dsatow

OK, I've had situations like this and this is how I handled it in a campaign.  YMMV.
 
PS: It's a lot harder in CON games or games where you have little say over what the players bring (like say a communally GM'd campaign).
 
1) If you are going to have mysteries in your group, make sure your players know that there will be mysteries to solve.  They will tend to buy up their INT and deduction skills and possibly buy things like forensics and criminology. 
2) Never have them roll to spot evidence or never tell them what they need to make it by.  Just have everyone roll perception and tell them to tell you how much they make or miss it by.  If they all fail, then simply say there was a bonus to their perception modifier (make up something like "Your experience in super power combat gives a bonus the police don't have in ordinary crime.") and the players who made it the closest are the ones who spotted the clue.
3) If they continue to ignore the plight of the DNPC, kill the DNPC.  Yes, that is correct.  Kill the DNPC (or effectively eliminate the NPC from the game).  Its an NPC, or effectively your character, not the players.  I can see the NPC getting into serious trouble and no longer wanting to be their DNPC.  In the situation you describe, you could give the player 1 last chance.  The DNPC is supposed to have a date with the hero but doesn't show up and doesn't tell him about breaking the date.  If he goes to her apartment, she's not there and the villain is burning her apartment down. Stopping the villain will lead to the question of where is she.  If he doesn't care, that's fine; she's gone.  If you don't want her dead, she is rescued by another superhero (one who will annoy the hero) whom she has fallen in love with.  Make the player get a different NPC or buy off the complication.  If its a second reporter, well people in the industry do like to gossip and the player though, handsome, rich, and smart, never seemed to pay much attention to his last girlfriend...
4) The two skills most heroes need, especially if the players are a bit clueless to your mechanizations is deduction and tactics.  Deduction is great for "Hey, this is the plot thread!" rolls and Tactics is good for "You ain't gonna win!" rolls.  Apply rule #2 to these rolls as well.
5) Recap adventures in the beginning of the session.  Most players don't take notes.  They don't remember what happened last adventure let alone the one, one or two adventures ago.  Emphasize the clues they have found. 
6) Even with all these things, players can be dense.  Auto pilot them. If you ended with their discovery of the burning car, the next adventure auto pilot them, by saying, "Last adventure, you found someone's body in your girlfriend's car.  In your concern for her safety, you go to her place and check up on her where she leads to this startling confession 'I think someone might be trying to kill me.'"  If they still aren't biting, go to #3.

OK, I've had situations like this and this is how I handled it in a campaign.  YMMV.
 
PS: It's a lot harder in CON games or games where you have little say over what the players bring (like say a communally GM'd campaign).
 
1) If you are going to have mysteries in your group, make sure your players know that there will be mysteries to solve.  They will tend to buy up their INT and deduction skills and possibly buy things like forensics and criminology. 
2) Never have them roll to spot evidence or never tell them what they need to make it by.  Just have everyone roll perception and tell them to tell you how much they make or miss it by.  If they all fail, then simply say there was a bonus to their perception modifier (make up something like "Your experience in super power combat gives a bonus the police don't have in ordinary crime.") and the players who made it the closest are the ones who spotted the clue.
3) If they continue to ignore the plight of the DNPC, kill the DNPC.  Yes, that is correct.  Kill the DNPC (or effectively eliminate the NPC from the game).  Its an NPC, or effectively your character, not the players.  I can see the NPC getting into serious trouble and no longer wanting to be their DNPC.  In the situation you describe, you could give the player 1 last chance.  The DNPC is supposed to have a date with the hero but doesn't show up and doesn't tell him about breaking the date.  If he goes to her apartment, she's not there and the villain is burning her apartment down. Stopping the villain will lead to the question of where is she.  If he doesn't care, that's fine; she's gone.  If you don't want her dead, she is rescued by another superhero (one who will annoy the hero) whom she has fallen in love with.  Make the player get a different NPC or buy off the complication.  If its a second reporter, well people in the industry do like to gossip and the player though, handsome, rich, and smart, never seemed to pay much attention to his last girlfriend...
4) The two skills most heroes need, especially if the players are a bit clueless to your mechanizations is deduction and tactics.  Deduction is great for "Hey, this is the plot thread!" rolls and Tactics is good for "You ain't gonna win!" rolls.  Apply rule #2 to these rolls as well.
5) Recap adventures in the beginning of the session.  Most players don't take notes.  They don't remember what happened last adventure let alone the one, one or two adventures ago.  Emphasize the clues they have found. 
6) Even with all these things, players can be dense.  Auto pilot them. If you ended with their discovery of the burning car, the next adventure auto pilot them, by saying, "Last adventure, you found someone's body in your girlfriend's car.  In your concern for her safety, you go to her place and check up on her where she leads to this startling confession 'I think someone might be trying to kill me.'"  If they still aren't biting, go to #3.

Drain stun, plus drain body of a smaller amount. Link it to the Stun Drain.

But you could get a great car like this!

 
Seriously though, if they want to add that kind of mechanic, why not.  Hero allows people to do their own thing.

Why not do a Drain that does Stun and Body simultaneously?  It is slightly more lethal than the OP power suggestion but is the simplest way by RAW.

Sorry late to the game.
 
In the last fantasy game I run, I made everyone buy everything with points.  The idea was, it was a Xena/Hercules style game.  So weapons, magic or what not, that you would commonly have, needed to be bought with points or you would lose them between episodes.  Treasure was never defined as X gold pieces but as X xp worth of generic treasure (about 1 pt per player for the big treasure at the end).  If the player wanted to be rich, they simply bought wealth.  If they wanted a magic weapon, the treasure haul would have the weapon amongst the items and the player would buy it with xp.  Fighters could have multipower pools defined as anime style attacks.  I dislike power pools, so not even the villains had them.  Sadly, that game died mainly due to my fault of being unprepared and a bad work situation, but the treasure idea worked well IMHO.

In Hero Designer simple create the detect as a sight based power and then take for a -0 limitation Sense affected as another sense (magic sense).

Sorry late to the game.
 
In the last fantasy game I run, I made everyone buy everything with points.  The idea was, it was a Xena/Hercules style game.  So weapons, magic or what not, that you would commonly have, needed to be bought with points or you would lose them between episodes.  Treasure was never defined as X gold pieces but as X xp worth of generic treasure (about 1 pt per player for the big treasure at the end).  If the player wanted to be rich, they simply bought wealth.  If they wanted a magic weapon, the treasure haul would have the weapon amongst the items and the player would buy it with xp.  Fighters could have multipower pools defined as anime style attacks.  I dislike power pools, so not even the villains had them.  Sadly, that game died mainly due to my fault of being unprepared and a bad work situation, but the treasure idea worked well IMHO.

Having slept on the topic and rethinking what I was last arguing I think I agree with Killer Shrike comment, that ultimately its a challenge mechanic rather than what type of dice are rolled.  I still think NDB doesn't vary enough but the main crux of the thread is whether a dice pool challenge mechanic would work.
 
At some point, I think I''ll just have to run an experiment and see how the results would turn out.

6e2p103
 

Each die on average does 1 Body.  Sixes do two body and ones do zero body.  Assuming just 3d6, out of 216 possibilities only 27 will be less 2 Body. (1 die will be a 1, and the other 2d6 rolls a 1-5,1-5; plus the event that one of the two dice rolls a 1,6 and 6,1).
Similarly, we can reverse the numbers, where 27 rolls will do more than 3 Body. Meaning 162 rolls will be 3 Body.  (216 - (27 x 2))  That's a 75% (162/216) of 3 body.  
 

If you don't want higher variance, you don't want any kind of contested roll...you want flat modifiers.
 
Every additional die roll added to a resolution increases the variance. If you want the attacker and the defender to roll, that will have more variance than if only the attacker or only the defender rolls. If there are no dice rolls at all in the to hit, just a comparison of values, then its a calculation and there is no variance.

I knew a guy who did something similar for his agent zombies.  Upon taking body and losing a limb, the zombie would instantly summon the separated body part (like an animated arm or leg) which would continue to attack.  If the zombie and limb survived the attack, they would reattach defined as healing limbs and summons going away.

I'd allow it in my games, as i see it no more dangerous than a big flash or mental illusions/mind control "Hey you're blind".  A lot of my villains (probably 1/4 to 1/3) have another targeting sense.  A few have combat sense.

I had a villain with a cream pie power like that.  A standard drain on Presence.  It did not flash, it instead made you look so stupid you had a hard time doing presence attacks.

I had a villain with a cream pie power like that.  A standard drain on Presence.  It did not flash, it instead made you look so stupid you had a hard time doing presence attacks.

I ought to note, I also thought of putting in the Jedi -- "There is a disturbance in the force." quotes.

With HERO it is all about the game effect that you want to achieve.  If you throw a pie at an opponent, what do you want to happen?  Ignore the special effect at first and focus on the game effect you want to achieve.  
 
As Oruncrest said, an obvious game effect from throwing a pie might be rendering someone unable to see for a short time (we use Flash to achieve that).  You might want other stuff, like it enrages the target or embarrasses him or something else.
 
The coming apart routine is a complication (if you are not really trying to simulate being chopped up and healing).  I would have a complication that indicates that when you are successfully attacked by a slashing weapon you suffer some kind of "separation" with resultant disabilities (head means you have a different perspective with regard to your body; arm means you have only one arm to use, etc) until you spend a phase with parts in the same hex...
 
Doc

I think we're coming at this from the wrong angle. The answer to the question "Does Invisibility cover an obvious focus?" should be "why wouldn't it?"
As far as a focus goes, "obvious" does not mean "visible". If someone is cut with an invisible sword, they may not SEE the object, but they will know that the cut came from the object.
The book actually says, "If a Focus is Obvious, it’s clear to anyone looking at the character that the power comes from the Focus" (emphasis mine).
None of that indicates the observer can actually SEE the character, or the focus, just that it is clear the power comes from the focus.

In Hero Designer simple create the detect as a sight based power and then take for a -0 limitation Sense affected as another sense (magic sense).

I ought to note, I also thought of putting in the Jedi -- "There is a disturbance in the force." quotes.

Some examples of danger sense in media
 
Lots of Kung Fu/Wu Shu movies have martial artists sense danger and react before it happens.
 
Doctor Strange used to have the ability to denote world class dangers.  Something like global impending doom due to Dormammu.
 
Dreamer(Legion of Superheroes) had precognition which could be partly defined as Danger Sense.  She would remember to avoid things due to her dreams.
 
Wolverine seems to have danger sense and would constantly sniff out problems before hand.

Personally, if you know your players have that kind of power, you should prepare the major villains to deal with it.  I had a player with mental paralysis and in general the major villains had large egos.  But then again, by concept, my major villains with grandiose plans will not have a 15 EGO, but more like a 28 to 33 EGO.  It was still an effective attack and would incapacitate agents for the entire combat and standard villains for a couple of phases.

That's just a loss of face
 

A good resource I think is pathfinder's page on alignments.  The section on types of each alignment would be good mining for psych lims.
 
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alignment-description/additional-rules/