GamePhil

Makes perfect sense, just not within the story. Someone in Authority (the position, not the *shudder* comic) called down from On High and said unto the writer: Put the Beyonder in your story! And payment shall be continued! So they inserted him into a fairly innocuous place in the story they were going to do, anyway. Annoying when marketing interferes with art rather than enhancing it, but there you go. Of course, I'm likely stating the painfully obvious and it doesn't help, but what can you do? Send points to GamePhil so he can buy off some of his Psych Lims.

That's ok, I just took you too literally. If I had read more carefully I would have caught what you were trying to do.

Oh, is *that* all you wanted? Would that I had known...

Perhaps, perhaps not, but in his day he was well known for doing precisely this: characters that had been "continuity reset" (made back into what they were, even many years before) were sent to the "Byrne Ward".

What, you want to flush 20 full years of continuity and not call in John Byrne?

Say, that looks pretty good. I do admit I tend to not think of using Followers for things like this. Which is a bit ironic, now that I think of it.

Visible seems a little wonky, since it's already an Obvious Focus. I could see it working, but it would have to somehow be more obvious than just large plates of steel surrounding the character, which you already have. Instant Change is 7 points, if my memory isn't playing tricks, in 5th Edition: are you using 4th?

Woohoo! I'm up to Standard Hero! Soon I shall be a world-conquering supervi... Uhm, protect the world from the Forces of Evil! Yeah, that's it!

Couple of possibilities, perhaps. You could have a Triggered Dispel, and the trigger is something they can Abort to. Here's a hard way: Dispel: Any One Magical Effect (+1/4), Continuous (+1), Radius (+1), 0 END (+1/2), User must abort an action to use this Power on a single attack (-2), No Range (-1/2) That comes out to net about a +1/4 Advantage, if you buy into that. Less, really. I'd figure out what the cost of that is per die (or group of dice) and call it the new power Counterspell for the game, to save player tedium: it may be difficult, but you only have to do it once. Blue's statement is also true: as long as the Dispel is purely being used defensively, you could rule that it can be Aborted to.

It's also easy to give a man a fish, but teaching a man to fish is harder. Sure, if the device is only ever going to be in that one game you could do this. I like having it built and ready to take into another game if needed, or to run the cost through the Star HERO formulae to get a cost in credits, or to know how much of a penalty I have to my Gadgeteering roll to make modifications to it. For that matter, knowing what it is I'm making modifications to. It gives me an idea of the power level of a group that has equipment not paid for in points. Perhaps he just has fun coming up with the write ups, or hearing about them. I do. That's in under a minute, I'm sure I can come up with more. Nothing wrong with hand-waiving, but there are advantages to putting in a little extra.

Really, I should have said, "More balanced". That probably would have gone over better.

*sigh* But the example is wrong... Oh, nevermind.

Re: Re: Re: Pop-Out Armor Actually, that wouldn't work here, precisely: since the armor is an OIF, you'd need to take "Variable Limitation -1/2", because some of the Powers in the Pool would only have OIF or IAF. Still, the idea is the same, you'd just get a -1/4 for it. My rationale is that, since Focus is a single Limitation, taking "Focus (-1/2)" on the Pool cost is close enough to kosher.

It's an homage to (or perhaps a poke at) the 80's comic book series, "Secret Wars", by Marvel, and "Crisis on Infinite Earths", by DC. Both featured most of the major (and in the case of Crisis, many minor) characters of the day for their respective companies. Crisis changed the DC universe radically, while Secret Wars became part of the continuing story of the Marvel Universe without changing its underlying structure.

Re: Pop-Out Armor From what you are saying, the armor will be in the pool. I'll assume that the pool is difficult to change, taking either a Phase and a roll or even time in the lab. First, you'll have to change the Limitations on the Pool. The armor you describe is not an OAF, so for it to be in the Pool it can't have that Limitation. Change it to OIF, or perhaps "Focus At -1/2 Level Or Greater". I'm not sure that last is altogether legal, but I generally allow it. Buy Instant Change as a component of the Armor, to allow you to instantly be in/out of it. It should work: you're just using the Instant Change to turn you from someone out of armor, but who has purchased it, into someone in the armor he has purchased, if that makes sense. When it is off, the armor can be taken as part of the ring (or whatever); when it is on, it can be taken away itself. So, either way, it fulfills the requirements for being an OIF.

Thanks. All right, I essentially agree with Mr. Long on all points of his response. They could be used as spares, or for Two Weapon Fighting or MPA's or what have you. However, that's where it ends. I don't see too much trouble with this, or with not allowing it for natural powers. However, summing up my views on the subject: 1. While I think the MPA is technically legal, such attacks specifically need control by the GM (it is mentioned in their description somewhere), and I wouldn't allow them for reasons already stated. 2. TWF is a minor enough advantage (little "a") that the cost for it seems right to me. 3. As just spares, they aren't a problem, and if you have enough of them that it should be an OIF only very expensive Powers will benefit from not just taking the lower Limitation. For a 60 point Power with just OAF, you lose point benefit from just having 4 weapons. 4. Any Limitation overcome cheaply by having a bunch of the items is no longer a Limitation. We all know what that means. 5. Other uses of the doubling are more correctly modeled in other ways, and these ways also happen to be more expensive and applicable to natural Powers as well as Foci.

Re: Discussion of 5-point Gadget Doublings Actually, please do: without knowing what question he was answering, we can't judge the answer. At least post a link to or the title of the query.

I apologize for the quick de-railing, and will start a new topic on this (it has been brought up before, but some people haven't seen the various sides): 2 things. One, this has been true since at least 4th Edition, and it wasn't Steve that said it originally (I believe it was Bruce Harlick, but it could have been one of several of the original crowd). It just wasn't in the book at the time, but was a suggestion much bandied. Secondly, like many people you are leaving out one important part of the rule: for two equally valid powers, you choose the more expensive one. In the example you gave, the more valid power to do an energy blast is Energy Blast, not Drain. The problem with every example I have ever seen, in fact, is that they present an absurd use of Powers to try to demonstrate the flaw in the rule, forgetting that by definition an absurd use of Powers is going to be less valid, or perhaps forgetting that validity is an integral part of the rule. Back on topic: In this case, I probably shouldn't have opened the can of worms, because the 5 point Doubling method isn't valid in the first place. It is well defined in what it is for: spare weapons for the character. The ability to give others a usable suit is in the Usable By Others Advantage, and should stay there.

The book did: Heroic games you usually don't pay for things in. There's really nothing wrong with that as long as either everyone has access to all equipment (Knights and Swashbucklers can wear heavy plate if they like) or if everyone has access to character-appropriate equipment. However, I'm almost certainly taking your statement too literally Besides which, the easiest way to obtain balance if you want to restrict characters to "archetype appropriate equipment" is to make everyone pay for everything. That sounds like it could be a modification of Wealth. That works, or you just make them pay for the Armor and weapons normally: really, even the Full Plate with OIF, Real, Normal Weight and so on is not that expensive.

For the item from the question to Steve, I would tend to agree. For the item in Gamma World, the original question, it actually puts up a force field (that is, Force Wall) that stops a small amount of damage from getting through.

I certainly hope not! Otherwise, a lot of us are.

The initial comments on this thread said that they could be used for TWF and MPA's. I mentioned earlier that I would allow it for TWF: this is not even an advantage over Rapid Fire/Sweep unless you also have Two Weapon Fighting, and even then it is only a slight advantage, probably worth the points paid. I probably wouldn't allow it for MPA's, myself, for reasons already mentioned, but that's arguable.. No initial comment says that I should have to allow it to be handed out and make everyone in the party 100 points more effective for 10 points, even if I were to allow everything Steve said: it is for having spare weapons for your use, not for outfitting an army. There are other ways to do that, they are both more valid and more expensive, and are therefore the correct ways of doing these things by the rules. It may be obscure and need to be clarified, but by the book what you said should be disallowed. Anyway, enough of that.

I'm curious: what did you need the Force Wall for? You seemed to have everything covered without it.

So, each post is worth a point? You go from Competent Normal to Heroic when you get to 150? That's pretty good. Hmm, I seem to have much catching up to do. And editing would be cheating

I had a character named Tachyon, never used. He was based around a Tachyon Laser Pistol. This was bought as follows: SPD 4 (mentioned for reasons that become apparent) Effect Before Cause: +4 SPD, only to use the Tachyon Laser (-3/4), IIF (-1/4) Tachyon Laser: 2d6 RKA, Indirect (+1/2), Invisible to All Senses (+1), 0 END (+1/2), IIF (-1/4) Total cost: 92 points At about one second in a potential future, he would (will?) fire off the weapon (it's Indirect because he could move a bit before firing). It then travels back in time and hits the target. He then decides not to fire it. So, his now non-existant future self shot an enemy, so he didn't spend the END. It's Invisible both because it's hard to tell where it came from and because it's just hard to detect tachyons. It's IIF because he just needs it on him, he never has to actually fire it. I was thinking that eventually he might start pulling other stunts with it: future selves firing it for Autofire or Area Of Effect, and so on. Technically, he could use the Laser on his Phases, but it didn't seem worth a Limitation to restrict it considering the savings on the extra SPD: if it's worth a -1/4, it reduces the cost to 80.