Vulcan

Re: How was it in the store? Too many variables to tell. Obviously Vigil isn't the guy at the counter, el luchadoro took a moment to talk before attacking, Vigil would have been ready for him. And even in secret ID, Vigil is a world-class martial artist and wouldn't need to resort to his powers... unless the guy is a super of some sort, anyway. That leaves Vigil as one of the bystanders, and that brings up an intersting question - did el luchadoro actually slam the dude's head on the counter, or just fake it? Vigil's senory acuity would allow him to tell the difference in the sound of the impacts. At any rate, given that he didn't totally collapse after the impacts he's probably not badly hurt. And unless el luchadoro decides to push the issue, Vigil might just let him walk, especially if the luchadoro's little soliloquy gives him a pretty darn good reason to have acted the way he did. If he does push it, he'd better have real powers or he's going to discover, like that 13-year old in the other WWYCD, that acting like a supervillain isn't a game, and can get you seriously hurt - or even killed...

Re: Royal Pain After the first incident the government would declare him 'persona non grata' and send him home. Problem solved. I'm afraid Vigil would handle the brat pretty roughly. It's unlikely he would be killed out of hand (although accidents can happen), but a lengthy hospital stay is very likely. Superheroing is NOT a game. Treating it as such can get you killed quite easily.

Re: A Wicked Situation... After taking a look at Mr. Wicked, well, unless the GM did some deus ex machina with the VPP so Mr. Wicked could detect Vigil first, he's meat on the table. He'll walk up to the girl... and step into the afterlife in one easy step.

Re: A Wicked Situation... What about pre-captivity memories? Is she really from Victorian times, or just dressed up that way? EDIT: Regardless of the situation, Vigil is going to live up to his name and observe the situation for a farily lengthy period before getting involved, if for no other reason than to see if it's a trap, and if it's not a trap then to see if whoever tied the girl up is coming back. If this is simply what it looks like - a kidnapper/rapist playing sick games - then neither one of them will see Vigil until he quite literally takes the rapist's head off. No, Vigil isn't particularly heroic. But he'll guarantee this guy will NEVER do it again...

Re: Mystical tests of character? The best way to do it is to make the test about teaching the character something about himself and/or having failure forshadow a future issue the character will have. This is the way Lucas handled Luke's test in the cave, after all.

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities Totally with you there. There is no excuse for rape, period, and I think rapists should be shot (note, I'm not a judge so I can afford to be over-the-top harsh about it). However, a prudent person takes precautions. Being able to hand an attacker his head is one heck of a precaution.

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster Here's my horror stories with mass transit in STL. 1) 90 minutes, 75 of which are waiting at the transfer point... to go a mile and a half, which I can walk in 45 minutes. 2) On Gravois Road between Lindbergh and Highway 270, a two-mile stretch, there are no bus stops. North of Lindbergh you can take the 110 bus, South of 270 the 210 bus. To go south from Linbergh and Gravois to 270 and Gravois, you have to take the 110 NORTH. North all the way downtown, a good ten miles. Then you wait for the metro to take you to the Delmar station, 5-6 miles. Then you have to switch to the other branch of the metro which goes to the Shrewsbery station, 4-5 miles. Then you can finally catch the 210, which goes down Highway 44 to catch Highway 270 and eventually exiting onto Gravois and dropping you off after traveling a good 15 miles. To cover those two miles by mass transit, you've traveled 35 miles and taken well over two hours. Instead of just extending the 110 route to cover that section.

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster If you go back and watch the movies, the only time intersystem travel seems to take a significant amount of time was when the Millenium Falcon had to get from Hoth to Bespin... without the main hyperdrive working. All the rest of the trips seem to be very quick - a matter of a few hours, no more than a day or two at most. It's fast enough that even fighters with minimal facilites can make interstellar trips easily and pretty regularly. For example, the flight from Naboo and Coruscant can be made on a starship that seemed more similar to a bus than to a cruise ship. This implies you won't be onboard long enough for sleeping in a chair to be a serious problem. And Naboo is apparently pretty far out on the edge of the galaxy, since you have to pass Tatooine to get there from Coruscant and the other Core Words... and Tatooine is in the "Outer Rim Territories". So if you can cover half the width of the galaxy in no more than a day but cannot make a serious attempt to explore other galaxies implies a very isolated galaxy indeed. In the Expanded Universe, the Republic (pre-Empire) sent the Outbound Flight expedition to explore a nearby galaxy... but Palpatine sabotaged it in order to kill off the six Jedi Master who were on the expedition. I would guess his motive was that these Jedi Masters would have had a lot of prestige when they returned which would have made General Order 66 very difficult to apply to them.

Re: Has anybody experimented with removing Speed? Removing speed basically means you're not playing HERO System anymore. The speed chart is the core mechanic of the game. By all means go for it if you think it will work for you. But the speed chart is pretty integral to the game, you might find a fair chunk of hidden imbalances by not using it.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Ah. There's the bullet trap. Looks pretty good though...

Re: "Neat" Pictures Is that... actually... can it be... a breastplate for a woman without the built-in bullet trap in the middle?

Re: "Neat" Pictures Goldfinger. This appears to be right before he beats the villian (granted, by a technicality) at golf and royally pisses him off. You also get to see Oddjob's fancy hat at work too... EDIT: Ninja'd!

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Re: Does anyone ekse like People with Powers style games? As a player, I've found that these plotlines almost always degenerate into 'innocent people who just happen to have powers vs. ridiculously paranoid people without powers but in positions of power and influence trying to destroy them.' See the TV show Alphas for a modern example. It's a plot that goes all the way back to early X-Men, that people with powers are not trusted no matter how much good they do. And frankly, my personality runs toward the 'Oh really? Then a pox on you and your house, save the world YOURSELF next time!' solution to that.

Re: So, just to eyeball a custom advantage Like most wierd powers of this type, I'd make it a separate Transform (this target to has a wound that won't heal from healing powers). More expensive, yes. Much fewer arguments that way.

Re: Electricty based characters My wife played an electrical character for a good number of years. We borrowed heavily from the Ultimate Powers book; there's a lot of good stuff in it (but it would need to be brought in line with 5E). First off was the Ohm Effect: 75% ED Damage Reduction, Resistant; only vs. Electrical damage (-1/2). This almost never came into play, except for the few times she needed to REALLY juice up and grabbed a high voltage line. We (the group) ultimately decided that since an obvious energy character would be the LAST person anyone would attack with that form of energy, a -1 to possibly even a -1.5 limitation would really have been more appropriate. But, to juice up: Aborbtion, ED to Endurance. A nice quick recharge power, allowing her to push her powers a lot. Eventually she even bought an extended push on her Blast - 2d6 Blast, x10 End, only when pushing - so say that when she pushed, she could REALLY push! Another favorite of the player (less so for the GM) was her Teleportation (with the safe arrival adder) through electrical lines. Electricity goes nearly everywhere... and she could too. Eventually the GM realized that as soon as we knew where we needed to go, at least one of us could get inside without any trouble whatsoever.

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Re: Headline: Bank Robber Suffers A Net Loss... Any gadget-based character I had would be scouring the internet for those plans... A netlauncher could be handy. Aside from that, laugh. More paranoid characters might check out the 15-year old, his friends, and their parents for signs of MSD (Mad Scientist Disorder).

Re: "Neat" Pictures You would be absolutely amazed at what a large group of highly-motivated people can do when they put their minds into it.

Re: Cool Guns for your Games Well. Color me embarressed. I could have sworn...

Re: Cool Guns for your Games Don't tell me you don't recognize the smart gun from Aliens?

Re: Cool Guns for your Games

Re: Cool Guns for your Games

Re: When I Am the Benevolent Ruler.... Why do you think John levied all those harsh taxes? To pay for Richard's crusade! Richard abandoned the country to his brother to go seek glory in the Middle East, and nearly bankrupted his country to do it. Yet John is remembered as the villian, and Richard the benevolent King who returned to save his people from John's excesses. Of course, this is only really understood because modern historians made the connections, so I suppose your point stands - so far as modern historians go. The historians of past generations, on the other hand, seem to be very good at rewriting history to suit their own judgements and preconceptions... which was my point.

Re: When I Am the Benevolent Ruler.... Tell that to Richard the Lion-Hearted, who was only benevolent in comparison to his brother.