Pattern Ghost

Re: Military Develops Non-Lethal Ray Gun CS and water cannon flat out knock the snot out of people, so not in the same class of weapon. Rubber bullets can be lethal, so I haven't mentioned them yet, as I'm against them on principal. May as well use real bullets IMO. Troops in riot gear will break a rowdy mob unless they're seriously outnumbered, so they serve the same purpose as CS/water cannon, or complement it. I'm either clarifying or nit-picking this part of your response, though, so I'll leave it at that. =D The rest, I pretty much agree with you on.

Re: Military Develops Non-Lethal Ray Gun I was an MP for a number of years in my youth. Here's the thing: If you use force, it had better be enough force to get the job done. Half measures can tend to incite. In some situations, the heat gun, if it works as advertised will probably work. Now, let's say you have a crowd to disperse. Against a peaceful crowd, you don't use any escalation of force. For example, Desert Storm protesters would come out to our base and line up for a bit of sign waving, etc. The PM would come out and read them the ordinance regarding getting their butts off our base or being arrested. The protest organizer would then ask everyone who wanted to be arrested to step forward and the rest to back off. Then we'd round up the folks who wanted to be arrested, and the rest would leave. We'd just put flexi-cuffs on the protesters, take them to an unused base gym and process them all (essentially take their info and issue tickets to appear in court) then load 'em up again and drop them off in town a good hiking distance from their cars. Nuts, but nothing you need to bust out ray guns for. Now, you may have the peaceful type crowd that doesn't want to be arrested for bizzare reasons of martyrdom, but for the most part, if the crowd is permitted, you only need to isolate and haul off the worse of the lot if their peaceful. Or unchain them from a building and haul them off. You don't want to CS them or water cannon them, or ray gun them. If you did happen to use any less than leathal force on these guys, they'd probably go crying home to mommy. The ray gun might work here, but why bother? Which leaves violent, thuggish crowds. The types of crowd the article mentions using a ray gun on, and really the only type of crowd you're justified in using force on the scale of mass crowd control stuff on. Now, the article mentions military applications in regions like the Middle East. If you escalate force on these guys, they will in all likelihood escalate right back at you. In that case, you want to skip over anything that doesn't flat knock them on their ass. You don't send in cops to drag off individuals, you either go in formation with shields and riot clubs, toss in CS, water cannon them, or whatever. But this is no place for a heat gun, or at least no place to rely on a heat gun (as described in the article). I can see someone blasting a crowd with it then rushing in and overwhelming them with riot-geared police/military, using it as a set up for busting the crowd up with standard tactics. I can't see it being relied on to break a crowd of this type by itself.

Re: Military Develops Non-Lethal Ray Gun I don't have to imagine 130 degree heat, I know exactly what it feels like. The weapon is designed to deter by psychological means, as stated in the article quoted. That makes is a non-starter for me. The sonic weapon (which I think is linked around here somewhere a while back) will actually incapacitate. 130 degree heat just makes desert lizards skitter over for a nice bask. That level of discomfort is nothing to bank on deterring angry desert-dwelling humans with any level of certainty. Sure, humans aren't going to stick around in the heat, but it does nothing to stop them from coming at you as opposed to away from you. Weapons that don't at least seriously impair the body's capacity to function are worthless.

Re: THE HARBINGER OF JUSTICE Writeup.. What's GNC stand for? The only thing I'm coming up with can't be right. =D

Re: Dark Champions the Anime Series Revi cosplayer. Pretty accurate IMO: http://www.acparadise.com/display.php?a=22299&c=8058 I got the same feeling of an abused background as Edsel and Nexus. I think from the body language in the scene on the sub, and the intimacy of the dingy bedroom location in the flashback. I think those cues were deliberately shown to indicate some form of abuse, though whether it was patricide or not would be up in the air.

Re: Military Develops Non-Lethal Ray Gun Sounds pretty useless. 130 degree heat against people who live in a desert? May be of some use if Scandanavia becomes destabilized, though.

Re: Normal-proofing your Bricks? You act like I said "Let's make it so someone can be the most powerful munchiny, everything proof character in the game!" Well, I didn't. Is there anything wrong with a character being essentially punch proof versus character types with the background of having a normal human physiology? Is this any different in the long run than a character who has electric based powers buying effective immunity from electric attacks? Other than the defended against SFX being more common in the first case, it's not. If you extend the immunity to PD, ED and even MD (and that's the case for Wolverine, and enhanced resistance to mental attacks is also a Hulk trick), then you definately have a problem. Personally, I like the model we came up with waaaay back in the building the animated Justice League thread: Moderate CVs/SPDs, and in general higher physical defenses than energy defenses on the brick types. Supes can take a hit from almost any impact and shrug it off, but gets stunned from almost any large energy attack. That works pretty well.

Re: Normal-proofing your Bricks? There, there. I forgive you already, so don't worry about it. =)

Re: Normal-proofing your Bricks? Does every team have a brick? Are all bricks created equally? And even if every brick in the universe was MA-proof, that's not the only type of character you should be running into, so is it really an issue? You're making a lot of absolute statements here. The ranges of nothing are fixed. We're not talking about DnD, and Archetypes aren't fixed classes. You continue talk as if I've offered no suggestions of balance whatsoever, which is patently false. Remember Thor vs. Supes in the JLA/Avengers crossover? "Where I come from, the dial goes up to eleven!" I'm just talking about options for adding numbers to the dial. Why not make some suggestions, then? I have, and since you've ignored them, I'd like to hear yours. Not that I don't respect your role as Devil's Advocate, but this is leaning toward wheel spinning. I can't believe you can't see how it's useful. Let's put it this way: Who can damage the brick when he's on the ground? Your highest damage team member, right? Typically, that's someone with low to moderate CV to compensate, perhaps your own brick? Given the tight range of CVs suggested by the sample characters and the table in the book (7-11 and 7-13 respectively, IIRC), halving anyone's DCV is a HUGE advantage in a fight. Are you telling me that you don't understand the concept? I'm not buying. I've seen plenty of your posts, and I have an idea of your grasp of game mechanics, and I think it's a pretty solid one. So, what gives?

Re: Normal-proofing your Bricks? Shh...

Re: Normal-proofing your Bricks? The first type should be built on a higher point total. This is about stretching the boundries of "everyone must be equally capable in combat" for a bit of variety. For the record, I'm fine with the way Champions is presented, where everyone has a shot at a fair fight with everyone else. It represents the middle ground that most comic characters tend to fall in. This thread is just for the sake of discussion of what's possible. You must have missed a slew of combat options here. The two can interact. If the MA goes all out offensive, he SHOULD be able to avoid almost all damage from the high defense type brick. Look at how many comics examples of this there are of the light fighter simply trying to bait or lead the bigger, tougher opponent into a more strategic position. Agile versus Strong is a pretty classic comic standoff, isn't it? I never said either of these things, and you're not addressing any other point made in that section. Also, if we're building PCs, you shouldn't be in combat with the guy who's on YOUR OWN TEAM to start with, and any GM with a sense of fair play won't be tossing 40 Def bricks at your group on a weekly basis. Let's just stick to false dilemma situations and stay inside the box. As I said, I like the default box well enough, so no harm in that. Actually, most real life MA techniques aren't terribly useful if your opponent has a huge strength advantage. You don't see skinny girls putting 250 pound body builders in wrist locks every day anyway. However, it's entirely in genre for someone to throw a character that has a huge STR advantage. First of all, "leverage" becomes magical in many comics settings. If you want more realism, you can simply say that the brick was tricked into overbalancing themselves and tripped or stumbled as a result. The throw maneuver doesn't mean you have to flip the other guy over your shoulder, does it? I know you know the answer to that one, so I don't know why you're bringing it up? Who ever said they did? I don't know what you're talking about. CV is definately one of the classic tradeoffs for high Defenses. If you have a Def/Damage gap in the brick's favor, you should have a CV/Speed gap in the MA's favor, in general. This is the core of the problem with "Martial Bricks" being somewhat overpowering. By taking a middle road on CV/SPD and high primary attributes, then combing them with some Martial Maneuvers, you get a god-awfully combat effective character. Even those guys are in genre, however (Spider-Man for example, or any one of DC's speedy uber bricks). These middle road guys are the ones lacking in tradeoffs. With the current recommended power levels for a 350 game, they have no real competition on the melee front. As I said, the idea was rough. However, it's in genre, and it makes some interesting alternatives to the Martial Brick types. I think the game has enough combat options to help in this regard, and powers can help as well. I think that the Nighthawk/Luke Cage scenario you suggest is a happy middle ground, and I think it works well for a game. As I said, this is just to stir up some ideas for allowing something out of the ordinary. Again, I like the status quo, but it's also fun to kick around some alternative concepts.

Re: Normal-proofing your Bricks? Here's one idea I had the other day, though it's very rough, and there are similar systems, like Rule of X, that may do it better. You could set up a matrix of Damage/Defense/CV/Speed. That gives four categories. Assign four power levels to the four categories: PL Dmg Def CV SPD 1 08DC 10 08 3 2 10DC 20 09 4 3 12DC 30 10 5 4 14DC 40 11 6 At a basic level, you could allow one of DMG/Def/CV/SPD from each power level. For example, you could have a MA with: 10 DC Dmg 10 Def 10 CV 6 SPD Or a Blaster with: 14 DC Dmg 30 Def 4 SPD 8 CV Or, you could take it a step futher and say 1+2+3+4 = 10 pts worth of power levels and let the players mix it up. My numbers here are mostly bogus, and may not work in actual practice. The chart doesn't take into effect more elaborate power constructs for example. Given that the numbers are probably bad and the matrix is simplistic, here's how I arrived at the numbers: DC based on typical range of damage found in Champions, without regard to modifiers. Defense based on the next PL being able to effectively negate the one below it. So, at PL 3 you have 30 Def, which effectively stops the *average* damage from a PL 2 attack (35 average), while still letting some Stun through. Of course, the inverse is also true. CV was taken by looking at all of the sample 350 pt characters in Champions and adding up their base CV + Skill levels. It turned out to be a very tight range. SPD was set with the idea that a lower speed campaign would make balancing a little easier. It could have been 4-7 to allow for speedsters having a rank to shoot for over Martial Artists, but you can still build a formidable Speedster using power constructs and skill levels. Anyway, for all the length of this post, it's still a very rough idea. But it's one that could allow for a little bit wider range than the standard suggestions in the book while maintaining a bit of balance.

Re: Normal-proofing your Bricks? That's an interesting perspective. Why does "can't damage the hulk with my punch" equal "incapable of accomplishing anything"? Let's say your MA can toss out 10 DCs of damage. Let's say some bricks have 40 PD. Ok, you aren't hurting that brick with your MA attack at 10 DCs. Maybe you can use some Knock out gas to weaken him, or Martial Throw him so someone with higher damage and lower CV than you can get a shot in. Perhaps you can use Teamwork to boost damage? Or you could buy tactical abilities to boost your teammates ala Batman. So, you're never entirely useless even in combat. Even if you were totally ineffectual in combat versus another character, how many combats are one on one? Most heroes and villains fall somewhere in the "medium" category in most of their abilities, including damage and defenses. Everyone should be able to find someone to attack in most melees. Of course, if you *did* get stuck effectively sitting out a combat session, it'd suck. Combat takes a big chunk of a game session, and that's interaction you're missing out on. I'd say that keeping you involved is the GM's job, and being anal about power limits to too great of a degree isn't the best solution, though it's definately one solution.

Re: Normal-proofing your Bricks? Thanks, but I didn't take any real offense to Squall's attacks. They were pretty mild.

Re: Normal-proofing your Bricks? Sigh up a rope.

Re: Normal-proofing your Bricks? I can't believe people are still having a hard time grasping "Normal" as an ORIGIN, I was NEVER talking about a normal guy off the street. Learn to read for crying out loud.

Re: Why model smoke grenades/pellets as Darkness? If it can impose penalties, there's no reason it can't logically reduce penalties...

Re: What would your inner geek pick? Power Girl.. and I'd never leave home!

Re: Why model smoke grenades/pellets as Darkness? I never understood why creating light became images. Seems simpler to change the light level in an area than to create an image of a lighted version of what we're looking at. =P

Re: Thunderbird Questions No kidding. The John and James writeups are right next to each other. James, as you noted later, has Ex Agility as the ony difference. The source named was from around 1990 or so. Edit: I did intend to put the agility difference for James and John up, but forgot. Good to know. That said, what was your point? Just being snarky? The only relevence to the thread in your post was to the upgrades on the current version of James. You could've just posted those. Obviously, any FASERIP stats are out of date, I was just providing same since another poster above me mentioned them.

I can't seem to find the value for Does No Knockback in the rules (5th), so now I'm beginning to wonder if this was ever an official limitation. Though I'm sure I've seen it somewhere in print. Very handy for building beam weapons that don't exert physical force. Whether I'm imagining it or not, what would the appropriate limitation value be? I think I've seen it at -½ before. edit: Nevermind, found it buried in the Attack Powers section.

Re: Calling all Archers That's a retcon. He has varying levels of adamantium in his bones depending on the writer. In the 1990 Gamer's Handbook of the Marvel Universe, he's described as having a full adamantium skeleton, with the bonding done by Lord Dark Wind.

Re: Ok, I have decided...

Re: Champions Or Mutants & Masterminds? This site has every MSH publication made up in PDF Format: http://www.marvelrpg.net/

Re: Why model smoke grenades/pellets as Darkness? I think the normal range penalties would cover that. Edit: That was in reply to Fitz. =D