Talon

I think the extremely high demand for FH (judging by playtest activity, far higher than anything else to come down the pike so far) is, um, skewing things somewhat.

Hey, no talking about the playtest manuscript in public! Shame on all of you: Enforcer84, Ste-- ...er, never mind,

USDB was a stroke of freakin' brilliance -- a book that eases newcomers into the Hero System, while showing everyone what you can do with the rules. Whoever said it should have come out second after FREd was absolutely right...but it was so not the kind of book Hero would put out in the past. I wonder if it was on the schedule or if it took Steve and Co. a while to think of the idea. I'll be infecting my D&D group with the Hero System at some point, and USDB will be a prime weapon in my arsenal. As for "trivial" examples: I expected to see them in USDB, where they make sense. I didn't find that TUV or Star Hero had an excessive amount of such examples, so I don't expect to see too many in FH either.

If it's a property of the campaign world (i.e., all deep scans cause it), I'd write it up as an external effect -- the character doesn't pay or receive points for it. Since it has bad (you can hurt or kill someone) and good (you can hurt or kill someone) effects, that seems fair. The writeup could also include means for bypassing it (don't know B5 well enough to know if skilled and/or powerful mentalists can get past this side effect).

Different situation, different rules. Planes, being small, are easily specialized. Sails and oars are a silly argument -- they affect design too much, are neutralized too easily, and don't provide significant benefit. If Hyperdrive or Displacer drives had competing design requirements there might be a similar issue -- but in the Terran Empire universe (which is space opera after all!), this isn't the case. Actually, sails and oars are a great argument -- when those were the primary methods of propulsion, you found both on many military and ships, because each offered a significant advantage over the other. Ship designs were highly skewed to provide for both (trireme, for example).

Another good reason is that you can theoretically hang out in Hyperspace and do funky stuff (smuggling, hack into nav beacons, prepare for an assault, etc.). A military ship that couldn't jump into hyperspace would be unable to stop such activities, turning hyperspace into a safe haven for bad guys.

I thought this was a good example of applying game-world "realism" to ship design. It seems to me that FTL speed is the absolute most important thing in an interstellar military vessel -- if the enemy can outdistance you, he can play all sorts of flanking and feinting tricks, then strike at an unprotected system (or mass his fleet against a weakly defended one).

Assuming the character is powerful enough that taking a life every week is not a huge problem, I'd say -1/4 is right. Remember that the Limitation will never come into play during combat, and even if he loses the equipment, he's got an average of 3 days to find/build a replacement device (or recover the original). Of course, if the device can be used in combat, it should be bought as a Power. It's really up to you -- the RKA is probably more expensive, but has the benefit of hurting people as it functions (whereas someone partially hit with the Transform hasn't taken any actual damage). I'd lean toward the RKA myself.

Or, buy the more powerful form, then limit his enhanced stats (and anything else that is gained from the lifedrain) with a -1/4 "Must drain 1 life per week or goes away".

Combine with this: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993750 for maximum Sci-fi pleasure!

Re: Re: Re: Species Traits *smack* *smack* My work here is done.

What bugs me about this ruling is less that it's abusive and more that it's inconsistent. If I have an Ablative Force Field with 8 Charges that gets nuked in one Phase, it's still ablated if I activate it on my next Phase. Despite being a separate Charge, I'm still using the same power. Same thing with Charges and Burnout -- the Burnout accumulates across Charges. An END Reserve with Charges should work the same way -- the character is using the same END each time, and if they used some of it before, it doesn't return unless the Reserve's REC has kicked in. It just seems to me like the consistent way to handle it.

The thing to remember is that a Physical Limitation doesn't require a "physical" special effect, and a Psych Lim doesn't require a "psych" special effect. If the character can overcome the disad by making an Ego roll, make it a Psych Lim; if not, make it a Phys Lim.

Deathrider: While Deathrider would have no qualms about killing Impulse, there's a more urgent problem at hand. He would start by attacking the robot (using his AI-equipped superjet) while performing aerial recon to make sure this wasn't a feint or distraction. If he could spot the controller or any other enemy forces, he would take them down. Since he's more of an outdoor hero (being little more than an agent outside of his plane), he'd lead the attack on the robot, and try to encourage some of his teammates to go make sure Impulse was still under wraps. Once the conflict was over, he'd have a few words to say about making sure Impulse remained out of circulation...by whatever means possible. Talon: Talon would attack the robot, most likely fighting defensively to keep it from harming others. He'd be on the lookout for other attackers and/or any escape attempts, but his first concern would be the safety of those on the base.

When I ran a low-defense game in 4th, I found that it promoted clever tactics both in and out of combat; players would think harder about their approach to combat situations as well as their actions during combat.

The Rapid Fire maneuver from FREd should do the trick.

I started one campaign with a charity supers tournament: the 6 PCs and 6 other supers showed up to battle (in teams of 3) for a charity event. That lets you intro everyone in roleplay (before the event), show off abilities in combat, and provides a hook to get the PCs together. If you need something more dire, you can have villains attack the event or have something happen to the other heroes.

That would be Mind Link, IPE...or maybe a special effect for Precognition.

There is no official way to do an auto-resetting Trigger; however, it's been done by GM fiat in several published examples using (I believe) 0 END Persistent. I'd go that route, assuming the Knockback Resistance idea wasn't to your liking. If this works every time she is knocked down/back, then IMO it does not merit No Conscious Control. NCC should only be applied when the lack of control is a limitation (which usually means its random).

I think a Skills VPP is way too cheap (my usual rule is each +1 to skill counts as 5 active points). Technically, the Transfer is illegal for skills which the character does not already have. If you ignore that point (or apply a house rule Adder to let it work), it's a fine construction. I'd suggest taking a Multipower with the Transfer in one slot and a similiar Aid in another; that will get you the "target can keep skills" functionality for fewer points.

Or +20 OCV, only vs. Missile Deflection, to just make it really really hard to deflect.

The problem with all these "set Batman up" plans is that this Batman has better skills (and apparently contacts) than the PC in question. Batman is very likely to see through the plan or even find out about it before it can be pulled off. To truly get the character, you need to neutralize his skills as well as his powers. This probably means the PC is on his own -- any attempt to use outside agencies risks detection by Batman's contacts and/or skills.

Yeah, the movement skill level text is the same place as it was in 4th...but with costs listed (unlike 4th).

Plonk.

Sshh! This does sound like there are player vs. player overtones to the conflict...if there are, resolve them out of game rather than attacking his PC. If not, read on... Being the patient, serve it cold sort, I would start by giving them absolutely no reason to dislike or oppose you. Stop doing the things they don't like -- be a pinnacle of society, act selfless, etc. Don't suck up to them, just act in a way they would approve of. If you talk to them, say something about having seen the error of your ways; if your actions caused that much conflict between people who should be fighting together, then clearly your actions were wrong. Then, once they trust you, it should be no problem at all to catch the SOB out of combat and drop a cap or two in him.