thing on my sheet. If I wanted a particular thing to come up, I'd flag it explicitly. Most things on the sheet are logical follow-ons as part of the fluff-crunch recursion. I am in agreement. I think we all are, actually. Again, should every character be forced to force their disads into the story or lose points?

Skills and Perks are reasonably obvious why they're excluded from MPs/VPPs. Skills: The times when you need to use skills often have little to no overlap. How often are you going to need Climbing and Inventor at the exact same time? Putting all your Skills in a big Multipower with enough reserve to use 2-4 of them at once saves a huge amount of points at nearly zero loss of utility. Or god forbid, what if somebody takes a VPP, Cosmic, Only For Skills? Perks: Turning Perks on and off as Multipower points get reassigned makes no sense (Follower and Vehicle/Base excepted, but mostly useless due to 5-point doubling). Most Perks are "Always On" conceptually so having a framework that turns them off is generally narrative nonsense. Talents are less obvious, but as Hugh and Phil have mentioned you have to look at their unobfuscated AP values instead of their listed values.

A silence field works, but is extremely blatant. What sort of social situation prevents you from telling the blind man about the thing he can't see? In an undercover situation you'd want clandestine communication channels anyways, wouldn't you? Why can't Man-Bat decide who to attack on his own, or delay to see who Teamo shoots/points at? Why does the color of the blast matter? Doesn't he want to dodge all the energy blasts? Doesn't Man-Bat have work and family commitments too? Wouldn't a blind person have accommodation made by his workplace and set up in his home? Is Man-Bat expected to go on solo adventures while everyone else at the table twiddles their thumbs and waits to be permitted to play? (Though, bluebooking solo adventures would be a great way to get the blindness to matter.) In my experience, the majority of a character's 150 points of Disadvantages don't come up. Should every character be forced to force their disads into the story or lose points?

It's damn near impossible for a GM to subtly force the subject against a competent player. Man-Bat is blind, but can echolocate. Man-Bat knows not-blind people like transmitting information visually. Man-Bat keeps a seeing-eye teammate around. Man-Bat therefore suffers very little from being blind. This is both perfectly reasonable in-character and an excellent method of playing around the blindness. How do you, the GM, force Man-Bat to split off from all his teammates? And how do you do so without making it blatantly obvious that it's for the purpose of forcing Man-Bat's blindness to hinder him?

But unless most/all of the group is blinding themselves for ultimate cosmic power, that's not going to come up barring awkward contrivance or an obsession with splitting the party. You just have a teammate read things aloud, hand them the pliers, or have them mention they recognize this guy. Teamwork! In my current Champions game, there's an illiterate PC. This has yet to come up at all, since there's the rest of the team to read things aloud for them.

50CP to get 4d6 HKA, since everyone starts with 10CP of STR. My sticking point is the bizarre relationship between HA and HKA compared to EB and RKA. EB and RKA get range, STR doesn't add, there's no inherent Limitation. HA gets no range, STR adds, and it has a built in -1/2 (or -1/4). HKA gets no range, STR adds, and it has no inherent Limitation (WHY?). If HKA got the same Lim that HA does, it'd immediately open up the concept space again. STR 45 HKA 1d6 Man would pay more than STR 15 HKA 3d6 Man, which is correct because STR 45 HKA 1d6 Man is getting more flexibility.

There's an argument to be made that because Sight is a very common target for Flash/Darkness, it should be less valuable. A sort of inverse to how ED and PowD cost the same but a 6d6 Blast that goes against ED is cheaper than a 6d6 Blast against PowD. I'll admit that were I min-maxing a 6e character, one of my first decisions would be to sellback Sight and replace it with an exotic alternative.

The basic idea is to blanket the world in a "Every time I get a Phase, my dead people go to my heaven" field. Should be pretty infallible so long as the field covers everywhere a worshipper is likely to be. Not functioning in unusual places (eg, hell) may be a desired feature or a bug to be patched. On that note, a lot of the details will depend on other details. Maybe this god lives in a sky palace, so all that's needed to reach the world is Megarange (or enough Megaarea). Maybe he lives in his heaven, so he needs the Dimensional modifier to project the field across planes. Maybe there's a bunch of heavens/hells and you can go there before dying and he may need the Dimensional modifier to dump his field there too (or maybe dying in a heaven/hell should trap your soul there, as mentioned earlier). Maybe the soul can't leave a body if the mouth is closed, so we need a Limitation to reflect that. Maybe he has his servants do the soul-moving so they should have single-target soul-move powers.

So the god doesn't have to spend an Attack Action every time they want to shuffle dead folks to the afterlife.

XDM, UAA, Megascale Area, Continuous, Limited (to dead worshipper souls only). Apply QoL modifiers like Dimensional and 0END as needed. Edit: Megascale Area, not just Megascale. Important part of the thought got trapped in brain instead of making it to keyboard.

SocLims, Hunteds, Reputations, and a thin glaze of PsyLims.

Glad everything worked out for you!