MrAgdesh

I’ve been talking about this recently with some of my players. I’m thinking of the next Heroic level game I run having the Speed capped at four, with the CHA Max being set at 3.
 
 

Part of the problem is that the majority of Champions games are not solo hero adventures, while the majority of comic books are.
 
The Joker is less powerful than Batman.  As long as the Joker sticks to his areas of strength, he can be a reasonable opponent for the Bat.  He avoids direct combat unless he has some kind of advantage to even the scales, so he'll always have a secret weapon, or a trap, or some hostages or something to distract Batman.  The conflict usually ends when Batman gets past all the obstacles and is able to confront Joker directly.  When it gets to "punching in the face" time, Batman wins.
 
However, Joker doesn't really scale well when you've got the other members of the Justice League there.  Or other heroes at all, really.  The more heroes involved, the higher the likelihood that somebody is going to engage him in combat before he's ready.  Or avoid his obstacles.  Imagine if Batman was teamed up with Nightcrawler of the X-Men.  Bamf!  Punch!  Fight over.

I think this is oversimplified, but I like the idea of an attack which tries again until either it hits or it runs out of steam (toss on Physical Manifestation and you can also KO the ongoing attack).
 
Constant allows an attack that hits once to keep doing damage without further attack rolls, but stunning or KOing the power user, loss of LoS or changing slots in a framework all shut it off.  If all of these will also shut off your Homing Power, then a hit on the first attack "wastes" Homing, but it also "wastes" Constant, which would not have kept trying in each subsequent phase until it succeeds.  Maybe for +1/4, it tries again once, doubled for each additional +1/4, requiring no further attention from the user (maybe even no ongoing END - the END to fire the initial attack is still flying around). 
 
You could make a Homing Constant Uncontrolled attack - once it hits, it keeps going for as long as the END you dumped in to power it.

I'm not sure how Nega-Beam is relevent, besides being highly illegal and abusive. It is the second most terribly written power I've ever seen (the first being Captain Chronos in general and his NND Entangle specifically). Nega-Beam uses Summon to create a "Character" that represents an Attack.
 
HERO System should have long since included an Advantage for representing Homing attacks... so that we did not require such an atrociously built construct to represent a fairly common trope. For Example:
 
Homing (+1/4): Allows the Attack to function similarly to a heat-seeking missile. If a Homing Attack misses its target, it will bank around and attempt to attack the target again next phase (using the same OCV it initially attacked with). A character must normally pay END to maintain a Homing Attack (but needn't take any further action to maintain it). A Homing Attack is considered to have a number of meters of Flight equal to its maximum range. Homing Attacks have a normal Turn Mode (unless it takes No Turn Mode) and must obey all of the standard rules for acceleration/deceleration; meaning that it is fairly easy to block homing attacks (compared to other ranged attacks) or trick them into hitting something else (a Sucker Attack).

Actually one of the most overused lines in comic books is "how can something so big move so fast??" so the big=slow thing isn't necessarily a valid concept.  Plus, most of the big = slow thing came from movies using slow movements to emphasize their vast size, plus animation issues.  Elephants aren't any slower than weasels.

I'd go back to the source material:
C.S. Lewis' Jabberwocky
 
The word vorpal appears twice:
 
"He took his vorpal sword in hand;
   Long time the manxome foe he sought—"
 
"One, two! One, two! And through and through
   The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
   He went galumphing back."
 
Gygax decided "vorpal" meant "tends to behead easily" but that is not at all obvious to me from the poem; in fact, the meaning of "vorpal" is pretty obscure and before I encountered the word again in D&D I always thought it referenced some imaginary metal like adamantium or mithril. It could also reasonably be a style of blade, like longsword or broadsword.
 
Note that "He left it dead and with its head He went galumphing back" could easily mean he slew the monster, than beheaded it post-mortem; there's no reason I see to conclude that he definitely slew it by cutting off the head.
 
All the poem tells us is that if you go "one two! one two!" with it, it will go "through and through" and go "snicker-snack!"  This does not really distinguish it from any other sword in the hands of a capable warrior courageous enough to brave "the jaws that bite" and nimble enough to evade "the claws that catch." At most, it suggests that the sword easily cuts through the hide, flesh, and bone of a jabberwock. Or of "The Jabberwock" as it seems possible the monster was singular and unique.
 
So perhaps I'd give a "vorpal" weapon a combination of Armor Piercing, Penetrating, Reduced Negation, and some extra damage.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
And on a palindromedary I went galumphing along.
 

 

It can also go the other way as well. Although it is not stated directly in the rules, I also have a house rule with Feints that they can only be used against sentient/intelligent beings. A zombie or a wild boar isn't going to be tricked into "falling for" a feint, because they have no real concept of attack - counter attack, etc... they just go full out to the best of their abilities, there is no attempt to "out think" their opponent and they don't have the awareness that they opponent is trying to out smart them. And now that I am writing this down, I also think that Feint should also not work against a character that is Berserk as those characters are also going all out attacking and not caring if they get hit or what their opponent is doing. 

And actually, that's why feints are more effective and necessary against people who have trained the 'right' responses. The feint is intended to summon up the correct response to the move that appears to be coming, only to then switch to something that capitalizes on that. If you feint with a jab, and I do something that is totally ineffective against a jab, but happens to block the line of attack of a hook, and your real attack is a hook, the hook will fail, irrespective of the fact that my response to your feint was totally wrong for what I thought was coming.
 
Well trained techniques are a double edged sword that way.

The only reason I can think of is to speed up combat by ensuring people go down faster and stay down.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
Or to feed it to a palindromedary

If you watch a real fight, 90% of it is footwork, blocking, dodging, feinting, and moving for position.  In role playing games its too often simply two creatures pounding on each other with their most powerful attack until one falls over.  I've pondered long and hard about how to encourage more defensive and creative fighting, including getting more mobility into the game.

It could be looked at with that in mind.  If someone is good enough to feint, it encourages their opponent to do exactly the wrong thing.  It is possible to write that in HERO in a number of ways.  You can presume that the feint is successful and simply give the attacker additional OCV, damage or both or you can have the OCV and/or damage be dependent on an additional roll.  
 
I think the problem, as described, is that, if the target knows that his opponent's OCV is raised on the next action, then they may be entirely able to negate that advantage by dodging (aborting to that dodge if necessary).  If you had properly been feinted then you would not be thinking of dodging, you would be committed to whatever action your opponent fooled you into pursuing.  There is the potential for the GM managing this but that has the potential for a lot of arguing that "I was going to do that anyway"...
 
I think that, instead of providing a bonus to damage or OCV, the person who succeeds in a feint should be able to dictate what his opponent's next manouevre should be. Before committing to that manouevre on their next action, the target should get a chance to see the trap (some kind of INT versus feint roll) as a last chance of not doing what the opponent wants you to do.  I do not think it should be easy to feint but if you do, it should not be easy to spot the trap set for you.
 
Doc

A feint is supposed to be a false attack that causes your opponent to be at disadvantage vs the real attack.  Because of this I would say you have to declare the dodge or block before the feint.  Basically consider feint a combined attack not a separate action.  

Hm, so it sounds like what's really being created is the ability to keep one's opponent from Blocking or Dodging.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
What's being created here is a palindromedary tagline

How about instead of raising OCV, it decreases the targets DCV. Or better yet, instead of dealing with CV directly, it makes the attack act as invisible just for the next phase? 

Mr Agdesh I hear what you’re saying, the player knows about the surprise and would logically Dodge. However the character doesn’t know and the GM should enforce this and the player should go with it.