assault

I wouldn't do that. The way Halfjack is built makes him look like a monster. The other route allows Halfjill to be more "normal", and even attractive. It soft-pedals the whole thing, not to mention conforming to an "even female monsters are sexy" stereotype.

Over my roleplaying career, I recall two instances when my character whacked another PC. In both cases, the other PC was of "CD" alignment, and a threat to the survival of the rest of the party.

The err... down side of that is obvious. You need to finish before the depressive phase starts. There's a serious risk that you won't care about what you were writing by the time the next manic phase starts, and will instead chase some other butterfly.

It's how the fire pits of Apokolips keep burning.

So much this.

Obviously that depends on the kind of fantasy.

Historically, imprisonment wasn't a penalty in most societies. You would stick someone in a tower (donjon) or underground only for the duration it took to judge them. Then you would kill, mutilate, flog or enslave them according to your laws. If you couldn't punish them that way, you might, perhaps, just leave them imprisoned for an indefinite period.

You need to reason from effect, not special effect. What can the character actually do, not how he does it.

A thought: maybe non-combat stuff shouldn't be bought with points. (I'll ignore directly adventure-related stuff like Detective Work.) Points in HERO are, in general, a balancing tool. But what actually needs to be balanced, and what doesn't? Obviously, combat needs to be balanced, or at least able to be objectively assessed. Points are relevant here. But what about social things? Does it actually matter that Tony Stark is a billionaire and Peter Parker a struggling press photographer? It obviously does in plot terms, but what does it mean in game terms? Does it mean

I did this a lot way back when (before 1e Champions, let alone any other Hero system game!) Obviously conventional adventuring doesn't happen, or only does so as a change of pace. If something like that is necessary, delegation is often possible, but naturally your character has to delegate to people they can trust. And sometimes your character has to be there in person... that's when their faces get melted.

A hopefully "final for tonight" point: in my game, if you build an Ezi-Drain character, and get the benefits, a Drainer will be one of your regular opponents, even if they don't appear in your character's Hunteds. In fact, it's probably a good idea to have a character that hits your weaknesses as a Hunted - at least you get points for them. PS (edit): While I am an advocate for the validity of "superheroic normals", my preferred character type is, using the terminology from the web- and print- series PS238, the FISS - Flight, Invulnerabilty, Speed and Strength. In other words, someone wh

Only if you live where you do. When you posted it, it was dawn for Australian Batman. (And he's a whole other question!)

I think we've put the Batman Fallacy to bed. Maybe we should address the rest of the issue?

True, but buying the military and police to make your claims stick is expensive.

My point about it being a "bogus argument" needs to be read in light of what I subsequently wrote. In the past "character concept" has been used to argue what I call the "Batman fallacy" - the notion that since Batman is "only human", he should be inferior, in terms of characteristics, to "real superheroes". It's a fallacy simply because in the source material, the majority of superbeings aren't superhuman in that area, except where that is specifically part of their powers, and in fact Batman is plausibly superior to most of them in those areas. So he is actually squar