dsatow

Yes, just be careful about charges. A limitation of VPP is if a power has charges, then once a charge of the pool has been used, that portion of the power pool is gone for the day. Example: If you had a gadget pool and brought out a machine gun which used all the points in the pool and you used 1/2 the charges, then for the rest of that day, even if you still had charges left in the machine gun, you would only have access to half the pool. The reason this rule exists is to prevent a whole bunch of one charge items from the pool having no consequence.

You want to leave whether they reveal their secrets or not up to them. You can, however, help them along based on your scenarios and environment. Start subtly and watch the player reaction. If they feel comfortable with this, you can expand otherwise back off. Examples: In the former Red Sparrow: They encounter another Red Sparrow whose skills appear to be very similar to the player. That player can make Int rolls to determine what the other Red Sparrow will do. The team encounters a spy and tracks them back to their base of operations. Again, the PC can make Int rolls based on what spies generally do. A security incident at the League of Nations has them tracking the player down. Some suspicious items in her background sent up red flags. If they don't respond to this threat, the player will be arrested by the League of Nations task force and possibly scapegoated. Maybe the program hasn't had a spy as good as her and want to take her back in. Several current Red Sparrow trainees come after her to take her back. Of course, the trainees are conditioned not to talk about the program, but other players maybe curious why this trained assassin group are after the player. This scenario is a hit the players on the head with a brick scenario. In the former actress: A millionaire obsessive fanboy has canisters of film, publicity photos and posters, of the character. They may even have gone so far as to send a detective to take pictures of her in stalker-ish fashion. Family is big with the Romani in a Clan-Mafia sort of way. If she is a practicing Romani, this might be included to her being sold as a bride since as she's no longer an actress her worth is declining. Her extended family sold her to take advantage of what worth she has now and the bridegroom has come to collect. The players come across a circus they need to infiltrate and guess what, the circus has an opening which the player has done before.

Agreed, skills bought like this can have role playing aspects or problem solving aspects. In some instances too, these "wasted" skill points can help solidify the vision of the character.

Personally, I would do it like this: 20 Regeneration (20 BODY per Week), Can Heal Limbs, Resurrection (65 Active Points); No Conscious Control (-2), 1 Recoverable Charge (Recovers Under Limited Circumstances; -1/4) 5 Teleportation 3m, Safe Blind Teleport (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), MegaScale (1m = 1 km; +1) (8 Active Points); Linked (Regeneration; -1/2) The regen is no conscious control because the character doesn't know if he's gotten enough credit to respawn or how much time it takes in bureaucracy. The 1 recoverable charge with limited recovery is based on if they do enough good deads in this new life to earn them another respawn. The teleport is enough to put them somewhere safe with about 1 mile of the body/death site.

I see this mostly as a way to curtail jousting from being overly effective. If you are mounted on horseback, you hold the lance but it's the strength of the horse and its movement you are using. Basically, you are using the strength of the mount and the rider's accuracy. I can also see people without mounts running across a battlefield at full tilt having a hard time swing the weapon as you aren't going to be bracing your feet for the momentum compensation of swinging a large weapon. A smaller weapon, the move through/by wouldn't be as effective as most of the weapons have a damage cap of 2x the base weapon damage.

Personally, I'd probably build this as an invisible area of effect transform. This is very much like the Silence from Doctor Who. Side note: Prosopagnosia is actually a real disease wherein the afflicted can not tell people by their faces.

It would depend on how effective the amnesia was. If its just you're so much of a wallflower people would not take notice of you but not so powerful that you'd totally be forgotten (thus in the realm of believability), it would probably be a perk about 5 points. If it forced people to forget you were there, ala The Silence from Dr. Who, then you'd need to make that a power which would be quite costly either in the form of Transform or Mind Control (or possibly Telepathy).

Personally, I am not really a big fan of ranged martial arts in Champions. Except for ranged disarm and ranged throw, I think most of the advantages could be simulated by levels or more dice on the power. In heroic settings, I can see more reason to have it as everyone is using the same equipment/powers. But not in a superpowered setting.

That's generally a GM call but the usual answer is that the power lasts about a segment but never more than to the next phase of the character.

The interior volume should total the exterior volume unless there is a reason for the volumetric changes. How tall a floor is matters only to the people using the room. You might have a danger room 16m tall or maybe 32m to accommodate fliers. In general though, most people make floors about 3m tall or two game inches (10' to 13') in height.

I'd allow as is, mainly because the description is very disadvantageous to the character. By the OP's original description, the target player decides when to apply the charge meaning the target needs to be aware of the attack. If it uses a charge per attack, regardless of when that attack hits, that would be even more disadvantageous. To be honest, given all the extra limitations as described, I might even allow him to increase the cost of the limitation by at least -1/2.

In case anyone wants to know: In 1985, the United States created the Sentinel program. A civilian military unit which employs paranormals. It is the premier super powered group in the United States. It ranks supervillains/superheroes by category. Category 1 is the weakest while the highest seen so far is a category 8 which killed several superheroes before being driven off. Local Supers Lodi Official Super Enemies and Rebels Society (LOSERS) The LOSERS are a group of third string supervillains who for one reason or another can’t make it in normal supervillain society. The LOSERS are very open to supervillains joining their group and do not judge other supers for their disabilities. They are a cat 3 group. Lube – Lube is the primary leader of the group. His power produces a sticky, slimy gel which constantly excretes from his body. The gel is slippery, slimy, and gets everywhere. Flat – Flat is the lieutenant of the group, primarily because he was the second person to join. Lube was the first. Flat wields the awesome U-Lance, a HTH device which channels Flat’s chemical gas generation. Ruby Tuesday – Ruby has probably the most socially acceptable power in that she is a shape changer. Unfortunately, she can not hold any shape more than a day and her base shape changes every time she sleeps. Bludgeon – Ruby’s best friend. Bludgeon is very strong and has huge forearm like clubs. Unfortunately, this has the effect of not letting her grab or manipulate anything (no fine manipulation). This makes her life pretty hard (has a hard time getting dressed, can’t eat using finger or utensils, etc). Kafka – The cockroach powers super guy. Postal – A postman with the superpower of sending a properly addressed package anywhere in the world. Some restrictions do apply. (Can’t send live animals, no solvents, no contents under pressure, etc.) ??? – an unknown member not encountered by the PCs. He funds the LOSER group. Scylla Scylla is the name of an eco-terrorist group and the ship they sail on. They attack any ship they feel is polluting or exploiting the seas. Kraken Joe – Leader of the group and Captain of the Scylla. He is half octopus on his right shoulder and face. Tsunami – a Japanese ecoterrorist who can control the water. Mako – a supervillain who has the looks, powers and abilities of a Mako shark. Seadawg – Members of the Scylla group. They are eco terrorist pirates who can’t spell. They man the Scylla and are cat 2 threats. They have no powers but the Scylla ship is a heavily armed military vessel. The Syclla – Is a ship stolen by the Seadawgs to replace the Flotsam, an armored tug boat/fire boat. The Scylla was a fully armed vessel with light missiles, machine guns, and a small recoiless. ??? – several other cat 3 members have not been met by PCs. Zukünftiges Deutsches Reich (Future German Empire) The ZDR are based on the moon and are planning to retake the Earth. They have begun supporting existing groups with similar ideological viewpoints on Earth and secret missions to destroy those who might oppose their rule. Ubermensch – “Superman”, a flying brick. Considers himself an invulnerable, immovable brick. Others consider him just a prick. Die Gratin – “The Countess” is a 400-year-old blood mage/vampire. Uses blood in interesting ways including magical blood spears and swords. She’s a bitch but not really a Nazi. She just works for them for her benefit. She keeps a list of people who pisses her off but seldom remembers them after a while. Blitzableiter – “Lightning Rod” is a relative newcomer to the ZDR group. He’s good friends with his co-recruit Entzünden. He turns temporarily into a living lightning bolt which he uses both to move and to attack but the drawback is that he needs to land after each move. Der Überreder – “The Persuader” has the ability to make suggestions to people. He is not well liked by his peers who do not like how he plays with people, enemies or not. He seems to need to be close enough to his targets to tell them what to do. Ein-Mann-Armee – “One Man Army” has the ability to summon clones. The clones will pop if they take too much damage. Taking out Ein-Man-Armee will take out his clones. Entzünden – “Ignite” is a new recruit. He has amazing control of fire and can even sheath himself in fire to protect himself and fly. His fire requires oxygen to create the fire and was defeated by Sabre holding him in the cold water of the Monterey Bay. Jägermeister – “Hunt master” is a master martial artist. Technically, a normal, he is an expert in Kampfrigen both the tradition and new maneuvers he has added to the Lunar branch. He has taught most of the ZDR’s military martial arts. Überschallknall – “Sonic boom” A sonic energy master and former boxer. He’s a bit overconfident and thinks he’s a better soldier than he is. Space Nazis from the Moon February 16, 2020 Roll Call Mayhem (played by James Kletzing) Doc Paladin (played by Vernon Putnam) Mr. Powersuit Guy (played by Brian Lienhart) The Human Torch (played by Tony Morreto) Cybrite (played by Isaac Bolmen) A-ko (played by Bruce Hahne) Freedom Belle (played by Barton Bolmen) Space Nazis from the Moon are planning to destroy California by mind controlling a space monster sleeping in deepest part of the trench in the Monterrey Bay. Their first step is to get the latest in mental control of giant lizards technology in Silicon Valley. They outsource this task to Lodi’s Official Super Enemies and Rebels Society (L.O.S.E.R.S.), a group of supervillains (cat 3) who for one reason or another could not cut it in Northern California’s super scene. The LOSERS strike a technical company working on high tech animal control techniques. They get instructed to steal a mind control device which operates on reptilian brains. They were able to disable the general alarms and security systems, but the restricted lab area was not disabled, and an alarm went off. The sounds of the alarm, surprised Flat who released a toxic cloud in the company. The LOSERS evacuate the building only to run into several superheroes on the street. A quick fight occurs, and the LOSERS lose. Only Kafka escapes capture but Mayhem allows both Ruby Tuesday and Bludgeon get away. In exchange, they find out about the tech being stolen and the destination address for the stolen goods. When they get to the destination address, they find out it’s a motel room. Inside the room, a Nazi spy is taking pictures of the device and is sending the information in a narrow beam up to a cloaked Nazi saucer hovering 1 mile above. The saucer, hidden from sight and radar, relays the information to the second saucer which is running the operation to capture Scylla. The first couple of heroes who arrive at the motel decide to track the radio signal to its destination and accidentally crash into the cloaked saucer following the beam. The saucer attempts to see what hit it and opens a hatch when Powersuit and Sabre, the two heroes, enter the saucer. The Nazis fire assault rifles against the invaders but the guns are to no avail. Ubermensch who is on board attempts to pull the heroes off the ship but also to no avail. With reinforcements of the heroes on the way, he makes the decision to scuttle the UFO and drop its payload of bombs on the city of Santa Cruz. Unable to use high explosives against the invading heroes because of the confined space being their saucer and the bullets being useless, they attempt to hold the invaders down with grappling holds and use shaped charges against the two heroes. One hero gets grabbed and a shaped charge is set. Meanwhile to protect the control center, they set up a 50 cal. Machine gun with AP bullets. Powersuit Guy tosses off the grab and rips off the shaped charge. With only seconds to spare, he throws the shape charge at the machine gun setup and on phase one, it explodes. The explosion takes out most of the control center and the gun nest as well as most of the Nazi officers. The saucer spins out of control and begins to fall to the Earth. The Powersuit Guy, Sabre, and CyBrite, who joined them, push the saucer into the bay to prevent it from crashing into the beach. Meanwhile, the heroes at the motel quietly surround the room. Mayhem sets himself up in the only possible escape route and meets Stan Lee walking the dog at night past the motel. Doc Paladin knocks on the door to the room with the spy but Freedom Belle doesn’t want to wait and screams down the door, or at least attempts to. The door is battered but is not knocked down. The Human Torch purposely sets off the sprinklers which causes a big ruckus in the motel with people in other room screaming about the noise and unanticipated rain in their rooms. CyBrite kicks in the door and the spy attempts to fight back. Freedom Belle covers the spy, but given the spy’s orders, decides to take the damage and escape. This fails, for while the damage doesn’t do much, the spy is knocked back into the room. On the ground, Freedom Belle blasts the spy into the ground and into submission. With nothing much else to do, CyBrite starts flying to where Powersuit Guy and Sabre are fighting. The human torch soon follows afterwards. After ensuring the spy is out, Doc Paladin and Freedom Belle join in the flight to the saucer. They all come to the saucer after the saucer loses control and begins its plummet towards Santa Cruz. As the saucer is falling, its bomb bay doors open, and Nazi soldiers and bombs drop out. Everyone but Cybrite that are in flight deal with the bombs and Nazi soldiers. The saucer crashes into the bay, its nuclear fuel cracked. The water cools the small nuclear reactor, but the heroes lift the saucer out of the bay and onto the beach. The fuel begins to heat but before it can begin to meltdown, Doc Paladin stabilizes the core and repairs the saucer to a semblance of stability. They get the manual coordinates from the saucer and prepare to head out to the sea. Early the next morning, a call comes out from the Eiko Maru, a science vessel for NOA. They are under attack from Scylla, eco terrorist/pirate group. The call gets cutoff after the SOS is sent out and nothing is heard from them again. The coast guard, already with the players because of the saucer on the beach, have asked the heroes for help dealing with the Scylla. The players agree and they take the boat out in the early morning hours to meet up with the Eiko Maru. About a half a mile way, they see smoke coming from one of the boats. Using binoculars and supervision vision, they find out the Eiko Maru has been taken over with hostages by Nazis! The boat on fire is the Scylla. All its missiles have been fired and non-essential parts of the boat are on fire. The hero plans a surprise attack/rescue. This is for the most part successful as half the villains (not counting the clones) do not see the heroes coming. The fight is touch and go for a while, but the hero appears victorious. Die Gratin sees the writing on the wall and leaves combat. Mako gets called back by the heroes and does not awaken the monster sleeping in the chasm at the bottom of the Monterey Bay. The heroes find out that the only ones in the ZDR Nazi’s group that could survive at that depth is Ubermensch and Die Gratin. Die Gratin refuses to do something so unseemly and Ubermensch could not go for a reason not disclosed.

Good question! First, as noted earlier, he doesn't go to this extreme. He actually keeps a 3 DCV in a now 10 CV game. Second, he's not quite human having suffered from a horrible magical accident crossing barriers between dimensions. So his body doesn't always do what he wants with it. I've found many players will come up with whatever reasons necessary to justify their builds. If it 's just to save points and its not over powering, I've gotten to not really care.

Say a character buys a susceptibility to some normally instant effect, like being hit with blessed items. What happens if a part of the blessed weapon gets embedded in the character? Do they take damage over segments or phases? Or is instant always just a single occurrence?

HD will also export characters (unfortunately not vehicles or bases) as PDFs.

As far as I know, all the scheduled Hero games went off and were full. Most of the Dundracon HERO games, the GMs will allow crashing if you know the system and you are there at the start of the scheduled game. Officially, Dundracon only allows 1 crasher. Unofficially, some GMs will allow two. I, personally, will allow a second crasher so long as 1) they aren't a burden on me GMing (I don't need to keep explaining the rules to them) and 2) the rest of the group is okay with them joining. Dundracon for its part, staggers the HERO games to let people get at least 1 Champions game in. So if two Champions games occur on the same day, the run times of the game will overlap by a couple of hours so that if you are in one game, you can't be in the other. This lets more people play Champions at the con. I really hope more people GM HERO at the next con. The new hotel in Santa Clara has over twice the rooms at the San Ramon, and there are more hotels/motels a few blocks away. One of my players was saying he might do a 1889 HERO game next convention.

I never said it was a net cost of 2. I said 8 but that's still slightly wrong. So, I should re-go over it. Note, I use 6th ed. Base DCV = 3, dropping this to 0 is 15 points. Buying 8 DCV levels is 40 points. But this is effectively a wash, because buying up the 3 DCV to 8 is going to cost the same. Base OCV = 3, dropping this to 0 is 15 points. Normally buying an 8 OCV costs 25 points. Buying 8 OCV levels for 3 maneuvers is 24 points. 24 -15 = 9 points.

Never knew that, but I seldom use defense maneuver for villains beyond the multiple attacker immunity. Will keep it in mind.

Its a zero phase action to assign levels. So yes, if surprised or KO'd your DCV is zero instead of halved. But in most games, a difference between 1/2 and 0 is not incredible. For example, if you had an 8 CV against a person with an 8 CV, you would normally have a 11- to be hit. At half, you go to 14-. At 0, you go to 17-. The difference between 14- and 17- is ~9%.

Does absorption come before or after vulnerability multiples? Ex: Wile E Coyote take 2x Body damage from large boulders but has 20 pts Absorption into Body. A 10d6 large boulder falls on top of him and does 10 Body. Does he absorb 10 Body or 20 Body?

I stand corrected.

Just a minor comment In the rules, there are Floating Locations and Fixed Locations. Saying Floating Fixed Locations, I am assuming you mean Floating Locations. BTW: Can you clarify a little bit more? I am having a little problem determining whether you are talking about the inscribed circle or the amulet at times.

As a side note, this may have been a reaction to the constantly improving martial artist design villain I made. Whenever he hit someone, he drained 2d6 of DCV. This drain only benefited him for a -1/2 limitation. Similarly, when he was hit, he would absorb 10 points into his own DCV. The absorption wouldn't provide defense, but would make him harder and harder to hit. To stop him, they dropped a mack truck on him.

The thing is, he defaults to his levels always assigned to DCV. So DCV is not an issue. Why they would do that is another matter. I mentioned block to the player, but it doesn't matter to the player. As a brick, he would state that its his job to get hit and soak the attack. He doesn't do two different targets so grabbing one and punching another at the same time doesn't come up. He doesn't use clubs or impromptu clubs. He has occasionally used cars to smash high DCV targets, but an average car being 2.5"x1.25" (5mx2.5m) makes it an area effect attack which he then uses to smash an effective adjacent hex (0 DCV). For the most part, he ignores having to do improvised range attacks because of stretching (6e1p285, all stretching attacks are considered HTH, not ranged). I'm not saying the build isn't a bit limiting and I did mention in the post that he doesn't go to this extreme. But the design is playable and effective. Just a little limiting.

BTW: My version of a 6th ed ring of regeneration. If you take off the ring, you have to re-acclimate to the ring in 24 hours. 14 Regeneration (2 BODY per Turn), Can Heal Limbs, Resurrection (57 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Day, Only to Acclimate, -2), OAF (-1)