Fireg0lem

Re: Armour Piercing in Champions 6e This is not quite an accurate comparison, because 10d6 with a +1/4 advantage is 62 AP, not 60. It would be more appropriate to compare 9.5d6 Energy Blast with AP (which is exactly the same as 12d6 unadvantaged), at which point it is 17 vs. 21 (advantage AP), and the breakpoint where they do the same is at 17 DEF. Other than that I think your point is accurate; the intended balance looks to be that the regular attack is better against enemies with Hardened defenses, along with minor things like more knockback.

Re: A level of confusion For 3/5 the cost of DCV, you can easily afford the already-not-a-bad-idea Defense Manuever IV, which removes both those problems since it makes the levels default to DCV. As far as "there are situations where those levels can be denied to him," there are a whole lot more situations where being able to shift them to OCV is way, WAY more useful than DCV.

Re: A level of confusion Yeah, our ruling is that 3 and 5 point levels may only contain one "class" (range/melee/mental), period. Otherwise it is just flat-out superior to DCV.

Re: Variable power pool? Questions... I agree - that's why we have the "This is much more lenient..." line in there.

Re: Variable power pool? Questions... Our group's ruling on limitations on powers in VPPs is as follows: VPPs and Limitations: Most limitations are -0 if put on powers inside a VPP. In order to be full value, a limitation must be guaranteed to come up every time the power is used, and not be negatable by changing the VPP. This is much more lenient for VPPs that take a full phase or more to change; in general, only ones that the character will always know far enough in advance to swap out should be banned (ie, “Only on Tuesday” unless the VPP takes a week or more to change). Examples: Activation Roll is fine - it will always be rolled. Not Vs. (SFX) is not allowed - if you come across someone who can use that SFX, you can change it. Incantations are not allowed - if something prevents the incantations, you can change it. No Range is not allowed - if you need to use the power at range, you can change it. Cannot Be Used With Manuever X is not allowed - if you want to use it with Manuever X, you can change it. Charges - No Increased Endurance Cost - Yes Side Effect - Yes, provided that the side effect is not in some way conditional/easily removed such that it doesn't matter to you. For example, Activation Roll + Side Effect of taking damage if the roll fails is fine. Not In (Situation), Linked, Lockout, etc - not allowed.

Re: Questions about the HERO system. I'm not sure quite what you mean by "at least some basic rules for miniatures." Do you mean that you do not want a system that has abstract ranges/movement (for example, not like Vampire or Wild Talents), and instead has ranges, movement, and whatnot with measurements so that you can set up your battle on a grid with miniatures? If so, then yes, HERO meets all these requirements.

Re: The cranky thread The engineering students whose tests I am grading are really, really stupid on average. More people than not failed the question I'm grading* because they cannot factor a simple cubic polynomial with integer coefficients and roots. They should have learned this in 11th grade. Arrgh. The worst answer I got was "I can't factor this polynomial with the means available to me, so it must have no roots." The best wrong answer I got was some attempts at a solution, then a picture of a smiling whale with the caption "partial marks save the whales, every part mark helps." I gave him 1/10 and drew a picture of Captain Ahab holding a harpoon and saying "Tharr be the white whale!" *(I grade 1000 copies of one question, and a different TA grades each question for all the sections for fairness)

Re: Ctrl+V It's the Hofstadter-Conway $10,000 sequence. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hofstadter-Conway10000-DollarSequence.html

Re: Is our approach to ' Combat Levels' fundamentally flawed Uh, what? 2x 5-point CSLs with -1.5 "Damage Only" are 4 points. That makes them cheaper than buying DCs for just a single attack.

Re: Ctrl+V R(n) = R(n-R(n-1)) + R(R(n-1))

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? JCVD, it is Jean-Claude Van Damme playing himself, and it is beautiful.

Re: More Blockages The comparison is not "Block vs. not take defensive actions." It is "Block vs. Dodge." Normally, Block is marginally better than dodge under very particular circumstances. Nerfed block is worse than dodge under everything except rare edge cases.

Re: Is our approach to ' Combat Levels' fundamentally flawed Oh hey. Also, Deadly Blow. CSLs, Only for Damage (-1/2).

Re: Is our approach to ' Combat Levels' fundamentally flawed I do agree with you that such limitations on defensive powers should generally be worth more than they're listed as, but I think that's a flaw, not a feature. Limitations on VPPs are another good example. Only Adjustment Powers - well, adjustment powers are less than a quarter of the available powers, so this should be -1.5 to -2. It is actually -1/2. Only Drains and Aids would clearly be -2 if you were limiting based on how many options are cut out. But it's only -1. Attack powers are less than half of all powers, so it should be at least -1 to have "Only Attack Powers," but it is instead only -1/4.

Re: Is our approach to ' Combat Levels' fundamentally flawed It's the distinction between "power is only usable half as often" and "power has only half as many options." For example, Cannot Englobe on Barrier is an option-reducing limitation and is -1/4.

Re: More Blockages Sure, you could spend 20 or so points getting your Block up to the point where it isn't pointless. But it will still be worse than Block, and Block is already only selectively better than dodge. You'd be better off buying Martial Dodge and a few levels with it instead. It's not an inherently bad idea, but it accomplishes fundamentally the same thing as "Block is removed, just Dodge or Roll With the Punch instead."

Re: Is our approach to ' Combat Levels' fundamentally flawed This reasoning is off. Losing 2/3 of your options is not losing 2/3 of your power. Compare the cost of a 3-slot multipower with a single power - 1/3 the options will cost roughly 75% as much.

Re: Trick Shooting for my Archer Wait, by "all slots 32 charges" do you mean "each slot has 32 charges" as in you have 32 "plug the barrel" shots, and 32 "trick shots" or did you mean you have 32 charges shared by the whole MP? If its the latter then it is legit, and I was just confused by the wording.

Re: Is our approach to ' Combat Levels' fundamentally flawed I'm actually OK with this, and in fact I wish more of the "published" characters who could take advantage of this did so. Being a one-trick pony is a significant drawback, and I think getting point savings for it is fair. That said, we do have two restrictions: you can't have more than one "category" (range/melee/mental) in a single 3 or 5-point CSL, and you can't take 5-point CSLs with "anything I might conceivably use" unless those things are all in the same category and also all grouped in a power framework or martial art.

Re: Trick Shooting for my Archer I think that's because most powers can inherently be missile deflected, but entangles normally cannot. I would allow both TK slots. There are a few problems I see. First, the entangle is a little wonky - you're paying for an advantage (autofire) and a disadvantage (each arrow only hits one limb) that together make the power worse than just a straight entangle. I would remove both of those and replace them with "Must Use One Charge Per Limb (maximum 3 limbs) -1/4. Second, you can't do that construct with Charges on the MP pool. 32 charges on the pool means 32 charges on the entire MP, not 32 per slot. You would need to make the pool larger and put 32 charges (or more or less) on each individual slot.

Re: Mental CSL's and base cost weirdness (6e) At 3 or less attack powers, you can buy 3-point MCSLs, though, so there isn't really a breakpoint.

Re: Champions Powers book issues... Yes, RKA's are counted as vs. PD/ED. That's listed under AVAD. The reason is that PD/ED stops their stun. I think the answer is that both ways are legitimate ways to build a drowning power but that whichever way you use should be consistent within your game. In other words, a GM might prefer one over the other, but shouldn't make one player use one way and another play use another way.

Re: 5th Ed: Flying Dodge Here's what we made as our Flying Dodge houserule. We've found it to still be a good maneuver on fast characters. I have repeatadly observed the "auto-avoid melee attacks" portion of un-houseruled flying dodge to be way, way overpowered every time I've seen a character both (a) have flying dodge and ( know that you could use it to auto-avoid melee attacks. Case 1: You are using Flying Dodge as an aborted action Step 1: You gain all benefits of Flying Dodge, including extra DCV, linked powers, reassigned CSLs, et cetera, but don't move yet. Step 2: Fully resolve all non-area-of-effect attacks targeted at you. Step 3: If you were not in the area of any area-of-effect attacks, go to step 5. If you were, then you make a DEX roll; for every 1 point you succeed by, you may take up to 2m of your movement immediately. Note that your DEX and/or movement may have been reduced in step 2. Step 4: Resolve all Area of Effect attacks whose area you were in. Step 5: Take any movement not used up in step 3. Note that your DEX and/or movement may have been reduced in steps 2 and 4. Case 2: You are using Flying Dodge as a held action In this case, treat Flying Dodge exactly as if you used your held action to move for all purposes (including needing to make a Dexterity/Ego roll to move first), except that you also gain the defensive benefits (per step 1 above) of flying dodge immediately (before rolled-off actions resolve).

Re: Automaton Vehicles We went with tripling the cost only of PD and ED defenses (but not DN or DR), and then ruling that when other defenses block BODY damage (such as Power Defense vs. a Drain BODY), they have 1/3 effect for automatons. I hadn't really thought about the automaton vs. vehicle issue before but I think it is a cause for concern. I'm not really sure that the best solution isn't just to say that vehicles also pay triple for defenses in the same way automatons do.

Re: Presti's Weapon Rebuilds Might I suggest building the defensive value of shields like this: +x DCV +x Resistant Protection, Only Against Attacks That Hit Locations (blah) By One Or Zero (-2) The +DCV reflects that some attacks will glance off the shield by hitting it at an angle, but some attacks will be "direct hits" on the shield and damage it/possibly you. This is nice if you want blocking a giant's club or something to still hurt, but not be useless. It also allows shields to break over time as they take "direct hits." Also, this makes weapons like Axes/Hammers/etc that get bonus damage against objects more useful - they'll break through a shield more quickly than other weapons.