Talon

Agree. If the innocent is willing, then it should be automatic. If the innocent is unwilling (hysterical perhaps, or convinced that the hero is One of Those Evil Mutants) or for some other reason hard to touch, then Grab-By should do the trick.

I think Lord Liaden is on the right track...this seems like more of a out-of-game issue than an in-game one. As I understand it: 1) One PC is a loose cannon. 2) To do something about this one PC, the government (the "local government", who is that exactly?) set up an ambush, kidnapping DNPCs ("loved ones", whatever ) of many of the PCs. 3) Big fight, PCs win, DNPCs killed. 4) PCs declare intent to take over country. In performing #2 and #3, you the GM sent a message to the PCs: "The government is at war with you and is willing to play dirty." The government acted like a supervillain. Why shouldn't the PCs retaliate? If the ambush was something that the government as a whole approves of, then attacking the government as a whole seems reasonable. If the ambush was created by some sort of rogue official, then revealing that person to be a bad guy should vindicate the PCs in the eyes of the rest of the government, at least to some extent. At any rate, it seems like you, the GM, feel that they are taking a wrong course of action. What courses of action do you feel are more appropriate? What is the correct way to respond to this situation? If you feel this would really be suicide, then any PC with Tactics or appropriate KSs should know that. If the players ignore those warnings, it could be that they are dissatisfied with the game and are trying to create an incident that will make it "your fault".

No active point limit, SPDs 4 to 9, and another PC with a 150 point VPP (I hope that's Base + Control)...in that case I think you're on the right track. I would try to add a Limitation to the MP so you have a few points to play with. Desol and Flight will probably end up being your best non-combat friends, as you make a decent scout.

You asked for it. First: as a GM of course I would want a lot more about the character's background and history. You need to know (and hopefully tell us ) what campaign averages are for damage, defense, etc. Right off the bat, this character looks like he has very high damage, high SPD, high defenses, and decent CV. Combine that with the extremely low skill list and you've got a combat monster -- which is fine is the game's going to be all combat and everyone is built like that, but could be a problem if there will be a lot of out of combat stuff. Im assuming that 75 Active Points for attacks is par for the campaign. BODY and PRE of 10 seem like a cop-out, a gravity-based character should have a little more BODY for sure and potentially PRE. God forbid this guy meets a mentalist! Even in 4th, END Reserve is a Special Power and so isn't allowed in an EC. His combination of psych lims would set off serious alarms if I were the GM: doesn't like authority (could make it hard for him to work with a group and/or team leader), overconfident (could create friction with a group and/or team leader), plus intolerant to normals -- I don't know Quicksilver, but that could easily create friction between him and the rest of society. In short, he could easily be a Lone Wolf character, a type that often doesn't work well in games. If I were GM I would delve a lot more deeply into the character to make sure he would work out (or require changes if he wasn't going to work out). The light-based thing bothers me too -- why? From a pure point perspective, if you can sneak a -1/4 to -1/2 Limitation on the MP, you'll have a few points to play around with. I would have severe doubts about allowing a 5d6 RKA, which is supers games usually just ends up being a free ticket into the Stun Lotto (i.e., the BODY is irrelevant, but a good roll on the STUN multiplier and you can take anybody down). Note that 5th Edition disallows non-END costing powers in ECs (like Armor), though apparently the GM has allowed it already so it doesn't matter. If you know the campaign character construction rules we can probably make more specific comments.

It's obviously a high-end power that would be inappropriate for many games. The correct way to build it would be to buy a separate 10" Leaping power with Megascale as described above. This raises the cost a little bit but still lets the character do normal leaps. To be fair, the leap should have an accuracy scale of about 1km; if the character starts leaping around any sort of populated area, he could easy start landing on (and destroying) things.

I've been a fairly good (read: paranoid) GM over the years, so not too many things have slipped past. Some examples: The "spiky tentacle": an amorphous TK-like effect which could be used for FF, sensing (an AOE Clairsentience) and an invisible RKA. The character could literally lie on the ground pretending to sleep while people around him dropped like flies. Fortunately, this was in a combat-heavy Champs game so it was not as abusive as it would be in most games. General defense balancing: allowing characters with a wee bit too much defense (usually 25% or 50% Damage Reduction plus Armor). Of course, some of the villains got pretty nasty too. The standard 75 VPP villain, but back when we didn't know the rules, so you could a) switch VPP mid-Phase (switch VPP, move, switch again, attack); not count Advantages and Reduced END against the Active Point total. A villain who could set up time/space warps around a character (Teleport UAA AOE Ring plus Force Wall); any attempt to leave teleports you back to the center, and approaching from the outside teleports you to the other side of the ring. I loved the concept, but realized it was so horribly abusive that the villain never saw the light of day. Alas.

Here is fine for Champions characters.

If I was going to be real picky, I'd buy it as 0 END with a -1/4 on the Advantage only...but they don't like you doing that in 5th. Straight up 0 END and SFX seems most appropriate.

I did this back in the day (like 10 years ago, sheesh), and still do it for con characters. I don't really have anything fancy worked up, though. I've actually started doing it in D&D as well, for players who are not comfortable with the rules. Having a sheet with all the extraneous stuff removed seems to help a lot.

If you use these numbers you are out of luck with any version of Damage Shield. The 4th Edition +1/2 gets you an 8d6 Damage Shield, which will do little to no damage against average defenses and nothing against max. With that standard, any advantage -- AOE, Explosion, 0 END -- reduces the damage to the point where you're doing nothing. It's the best argument for lowering the average defense. For those math inclined, 4th Ed DS = +1/2; Damage Shield DC = MaxDC * 2/3; Average Stun = Max DC * 2/3 * 3.5, or around Max DC * 2.3.

Perhaps a useful exercise would be to see how many characters from CU and CKC would be affected by a 60 point DS (5d6 EB) and a 75 point DS (6d6 EB).

Boss! Boss! Ze game! Ze game!

Robin and Marian! I thought of Robin and Marian this morning and was embarrassed to not have recommended it the first time. It's a kick-ass movie that is not fantasy, but is the most medieval movie I've ever seen. It takes up the story of Robin Hood about 20 years after the original stories, when he returns from the Crusades (without Morgan Freeman this time). It includes: --Sean Connery (in "good movie" mode) as an aging Robin Hood; --Audrey Hepburn as Marian, no more need be said; --Robert Shaw (Quint from Jaws) as the best Sheriff of Nottingham ever; --Richard Harris (Arthur from Camelot, English Bob from Unforgiven, Dumbledorf from some other movie) as King Richard; --Some guy I don't know as a great Little John This is one of my all-time favorite movies. I haven't seen it in quite a while.

Don't hold your breath Old Man.

I think this could be a reasonable use of Flight UAA. Firstly, there's a quite reasonable condition to end the UAA -- breaking out of the Entangle. Unless the Entangle is pushing campaign limits, this should keep the power under control. Second, I would keep the amount of Flight fairly low, since it's just a bubble (or limit it based on wind speed). If the character is only moving a few inches per Phase, it shouldn't be a big deal.

You want to use Trigger to set up the Teleport in advance, so that there's no "attack" required when it goes off. If the GM is feeling really generous, and considers part of the castle to be a disadvantage rather than a benefit, you could do one of the two Teleports as a Side Effect of the other. This might make sense or might be abusive, depending on the circumstances, but it would reduce the cost. Cost Power 1 Other Character: Teleportation: Fixed Location (1 Locations) 19 Castle: Multipower, 56-point reserve, all slots: (56 Active Points); Can Only Teleport to Fixed Locations (-1), Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (-1) 1u 1) Long-Range Castle: Teleportation 5", Trigger (+1/4), Megascale 100 km (scalable) (+1) (22 Active Points) 2u 2) Short-Range Castle: Teleportation 5", x256 Noncombat, Trigger (+1/4) (56 Active Points) Powers Cost: 23 Without this you've got to link a Usable As Attack Teleport, which is going to increase the cost. (If the partner must help reset the power, you could buy it Usable By Other which would reduce the cost.)

So that they have a reason to revise the Growth/Shrinking rules yet again in 6th Edition.

I guess I've played a lot of low fantasy, so my characters seem less unique than a lot of these examples. My favorite was Jessit, daughter of the (deceased) Guildmaster of the local Thieves' Guild. An accomplished fighter, she also had the keys to her father's secret hideout (a concealed base with several hidden entrances).

By default Flight is continuous, so the attacker just has to pay END and maintain LOS. He can move the character the full Flight distance each round as a zero Phase action. With Uncontrolled, the Flight would continue even if the attacker loses LOS (or is knocked out, etc.). It does sound like Uncontrolled would make sense.

Technically there's no way, since Detect always uses a PER roll and you could always roll an 18. (Pedants will note the option of using XDM to travel to a dimension where 18s are not automatic failures. ) In reality, you could buy bonuses to the PER roll to whatever point the GM deems that a roll is not necessary: 18-. 25-, whatever. The problem with a languages VPP is that you have to know what language to switch to...which requires a Detect. Telepathy runs into Mental Defense, and also doesn't work well with recordings and the like. You could cheese something with Change Environment ("change all spoken languages into English"), but I wouldn't allow it. Transform ("me into me who speaks the language"; "target into target who speaks English"; "sound waves into English sound waves") is similarly cheesy.

I'm a huge fan (as in, used to and maybe still do know the freakin thing by heart) of the first movie, but less than enthused about the rest of it. I watched the series for a while, but it generally wasn't quite good enough, and I got tired of the necessary changes and additions they had to keep making for it to make sense as a series. Anyway, if I were going to run a Highlander game, I'd use the first movie alone as canon and make up the rest as I saw fit. My favorite idea from the If-Only campaign file is an alternate universe: the Kurgan, being a bastard, got the idea to ditch the one-on-one idea and start ganging up on immortals. Of course, the other immortals were forced to form their own groups to survive, Connor MacLeod heading one of the chief ones. At any rate, this delayed the Gathering at least into the present day, and gives a jolly good reason for the PCs to stick together as a bunch of immortals. I've also run an immortal as a PC in a Dark Champions game -- oodles of fun. "Trapped in the skyscraper? No problem, I'll jump." Lastly but certainly not least, I once ran a Western Hero one-shot which was (unknown to the players) a Highlander crossover. Despite being Highlander fans themselves, and knowing my obsession with the movie, the players somehow missed the clues (bright lights, leaves stripped off trees, followed by finding the main bad guy with his head cut off) until the very end, when they asked their immortal companion how he know so many weird people. "There are many of us," he said, "but in the end, there can be only one." End of adventure. I almost got beheaded myself for that one.

Heh, Ms. Cleo. "Intruders are approachin, Captain! Cahl me now!"

Does sound like more and more of a Summon to me. You could use Mind Link to control it if you wanted.

If you can control it, can you send it out as a scout? Does it have intelligence?

What's wrong with just buying the area way up? Add UAA, Self Only so the area moves with the character (decoy can't get more than X inches from the character). Since I assume the character needs LOS to control the decoy, this seems reasonable -- and from having used this kind of effect in the past, the cost is not out of line. If the phantom effectively runs itself, then Duplication makes more sense, though it means if someone manages to kill the phantom, it's gone for good. So...use Summon.