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If you get hurt, hurt'em back. If you get killed, walk it off. - Captain America, Universe 199999

Surely, even if it is meant to be a heroic game, if you could get that Battlestar "cheaper" by getting it as an "iconic" thing (and being the guy who owns an entire private starship, built for war, complete with fleet of fighters, seems fair to be considered pretty iconic) with a few points instead of equipment, bought with cash from wealth that you'd need to have enough points in that it becomes more costly for the points to get enough cash... You'd still want to just buy things like that with points. Especially as it makes your private personal Battlestar into a much more protected part of your PC, having some assurance that even if it is destroyed, you'll get it back or be able to find another to replace it.

Personally, I always treat magic items as both equipment and not. If I'm playing in a heroic game for a fantasy campaign, then I can just buy equipment with cash and it is able to be taken from me longterm or broken and not replaced. So, if I buy "my father's sword" as a 2d6 HKA with an OAF, using my points, I can have it pretty much all the time, and it'll be fairly safe from harm, just because I want it to remain in play as a part of my character arc. This is despite it being a perfectly normal sword. If I then also pick up an enchanted dagger from an enemy and use it until I lose it or it breaks, I don't need to spend points on it. It is a piece of equipment, just one that does a neat magical thing (some sort of bonus to OCV, maybe). If I also buy my mother's "amulet of love" (+5rPD, OIF) and pay an amount of points for it, and use it regularly, and detail it as being an important part of my backstory, then that is also not just a piece of equipment, but not just because this happens to be magical. If I then buy a fancy boiled leather breastplate (+5rPD, OIF), which is not at all magical, and I pay only a monetary cost, no points, then it will be merely equipment and can definitely be lost, stolen, or even destroyed outright.

Our intrepid heroes are being shot at. (This works better if they don't have plenty of guns of their own, yet.) Luckily, they're on a riverside pier, surrounded by a maze of box walls, made of wooden crates full of dried corn. (Whether its true or not, we're going to say that these would stop bullets.) All they need to do is sneak round to clock the mobsters in the head without the mobsters getting a clear shot at them. Throw in a falling crate or two as a crane got hit by a stray bullet, and a few screaming animals running away from the sound of guns, and even maybe a small boat pulling up at the pier right at the end for a get-away, just as the mob's reinforcements arrive by car.

I'm now picturing a setting that is mostly the same, like the whole of the setting remains consistent, but for this one particular city that got built or not back in the turn of the century (as is 1800s to 1900s) and is the centre of some weird time alternating stuff that can't be fixed yet, so instead there's just a big hotel/temporal embassy in there within the city/space where the city would be, ready to pick up an occasional accidental visitor who had wandered out from the other version of local reality and now needs a little magitech help to be able to go back to the other side. Lots of tourists, too, come to see the landmarks of the city that is and is not, then also visit all the nice countryside that exists in the version of local reality where it is not present.

Suddenly realising that there's no sniper archer, but rather invisible assassins are throwing knives at the party somewhere in relatively close range. The party wizard got a sleep effect ready to go off and: "Marco!"

Honestly, I wouldn't see the villain, or the other people of the magical kingdom, being dismayed or even surprised that they exist as results of a magical wish from a child. The wish of a child forming a kingdom of magic from their imagination is a perfectly standard thing for that sort of society. I'm also not sure it makes them any less real or valid. Certainly there's no reason for any disappearances when the child is killed. They may have wished for a magical kingdom, but now that its existing, the child isn't integral to continuing its existence. Like if an architect designs skyscrapers, so a bunch of construction workers in a union make their buildings, then if all of them got killed later, the skyscraper has no reason to vanish.

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I prefer an unfigured characteristic simply because even when using a version of Hero that has figured characteristics, I was always using disads to buy my characteristics as if they were unfigured. I sold back all of every characteristic as the first step of making a PC, so every single characteristic was at zero, but then buy them all back up as a whole bunch of separate things. For example, I would lower my Dexterity to 0, then buy it back to where I wanted but with it limited as "Does not contribute to Speed or Combat Value", then also buy a bunch of Dexterity, with it limited as "Only for improving score with OCV", and a third Dexterity with it limited as "Only for improving score with DCV". Then I would buy Speed at the usual 10 points each. And the same for Strength with PD, Recovery and Stun. And the same for Consitution with ED, Recovery, Endurance, and Stun. And the same for Body with Stun. And the same for Ego with OMCV and DMCV. That was all a bit complicated to write out each time, and far too expensive (I never asked for an enormous discount, and then end up buying each characteristic up separately, so I ended up paying several times at only just a little less than full price each time...) but I loved the fact that I could buy a high DCV for my psychic who sensed future attacks, and not also have her be an acrobat sniper for no reason. That was a very clunky fix, and I am very glad that I don't have to use it anymore in 6e.

If nothing else, they sometimes serve as a way to make things about your PC come up in game. Like, I *could* simply mention the fact that I've got this tattoo from whatever mystical mentor trained me, or that his old archnemesis is now looking for me, the best of his old enemy's students, to prove his superior magic, or even that I look very strange to people who view souls ever since mine started that change that my magic causes to a caster's spirit. But then everyone can feel free to ignore it totally to go right back to some other thing that they wanted the game to be about. But by having disadvantages and complications become an option for a PC, you suddenly have that way of letting everyone know, the things I want to add to the game as a whole include...

Magic, specifically being used to adjust density or affect those with an adjusted density. Technology (or a science-based effect, like a mutated person who shoots energy of the right sort to do such a thing) that is specific to adjusted densities. Powers that increase or decrease other people's density as is their special effects, with or without a target already being adjusted in their density (a power might have a damage effect fluffed as being decreasing the density of some parts of a person, but not others, so that things begin to go wrong within their body, like blood just falling out of suddenly intangible veins).

Could always pick one specific IRL lake and use the name of it as the surname.

"Perfect is the enemy of good and great." - not sure of correct original quote attribution "Sometimes it is possible to do everything right and still lose. That is not failure. That is *life*." - Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek The Next Generation

There are already some Lightsabre martial arts tournaments, and I'm a lot more likely to allow them to be using "plasma swords" in a nearby future than the copyright withheld "lightsabre", but someone invents a real working lightsabre and has the foresight to also develop hard light hologram versions for fun as a toy training tool, then it is totally plausible for other space opera to have a lightsabre fighting tourney.

Nyooom, (as the sound you make when you go fast...)