jtelson

Re: Assistance from Others... That's just, well, odd. Ummm I would probably go with -1/2 and then try to make it about that much worth of an issue when I ran. Really, someone pulling you to help with stretching? I can think of some uses but most of those would be stretching usable by others (maybe with some kind of focus limit [other players stretchy body]) My wife can come up with a few inappropriate jokes, and has been since I read this out loud.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? The relative utility of varying defenses is going to differ considerably from campaign to campaign. I tend to use agents and thugs reasonably often. Since this means that once the group is id'd the character with a 2 slot force field multipower will have a considerable advantage vs someone who has purchased FF straight (142.9% of a straight FF buy this is vs. the 71.4% of the straight buy they have under neutral circumstances). Fights in my campaigns only rarely are large brawls between groups of supers where having larger less versitile defenses has a greater utility and so I would tend to disallow the split FF multipower were I running something more 'standard', however, I don't think there would be any problem with a player taking the more versitile option (within the Def parameters of the campaign).

Re: What is your most humous story Setup: Modern government supers group in a training scenario. The team is split into two groups to practicing Capture techniques using minimal force. The scenario ends when someone ends up in the 'cage'. Character: Goldbrick - Brick type has been around since WWII. Legendary for being lazy. He was, in that game world, responsible for the phrase goldbricking. The scenario starts and Goldbrick grabs his closest team member, throws him into the cage, slaps his hands together and says 'Right, that's lunch' After the group recovered and the Team leader finished shouting the scenario was restarted with the caveat 'other' team member.

Re: "All or Nothing" Power Limitation..... Endurance cost to maintain size and needing to move through space less than 4 meters are both significant limits to not being able to scale the power. I'd definately go with -1/4 (essentially Beam).

Re: Best and most Pointless superbattle of all time That book was awesome, particularly the end.

Re: Your "2007" Pet Gaming Projects The characters are finished and all but two of the preludes have been run so the pieces are finally in place as John Watson tries desperately to assemble a group of people both capable and willing to battle the evil forces that are even now moving to seize control of the world - or My LEG-esque campaign set in 1893 is finally going to start. The Psi-Lords of Metro City's second arc is coming to a close so I'm actually looking for something else to run for my Friday night group. I've been considering something unusual - A small Bedouin tribe in just pre-Islamic Arabia runs afoul of the Banu Quraish and are forced to flee into the desert. I was thinking sort of like Battlestar Galactica but with camels.

Re: [Movie] Day Watch Wiki Info about the novels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_Watch_%28novel%29 and the movies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daywatch

Re: Would you allow it?: A FF buster If he's able to maintain a database of forcefields and always bypass known ones - I'd go with Armor Piercing Only vs ID'd sigs and maybe a few extra dice, so I think I'd just like to be friends with +Xd6 EB.

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? Part of what you're seeing may be based on standards for the Superhero genre. You often have energy projectors in the comics use their attacks in a variety of ways, but how common are characters whose defenses are visibly adjustable?

I'm looking for ideas on how to model a time-based ability. The character takes no damage from an attack when it hits, but can at some point in the future recieve the damage at which point it heals naturally. This is principally to deal with Body damage rather than stun (For Stun, because of the fast recovery time, I would just build it as high DEF, REC, and Stun scores). My first though is Armor/Force Field w/ Side Effects. Any thoughts?

Re: [Movie] Day Watch It only opened in limited release in the US this weekend but the Mrs and I are itching to see it. The third novel is called Dusk Watch and the fourth Final Watch although I only ever hear the movies discussed as a trilogy.

Re: Hero system complexity Congrats on having a ten year old that could be taught the Hero System. That being said - it's easier to teach a ten year old something than a twenty-five year old, also just because your ten year old could learn it doesn't mean all ten year olds can. It's also easier to learn something when you are being taught by a patient and loving parent than by some guy in your average gaming group who you see once or twice a week. My wife, who can run an office like a swiss watch, sight read music, do our taxes without software, track every birthday and aniversary for all of our friends and family, and memorize entire operas in foreign languages she doesn't speak, can not learn the system because it's too complicated. It's not that she hasn't tried or that she's bad at math. I think Ghost-Angel has it right - The first time I played Champions (1985ish), I thought it was the most idiotic game I'd seen. We were using the pre-fab characters and I had Crusader. I couldn't hurt the guy we were fighting so I scanned down through the character sheet and saw that I had Acrobatics and Boot Jets. Perfect - I run up to the villian, do a half flip so my feet were near his face, and fire off the jets. Everyone should know what happened next. It wasn't that it didn't work that bugged me during that first session, it was that it could never work - I understood the system instantly but it still seemed stupid that the bulk of your cleverness needs to be front loaded.

Re: Modifiers for Cloning Do persistant powers continue after the character expires? I thought that required independent. Also wouldn't the duplicate need to appear at the location of the character's death? For a base to have a triggered duplication power it would also require a way of detecting that the character was about to die, I think that if it duplicated him after he was dead it would be very inexpensive. It still seems like resurrect would be the most appropriate ability, with the limitation that it brings back a version based on the last DNA sample/Brain tape.

Re: Modifiers for Cloning Why wouldn't you use ressurect to acchieve this effect?

Re: Looking for Faith-based Magic Rules Thank you

Re: The Question write up? Skilled Martial Artist Capable Investigative Journalist Instant Change (Transform Guy to Guy with no Face? Mask can't be removed w/o gas but it will drop off in ~24-48 hours) Contacts Luck (Maybe - I like the write up version) I'm not sure how I'd model his meditation. Maybe just a high deduction skill and perhaps some simulate death.

Re: The Question write up? Sure, for that matter making any character is arbitrary. When you make a character that has context you can either choose to acknowledge that context or not. With the DC universe you've got to set your benchmarks. Is anyone faster than the Flash? If not then you set his speed at 12 and work down. Is anyone slower than a beat cop? If so you set their speed at 1 or 2 and work up. Everything from there is a comparison until you have your spectrum. Batman tends to be the extreme example of training, is Nightwing in his league? Is the Question? Vic Sage didn't think he was (Fables, The Question asks Batman to leave because with him present, Sage himself is useless and unable to repay his debt). So the Question is likely to be slower than Batman, from what I've read considerably slower and so I would tend to leave him at the normal human max, not the I'm an obssessive crazy training person max.

Re: The Question write up?

Re: The Question write up? Answer: Do you think the Question is as fast as Batman? Nothing I've seen in print indicates that he's in Batman's league when it comes to combat. Batman is probably the pinnacle of what 'normal' people should be able to achieve - So he gets a speed of 5 or 6. The Question, and therefore most other 'lesser' martial normals end up at a 4.

Re: The Question write up? Still just a normal guy with training, that should cap him at 4.

Re: The Question write up? The conspiracy business was just in the animated series, not really a part of the character. At least not in the far too short (35 or 36 issues) run he had with his own mag (Skillfully penned by Dennis O'Neil). His speed is fine at 4 as he's just a well trained person not superhuman.

Re: Looking for Faith-based Magic Rules What's the Spell limitation?

Re: "real" Magic resources Just a few we have knocking around at themagicalbuffet.com http://www.apocatastasis.net/OccultLibrary/Occult-Library.html http://realmagick.com/main/home.html http://www.conjurer.org/?id=west http://www.hermetics.org/ebooks.html http://www.zheper.com/blackraven/?page_id=10 http://historical.library.cornell.edu/witchcraft/ http://altreligion.about.com/library/glossary/symbols/bloccultsymbols.htm I hope they help

Re: A problem with Annie Oakley Thank you all for your help with this. "V", yours had me and the Mrs laughing so hard we nearly cried. Oddhat, It's a great idea, but Mudgett and the Chicago hotel are what I'm setting up as the campaign opener for the group (A Day at the Fair!), so I'll have to go with something else for Oakley.

Re: Three years later... The last arc of my Psi-Lords of Metro City campaign had ended with the MCMHTF being disbanded and essentially barred from public service (Despite having saved the day). The charcters were disgraced and disbanded - Tempo had opened a Pizza Parlor (Really fast delivery), Dr Rockslide was doing research in Mexico, Dead-Eye helping S&R teams in Northern Canada, Blockade became a bouncer at a strip club, and Gargoyle had gone vigellante. From the beginning there had been 3 NPC team members, Mr. Black had been a mole for a Psi-Lord all along, Skyrocket sold the designs of her armor to Israel and went into retirement, and Blaze dropped off the face of the earth. Two Years later... Gargoyle investigating a strange shooting death discovers that the victim is Blaze. Almost immediately upon discovering it she's captured by the MCMTF's replacements. Using her one phone call, she calls Tempo, who contacts the remaining team members who one by one return to Metro City to find out what happened.