BoloOfEarth

Hmm.  There are sensitive souls for whom such awful design decisions might cause real distress - I find I have no idea how to spoiler the image though...the problem is that the character is not even interesting enough to partially compensate...
 
EDIT - worked it out....
 

As I was reading the description but before reading the options, I was thinking ablative.
 
But I'm not sure the mechanics of doing ablative with DCV.
 
If someone autofires against you, are you using up DCV per shot? Per theoretical hit?

I don't agree.  I think that the damage negation should be the effect of a drone taking a hit and reducing the amount of damage that gets through, what might change as time goes on is the ability of a drone to get in the way but if it does, the protection afforded should be the same.
 
I think what we all agree is that we are not talking about protection, that can be modelled 100 ways to Christmas.  What we are circling round is how that protection degrades over time and how it might be restored.
 
I agree with Surrealone in that you do not want this to get too complicated or it will be a pain during the game.  I would be happy with the damage negation with 8 charges.  If you wanted to make it degrade in effectiveness as the drones get destroyed, then give it an activation 14-, and lose 1 in the activation roll for every 2 drones destroyed.  Personally, even that would be too fiddly for me, I would stick to the damage negation, 8 charges.

I like #2 the best, as it seems the cleanest and most representative of what you describe (among the proposed approaches) while being less hand-wavey (IMHO) than #3 (due to reliance on Ablative which, per RAW, is specifically for STUN or BOD damage IIRC) … and because #1 seems un-necessarily convoluted.
 
I don't particularly care for the Force Wall or Damage Negation suggestions, either, because I think both of them would need to rely on Ablative, too - in order to properly represent the reductions associated with each sacrifice. 

I would be attracted to Damage Negation with charges. You would not need to buy much to provide solid protection to effective damage but would open up the idea of an overwhelming attack burning straight through a drone and still damage the character.

Something that I considered was to make it either RP or DR with ablative.  As the char gains xp, ubo can be added to this ability (to represent that the drones are going to others).

I'd go with either #2 or #3. 
 
 
I love the idea BTW!

I'm inclined with idea #3 as well.
 
For a different angle, what if you buy 8 Force Walls as foci and they would protect from the 8 attacks completely.  Perhaps they can talk incessantly to really present the Drone (on) effect? 

I'm working on a character who has drones that buzz around her, whose sole purpose is to automatically sacrifice themselves to deflect attacks coming her way.  (So if she has 8 drones, they can at most stop 8 attacks before she no longer has any drone defense, and I'm okay with the defense becoming less good as drones drop.)  To be clear, I don't want her to constantly have to use her own combat actions to activate this defense -- these  are automated drones.
 
I can see several ways to do this in 6E (and know that the fine minds out there will probably come up with several more I hadn't considered), and I'm trying to figure out the easiest / simplest / best way to do this.
 
(Messiest option, IMO, but most literal)  Buy eight Followers (or more likely, Summon 8x Drones), giving them Flight, probably Mind Link among themselves, just enough defenses to absorb one hit and die, and let them individually interpose themselves in front of attacks heading her way. Buy Deflection (either Uncontrolled, on a Continuing Charge, or on an automatically-resetting Trigger with 8 Charges) along with additional CSLs in Deflection.  Then, the increasing penalty (or the Triggered Charges) represents drones sacrificing themselves until she has no more. Buy additional DCV, with Ablative (loses some DCV each time an attack misses her because of the added DCV).  So she starts with +8 DCV, and then goes to +7, then +6, etc. as subsequent attacks miss her due to the DCV bonus.  
Personally, I'm liking option #3, but am open to suggestions.

Blue Moa Slayer : once there was a species of giant birds living on the islands of New Zealand. The largest of them was the Blue Moa, a magical creature of immense potential. It was killed hundreds of years ago by a tribesman on a search for power and glory. The hunter took the blood and imbued himself with the magical power of the Blue Moa with the tattoos that cover his body. Longevity, strength and speed, quick thinking and minor magical abilities....
Over the years and decades the Blue Moa (as he calls himself) has become a power hungry, blood thirsty individual.
He runs at 60 km/h for hours, three times as fast when sprinting, jumps 12m high, 50m broad and lifts a ton

Not exactly a quote, but an interesting event overall, and I can't really think of a more relevant place to put it.
 
My youth group game is the only "weekly" game I have, after all, the other two being a bi-weekly game and an "at least every four weeks; more if possible" game.
 
I picked up a set of these:
 
 https://www.amazon.com/Oojami-Giant-Wooden-Carrying-Canvas/dp/B072KGYFLF/ref=sr_1_8?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIxYnMwq2o4gIVksDICh01aw9UEAAYASAAEgK7a_D_BwE&hvadid=328191546198&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9011003&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=b&hvrand=4774527260171532108&hvtargid=kwd-314746230900&hydadcr=2335_9913328&keywords=large+dice+wooden&qid=1558295080&s=gateway&sr=8-8
 
 
Not _exactly_ those, but similar.
 
For those not wanting to follow links posted by relative strangers on the internet, it leads to a set of wooden dice roughly 3-1/2" on a side.  They are essentially waste cuts and drops from hardwood 4x4s, evened up and finished into "yard dice" or "lawn dice" or  (creatively)  "Yardzee" dice.  Went to Statesboro yesterday (wife wanted to go to Hobby Lobby and get some new brushes) and I saw the set of five (yeah, the set I bought only had 5 pieces, but then, it rang up at ten bucks, so I'm good   ) and picked it up.  On the way home we stopped and she bought a car, but this isn't that story.  In fact, all I will say about that story is that, after nearly two decades of road tripping in the Leviathan, she now claims she wants something that rides better.  (the nerve of some people!)
 
 
So, in honor of the last of the bearable summer weather  (by this time next week, central GA will be Hell's own bakery), I decided to do something to get us out into the weather and enjoy the last breeze we're going to have until January.  
 
We used three of the dice as "Skill check" dice-- forgive the non-HERO-ness of the term, but over the years, I have found people pick up on the roll for Skills and Roll to Hit if they learn them to be "Skill Checks."  Don't know why, unless it just helps them group the mechanics in their head.  Now make no mistake, rolling three of those dice isn't possible.  You end up sort of backsnap-tossing it into the air to give it random spins, etc, and wait for it to land.  (I know: I played around with the viability of this idea last night when we got home and the wife was tired of driving her new car.)
 
I don't know why-- probably for _me_, as things conspire to keep me out of pretty weather but locked outside in rain, blast-ovens, of near-freezing temperatures with shocking regularity-- but I really wanted this to be a fun thing to do.
 
So I grabbed a few paint paddles-- the little balsa or white-wood slats they give you when you buy a can of paint-- and selected tomorrow's (today's) bad guys and a few random NPC-types, ad of course, the Heroes themselves, then printed the character portraits (remember I still use 2e, and our character sheets are _way_ more fun than anything that's come after 4e) and glued them the paint paddles.
 
Today's game featured the all-new fair-weather attack technique of "Bowl to Hit."  When a character wished to make an attack, his target's wood-and-paper effigy was stuck in the dirt roughly eight feet away.  The player had three shots (roll 3d6, right? )  he would fire off his three dice toward his target.  If at any time he hit the target with one of the dice, bingo!  Automatic hit.  :D.  If he did _not_ hit the target but the total of the three dice said he made it, then he hit.  If he both hit the target _and_ made his roll, then a random good thing happened: extra damage, automatic Stunning, or some such thing as that.
 
If there were _multiple_ opponents, then multiple targets were set up.  You might hit an opponent totally different from the one you were aiming at!  And of course, the die total might say "nope; seems you hit the _both_!    
 
And if there were innocent bystanders, well things got....  dicey..... (wow. That hurt more than I thought it would) 
 
It was really funny watching them just _sling_ the dice at the villains, but when there were civilians, they'd oh-so-carefully line up their shots, roll the die, and wince at every odd tumble.....      "There."  I proclaimed.  "Now you have a _much_ better idea of what it's like to actually be a super-hero-- to know how much power you have, and how easily you could accidentally hurt someone.  You understand the worry and fear your character's should have when fighting out in the open, and you understand why you might want to restrain the amount of power you use when something bad happens at the mall or the amusement park. "  Most of them found that to be eye-opening, as most of them (the oldest is in ninth grade right now) get their ideas of superheroes from movies, which don't seem to put a lot of emphasis on internal struggle or watching out for the civilians.
 
 
Yeah, this story goes nowhere, and only has a single quote, and it's by the world's worst Superhero Sensei, but still: it was a blast, and I wanted to share it.
 
 
Y'all have fun.
 
 
 
Duke
 

(Here we go, from Scratch for this last part. I'm sure I'm leaving a pot hole or two, but better a few holes than nothing at all written)
 

As the meaty hands of the crazed killer lifted me up, up, and away thirty feet into the air, his eyes seething something akin to electricity while he screamed a heavy metal refrain from some 80s band, I had to ask myself a question.

How do I keep ending up in these weird-ass situations? 
 
The answer, of course, is that I'm a superhero. One has to deal with the consequences of one's lifestyle choices. You put on the colorful jammies, weird stuff will happen and you will be there; whether you go to it, or it comes to you.

The guy lifting me into the air was a convict, a former prisoner who had just broken out, empowered by alien chemicals or gene therapy or lord knows what. Instant origin in a can, brought to you by Fumian tech. Results varied, but there were twenty-four more out there like him.
 
It turned out, everyone's guess had been right. Slime, for example, predicted a good source of fodder would be a prison. Of course, we hadn't guessed that the Fumians had given Mr. Brute and crew a few more toys. Or maybe Mr. Brute had snitched something off them and just took a chance? I couldn't be sure, I only had what I knew. And all I knew  was two dozen hard core criminals, the sort reckless and gutsy enough to rob, mug, rape and murder in a city with superheroes, had been empowered and broke loose to spread chaos.
 
Damn it, our advantage in firepower and numbers had been, at least temporarily, curtailed to put it mildly. To put it less mildly, it was FUBAR.
 
The others had their own dance partners , like the guy with huge dragon wings that was duking it out with Tornado. Honestly though, it wasn't much of a fight, it was kind of like handing a guy the keys to a semi when he'd only learned to drive, while the professional stunt driver did literal circles around him.  Sure, Dragon wing man seemed stronger and tougher, but Tornado lived up to his name. Dragonwing would streak towards him trying to smash, only to find his own momenteum used against him with a throw into something hard, or another empowered escapee.
 
Pinprick was having a blast. Whatever had changed these folks, it didn't seem to slow down his arrows, so one screamed (his pitch going from a manly enough baritone to a helium wail which I admit, I found funny) another gasped as his own hyperspeed did him no good, for vines burst impossibly from nowhere and held him fast. While Pinprick's diminutive size made him a hard to hit target, it did mean you didn't see how fast and polished his own moves were. The bow and arrows might be faerie magic, but the skill with them? That was all his.
 
Valorosa was ground level trading blows with a guy who had morphed his hands into sledge hammer like shapes. If he was surprised when she took a blow that could break rocks with a mere grunt, he was positively stunned when she turned intangible, stepped through him, and back kicked hard.  I admit, there are times protective urges kick in, but at this point all I could think was how incredibly bad-ass she was. And yes, sexy. What can I say, I have a pulse, and I'm male and I am so proud to be tapping that. Not that I would ever word things that way where anyone could hear it. 
 
Arctic Fox was in no mood to play. She weaved and darted as she skipped and ran across the ice of her own construction. She hit fast, and she hit hard with bursts of cold to varying effect. Some of the newly empowered actually shrugged it off, but most found their muscles stiffening  and their response time slowing right away. They were being set up for the others.

Lady Obsidian slammed two foes at the same time in colliding forcefields that held them in a position not unlike pinned butterflies. One sputtered with flame, nothing as powerful as Firebug, of course, but still, it was promising to see his fires weaken and then snuff. It was a sign of what might work against Firebug...
if only we could face the villains we meant to instead of the 'Attack of the Evil Rookies'. As it was, it was closing on my meeting time with Mister Brute.
 
Which was the whole point. IT wasn't that we New Samaratins couldn't handle these guys, even as powerful as a few proved to be, or as out numbered as we were, we had the edge. It was that Apocoptyic Inc would be waiting for me at that predetermined spot after alll, but they hoped without the back up I had planned.
I had no time for this.
 
I headbutted my foe hard enough to change the course of his flight path then followed that plan by shoving him at the shoulders, "First floor, the lobby." 
 
He took the brunt of the landing's impact, but darn it, he took it a little too well as we broke apart and he righted himself almost instantly, "You smart assed ass****!" 
 
"You seem a tad belligerent," I opined as I rolled to my own feet. "Look, you need to surrender. What you've all been hit with? We don't know the full effects. It could be toxic, even kill you. Don't you see that you're being used?"
 
"See this!" He slammed into me. He wasn't subtle, so I had time to grab him, and flip him over into a body slam. 
 
"I don't have time for this" I snarled my previously unspoken thought, "We're trying to save the people of the city you morons, and that includes you. Is it really that hard to believe that if I were lying I'd make up a better story than this?" 
 
There was an intense buzzing sound, like a freight train rattling building as it raced on rails that had been put way to close. The ground shook, particularly where the guy I had just flipped was. It nearly knocked me off his feet, but him? It knocked him out cold. I twisted my head to see the source of the energy. Was whoever aiming for me? for us both? 
 
"I believe you," A voice said, again buzzing...and there was a figure I didn't recognize, in fact, I couldn't recognize him. I was sure it was a man, and the color I saw of his garment indicated the ugly orange suit of a guest of our fair city's prison. But his features were blurred as it seemed a thousand tiny tremors were rippling all over his body "You got somewhere to be, best be going."
 
"Thanks," I said "Whoever you are."
 
"We didn't actually introduce ourselves," The vibrating figure said, "When you saved our asses."
 
I guess my raised brow translated to a sign of continued cluelessness "our?" I turned in time to punch another super powered convict, some guy with knives for fingers, in the face. Edward Stabbyhands was kind enough to go down and stay that way.
 
"You saved me and my brother then," The man replied, "From Bloodwatch, on the docks. Rest of our gang too. Go, I help your crew with the rest." He tossed another wave of tremors into the air where it struck a guy whose tongue was lashing about like a barbed whip. His accuracy was improving with every burst of vibrational energy, it was more like lobbing an invisible grenade than firing a gun, but he was adapting. "After this? We're even."
 
"I didn't do it to keep score, but thanks, and you might want to hang around. I wasn't kidding, what's been done to you might kill you. It's Fumian bio-tech."
 
He cursed a blue streak, "You mean that funky alien stuff that shrinks your @##$?" 
 
Our commercials, it seemed, had worked. Even the televisions in the jails were showing them.
 
"That's the one," I said, then spoke on the team communication line, "I'm on my way to a very important date. The buzzing guy is... he's on our side for now. Please don't shoot him."
 
"Geez, Mailmen, now convicts? " Pinpricks' voice retorted on the line back, "I save plenty of lives, morons, bums and jerks, and not once has karma made those pathetic losers grateful enough to rescue me back."
 
It occurred to me that calling them pathetic losers might not be the way to earn their gratitude, but I didn't have time to give a sermon on the golden rule.
 
"Go! We'll send you what back up we can when we can," Lady Obsidian said, "Try to talk to them, delay them, because if they come out fighting you're probably in a bad way."
 
"Dead" I translated grimly "I'll probably be dead." I whistled for the hovercycle and leaped onto the back of it. It was time for my meeting with Apocalyptic Inc and one Mister Brute.

I patted the protected satchel at my side. I had one thing to offer the villain who had once nearly killed me, and I wanted to make sure he saw it.
 

 

The man known as BugOut is a former cat burglar who stole a high-tech battlesuit that allows him to shrink to the size of an insect, and to mentally command legions of various insects to help him commit crimes.  Since stealing the BugOut suit, he has studied insects to the point that he's become a fairly decent amateur entomologist.  He is currently searching for a way to also command arachnids (which, contrary to common perception, are not insects), hoping to use that as a way to combat his frequent foe, Arachno-Guy.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more!
 
Seriously though, sorry to hear, but glad you're on the mend.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more!
 
Seriously though, sorry to hear, but glad you're on the mend.

A former 100-pound weakling, Trevor Corwin inherited Majestic's incredible strength.  He now fights crime as Strongarm.

Harry Case was caught in an explosion caused by the Maine firing his cannon into a crowd by accident. He woke up in a weird hospital, covered in bandages. Then the doctors put Harry in a shell and asked him to do some work for them.  Harry went rogue, using his new shell to earn the name Hard Case.
CES

I can't help from imagining El Cubano wearing a luchadore mask to hide his disfigured face and having metal hands that replace his shattered ones.
 
Frankie "The Face" Giordano was a capo in the Trafficante crime family. Stalker and Lady Midnight were given a contract by a rival family and proceeded to slaughter the entire crew. However Lady Midnight was somewhat taken by Frankie's handsome features and did not completely drawn him of life. Thus Frankie was transformed into a vampire himself. Waking in the morgue and quickly slating his new thirst on an unfortunate attendant he soon adapted to his condition. He has embraced his new power as a major player in the criminal underworld and he considers himself the leader of the Victims under his new moniker Frankie Fangs.

There's a difference between resisting and completely ignoring.  And these are anti-tank missiles, after all.  They should have at least a fair chance of doing some damage to a tank.  I mean, it's in the name, right? 

This is where we'd disagree. It is a killing attack... I'm killing the target, and the SFX is disintegration ray. That is classic Champs/HERO. To start over-engineering it to say, "Ok, that has to be this other more cumbersome build" is an example of exactly the issue I have with pushing HERO too far into complex simulation. Eventually everything is a Transform... Transform Character into Dead Character with a bullet in the heart... etc. The question is whether you want things simple " Cool... you have  3d6RKA Disintegration Pistol!" and let the story dictate the SFX interpretation, "Sure, you can zap a hole in the wall!" 
 
... or... you begin down the road of, "Well... for all the things a Disintegration Pistol can do, you at least need a Multipower with RKA and Transform and... blah, blah blah"... which, to me, is where things can quickly go from "fun and clever build" to "over-engineered nightmare of a points kludge"   The taste for that varies. I tend to the KISS side of things. 
 
 

I used to play in Dr. Bob Simpson's Champions campaign, with a top group of players.  as I have said before I was a long time war gamer, so tactics tend to be fairly important to me.  In Bob's campaign, it was really bad to be captured.  One of his former PC's became an  NPC minion and slave to a magical mega-villainess.  I had been reading a lot of gun magazines back then and one of the regular columnists had come up with a "color coded system of instantly evaluating one's surroundings. We adapted that to our superhero team so we could pass info quickly over the radio or the mental link. 
 
Situation________Examples
Green                 Relaxed,At home, indoors, at work, in your secret ID   
Yellow                Alert, In costume,  On the streets,t, on patrol
Orange               Cautious, Sketchy neighborhood,  approaching  the Villain's hideout, Something suspicious is seen.
Red                     Combat, Threatened, Guys in ski masks pull out weapons, Super villains in costume show up. Shots fired.
We added a couple of additional categories .  for if things went south.
Purple                We are leaving, orderly retreat.  drop what you are doing and retrieve fallen comrades and leave.
Black                 Lethal Force necessary. Kill or be killed, save the hostage from being eaten by a monster. save the Earth.
 
 Also, when the group inducted a new member in the team, we strongly suggested that they pick up the Team package deal.  Which was Martial arts, First Aid, coordination roll, and  Communications.  To justify the training rolls, we actually games out exercises at a local Fire Department training area, much to the amusement of the firemen, but we would practice pair specific combat maneuvers and  also ordered retreats, with the flyers picking up the slow pokes and the unconscious, and our teleporter  getting everyone out in the shortest amount of time.  However, because the training was a common and scheduled thing, the Villains once attempted to ambush us there, and it didn't go well for them. (This is where my character had to face a grand jury for manslaughter< but was acquitted). We had other skin of our teeth escape, but I am happy to say that we were never captured.

Now the game was run in a comic book store, in the middle of the Irpon age, where we could just grab a comic off the shelf as research or justification, so the campaign was of it's time, but man Bob ran a good game, and the situations forced us into  very tight teamwork.  Great players, too.

I've done this as well.  In a lot of cases, the players say they're okay with it... until the villains actually do it.  Then, the players are suddenly not so keen on it.  (My favorite tactical example of this is the "extra shot when he's down" to take advantage of causing 2x STUN to an unconscious person.  The PCs in my game do it *ALL THE FRICKING TIME*.  But heaven forbid the bad guys do it to one of them!)
 
BTW, I do the reverse as well -- before giving a villain a particular power or use his powers in a creative and potentially abusive way, I ask myself if I'd be okay with the players doing the same.  In most cases, I've decided not to allow myself to do it in the first place.

Regarding using agents against the heroes, for speed and ease of play I use mass combat rules where I group agents into one meta-character, though I also tend to give one or two agents from each group distinctive personalities or actions so they're not all just faceless mooks.  For instance, a more vocal agent might trash-talk the heroes, or do something crazy or stupid (rush ahead of his teammates, etc.).  The funny thing is, the heroes sometimes decide to concentrate their attacks on that hapless agent, rather than taking on bigger threats.
 
A recent example of this was an adventure I ran when a powerful vampire had a cadre of lesser vampires, mostly college students or gangbangers she had bitten.  Compared to the PC heroes, none of those lesser vampires were very powerful, so I was mainly grouping them together.  Except for one... Vampire Elvis.  This was a would-be Elvis impersonator the Countess had turned into a minion, and for fun I modified lyrics to some Elvis songs and sang them when he took his actions.  Several of the PCs decided to ignore more pressing threats to concentrate attacks on Vampire Elvis just to shut him up. 

Regarding using agents against the heroes, for speed and ease of play I use mass combat rules where I group agents into one meta-character, though I also tend to give one or two agents from each group distinctive personalities or actions so they're not all just faceless mooks.  For instance, a more vocal agent might trash-talk the heroes, or do something crazy or stupid (rush ahead of his teammates, etc.).  The funny thing is, the heroes sometimes decide to concentrate their attacks on that hapless agent, rather than taking on bigger threats.
 
A recent example of this was an adventure I ran when a powerful vampire had a cadre of lesser vampires, mostly college students or gangbangers she had bitten.  Compared to the PC heroes, none of those lesser vampires were very powerful, so I was mainly grouping them together.  Except for one... Vampire Elvis.  This was a would-be Elvis impersonator the Countess had turned into a minion, and for fun I modified lyrics to some Elvis songs and sang them when he took his actions.  Several of the PCs decided to ignore more pressing threats to concentrate attacks on Vampire Elvis just to shut him up.