Just A Guy Name

I do not think anyone has advocated rewriting the rules. Certainly that would be a huge inconvenience for those that like EC and MP frameworks, as they would be forced to change the rules for their own games to suit themselves Perhaps we can sum up by saying: 1.Use your best judgement as a GM in evaluating each character concept. 2.If you do not want EC and/or MP frameworks, just disallow them, but consider that some concepts will be harder to build w/o them.

I think you will find that it really is not saving much work at all. I take a character, give him a bunch of powers that share a theme in common, give the bunch of them a disadvantage which I will call "Linked special effects with these other powers" so that they are all vulnerable to Suppress, Drain, or whatever. Voila, there's your EC. Like I said last night, I do not have much of a problem with EC myself. I have found multipowers to be more prone to abuse.

Originally posted by Hermit

No offense intended, I'm not saying anyone who enjoys whacky power mixes IS like that automatically.. it's just my preference that they be tighter.

Aw heck, I'll say it. They're whack!

There. Now it's out in the open. At least the air is clear:)

I agree in principle, although ECs do not bother as much as Multipowers. The latter often seem to be taken just to get a point break on a bunch of powers that the character would probably use only one-at-a-time anyway. As GM, I have turned down a few multipowers that I thought were just frivolous. The only ones I (usually) like are those built through a focus. ECs are abusable also, but I have an easier time wrapping my head around a sound concept utilizing one, plus the definition of the particular EC clues opponents in on it's SE, giving them the potential to counter all the related powers.

Supreme; Regarding Gladiator , try amazon.com. I just checked and they have it listed in both hard and paperback. I would recommend it to any fan of superheroic fiction. If you do read it, compare it to those early Superman stories from Action, and see how strong you think the similarities are.

Gladiator

Dunno how copyright law would apply in a hypothetical case of Wylie v S&S, esp. not back in the 30s. I have never heard if they admitted to it, but it seems apparent that Gladiator and Doc Savage were big influences on their conception of Superman. The similarities between Danner and Kent (insofar as their superhuman abilities) were quite striking early in Superman's comic life. Due to the nature of the medium, his powers grew in both number and level fairly quick until the connection with Wylie's character was not so apparent. IIRC, The Young All-Stars had a character based on Danner, in a sort of an ironic tribute.

Despite the admonition that LS protects only against Change Environment attacks, my own house rule is that LS vs a particular special effect will provide a small bonus to defense, sliding upwards based on total points in LS.

Reflector. Yeah, that's the one. It wasn't wise to refer to him by his old joker name "Snotman", as he had a permanent mad-on due to his treatment before he drew his ace. Another aspect to his ace was the ability to absorb attacks, either giving him the power temporarily (as in Tachyon's psionic 'sleep' command) or boosting his physical strength ( as in the train incident you mention). Don't remember if it was ever made clear how long these enhancements lasted. Your point concerning the limits of his invulnerabilty are well taken, but it remains that he was shown to be immune to every attack made against him in the novels. It might be that a sufficiently large impact might overcome his invulnerability or a powerful mentat like Fortunato or (the thankfully dead) Astronomer might bypass his mental defense, but as it stands, these are merely untestable hypotheses.

Hmm. I am thinking of Reflecto (sp?) from the Wildcards series.

I believe he was invulnerable to any direct attack against him. The only way to affect him was with environmental changes. It was thought that you could bury him or otherwise cut off his supply of air. One ace (forget who) defeated him by drawing all the heat out of the area he was in.

Originally posted by keithcurtis

I forgot about GURPS IST. Great sourcebook, though I would place it second to Strike Force.

 

Keith "Allston fan" Curtis

Ooh, does anyone have the characters from Strike Force converted to 5E? BTW, if you like GURPS:IST, you might like IST:Kingston also. It was not from SJG, but I cannot remember the publisher of the top of my head.

Originally posted by Monolith

Same old arguments over and over.

What is more abusive. 100 pt Magic Pool (costing 150 points and allow you to do anything with a Magic Roll and a Full Phase) or a 60 point Magic Elemental (allowing you to have the base EC and 4 other 60 AP slots)? In the long-run the VPP is far more abusive.

Indeed. Which is a good argument for not allowing VPP either!

Regarding Acroyears comment on Sapphire; all the Champions characters are lacking in appeal to me (with the exception of Nighthawk, I have a soft spot for super-normals), probably due to their apparent origin as archetypical examples for player character creation.

What are spirit transforms anyway? What stat do they work on; body, ego,or something else?