pawsplay

I agree in the general, but pretty much all of this applies to Xavier as well. He's a mind-controlling authoritarian with a slightly different vision of what the future looks like. And his vision happens to be wrong. Idealistic, hypocritical, impractical, dangerous, and predicated on the use of extreme force to enforce peace. He has a worse record than Magneto in terms of recruiting child soldiers, and considers himself completely above and outside human law, which is why Magneto finds him ridiculous. Magneto is indeed a cultic figure... but it's hard to see him as a "villain." He's a resistance fighter, an arrogant, ruthless one who has discarded seeing his enemy as worthy of compassion. But he is fighting the war he was given, not the one he chose, and all of his aims are actually well-intentioned. In fact, he pities humans, because he knows that rationally, they should see mutants as replacements. People with powers will win. And Magneto is probably correct in thinking mutants need a strong leader in order to avoid turning their powers on each other and slagging the Earth. So. When you factor in Xaxier's use of fourteen year old assets, and his non-consensual use of mind-reading and mind control, I can barely see daylight between him and Magneto.

Magneto. He's just right. Of course, he is a "villain" because of his extreme actions in the cause, but then again, nothing he does is more extreme than what the other side is doing to him. Like most figures in a genuine resistance, he recognizes that battle lines are often arbitrarily. Even in his oldest, most cartoonish versions, he just comes across more as a vigilante, partisan, and/or anti-hero than an actual villain.

It wasn't Hero, but White Wolf's Aberrant is set up like this. Essentially, everyone is a quantum-powered "nova." You could optionally play a really talented human, who would be toast in a real high-powered fight but might be skilled and useful in their own way, or a not-quite-as-limited "psiad" with traditional psychic abilities (who was generally not recognized as being different from a nova). I did try to run a Wildcards game in Hero once, which I think would have been great, but it just never got off the ground.

The big issue I see with Multiform is that you don't really become someone new. Especially if you retain spellcasting or other abilities, you end up having to buy a lot of your abilities twice. And how does that work with adjustment powers? I think Shapeshifting with a Multipower is the correct approach. I see the "no multipowers" rule cited above, but that has to do with putting unrelated spells in a Multipower. I don't think it applies to a standalone supernatural power, and certainly, I've never seen issues with creating a multipower for a spell that does multiple things. The D&D 3e version of a druid, which involves paging through a half dozen books to pick out the most advantageous "animals" and casting in animal form is probably more like a VPP, but I don't think that was the intention. Assuming a druid has a number of forms related to local species, I think you could get away with a Multipower that lets you slip in Growth and Shrinking, natural weapons, movement changes, special senses, boosted STR, and a little ED and PD. If all you do is turn into a wolf or a bird, all the easier.

Well, for a force field, it would be nice if it blocked a disintegration ray that went against Power Defense.

If it's momentary, Change Environment seems the way to go. If you want it to do more watery... stuff... you would be looking at a Transform.

Playing in an imaginary world, you have a choice: either all-imaginary names (which requires a certain level of creativity and means you can't use certain evocative choices) or borrowing from the real world (which can have connotations you don't want). I'm generally fine with anachronistic or atopic names popping up in pure fantasy, but one particular thing I find jarring: Biblical names in a world that doesn't have Christianity or anything like it. To me names like Miriam or James or Jericho have a very specific connotation to specific Biblical characters and mythology which I find distracting. I don't struggle as much with old Celtic names, or with Latin names (which of course have been used, reused, and abused all over Europe anyway).

Medieval peasants had physically demanding lives, but they also didn't get as much meat. I don't know that a peasant was any stronger than a modern truck driver or fast food worker. Maybe the Min Str for the spear is off... but it's entirely an assumption that peasants are running around with weapons they have matching STR for. People have historically probably used lots of weapons they took the -1 penalty for. A spear is cheap, durable, and most importantly, offers Reach. Nobody but a professional warrior is going to go into battle intending to use something like an axe, club, or sword.

I'm not saying it's advantageous. Rather that it's ability to absolutely overcome defenses is appealing to some people when trying to model certain highly powerful attacks, and the fact it is not always advantageous causes the resulting construction to look and play weird. It's like, hi, I'm wearing a spacesuit, so I'm less vulnerable to adamantium claws.

I'd rather get rid of Penetrating and keep AP. AP allows attacks to rationalize enemy's defenses without creating huge kill numbers. It's indispensable for characters like Wolverine, who can harm very hard targets but isn't going to cut a tank in half with claws that short. Whereas I could live without Penetrating: Bees! 1d6 RKA NND, defense is environmentally sealed armor or immune to bees Penetrating is in many examples used as, okay, this really CAN cut through anything, and I think it's the wrong Advantage for that. Penetrating should really only be for attacks that can seep through incompletely sealed defenses; it does full damage against lesser defended foes but still always does something without Impenetrable defenses. It's a very specific behavior, which in most cases could be adequately modeled by combining an attack with a Linked NND attack for the splatter/leakage/swarming damage.

It's not a Real Weapon, it's the farthest thing from it. It has whatever characteristics you assign it, can't really be lost, requires no maintenance, and can be instantly repaired by resummoning it. I don't think it's even Restrainable, since you can already add your Strength to it, meaning it inherits the requirement for movement already. The 3e mindblade is just a multipower with two or three slots. It's just a standard KA, with RKA in the other slot, and Lockout (the weapon is thrown or disarmed). More advanced users have a third slot where it creates two weapons, with a smaller damage bonus. The weapon type is probably immaterial; if you think crushing versus slashing will make a difference, and you can do both, add Variable Special Effects to each power. The inspiration is a reliable ability. If you want to add Requires a Skill Roll or something, go for it. To imitate a low level user who has to use a "move action" to manifest it, take Extra Time (Full Phase, only to activate the first time, -1/4).

I'm not talking about disrupting the Haymaker. I'm saying, if you can move after attacking, you can complete the Haymaker, then dart away. I don't see the benefit of characters running up, attacking each other, then retreating throughout combat. Of course, if everyone does it, it largely neutralizes any advantage, except in the occasional situation where it isn't feasible for someone to move in that way. It's tactically shallow, I don't see that it adds anything except quirkiness.

To me it's less a matter of balance, than of how characters will always be moving away from each other during battle. It produces oddities like characters winding up for a haymaker, suffering reduced DCV, and immediately moving away.

Arithmetic is easy. It's decisions that are hard. A question I would pose is, if CON is how healthy you are, why do I then also have to decide how much damage I can take, how much endurance I have, and how tough I am, separately from my Constitution? What does DEX represent, if it's completely divorced from combat ability? If I'm creating a fighter for a fantasy campaign, how much PD and ED should I have? These might seem like second nature to long-time players, but to the novice, we've gone from a system where you have eights traits to decide, and a few things to calculate, to one in which you have sixteen or so, including a vestigial OMCV for many characters. The current system is what you get when you keep refining something to appeal to an expert user base who are comfortable with odd legacy items. Splitting off SPD, in order to get rid of decimal purchases for that one trait, and because it doesn't necessarily have a strong relationship with DEX, was a good idea.

While I understand some of the advantages of getting rid of Derived Characteristics, it drastically increased the mental load needed to make a simple character.