BoloOfEarth

It was Lord Liaden's journal idea.  I just expanded upon it.

It's the Fextbook.  Next to the Fencil and the Falculator on her Fesk.  In front of the Falkboard. 

Sorry, things at work and home have been overly busy lately, and I haven't posted in this thread.
 
Hmmm...  belt pouches?  Check.  Skull-and-crossbones?  Check.  Ragged cape?  Check.  So let's take a step back to the 1990s...
 
Who am I?  They call me DeathStone.  Well, the police and media do.  My enemies mainly scream, "Oh no!  Not him!  Please, dear Gaaaa..."
 
(No, I don't need a throat lozenge.  My voice is always this gravelly.)
 
That stone on my forehead?  It lets me see the darkness in men's souls.  Then my touch removes that darkness... along with their skin, some muscle, and most often their ability to continue breathing. 
 
DeathStone!  Hear my name, scum of the Earth, and tremble in fear!
 
(Honestly, get those cough drops away from me.)

Don't he and his buddy Wayne do a public access TV show from Wayne's basement?

I like this idea.  You could even make an adventure about it - the enemy finds out Fox wrote about his ability to possess people and sends some minions to locate and retrieve Fox's notes.  The heroes get wind of this (but not why the enemy wants the journal, just that he wants it so badly) and can recover it first. 

Move the confrontation to a site with conditions which may force the spirit to become manifest, depending on your concept: consecrated ground; a place with traumatic emotional associations for the spirit; proximity to a device giving off energy which can affect Astral presences. Or have him come face to face with someone important from his past. Or let the PCs discover a journal describing his activities and intentions before death, and maybe after.
 
(BTW I read the thread title before I saw which forum it's in, and assumed it was a political commentary on Fox News.)

I have a transparent hexmap I bought many years (2 decades+) ago.  I don't think the original manufacturer makes them any more, but I found this:
http://arcknight.squarespace.com/shop/clear-map-grids-colors-and-styles
 

I've found the best way to use CLOWN is in the background.  They make appearances in the news, having distributed the personal financial details of the executives of a company whose poor security led to the loss of customer data to hacking, or filling the sprinkler system of a polluting company's headquarters with similarly polluted water and then setting it off, or destroy the reputation of a hero team who is lax in their codes against killing and maiming.  For me, they work best as a cautionary tale.

The players were incredibly irritated with your Seeker Missiles, especially after one temporarily turned the team mentalist into an Aussie ninja.

He's a great guy.  We generally send him out for snacks and pop.  Maybe the occasional pizza.
 
Seriously, though, Foxbat has been a fixture in my Champions campaigns as long as I've been running them.
 
His most recent caper involved breaking into the Federal Reserve to replace the US currency there with "FoxbatBucks" (basically regular dollars with pictures of him and other members of his troupe in place of the US presidents).  He combined this with covering that section of the city with a giant force dome to try and keep PRIMUS and the superheroes out.
 
Foxbat once tried kidnapping Adam West and Burt Ward (dressing them in their Batman costumes complete with working utility belt gadgets so they could have a proper fight beforehand).
 
He has tried numerous times to get dates with various PC superheroines - even after Batfox joined his team and protested that he was "her man."
 
He ran for president (in 2005 - yeah, we all know it wasn't an election year - he figured he had a better chance because nobody else would be running then).
 
Foxbat once tried participating in the CLOWN annual scavenger hunt (to determine who the next leader of CLOWN would be that year) in the hopes of becoming the new head of CLOWN.
 
He committed a series of small crimes (break-ins of homes and businesses, robberies, etc.) that the heroes eventually mapped out to realize he was creating a giant connect-the-dots Foxbat emblem across the city.
 
Originally, it was the Foxbat Five (more powerful than the Fantastic Four because, y'know, there were *five* of them), but now it's Foxbat Force, consisting of:
The Awesome Exo-Skeleton Man - because you gotta have Leroy! Harmonious Fist, a complete redraw of the the published martial artist whose martial arts maneuvers make you beat yourself up! Dot - the character from CLOWN, slightly redone as an homage to Spider-Man's foe Spot Garble - the mentalist who mixes up your thoughts and perceptions - and is so scramble-headed himself that he's the only person who truly understands and appreciates the genius of Foxbat's Master Plan! Batfox -- because Foxbat needed a babe to hang on his arm Professor Steriaca - a mad scientist based off a poster on these boards, who believes everybody (including himself) is just a character in a Champions game The King - yes, Elvis is alive - he was kidnapped by aliens who "fixed" his DNA and returned him to Earth decades later Blinky - a teleporting would-be-Earth-conquering alien whose weapons have been replaced by Foxbat with non-lethal versions The Foxbots -- Freddy's robotic minions, with names like Federico, Freddo, Fritz, Froederick, and Derf.

I generally don't use him and I think my players wouldn't want me to, so at some point, I'll have to use him. >:D
 

I thought you were quoting the table, but if this was your calculations and the table deviates from them, then of course, I am 100% with you. 🙂
 
Having checked the table, I see they have velocity of 10 (correct) and distance of 10 (incorrect).  This reflects HERO's whacky movement conceit where all the movement in a phase happens in the segment in which you take the phase based on your velocity.
 
So, velocity 10, you move 10m.  It is why you get 10m in first segment, 20m in second, 30m in third for a total of 60m in 3 segments.
 
Obviously we know that in 3 seconds, the distance travelled will be, 45m
 
Table should be 5m, 20m, 45m, 80m, 125m, 180m IF you presume that the acceleration is constant.  In reality air resistance will be increasing as velocity increases and so the increase in velocity will decrease as speed increases and so both the distance travelled and the current velocity would be less than the Table suggests and it would take longer than 6 seconds to achieve terminal velocity. 
 
I can understand why they went with a more standard format for the table, in one segment the acceleration happens all at once and the movement happens after that.  In those circumstances the table makes game mechanic sense if not physical reality sense.  😄
 
Doc

Sounds to me like you need to tell physics to put on its spandex and get with the program already. 

Yes, rPD and rED cover normal (non-killing) physical and energy damage.  Also, your normal (non-resistant) PD or ED is added to your rPD and rED, with that total applied against the STUN of a Killing Attack.  Only the rPD / rED is applied against the BODY damage of the killing attack.
 
For example, let's say Joe the SWAT Cop is wearing a bulletproof vest (6 rPD / 6 rED) and has his own 4 PD / 2 ED.  Joe is shot in the chest with a pistol (1d6+1 RKA), doing 5 BODY and 15 STUN.  The 5 BODY goes against the 6 rPD (doing no BODY damage to Joe), and the 15 STUN goes against the 10 total PD (6 rPD + 4 PD), doing 5 STUN to Joe.  If the thug hit Joe in the back with a lead pipe (doing 5 BODY and 18 STUN of normal damage), Joe would still get his full 10 PD against the attack (taking no BODY and 8 STUN).
 
As such, I advise a mix of Resistant and Normal defenses, because the resistant defenses cost more than the normal defenses.
 

He's a great guy.  We generally send him out for snacks and pop.  Maybe the occasional pizza.
 
Seriously, though, Foxbat has been a fixture in my Champions campaigns as long as I've been running them.
 
His most recent caper involved breaking into the Federal Reserve to replace the US currency there with "FoxbatBucks" (basically regular dollars with pictures of him and other members of his troupe in place of the US presidents).  He combined this with covering that section of the city with a giant force dome to try and keep PRIMUS and the superheroes out.
 
Foxbat once tried kidnapping Adam West and Burt Ward (dressing them in their Batman costumes complete with working utility belt gadgets so they could have a proper fight beforehand).
 
He has tried numerous times to get dates with various PC superheroines - even after Batfox joined his team and protested that he was "her man."
 
He ran for president (in 2005 - yeah, we all know it wasn't an election year - he figured he had a better chance because nobody else would be running then).
 
Foxbat once tried participating in the CLOWN annual scavenger hunt (to determine who the next leader of CLOWN would be that year) in the hopes of becoming the new head of CLOWN.
 
He committed a series of small crimes (break-ins of homes and businesses, robberies, etc.) that the heroes eventually mapped out to realize he was creating a giant connect-the-dots Foxbat emblem across the city.
 
Originally, it was the Foxbat Five (more powerful than the Fantastic Four because, y'know, there were *five* of them), but now it's Foxbat Force, consisting of:
The Awesome Exo-Skeleton Man - because you gotta have Leroy! Harmonious Fist, a complete redraw of the the published martial artist whose martial arts maneuvers make you beat yourself up! Dot - the character from CLOWN, slightly redone as an homage to Spider-Man's foe Spot Garble - the mentalist who mixes up your thoughts and perceptions - and is so scramble-headed himself that he's the only person who truly understands and appreciates the genius of Foxbat's Master Plan! Batfox -- because Foxbat needed a babe to hang on his arm Professor Steriaca - a mad scientist based off a poster on these boards, who believes everybody (including himself) is just a character in a Champions game The King - yes, Elvis is alive - he was kidnapped by aliens who "fixed" his DNA and returned him to Earth decades later Blinky - a teleporting would-be-Earth-conquering alien whose weapons have been replaced by Foxbat with non-lethal versions The Foxbots -- Freddy's robotic minions, with names like Federico, Freddo, Fritz, Froederick, and Derf.

The players were incredibly irritated with your Seeker Missiles, especially after one temporarily turned the team mentalist into an Aussie ninja.

Don't he and his buddy Wayne do a public access TV show from Wayne's basement?

It’s not exactly for a game but one weekend with nothing else to do I wrote a movie treatment that was a retelling of Man of La Mancha using a superhero instead of a knight.
     It opens with Leroy, an out of work veteran being hired to look out for Freddy Fosworth the creator of Foxbat. An incredibly successful comic book and movie character.  Since the death of his wife during a mugging on the two of them he’s become withdrawn and secretive and his cousins want to have him declared incompetent in order to take over his finances.
   Leroy discovers that Freddy has sunk millions into having the superhero gear in the comic built and is going out at night to fight crime.   End of act one.
    I have the rest of the story worked out as well.  Street gangs,  the city needing a hero,  the cousins finding out and having Freddy put away in a psych ward,  Leroy and the young single mother with a little boy who idolizes Foxbat who runs a local neighborhood watch (re: love interest) breaking into the hospital to convince Freddy that “There’s a hero in all of us” ,  grand escapes,  big confrontations.   Good guys win.  Bad guys defeated.  The end.
   Every character is worthwhile, it all depends on how you use them.

Foxbat is certainly a character. For those of us who use him, how do you use him? Is he an actual mastermind, a henchman, a solo villain or what?
 
For myself, Foxbat is (in his own mind) a mastermind and every mastermind needs people to carry out his greatest idea. Of course, all his efforts are considered to be his 'best idea yet', regardless of the reality of it. Foxbat likes to scheme of ways to make himself look good by making the heroes look bad: one such scheme had the hero team show up at a factory where he dumped lotion on them and took a picture to send to the press (it turned into a slippery game of 'catch-the-camera'). Really though, all his schemes are ridiculous. Foxbat always goes out of his way to make sure no one gets hurt, because that shows what a wonderful mastermind he is.
 
Back to the people he has:
 
The Awesome Exo-skeleton Man: who can't love a guy with a name this long, who heaps praise and adoration upon Foxbat everytime the heroes dare to question Foxbats ideas
 
Speedster: a superfast-reaction guy with some superstrength (has a Speed of 10). He follows because Foxbat always has an idea to get rich & because he's greedy but fun. Surprisingly, he's not all that fast as a superspeedster
 
Airhammer: an easy-going young lady with a super jetpack  of incredible speed who uses an airhammer attack to knock heroes around. However, she gets bored easily and doesn't listen to orders for long
 
Scarecrow: a guy dressed like a scarecrow, or is he dressed? No one knows really. He's greedy, overconfident and likes to throw little explosive pumpkins. Tries to be a mastermind himself but has 3d6 Unluck...
 
With a team so, hmmmm, not tight, how could the great Foxbat fail?
 
So, how do you use him?

Redstone; once an ordinary space pirate, moderately successful, but that Big Score eluded him. His policy was to leave everyone alive, a tactic that kept him low on the list of pirates to capture, but also meant he only went after low risk jobs...
 
Until he found one of the legendary Stones Of AvarenShen, said to grant immeasurable power to those who find and unlock their secrets.
 
The stone slowly corrupted him even further, no longer content capture & release, small time smuggling, and just staying one step ahead. Redstone began a ruthless campaign of terror in the galaxy, amassing a fleet of dozens of ships now... 

Largest number of PCs was 16 with a supervillain for each hero.  Trip sheet was 32-35 lines mainly because I think there were several agent groups on the list too.  It was grueling but at least all the players were veterans and even if they weren't following the story while the other actors were taking their turns, they could pick up what was going on and get through their turn.
 
I'll probably never do that again as the martial artists and speedsters did just about everything and the brick would do their one punch and then go off and do something else like get lunch.  The guys who got lunch were playing bricks, they rolled to hit and did any damage and then handed off their character to someone else to keep track of stun.  They took off to Togos, got lunch, came back, checked the trip sheet, went to the kitchen, ate lunch, cleaned up the plates, and came back and were in their spots a few actions before their next turn.  The mat had something like 60 or 70 counters on a mondomat.  It was both epic and nightmarish.

RE: projected year-end numbers, that's a decent possibility (and a good point).  However, my thought is that this higher number of apprehensions has less to do with the number of people crossing the border this year as opposed to prior years, than it does with the onus being put upon the USBP by Trump & company to lock up every possible "potential illegal immigrant" in sight.  Perhaps the net is being cast a little too wide?
 
As to difference in how detainees are being handled, I assumed my reference to Simon's post would refer to "catch & release" short-term detainment vs. "zero tolerance" long-term detainment.  So yes, I would expect that a marked increase in volume - especially long-term detainment - would affect service quality.  That's self-evident. 
 
What you might want to be asking is, Didn't anybody in the administration think that vastly increasing the detainment time and number of arrests, without increasing funding for said detainment, would affect service quality?  Either they didn't think of that beforehand or, as I suspect, they really didn't care all that much if it did.

I'm not speaking for Grailknight, but I'd think a discussion about differences of scale between Obama's and Trump's administrations might benefit from numbers that covered Obama's administration as well. 
 
Here's something from the Department of Homeland Security's annual report for 2017:

 
Toxxus' figure for 2017 apprehensions is the second line in that table, far right column.  It should be pointed out that the 2018 figure of 404,142 is actually *less* than the apprehensions for 2013 and 2014 (both Obama years).  The 2019 YTD number of 598,714 is certainly higher than the highest listed here (486,651 in 2014), by roughly 23%.
 
So I don't think it's really about the volume of detainees being apprehended.  As Simon points out, the big difference is in how the detainees are being handled.