Talon

I saw a house rule once that let characters bypass a target's armor by taking an OCV penalty; the exact penalty varied from -2 to -8 depending on the amount of armor the target was wearing. I played the lightly-armored knife-thrower and found it a great way to achieve the effect you are looking for: I could easily take a -2 to -4 to drop the goons wearing breastplates, and still had a shot against the major baddies in full plate. And oh yeah: Emphasize Stealth.

Hm, guess this proves that James Davis isn't posting on these boards...

I have always combined Clairsentience with Area of Effect to get the "huge number of viewpoints" effect.

Thanks for keeping me honest, Gary! Turns out that the OCV bonus needs to be (X - 1) times double the attack's hit percentage. For 10-, this works out to X - 1. For other percentages: [EDIT: Oops, copied the wrong column. Numbers changed.] 3-: +1 OCV per 100 shots 4-: +1 OCV per 25 shots 5-: +1 OCV per 10 shots 6-: +1 OCV per 5 shots 7-: +2 OCV per 3 shots 8-: +1 OCV per 2 shots 9-: +3 OCV per 4 shots 10-: +1 OCV per 1 shot 11-: +5 OCV per 4 shots 12-: +3 OCV per 2 shots 13-: +5 OCV per 3 shots 14-: +7 OCV per 4 shots 15- or better: +2 OCV per shot (To make it easier, the "minus 1" doesn't really matter once you get huge numbers of shots, so you can drop it.) Some of those are approximations, so if you compare (using Gary's method) against a huge number you'll be slightly off, but IMO this is more than close enough for a game, and kicks serious butt over just using MPAs.

It seems silly to me that Foci have different rules than all other physical objects, so I would give them BODY equal to their DEF and treat them like other objects (wrecked once they take BODY, etc.).

You got it right. Technically, adding (X-1) * 1.25 OCV gets you near-perfect results...but why bother, X-1 is close enough. It errs on the side of giving fewer hits, and since it's usually NPCs shooting at the PCs, fewer hits is probably good!

Heh, if there weren't restrictions on magic I'd do that every game just because FF/Armor is so cheap. Few more comments. From a "realism" perspective, restricting DEX like that seems unrealistic. Since I found that wearing armor doesn't restrict your movement so much as tire you out faster, I instituted exhaustion rules, so that people wearing armor are going to get tired (and thus suffer CV penalties) quicker. From a game balance perspective, it seems that players will just build around the rule: put their DEX at 15 or so, pop on the medium-heavy armor, and buy lots of levels with the points saved on DEX. They'll still be heavily-armored, high CV characters.

The advantages of using Entangle are: 1) There are defined rules for the size of the bridge; 2) There are defined rules for the DEF/BODY of the bridge. With Transform, you just have to hand-wave all that to a large extent. If I were being fully kosher (it being Passover and all), I might require a +10 Adder "Can Build Bridges" for Entangle; otherwise, the Entangle material is assumed to lack the structual integrity needed to support itself and make a bridge.

Excuse me, abusive was the wrong word. I meant "harsh". Firstly, since SPD rounds down, any restriction on DEX will probably result in a 1 point SPD drop. Losing SPD is just too critical...especially for all the SPD 2 goons who will now be SPD 1 in armor. Secondly, it doesn't make sense to me. Certainly your attacks might be less accurate, but less often?

Yup. It's not perfect, of course, but it's more than close enough given its simplicity.

Definitely wouldn't have it affect SPD, too abusive. Does this affect who goes first in the Phase as well?

Reading TUV last night, I started thinking about the method of simulating broadsides (multiple attacks at the same OCV) quickly. This morning, I did some playing around with spreadsheets and came up with something that does a decent job of simulating repetitive rolls: To resolve X attacks made at the same OCV, make a single Autofire attack with X shots and an OCV bonus of X-1. Thus, 10 shots is Autofire 10 with +9 OCV; 50 shots is Autofire 50 and +49 OCV. The resulting odds are about as close to the actual odds as you're going to get while using 3d6. (I'm dangerous when bored.)

Chief question: if the split-off entities can be killed (and afterward never come back), use Duplication. If the entities will come back after being killed, use Summon. Break off your arms, etc.: This sounds like Duplication, unless the character could regenerate a lost limb, in which case use Summon. Thousands of entities: This sounds more like Summon, since killing one of the entities will hurt the main character but presumably he'll be able to split into the same number once he heals. The question here is, what happens to the character's spirit/consciousness while he is split? My suggestion would be: Summon (thousands of tiny critters), plus Extra-Dimensional Travel (to mental/spirit realm). To make it zero-phase, you have to buy it with the Triggered Advantage. That way the character "vanishes" until the critters "recombine".

Don't hold your breath expecting a change. After all, SH states that 1G of acceleration is equal to 60" a Turn, when of course it's really 720" per Turn squared, and the per Phase rate varies significantly based on SPD (720 divided by SPD^2). This one was pointed out during playtesting. My guess is that the issue you bring up, although annoying, is not going to get used to any great degree, so it will be easy to change to "+5 STR per x2G".

That's alright, I'll just post lots of complicated questions on the Rules board to slow you down.

Something else I'd like to see: a long playtest period! I'd hate to see this one get a shortened playtest due to scheduling issues.

Having GMed a character similar to this (but worse: add N-Ray Perception based on "feeling" objects around the character and a KA)....ew. Obviously it would be helpful to see the background writeup, but in the meantime here are some purely point-based comments. If the intent is to have the Extra Limbs totally Invisible, I would at least require IPE on the Stretching; if I was in a bad mood, on the STR as well. I'm not sure I would give -1/2 for STR "only on Extra Limbs"...but then you do have agents with mutant-suppressors. Standard "3 and 8" comments on characteristics. I wouldn't give full (or maybe even any) Limitation bonus for Extra Time on the Force Field: it's 0 END, invisible, and with his Damage Reduction he's almost never going to be Stunned so it will almost never drop anyway. In other words, how often is he actually going to have it off? The Regen seems a bit cheesy, but I don't have the background of the character.

In that case, congratulations on being nominated for all categories of the Origins awards.

It's 10 10-point levels (i.e., +10 to whatever). However, it's definitely /not/ a standard game -- it's a con game (Psi Hero, runs at GenCon, come play!) with very powerful PCs. The point values used to run from around 125 (for the non-powered leader) to 600+...but then we killed off a few people last year. I think there's an 800 pointer in there somewhere. The purpose of the game isn't points though -- players don't even see point writeups of their powers. The 10 Overall levels are actually the least of the precog's abilities; she sees into the future (by "solving labyrinths") and can choose a course of action. The telekinetic can hold up skyscrapers, the biokinetic can stop people's hearts (or could before last year)...and then there's Pete, whose working title was "Head Exploding Guy". It's a fun group.

Sssh, you're messing up my pedantry!

I've never read the comics in questions; what meager knowledge I have about the Secret Wars/the other one comes from absorbing snippets of information from comic-clueful friends. I don't see an issue in not going into more detail; if you don't know what it refers to, then you can make up your own "battle across space and time involving all heroes". Or, someday Hero will come out with Secret Crisis Hero and we'll all find out that it really involved all the heroes of the multiverse battling to keep Seeker out of the CU. If they didn't explain the watermelon, I don't see that they have to provide details here.

Re: Team Leaders? Happens to me all the time; I think people who GM are often good at organizing players (big shock there), so are easily made de facto leaders. My current group suffers from lack of a leader...my wife has to tell me to be nice to them. Very nice -- I've used the same construct for a precognitive who can "make suggestions"; except it's +10 Overall Levels.

Harbinger, the Elminster of Dark Champions.

I am compelled to point out that Gandalf is not a mortal spellcaster.

If the GM said it was OK, then the 5 points would come from the pool. I wouldn't let a character use this as a cheap way to equip the rest of the PCs, though.