TheEmerged

Re: Searching: Mechanon & The Zodiac Zodiac, if I understand properly, is owned by Doug Shuler (yes, the same guy who did the artwork for several Magic: The Gathering cards) and therefore unlikely to show up under 5th due to rights issues.

Re: Penalty Skill Levels for noncombat skills? For example, "PSL's vs RSR penalties where the penalty is at least -6"...

Re: Down with active points The longer I play HERO, the more attention I pay to DC and DEF and the less I pay to active points. They're still a useful tool, but the operative terms being "useful" and "tool". I've begun allowing non-combat powers to be built without respect to the cap, and so far it's working better than expected.

Re: Penalty Skill Levels for noncombat skills? RE: Original topic. There's already precedent for this -- take a good look at Environmental Movement, it uses this mechanic. RE: Take 11/8. HERO already has a similar mechanic, allowing you to get bonuses to your skill roll by taking extra steps on the time table. And given HERO's chance curve, without penalties to counteract even a +2 or +3 to the roll can nearly guarantee success. RE: Need for this. Depends on your campaign, and the feeling of your GM toward how meaningful skills should be. If you belong to the school at believes 11- is a professional level of skill and that how much you make the roll by should never matter, then PSL's for skill is a meaningless complication. If on the other hand you believe 14- better represents a professional level of skill, and that players who purchase skills should be rewarded, then this could be an interesting option. I started allowing them in my current campaign, and while I see a couple potential low-level abuses for the most part I like the way they work out. The following are a couple of examples I've seen on PC sheets. #1> "MacGuyver" levels -- PSL vs the penalty for having insufficient tools. A must for any self-respecting gadgeteer, or Survivalist (Generally assumed to cap at -4) #2> "Postcog" levels -- PSL vs time-based penalties; for the PC in question, it applies to her Tracking skill to allow her to negate the penalty for following older trails. (Generally -1 per step on the time chart until "day", -2 per step thereafter) One that I initially allowed and quickly changed my mind on was allowing PSL's to apply to Find Weakness (vs Lack of Weakness or the penalty for multiple checks). All it took was seeing it in battle with a High-SPD martial artist type... One that I initially disallowed but have decided to allow on a test basis is PSL's vs the RSR penalty. For the most part it won't be that much of a cost saving, except for cases where a large number of skills are affected. My initial fear that it would trivialize the RSR penalty might bear out, though.

Re: What is YOUR favorite Champions character? As far as characters the PC's hate, that would be "Annoying Man". I've been threatened with life and limb if he ever puts in another appearance... That was the first Champions battle I had make it to a second minute -- not segment, phase, or even turn, minute...

Re: A "tactics elemental" The following are powers belonging to "Noah Tall", a similar NPC in my campaign. "Team Spirit" 4 Overall levels, 2 each defined as +OCV and +DCV. Usable by up to 8 others, simultaneous, at range, "Actual effect determined by RSR" -- that is, his teammates get a bonus depending on how much he makes the RSR by. Note that this applies to non-combat skills as well, which is often even more frightening... EB +3/4 Indirect, RSR Demolitions -- "Supreme trap-making skills". This represents his ability to place traps thanks to his superhuman ability to predict how the battle is going to play out. In-game he fires an EB, the special effect of which is that a trap he planted well in advance goes off. +5 DCV, "Read them like a book", combined with Defensive Manuever 4, both limited "Not vs opponents with Tactics 15- or INT 30, or better" (-1/4). The better to represent his ability to predict his opponents so well he's harder to hit.

Re: What is YOUR favorite Champions character? Published, 4th Edition: The Leaper (Champions of the North). Foxbat, with a little more competence. Published, 5th Edition: For some reason Zephyr is showing up more than I expected. I also have to admit that Ironclad has made me all-but-forget Obsidian ever existed Personal: I'm having quite a bit of fun with my current GM-PC ("The Disruptor"), but push comes to shove it's still Stefan Sashkey (from The Emergence).

Re: Champions at a higher point cost Unless they've changed the rules, this violates one of the board policies. Otherwise I'd have long ago posted my NeoChampion Universe team (Defender, Ironclad, Sapphire, Solitaire, KnightSeeker, and Jaguar), corrected and boosted to the 550-650 point range.

Re: Mega Scaling Explosions For my own campaigns I've ruled no, for the same reason I don't allow Megascale to be applied to an Area Effect: One Hex power -- Explosion is really a 'special case' of AE, so IMO this is an attempt to "shave" +1/2 worth of cost. I also require powers that naturally affect an area (Change Environment, Darkness, Images, etc.) to cover at least a 3" radius before Megascale can be applied (I similarly require 10" of movement power before Megascale can be applied). Your mileage may vary, especially given other campaign constraints and all that.

Re: Multiple Grabs Oh, and come to think of it, I suppose you could also use... Transform: Victim into identical copy of victim that his "grabbed" by the user of this power... Yes, Virginia, that was an attempt at humor...

Re: Multiple Grabs To make multiple grabs, you'll need something to hold them with. So you're going to be using either Extra Limbs with Invisible Power Effects, or Telekinesis (which IMO should require Extra Limbs to have more than two "limbs" anyway, using the "two flat boards" principle...).

Re: Crowd control overpowering game Mental Illusion can be one heck of a "crowd control" power too. Creative use can cause players to miss phases regardless of their attack powers. RE: Mental Entangle. I allowed this once, and found it too powerful for my taste. Ditto NND Entangle. Neither is allowed in my campaigns as a result. YMMV and all that.

Re: Taking Characters from books and making them your own... I borrow liberally and regularly. For example, 3 of the major "official teams" in my campaign are one-offs of the Avengers (Capital Gang), Justice League (Justice Battalion), and X-Men (the Moderators). The various members are a variety of one-offs (example: Mega is Supergirl powered down slightly and lacking heat vision), parodies (example: Victory is a parody of Wonder Woman), remixes (example: Baethan Electrum is a remix of Booster Gold, with his original powerset and similar attitude but a different motivation and competence level) -- and the occassional direct conversion (Warbird). Sometimes changes have to be made to fit the world -- Rope Trick of the Moderators is a conversion of Jean Grey, who has to disguise her telekinesis from a world with a strong anti-psionic backlash.

Re: First Round TKO Okay, from the top #1> Exam the campaign standards of your campaign, in particular the area of minimum defenses. If you're throwing around 12DC attacks (average result 42 STUN) and characters are running around with less than 15-20 DEF and/or less than 30 STUN, one-hit KOs are going to happen. Yes, it's annoying and a little anal but if you want people still standing after a few blows they need to be designed to still be standing after a few blows #2> Seriously reconsider vulnerabilities. Yes, they're very genre-correct for campaigns with a Golden or Silver Age feel. However in my experience PC's simply should not take more than a x1 1/2 vulnerability unless said vulnerability is fairly uncommon. Otherwise they're going to get hosed, and their options are changing their mind or learning to live with it. #3> Reexamine how much REC the character buys. In my experience many players under-purchase REC, especially if they're used to battles that end in under a Turn. Of course this only matters if they don't get stunned into "recover whenever the GM feels like it" territory... #3a> It's not appropriate for all genres, but in some cases it might be appropriate to "pro-rate" the post-12 recovery. Again, this only matters etc etc... #4> Consider either going with an automatic xSTUN mod (like x3 for powers and x2 for "real" weapons), or using the HitLocation chart. I've used the later for my campaigns almost from the beginning and I have only a portion of the Stun Lotto problems many GM's complain about. #5> When in doubt, fudge like heck. I can't recommend strongly enough that you get in the habit of making all your dice rolls as GM behind a screen. Some players won't like it, you'll have to find your own solution to that. One example wouble be to let only enough STUN through to CON-stun

Re: To agree or disagree with Steve's answer I've always run it that they "recover" as a single stack, with the quicker fade rate drains coming off first. snippy and unneccessary crack deleted by poster

Re: Linking a characteristic decrease to a power I've seen an alternate construct: a Multipower with two variable slots. One is for 15 points of growth, the other is 15 points of INT. There are 15 points in the pool, and the character has bought off 5 points of INT. This only works if it's a point-for-point ratio, of course.

Re: What would your character LIKE TO do? The Disruptor NeoChampions Campaign: He would want to be able to prove to the world that he's actually innocent of the first crime he's accused of, and to be able to tell the truth about Silver Streak's disappearance and people actually believe him. Stefan Sashkey The Emergence: If he had his druthers he'd leave the universe to fend for itself and settle down to a pleasant life with his wife -- after finding a way to make her as nigh-immortal as he is -- and be a proper father to the twins. But he knows that can never happen. SythRyss D&D 3.0 "Skull Axis" campaign. SythRyss would continue to increase the power of the Skull Axis (a loose confederation of weak monster races like kobolds, goblins, orcs, etc), and eventually rule the world. He would also like to find that elvish mage that mind-controlled him and subject her to a slow, painful death. "Billy" Alternity: Billy would do what he's already doing -- living out what is left of his days in a life of adventure, enjoying the fruits of his labors instead of watching them go to others.

Re: What is it about Champions? That's actually the only WoD-system game I've actually played. It had its moments, although it started getting wonkier as they added to the system instead of better...

Re: When you charge the PCs END? I'll only make exceptions (to "when in combat") for times when long-term exertion might kick in -- or times I find it important drama-wise

Re: Hero System women are all insanely attractive The NeoChampions campaign has a female NPC with a normal COM of 30 and a possible COM of 60 (costs END), and a male NPC with a normal COM of 0 with potential scores of +/- 20, +/- 40, and +/- 60 depending on his activation roll. I try to be equal-opportunity with these things

Re: Working in those unusual skills Personally I look for opportunities to reward players that take unusual skills. For languages, nothing works quite as well as the cleaning crew that doesn't speak English One of the PC's in the campaign took PS: Waiter to reflect the job his character had before his origin story kicks in. So when I was looking for challenges for the PC's during the "Sidekick" session (imagine "The Apprentice" for superheroes), one of the challenges was to see who could earn the most tips during a charity dinner. Guess who walked away with this one?

Re: Why that costume In The Disruptor's case (NeoChampions Universe), his mismatched armor is intended to represent the way he is constantly tinkering with it. It's an extention of the stereotypical engineer's mentality -- he doesn't give a fig about form, only function. In the case of Stephen Sashkey (from the Emergence campaign), he doesn't where a "costume" -- it's too noticeable (even though most supers in that campaign do wear costumes at least part of the time). Instead he wears "the Steve outfit": jeans, T-shirt, and an oversized flannel shirt unbuttoned over it. The outer shirt forms a kind of "poor man's cape", the look is intended.

Re: Brave New World "to HERO Conversions & Adaptations" I adopted a fair amount of the super material (as oppossed to the alternate history material) from it for my current campaign. I found its treatment of a Registration Act to be far more realistic than the 5th Ed CU (especially the disorganized resistance and "de facto" acceptance by most of the public). I also adopted the idea that low-powered supers tend toward certain schticks that would end up being named. In particular, the idea that magic users are named Bargainers was a piece of terminology I liked.

Re: 5th Edition Villain Updates My main list is CLOWN, including a few house-created characters like Da Punisher and the MasterMime.

Re: Loving Your DNPCs The only way I'd allow the original topic (DNPC+PsychLim) it is if there's some reason it's worth seperate points. I won't allow it for, say, Lois Lane (I still maintain she's less of a DNPC than a follower with "Psych Lim: Hostage fetish"). There has to be a reason why being in love with the DNPC causes a seperate set of problems from having to protect that person, such as the fact that the DNPC happens to hate the character's guts. And, as someone else mentioned, as GM you had better believe any PC that double dipped in this way would be paying for it On the issue of the DNPC/Follower, I've allowed this a few times in the past. This would be appropriate for the Silver Age Jimmy Olson, for example.