RDU Neil

This is just awesome.  +1 "likes"
 
 
With you RDU but I ran out of "likes" at like midnight . . . not really sure why there's even a limit on that kind of stuff. . .  

Does it matter?  GMs have an infinite point budget.  I'll just write "Meteor Bonus" under its Discomplivantationages.  
 
 
I do use it.  I use it on PCs, occasionally, even.  I don't hit them with 20d6 PRE attacks, though, any more than I'd hit them with a 20d6 Energy Blast, out of the blue, or put them up against a 100 STR brick.  
 
But sometimes, you do have a brick character get hit by a truck, just to show how tough he is.  I think that in this case, a high PRE attack can certainly do that as well.  
 
 

I'd like to add to that thought.
 
I used to be a pretty loquacious guy until about 16 years ago when I had a severe head injury. Now I swing back and forth (mostly at random) between being what used to be my normal self to being barely verbal, sometimes within a few minutes. I can do thinking and writing but I stop being able to produce words verbally or my rate of being able to get out words slows to a crawl. And even at my best I sometimes substitute a wrong word for the word which I thought that I was saying.
 
I vastly prefer roleplaying to roll-playing. But a system needs to be able to accommodate various levels of player skill, even if it's from moment to moment within the same player.
 
I don't really care whether the way of dealing with that is a having great GM or having a comprehensive set of rules. But I've seen more sets of rules in my life than great GM's so I'd think getting a set of rules would be easier to come by even if having a great GM was strictly the superior option.

I am out of likes for the day, but Lord Liaden and RDU Neil, please have some likes.
 
I did like the Carol Corp. Especially loved the covers.

I've been thinking about why I don't quite resonate with the concern over "caps becomes minimums"... but couldn't quite put my finger on it. Then I realized it was simply my perspective was slightly different. If someone says "60AP or 12d6 Cap," or whatever... I realize I never ever thought of them as caps... but averages.
 
When our group short hands "This is a 12d6 game" we aren't talking about caps, we are talking about "The average base attack" and every power/build will be judged against that average. A gut check "Is this particular build/power/maneuver combo more or less or around the same effectiveness as a 12d6 attack? If so, cool. If a weaker than average, does it makes sense/is the player ok with that? If stronger than average, is it too much? Will it unbalance or make the game unfun? 
 
Essentially, I was never giving a "cap" to the game, but the average that players should aim for as a guide to their builds. Flexing around 12d6 effectiveness (as an example) is generally the expectation for that game/campaign/sub-campaign. 
 
Maybe that is a better way to think about it? It just occurred to me, rather than anything I've formally established.

I totally get how Skill Level pricing is at odds with Characteristic pricing. My main issue though, is that they are too cheap at Heroic levels, and too powerful. I've noted PCs that are no longer in the DEX war business, have slipped into the Skill Level war business, because "not missing" is so damn important. AND because what look innocuous on the page... +2 here, +2 there... often stack very quickly and easily, and can get out of hand.

But, since OCV and DCV were separated into their own Charcteristics, we now have a clear "value" for  +1... it is 5 points. +1 OCV in all situations is 5 points. This does beg the question about 10pt skill levels as 10 points spent in OCV and DCV get you both at the same time, not just one at a time.

Yeah, I just did the same and it is a list of some of my favorite titles over the last few years... Ms. Marvel, Daredevil, All-New Hawkeye, Carol Corps (the best Carol Danvers portrayal of the recent runs), etc.

This is a good example of needing a judgment call on Combat Luck... 
1) Did the fighter player have the OPTION of taking Combat Luck and just chose not to?  Ok... death is on him.
2) Was Combat Luck not allowed (by house rule) if you wore combat... or the Talent changed to not apply when armor is worn? That could stick in a player's craw.
3) What does "Doesn't work with armor" entail? It doesn't stack on Hit Locations where armor is coveirng, but it DOES apply in hit locations where there is no armor? Or because any armor is worn, Combat Luck doesn't work, no matter hit location? (That would be a serious bummer for this PC.)
 
Not saying you can't do it, but if you have an extra rule of "Combat Luck doesn't work with Armor" then you need to be really clear about what that means. 

When you peel it apart it does look like a cobble, but our group loves Combat Luck, even with armor, but because it fits the cinematic action. It lets them have a modicum of comfort when being blasted with automatic gunfire that one lucky shot won't completely take them out. It does make hits to armor (less common/less coverage in modern action than fantasy) much less likely to penetrate, but in a game where taking any Body damage is serious, it just allows them to have more confidence in combat.
 
As I've said elsewhere, if it was a more traditional Danger International (spies and private eyes, not action movies) I'd disallow or further nerf Combat Luck (like only damage resistance and doesn't stack). 
 
Edit: Combat Luck is something, in my experience, that looks like a horrible cobble/cludge on paper, but ACTUAL PLAY it works very simply and elegantly and affects play in a way that feels right. Ugly in construction, elegant in execution.

In my games (modern action adventure) all PCs have Combat Luck (can only buy 1 level) because it is just important for survivability. What we've found is that it does stack with armor, making armor hits by guns much less likely to do damage, but armor is also more limited in coverage (usually) in the game. Instead of changing cost and effect, I've just told players to buy their PD and ED 3 points lower than they would have, because what we've really noticed is that an 8PD guy, now effectively 11 PD prior to Armor... that 3 difference in amount of stun taken really ads up. So, instead that 8PD guy has a 5PD, 8 with combat luck, and we're all good.

For my games, the PCs need the extra resistant defenses, not to get easily scragged by autofire high velocity weapons and frag grenades, etc.

I tend to do this. As GM I say, "Build your character as you feel they should be viable, critical CSP (Characteristics Skills Powers) that define the character. Don't worry about background skills or nice-to-haves. Use 400 pts (or whatever)." Then once those characters come in and we review them for group balance, I say, "OK, everyone now has 20 points for background skills, flavor contacts, etc. that may or may not be relevant to play but are nice to have written down as fleshing out the character.)
 
Been doing that for years.

Perhaps what we need is a new methodology for creating characters. Say X amount of points spent regularly for Powers, Skills and what not then an additional  Y points  say 20 CP total and these are spent for only minor abilities or lease likely to be used skills and such. (Trust me I’m pulling some of this outta my head as I text). My experience is that with Characters that I was told to build with a nice budget but kept everything else reasonable, I started to buy things that defined the character but not necessarily were “get what you pay for”. An example was for my Martial Artist in a Pulp game (anyone really surprised?). I bought extra Body only to defend against Disable Element. I knew that the GM (who had enough on his plate) probably wasn’t going to use Disable Element for Martial Maneuvers however I had the points, I thought it was a neat concept and it fleshed out the Character. (He’s really good at joint locks and this can defend against them.)

Yes, yes, yes. The whole post echoes what I said (essentially, strips down to increasing chance to hit which is increasing OCV or decreasing their DCV) so what in the system already allows for this?
 
Multiple attacks, especially if you buy levels to offset the MA penalties.  Quick, clean, interpreting maneuvers already in the game to cover various combat maneuvers you see in the source material.

You are working against yourself.
 
You want, at the same time, to both nerf guns and have gunslingers be viable characters.
 
I won't say you can't do that and succeed. But I will point out that when you have two contradictory intentions you can expect friction.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
The palindromedary approves of what you're trying to do and says to embrace the friction

Everything Tech said. Absolutely. I feel that putting your expectations out there is absolutely important, because most difficulties comes from conflicting expectations.
 
For example: If I was one of your players, and you said your "intent" and "expectation" was a game that could switch genres, I would be scratching my head. Genre's aren't about mechanics, to me... they are about stylistic, setting, content and narrative "expectations" (that word again) and switching those things mid game/campaign seems problematic if not impossible. 
 
Again, my expectations are that internal consistency is critical to a game. If the initial genre is Afghan War era special-forces team encounters monsters in the desert (and I'm building a semi-realistic soldier PC with modern weapons and tactics)... and the next play session, my PC finds himself in an oddly colored, washed out old Musical Western, and all his war-torn monster hunting weapon specialties mean nothing against the the smiling cowboy in the big white hat with a song on his lips who shoots the M-4 out of his hands with a wink and rhyming lyric... well, I'm not so sure as a player I'd enjoy that very much.
 
Now, maybe that is just me. It sounds like it would make for an entertaining novel or movie, but as a game where PCs are built a specific way to work a specific way, this kind of thing undermines the whole deal.
 
Let's say I played a gunslinger in your campaign. If my character suddenly encountered another PC or character who defied everything my character understood about the way the world worked... this would require very logical extrapolation to get me to buy in as a player. 1)If it is possible for people to move and bend their bodies faster than bullets... why are gunslingers even a thing at all?  2)If only a select, rare few can do this, is there a clear campaign/narrative exploration about why? How do you get such superpowers? 3)How is the world changed by the appearance of super-martial artists? 4) Why don't they just wipe out the gunslingers (anyone who can move their bodies faster than bullets can do horrific amounts of damage with attacks moving that fast as well, so... )?? 5) Are these martial artists like supers, rare and dangerous and elite, but gunslinging is something non-elites can learn and do more easily, so a larger number of gunslingers can keep a few super martial artists in check? 6) Is it a matter of gunslingers using the equivalent of a 19th century cavalry revolver, but if they invented a 20th century Glock 19 that can sling significantly more bullets and do it significantly faster and more accurately... does that help maintain the balance? Or is there some weird physics that says, "No matter how good the gun technology, the martial artist is faster" then... ???
 
etc., etc.
 
I played Torg a bit back in the day, and had this problem. If you take a character out of the genre they were intended for, they are often diminished andn unplayable. It makes for a fun narrative (a'la Enter the Spider-Verse, which is a must-see movie), but likely a very difficult, if not disastrous game. On a smaller scale, I remember running into this issue when playing Star Hero where we were working to simulate sci-fi in the semi-hard, Space Merchants/Merchanter Alliance kind of world, but there was a desire to have sword play be a worthwhile skill in a universe with advanced slug-throwers, body armor, even beam weapons, etc. We spent a lot of time, bending over backwards to write up a world where this made sense. We basically tried the tactic of "stations and ships are highly vulnerable and precious, so shooting guns was dangerous to everyone, and boarding combats and such were classic hand-to-hand so as not to cause deadly collateral damage."  Of course, we quickly realized that even rubber bullets and concussion rounds and tasers and sonic disruptors were all still way more effective than a sword, and accomplished the same thing. It still made no sense for sword play to be a "thing."
 
It made no sense because we were trying to merge genres. We wanted hard s-f tropes AND swashbuckling space pulp tropes... and the two didn't work well together. 

Can HERO as a system (or GURPS, or whatever) handle both hard-sf space marines AND swashbuckling Flash Gordon/Starslayer types? Yes. Can both characters be made with the same rule set and exist in the same game? Yes. Does the resulting narrative/story/play actual "feel right" and make sense and work out as a good RPG campaign?  Not really. I'd say it was unlikely at best, though a short, goofy one off where a noir detective, a wizard and a LEGO kitten have an adventure could be hilarious. 
 
Basically, you are using a task resolution mechanic (OCV and capping it) to enforce Narrative play (genre mashing). That can get really hinky.

Bullets on Ryugu (my next album title and a cool little bit of science)

Thank you for replying to us all. We're not afraid of long posts as many posters will attest to. You got a campaign idea in mind and what you want to do with it. Ultimately, be open with your players: don't be afraid to tell others that you're testing some campaign ideas and they may need to be fine tuned later on. Don't be afraid to make a mistake: if you find some of your ideas aren't working or need to be revised, then let them know about the new changes. You might even want to get some player input. When I GM and run across a situation I'm not sure about, I ask the players what should be done. Rarely do I make a decision by myself: getting a response from the players tells them you're flexible and that both GM & Players are there to have a fun time. It also builds trust from the players.

Don't feel pressured that you need to reply or post on the forums. We're a friendly group and more than willing to give advice - sometimes lots of it.

Alright, so OP here, and it looks like I've got some confessions to make.
Though before that I want to say that these suggestions have been tremendously helpful.
 
Confession #1: I'm the GM. A big part of this question is what I should tell my players to expect when they play a gunslinger and to give them as many possible approaches as possible when they do.
 
I'm working on a setting (which is to say, a set of ground rules and mechanics that I can reuse for multiple campaigns and hand off to other GMs if all goes well. Though I'm not holding my breath). That setting is meant to (Among other things) emulate a specific style of gunplay I had in mind and the OCV cap seemed to be the best way to do that.
In the setting there's a sort of arms race between HtH and Guns/Bows. The first time a Gunman emptied a magazine at a high level martial artist and hit nothing but air (matrix style) they had to ask themselves: "Well... what do I do about that?". So the OCV cap is a mechanical equivalent to what's going on in the "real" world of the setting. Being a gunslinger in the setting is largely stating "My art is to find solutions to this problem".
Mind you guns have other advantages like being able to take more shots per turn then a close-combat character would. A common belief in the setting is "Guns are weapons of the Mind, swords are weapons of the body" which is to say that a gunslingers greatest asset is his cleverness with a more versatile weapon, and a martial artists greatest asset is his speed and strength.
 
Confession #2: I've made a couple posts with regards to this setting and I'm struggling with how much context to give when I want some input (thus far I've avoided setting detail entirely because it seemed unnecessary). The setting is very large and involved and could easily wander off with bits about how this or that works, how things relate to each other etc.
One of the principle problems the scope of the setting causes, is that it is a cross genre setting. It includes Horror, Cyberpunk, Fantasy, High-Tech, Low-Tech, and the full range of D&D power levels so a starting character is a highly skilled normal but a long term character is god-like. Not all of these are happening simultaneously and in fact the setting is designed to add or drop them as desired.
It was originally conceived long ago in my youth when I thought about how there were many game systems that could handle different genres (Hero, GURPS, FATE etc) but not any settings that could change genres mid campaign. So I set out to make a setting that could handle mid campaign genre shifting without plane hopping.
Whether or not I was successful and whether or not the setting was necessary is certainly debatable, but one thing is for certain: After many years and a great deal more experience with different RPGs I still have a lot of love for what I created, and Hero System seemed like the best system to seriously build the beast in (I originally tried building it from scratch. Guess how far I got).
 
Confession #3: I must also confess that as a newer member of the Hero community I don't really know that kinds of assumptions that the good people of this forum will make, which ties into Confession #2 that I don't know how much information to give.
 
Confession #4: I work long hours and have some social anxiety so staying active on the forum is a bit difficult. So sorry if I don't respond to things as punctually as I would like.
 
@Tech "I would simply have the player who wants to shoot with the intent to miss make an attack roll. If you "hit", then the defensive person must move or get hit. PRE attk or Drain isn't accurate - some villains could care less if they get hit or not and will not move as hopefully intended (see original poster train of thought below)."
 
This is a problem the concept runs into. No one in the setting will be able to take very many direct hits (god-level characters are godly dodgers not godly durable) but its not unreasonable to presume someone might choose a lesser of two evils.
 
 
Several people have asked about where the cap is, and I have to admit I'm not entirely sure, but I'm thinking around 8 perhaps? Which is roughly where your characteristic for OCV would cap, Swordsmen and such however would be able to pile on CSLs to that value and it's not entirely unreasonable for a high level gunslinger to run into a high level Swordsman that he can't hit at all by default.
 
 
Quite a long post, but i really needed to bring up the "how much context" problem somewhere, and if I said more than necessary I guess that just gives an example of what I'm talking about.

Disagree away.  I am kind of with you though, but it does then require that you have a GM with a clear vision that has been adequately communicated to the players and the point of a rules system is to do some of that legwork for you.  Many disciplines incorporate other disciplines: it is almost impossible to do any science without some grasp of statistics, for example. 
 
My feeling is that 'Science!' is too broad, but Quantum Mechanics is too narrow.
 
Arguably, what should happen is that if you put 'SS: Quantum Mechanics' on the character sheet, the GM should note that and make sure it comes up in the game.  I am a lazy GM though, and feel I have enough to do.
 
It is always going to be a balance between flavour and playability.  Playability should generally win, IMO.  We already differentiate between Mechanics and Electronics as specific skills, Computer Programming and Systems Operations, Bugging and Cryptography, amongst others, presumably because we thing that is the sort of thing that might come up as a thing.
 
I'd be happy if we had something like:
 
Life Sciences - the study of plants, animals and microorganisms, medicine and genetics
 
Physical Sciences - the study or matter and energy and their properties and interactions
 
Earth Sciences - the study of the earth, the oceans and the atmosphere
 
Social Science - the study of  the psychology of and interactions between people or other social groups
 
...and call the job a goob 'un.
 
Anyway: I'll see you on Monday.

Also, right, why the flippety flip is Science a Background Skill and not an Intellect Skill?
 
Damnit.

Interesting conversation.
 
It has made me go back and actually read the description of Danger Sense. I've never played a character with it nor GM'd a character with it, so it was worth a re-read of the rules.
 
A few things jump out at me.
 
As pointed out in the OP it's pretty vague about how it is supposed to work as a different sense from any other sense. And it is pretty expensive for what you do seem to get.
 
Also, you have to choose to use it unless you buy a specific adder to turn it into a sense. WTF? Seriously, think about that. How can it be useful if the character needs to suspect that there is danger first? If you suspect danger and are looking around, you've got your other senses working already. (Minor niggle: and buying the adder makes the base power worth 17 points. 17. It's just a bad number, going around being all primary and not ending in a 5 or a 0. Stop making my maths difficult.)
 
The last thing, and this one is more of a personal preference for play style, is that it doesn't belong to a defined Sense group. I hate that.
 
<mini rant follows>
A sense operates by responding to stimuli by a given vector (would that be the right word? I don't want to say "media" that doesn't feel right.) Therefore there must be a vector. Hero has generously given us, IIRC, 8 vectors. What it calls Sense Groups. That's 3 more than us real people get. (The Mystic group is pretty wide open too. A lot of crap can be defined as "mystic.") So I want all senses placed in a group.
<end of mini rant>
 
So Danger Sense would need to be placed in a group before I'd allow it in my game. (Yes, I've segued into what I would allow in my game, and how I'd build it. The implication of that last thought being that I won't be using the Danger Sense talent as written up in the rules.)
 
By placing it in a sense group (or groups, I'm quite happy for a super sense like this to be defined as being several sense groups being taken holistically) we can start to get an idea of what a given type of Danger Sense should look like. The two most likely groups are Mental and Mystical, but it shouldn't be limited to them.
 
A Mental Danger Sense might work by passively scanning thoughts for ones that have hostile intent either towards the character or to others in general. This version could be bought as something like:
 
Mental Awareness. Constant, Always On. Only to detect minds with hostile intent, blocked by any sort of Mental Defense. This would mean High EGO, not being known to the character with the power, or being in a big crowd, are good "passive" ways of defeating the power. To make it effective across a large area you need to buy skill levels in it. It's a bit of a kludge build though as Mental Awareness lets you detect specific minds, but not read them.
 
So Telepathy might be better.
 
Telepathy, surface thoughts only, only to detect hostile intent, 0End, AoE, Constant, Always On, Does Not Provide Mental Awareness. To get the version that allows the character to spot the specific danger get rid of "Does Not Provide Mental Awareness." This build has the benefit of giving a very defined area in which it works, who/what it'll work on, what will block it. Downside is that the GM has to start asking the player to make EGO rolls every time they have a surprise planned. Now most people I play with would be fine and not use the meta knowledge. But for some groups this can be a bone of contention.
 
Mystic Danger Sense might be "I sense a disturbance in the Force." Maybe only work on other "Force sensitives."
 
Daredevil would have a completely different Danger Sense. Which I might try to write up if a get a few minutes later.
 
So yeah, interesting conversation. Thanks to all for getting my brain juices going.
 
 
 
 
 

Neil:
 
Loved the post; would have quoted it but that's a pain on a touch screen. 
 
 
At any rate, I think the bulk of your answers (drone or pilot, 36000 years, etc) can be answered by studying, mechanically, what it is Danger Sense does:  as you noted, it's the last-line defense against being surprised. 
 
So the answer, I would think (and generally how I use it) is that it is responding to that thing that _will_ attempt to hurt you if you don't move _now_. 
 
When the missile gets launched, you've still got twenty minutes or so to go on about your business before it becomes a "now or never" situation. 
 
Of course, the raises questions of "danger payload" (at least, it has for me in the past) : no amount of "dive for cover" is getting you out of the blast radius of seven Megatron fuel/air bomb; I give a _rip_ what the maneuver says. 
 
There are guys on this board way more familiar with comic books than me, but when this question came up at my table, a couple of players pointed out different scenes in Spiderman's history were his danger sense went off either repeatedly or protractedly while he was trying to figure out what was the danger.  Turned out (according to the guys education me) that it was really, really big danger, and his more or less ignoring his danger sense (thinking something was wrong with him) nearly got him killed. 
 
Again: there are likely actual experts here who can tell me if I got played, but given that basis, the point at which something becomes an immediate danger is going to vary depending on just how big that danger is, and when it's "now or never" to get out of the way. 

Not news, just some observations of how space battles would be like:
 
 

Almost posted to this effect earlier.  They cover it in the books as well.  Without the distraction of Aragorn's army at the gates there would be no chance for the hobbits nor the giant eagles to get into play without being spotted and eliminated.