austenandrews

Re: Working Precognition In theory, precognition could grant just about any effect you want. I've gone with the more generic choices, but overall, the sky's the limit.

Re: The Red Star -- Is Coming To Film. For a minute there, I thought you meant that someone's Hero game was being made into a film! Could be a fun flick.

Re: Hulk Smash! And then writes a traffic ticket? If a player fouls Shaq, is that Assaulting a Police Officer?

Re: partial effect? Very nice idea.

Re: New Avengers Good grief, has it been out that long already?

Re: Fair or Munchkin? I'd say you just decide whether the power grants it or not. No points involved.

Re: Works Well in the Source Material, not so Well in the Game

Re: Works Well in the Source Material, not so Well in the Game I've generally structured my Champs campaign worlds such that super-technology is mostly impossible to reproduce. Either it's so far advanced that no one can hope to make sense of it; or it only works in conjunction with some unique power source (like a super character); or it only works because the user generates an anomaly field that makes the impossible possible; or what-have-you. In other cases the authorities have gleaned knowledge from the technology but keep it under wraps. Which is why agents don't use blasters in my games, because it wouldn't be long before cops started using them, and eventually you'd wind up with one of those worlds where a SWAT team can deploy truck-mounted plasma cannon. That's fine for some situations, but I prefer the status quo baseline.

Re: Mental Flash I don't know what the book rule is, but I've always assumed that the targeting sense was mental. That the LOS rule is a guideline for determining cover/occlusion, not that sight is the specifically the targeting sense. For instance, I might allow a mentalist to attack a guard leaning against the opposite side of a door. But that may just be me.

Re: Favorite Abuse I've had a High Silver Age character in the back of my mind for awhile, whose power is the ability to turn into any kind of vehicle. She was always too intimidating to actually build.

Re: Fair or Munchkin? If the powers are psychic in nature, definitely munchkin. The limitation for not granting Mental Awareness is for Mental Powers modeling effects that aren't psychic.

Re: Mental Flash That's an interesting question, though... is there any other sense that can replace Mental Awareness for targeting mental powers? Can touch or Mind Scan be used as alternatives?

Re: Works Well in the Source Material, not so Well in the Game If I want a villain to break out of jail, I generally design a specific scenario around it. That way it's not a case of arbitrarily yanking the PCs' victory out from under them, but rather the villain's revenge as part of a storyline.

Re: Mental Flash The target will know who hit them, but will not be able to target them back. Correct?

Re: Mental Attacks: Visibility Thereof

Re: Working Precognition

Re: Working Precognition Mind Control - This one's a little trickier. The prediction grants one use of Mind Control. The number of dice can be high, but the effect is limited to the first level, "Actions the target would do anyway." This shouldn't force any uncharacteristic behavior on the target, but simply give the recipient of the prediction foreknowledge of what the target will do. Bought as Mind Control, Usable By Others, IPE, NND (defense = anti-scrying measures?), Telepathic Command, 1 Charge, Limited To Lowest Level Of Effect. The rub here is that the recipient of the prediction must use his own ECV to hit the target. Maybe this could be alleviated by adding Trigger to justify using the astrologer's ECV instead? Example: Theo the Thief is pinned down between two windows. Gutgrind the Guard is waiting to shoot an arrow through one of them. Normally Theo would have a 50% chance of guessing wrong. However the astrologer foretold that Gutgrind would target the left window. Theo's player rolls the Mind Control and "forces" Gutgrind to target the left window. Theo pops up in the right one and hurls a knife at his opponent. Edit: Forgot to add that this could be made more interesting with a No Conscious Control component. So in the above example Theo can't choose which window Gutgrind will target. The GM makes that choice by whatever means he wants - randomly, for dramatic effect, etc. However, Theo's player knows which choice the Mind Control is enforcing. The SFX is foreknowledge.

Re: Working Precognition Clairvoyance - The prediction allows the recipient to have some knowledge about what's happening somewhere else. The SFX are that the astrologer foretold what would happen elsewhere at that moment. Bought as Clairvoyance, Usable By Others, 1 Charge. Example: Theo the Thief consulted an astrologer to learn where Gutgrind the Guard would be, so he could avoid him. At the moment the player employs the Clairvoyance, Theo figures out that "When the thrush knocks, Gutgrind shoots golden arrows at the setting sun" means the guard is relieving himself off the western rampart.

Re: What skill would you use to see if someone is lying? As has been pointed out, any number of skills can be used to detect incriminating inconsistencies. But for a generic skill, I'd go with Conversation.

Re: Amerca's Best Comics, Tom Strong, Promethea, Etc

Re: Ahead, Warp Factor... It's somehow comforting to know that DARPA has employed mad scientists.

Re: Amerca's Best Comics, Tom Strong, Promethea, Etc I've never read Top 10, but I have Tom Strong and a bit of Promethea. Tom Strong is brilliant work. I find it utterly charming and a love letter to sixty years of accumulated comic book tropes. Moore once said that the Watchmen deconstructed superheroes and Tom Strong is his re-construction. I greatly enjoyed the satirical aspects of Promethea. But it lost me a couple of issues in, when it switched to a rather leaden stream of philosophical mumbo-jumbo. I never found the desire to pick up another issue.

Re: Enhanced Senses, overpriced ?? To be fair, I (and I suspect most of the posters here) am the sort of player who'd squeeze a campaign's worth of utility out of a Detect Small Lizard power. But most GMs I've played with don't expend much effort on making sure that Ultrasonic Hearing or Microscopic Vision are worth the cost.

Re: Working Precognition Good question. It would cost a pretty high AP per Overall Level, so it could be restricted by campaign limits and the particular magic system (framework). Maybe it requires an Astrology skill roll and grants 1 level per amount the roll was made (to the AP limit, of course). Maybe it grants more levels (i.e., has a higher AP) for more skilled astrologers.

Re: Working Precognition Detect - Basically the same paradigm as above, but applied to various Detects: Detect Safest Path, Detect Treasure, Detect Enemy, Danger Sense, etc. Example: In the Temple of Unlikely Hidden Dangers, Theo the Thief reaches a fork in the corridor. He thinks back to his astrological reading and understands a cryptic prediction which suggests that the treasure vault lies to the right.