Gnome BODY (important!)

Sure, but how? Sight Group Detect (Invisible things) doesn't work because they're invisible to the sight group. Unusual Group Detect (Invisible things) doesn't conserve sight group adders. So if my wizard buddy casts See Invisible, it doesn't work with R2-ShootU's 360-degree vision? That makes no sense.

Sure, but what about the tables where people don't start ignoring campaign guidelines two sessions in? Where do we get our premade villains? Very firmly agreed. This gave me no end of grief when I got started until I had my GM give me firm benchmarks.

I don't feel that "Boop, character's over" has any place in a TTRPG. Including sudden death will just discourage players from becoming attached to their characters and NPCs. Genre shmenre, if I heard a GM talking about "you just die" effects I'd walk. No way am I investing effort into something that ends at the whim of 3d6.

If you want something that'll scare but not instagib PCs while still being certain death for Johnny Bystander, I've come to love KA 1d6+1, Continuous, Penetrating.

The invisibility topic got me thinking. See Invisible is a pretty simple D&D spell. Given that Sight can have a bunch of adders strapped to it, how do you do it in HERO as a one-size-fits-all spell?

Why do you want this in your game? I don't believe this sort of power has any business being in a TTRPG. If used against a PC, it's "Zap! Ron is dead. Make a new character.". Worse yet, it can very easily be a situation where the player had zero input from the time the enemy revealed their death-spell to the time of PC death. That just comes off as "Haha! Killed your dude! Sucker!". If used by a PC it's likely to be of utterly binary power, either completely dominating (A la D&D3-PFs no-save-just-lose spells) or useless ("Zap! He's unaffected. Zap! He's unaffected. Screw it, firebolt!"). Both cause issues.

I have no interest arguing with someone who is misrepresenting my position. If you'd used the rules I said I'd use to show I was favoring some SFX I'd respond with an argument but you're not so I'm not wasting time on you.

Invisibility has no impact on the user's ability to use Images, such as Images to create light, such as a torch or lantern. Therefore Invisibility lets light out. Therefore a glowing ring (or character) is still glowing. You'd need a Darkness construct to snuff that. Invisibility to Sight Group would do jack about a ring that hums. That's sound. That'd be a inaudibility spell. Invisibility doesn't make the SFX of your powers stop being obvious so the SFX of "ring is obvious because it shoots tiny magical shields" remains obvious. Again, Darkness construct. To side-track over to the glowing character, depends on what level of concealability you bought the DF at. If it's Not Concealable, then it's not concealable. If it's Concealable, then it's concealable. I do agree the the verisimilitude argument causes a concept superiority issue and I'd just run Invisibility as "Buy off all your OXF to IXF unless you want them giving you away" regardless of SFX. I'm just poking holes in the verisimilitude argument because I feel it's based on an incomplete analysis.

The verisimilitude argument depends on why the focus is obvious. A sword or suit of plate are obvious because their function is evident from their form. Invisibility should, clearly, conceal this. Unless magic item identification is trivial for even the most uneducated, an OIF Ring of Protection must be obvious by some other means, such as glowing or humming or shooting tiny magical shield-bullets. I see no reason why invisibility would conceal any of these.

Group Naked Buyoff? Or if you want to be a right and proper rules-lawyer, Darkness, Personal Immunity, Invisible Power Effect.

I'd throw in a naked buyoff of Obviousness of foci.

Then that's just AVLD (Defenses with "Cosmic" SFX) +1.5 (or more), Does BODY +1, AOE Accurate +0.5. Sums to +2.5 (or more). I also question the wisdom of statting something like this out. If the cosmic being is supposed to be an unstoppable force, follow M&M's Power Level X conventions and outright admit it's a walking ball of fiat.

Just to play devil's advocate, all of those are also horribly likely to backfire if the PC or player distrusts the villain. The tape could be delayed to the point that the hostage is already dead, the bombs could be rigged to go off at anytime, and the voice trigger would make a wonderful anti-hero trap.

It's an interesting collision between description and mechanics. PD and ED are "I am hard to hurt with physical/energy powers". MD is "I am hard to affect with mental powers". And for the most part this holds true, since physical non-damaging powers are rarely made mental and vice versa. But Mental Entangle "breaks" the rules by being "affect" that isn't "hurt". I imagine a similar situation in reverse would occur with something like Nerve Override Ray Mind Control Nd6 (Resisted by ED and CON instead of MD and EGO -whatever)

Thinking more about this, it really depends on how a hero/villain encounter goes down. If they devolve into stand-up slugfests, then villains have to team up or power up to be interesting fights for a PC group. But if villains have objectives (I'm here to rob that bank) and will prioritize those over combat (Screw fighting these guys, I've got my sack-o-money) and disengage or take hostages or otherwise play dirty, a single villain who'd 50/50 a 1v1 with a PC can pose an interesting challenge to a PC group.

I don't see why it couldn't, Pushing rules say nothing about using it to improve a characteristic for a Casual roll.

First, I imagine that magic-enforced slavery isn't exactly what archer had in mind for his fantasy utopia. I think he's going for a more friendly church than Super IRSism. Second, aggressive collections just decreases the chance of default. What happens in the event Janson takes out a loan to start a weaving business and the place burns down killing him and ruining his assets? Or what about someone who just makes poor business choices and has a negative net worth at time of death? Third, your slavery/necromancy idea is exactly the "alternative revenue stream" I described, and raises a bunch of interesting questions about how people feel about the Super IRSists being willing to disturb the dead and shackle the living to get their coin.

It's an easy enough conceit to deimplement. Just have sufficient mooks of sufficient quality and/or villain teams. That's what I'd do if I were running HERO, just because 4v1 is an action economy curbstomp.

Some quantity of borrowers are going to default. That's just a fact of banking. So if the church doesn't charge interest, it's going to be bleeding out money over time. The church, in theory, is financially stable. Therefore if the church doesn't charge interest it has to have some alternative revenue stream which compensates for any loans which are defaulted on. Which raises the questions of where does this money come from if not loan interest and how do the people giving this money to the church feel about how it's being used?

But selling back the Common sense group is enough for a 15- in PS: Internet Arguer AND a 15- in KS Internet Arguments. Come on man, leverage those points.

OK, that does clear it up. You're looking for absolutes. HERO doesn't really do absolutes. See 5er p559 or 6e1 p133. That said, you can kludge it. Pick something suitably obscure (Resistant Power Defense comes to mind) to be the "Cosmic Defense" against Cosmic attacks and AVAD/AVLD will carry you the rest of the way.

Pulled my buddy's copy of GURPS 4th Edition Horror, which had Cosmic in it. Based on the text there, GURPS Cosmic is just your choice of Difficult to Dispel or Innate on the power, or Power Defense limited to defending certain powers.

What do you mean by "bypass" and "block"?

Sorry, was skimming too fast, saw a "de" where you put an "in".

I contest this assertion. A No Range power is useful in all fights which occur in "normal distance" provided the user has non-terrible movement abilities and/or enemies who favor melee. A Long Range Only power is useful only in long range fights. What's the relative frequency?