Wyrm Ouroboros

Be warned that teleport UAA is probably going to get nixed; it can very easily be a 'sudden kill' thing. However, everything you want could (possibly) be explained by way of teleportation, which would enable you to drop the apparently-vaguely-flavored 'energy beam' attack. RKA: you 'splice' them, just for a fraction of a second (because you can't do it for longer, too much <insert technobabble here>) EB: An instantaneous 'UAA' teleport of them, from where they are to ... where they are. Thing is, it can be very jarring ... Stretching: open portal, punch/grab, withdraw, close portal. Add increased levels of Indirect for best use. Really, anything you ever wanted to do in the game Portal ...

Depending on how far along your character is (thematically), you'll want either an Multiform or a VPP. As Jhamin among others points out, if your character has bunches and bunches of different armors, and each one has a big bunch of typical things (flight, defenses, blast, radio), then you build your baseline armor, and have the VPP restricted to OIF Armor, Change Only in Base, and if there's something extensive that needs to be done, perhaps an Extra Time (Takes Time to Change). I personally prefer the Multiform, however, because it allows for a whole bunch of stuff you aren't typically going to get access to with the VPP. Take Nutshell, for example. Please. Take Nutshell. *drum/cymbals* *crickets* *coughs* Sorry. Anyhow. Nutshell, aka Chester Sherwood Schwartzwald, was originally a normal British red squirrel, native to Hope Forest, Derbyshire. However, during the investigation of the outside dining area beside a certain unidentified top secret facility, the inquisitive Sciurus vulgaris went inside through an open window. A scrap of sandwich, left out, was eaten; more was sought, which induced what can only be described as a chemo-genetic accident. The squirrel, its senses aswirl with sudden superhuman intelligence (40), escaped to the outside and began to try to determine its future. First, information was required; libraries and universities were broken into, the rodent ravenous for information. He acquired it, he hacked computers, he built personas and a financial empire. He assembled inventions generations beyond what mankind possessed ... and patented them. He was the battle-armor super-genius ... villian. Yes, villian. Nutshell (who also possessed immortality, otherwise bam, dead in 5 years, y'know?) was entirely up-front about his desire to take over the world. However, as his quote says, "You fool of a villian!! Do you not know that only by acquiring the mindless adulation and sycophancy of the faceless masses can you possibly hope to seize total and lasting domination over the world?!? Your meganuclear orbital weapon is meaningless!!" He was going to take over the world the Mickey Mouse / Coca-Cola / WalMart way - by making everyone love him and buy from him, and every step taken (including joining the hero team) was part of that plan. He was going to be the smart Evil Overlord, and everyone would, as per Niccolo Machiavelli's advice, both love and fear him. Because most people don't understand how you're supposed to use Multiform (to wit, you ARE in fact allowed to go over 'campaign points', so long as you make the excess up with disads/complications, or if the GM lets you, pay double cost for the overage), what you essentially need to build is your 'base form' - which is you - and then throw all the rest of the points into the Multiform. This will give you at least x4 forms, and possibly many more, because without going over and paying double for that, there ain't a whole bunch you can do in order to have a good battlesuit in the armored-up versions that won't force you to spend a lot of extra forms, i.e. battlesuits. Here's the kicker you can do with this, though: in one of those forms, you can have a bare-bones suit ... and a mecha. Yes, you can do this if the GM lets you via the VPP ... but with the Multiform, it's a default ability ...

Ooo, a Ram Python!!

Since an STD can be viral, bacteriological, or fungal, 5 points really isn't enough. And, when it gets down to it, STDs are the diseases least capable of being transferred; only blood-required pathogens are more fragile, and there are few enough of them. (Not sure if there are any, actually.) Which means that if you're immune to STDs, you are - or should be - functionally immune to every other disease out there. Call it 9 points, or just spend the last point and, y'know, not go there. Otherwise, really, you're going to a strange place. No stranger, on the other hand, then the immortal character I saw who transferred youth, disease resistance, and a bunch of other benefits to his sexual partners - for an entire year if they coupled. (Plus there was a high chance of impregnation, etc. etc. ...) It, too, went to that strange place.

You certainly could, and when you get down to it, I really don't see the issue with not doing so; a basic 'x-point' Force Field (simply defined as Resistant Protection) would work. If you want to complicate it slightly, give it a -1 Disad of 'Total Defense Per Phase' (or per Segment), meaning that coordinated attacks are going to get through the 'we could defend against this all day' part and start really hitting the 'percentage' part of the shield. Then link it, so that if the BODY goes down to 0, this shield goes down as well. (And this being part of the ship's systems, it simply does not require a 'force wall' length and everything; it already functionally IS a force wall, personalized, because vehicles don't take STUN.) When that Body boost - which is defined as the ship's shields - hit 0, then the shields are, by definition, down. Oh, the system is trying to regenerate them, 5% max value every 12 seconds, but if the Romulan's 3d6 ship-scale RKA ('ship-scale' being defined as different than personal scale, or perhaps there's several different scales, as in Star Wars) is hammering at the Enterprise's shields (while Chekov / Worf is firing back) then if you're lucky, they won't do enough damage, or they'll miss, or maybe you have better shields or better shield-regeneration technology, and you can shrug it off because they just ain't doin' enough over the turn for you to worry about. To be honest, there should be several people involved in retuning / rebuilding the shields, but let's say it's just 2, giving us another -1/4, bringing it down to 25 points - which means for every point of shield regeneration per 12 seconds, you spend 5 vehicle points, or one character point. Backup shields? Sure, more BODY, and another regeneration that takes longer (per minute). Or whatever. Point is, look at what it does (prevent the main ship from taking damage) and work off that.

This reminds me of the 'can of whoop-ass' situation, but hey. "What do shields do?" In SF, they keep the ship from taking BODY but regenerate quickly. Since this is an 'all the same universe' sort of thing, define the damage done to shields as being 'non-penetrative' - meaning they don't penetrate the ship itself and damage its parts - and then ... +100 BODY (100 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1), Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4), Gestures (-1/4): 40 points Regeneration (5 BODY per Turn) (80 Active Points); OIF Bulky (-1), Costs Endurance (-1/2), Only Regenerates Shield Damage (-1/2): 27 points.

I don't think so. I don't see his name listed as part of the cast according to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2911666/fullcredits/ but not all of the names have pics attached either. I'm pretty sure it was another actor who just looks a lot like him. I watched it again, specifically eyeballing the cleanup crew at the house looking for him. It wasn't him, though the resemblance on a quick pass by the camera was strong enough to make you think it might've been him.

Mmmm. I can't deny the allure of building a 'look at what this guns-blazing guy can do' character, but ... to be honest, it doesn't strike me as what the character in question was about. John Wick - both the character and the movie - isn't about the fantastico cinematico things you see with most gunbunny movies; he isn't 'Equilibrium' cool, or The Matrix a zillion bullets flying through the air at the same time. The cinematic approach of the movie seems to me to be about doing it as realistically as possible; at one point, Wick even pulls the trigger on an empty chamber. It's about what a guy who has made his life about using guns efficiently and ruthlessly does with those weapons - first in a place he knows intimately (his house), then in a place where he doesn't want a body count (well, not of non-combatants, anyhow, meaning the nightclub), then a place where he knows he's walking into an ambush (the Church), over to a place where he knows there are defenders to take out (the warehouse) and finally in a place where he's out to finish it (the car chase). In each and every situation, Wick does his best to stack the deck in his favor; you can easily imagine him doing a bit of scouting of the church, and plotting out what moves he's going to have to accomplish to take out his targets - as well as why he made sure they were all in a single 120-degree arc, as compared to 180 or worse. From what I see, Wick's primary concern at any given moment is the absolute control of his weapon; that accomplished, he can eliminate his target of the moment. He sure doesn't go full-auto. He and Neo are both going to walk into identical buildings, but Wick is going to be carrying a (relatively reasonable) number of weapons, as compared to a truly staggering loadout like Neo. Wick will burst-fire single targets in order to either destroy cover or to punch through cover or armor; he's also using the heavy weapon (i.e. the assault rifle) as a psychological weapon, because 99% of his targets are not going to be used to a firefight with that sort of sound and punch. Neo turns on the lead hose right away, and doesn't stop until the tiles are falling off the walls. Wick doesn't take a shot that doesn't serve his purpose - he can't afford to. Both characters are going to kill every guy in the building, but Neo's going to destroy the building while he does it, and waste a crapton of weapons and ammo. Wick's going to have a 10% overage, and quite possibly emerge with a different gun than that with which he entered - because if a guy runs out of ammo for the weapon he has, he's gotta make do. Wick the character, in my mind, is less about 'lookit all the gunstuff I can do!!' and more about the absolute drive and ruthlessness to do what needs to be done. I'd make EGO his lead stat, and even go above 20 on that one (23-25 range); this character is all about the Will. This is a guy who will not stop until the task is done. He gets shot, he gets stabbed, he takes a full one-story fall onto his back, and he goes to the doc and is perfectly willing to pop the reds in order to get full mobility, tear out his stitches, and finish the job; he's gonna make that Ego roll. So sure, he needs skills - but not all the autofire skills. Rapid Autofire, Rapid Attack, absolutely - he sure as hell seems to be shifting targets twice as fast as anyone else in there, and yeah, it's because he's that good. The rest of the autofire skills, though, are definitely not necessary ... ... but all the rest of it, yeah.

... does he really need most of the autofire skills? He uses burst-fire, yes, but from what I recall of the film (last I saw was, I dunno, 3-4 months ago?) most of his shots were aimed, even the bursts - focussing so much on the multiple targets in front of him (delayed actions / covering) that he gets blindsided by a frickin' SUV. I'd have to watch it again (and I'm considering it, dammit), but I think most of his shots (trigger-pulls) are no less than a second apart, which could easily give you a 6 SPD and 'just' two PSLs to counter one additional multiple attack. (And of course, he DOES try to use cover.)

Having taken a look at Persona on der Wikipedia (which, as well we all know, is the be-all end-all of knowledge of the human race, ja??), I think i would tend to do the 'shift to lethal damage' sort of thing - though I would also always have any 'still living' mooks be tottering, braced and struggling to stay up, or whatever - so that the players never have to run around stabbing everything that's fallen 'just to make sure'. If it's flat, it's out for good; if it's propped up on one arm, shoot it again.

Martial Arts: Swat: 1/2 Phase, +2 OCV, -1 DCV, STR Throw, +10 STR for Distance of Throw, Opponent Falls at Full Extra Strength Distance: 5 Points (considered 25 AP). Add this with AoE TK as an attack linked to a specific Blast, and you wind up tossing people a few meters ...

Having seen this type of character before, I have to admit that while they do have their uses, those uses aren't usually in a major superhero squad. Simply put, the character is designed to take on one type of character - 'those who would find me attractive' and, not to make a pun, get screwed by anyone else of equivalent power level who isn't attracted to them. Beastttttt (I have no idea how many T's he has on his name hereabouts) has a character, Ghost Cat, who is very much like this. It may just be his playing style that made her pretty ineffective the (several) times I played with her, but the 'Gosh, ain't I a knockout??' aspect was there too ... though even Ghost Cat wasn't as lopsided as this ...

In regards to the 'team tactics', Greywind is absolutely correct. HERO is, in that regard, a lot more like SR than like AD&D. While 'geek the mage/mentallist first' is a good idea, which one is the mentallist? In Shadowrun, can you assense to find out? In HERO, do you have the skill 'Supervillians' in order to recognize one or more of the opposition? What if they're new? Tactics rely in many cases less on the opponents and more on your own team. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Do you all go on about the same Phase, so you can double- and triple-team individual members of the opposition? Can one of your people grab / entangle one target so that the rest can pound them into unconsciousness before jumping onto the next? Do you have a speedster who can keep most of the opposing team off-balance (Tripped, Stunned, etc. - recovering in some manner) so that the rest of your people can team up on someone? Do you have a brick that takes a licking and keeps on ticking? Are all your PCs high-movement characters, able to force the bad guys into a running fight that they can't win? Taking out the mentallist - or any other person with a power that can ignore most defenses - is a wise choice. But identifying the mentallist can be difficult to start with. And in a HERO-system campaign, they can be just as tough to hit (or hurt!) as the brick next door.

Echo3Niner, I'm a shadowrunner too, and if you read the main SR boards, you'll recognize me. So here's the thing. When you were building your SR characters - in whatever edition you were using - did you read the character creation guidelines? Did you read the part about 'maximum skill level of 6 at game start'? Or the part in the gear about 'maximum Rating 6, maximum availability 12' - or whatever it happened to be for that edition? Character generation for Shadowrun has its own power limitations; you're simply so used to them you don't think about them as being there. If you could, in 5e SR, play a character with a weapon skill, or spellcasting, or summoning of 12, wouldn't you think that'd unbalance the game more than a little? Of course it would - and that's why the limits are there, to corral all the kiddies into a place where the skill levels are generally the same, or at least have the same upper limit. The HERO system has the same thing. It's even there, early on in every edition. In both 5Er and 6E1, it's in the same place: 'Character Conception'. For 6E, you have 'character types', which is probably where you got your 'Standard Superheroic' 400/75 point value; right below that, you have your 'Character Design Guidelines', which gives you an idea of the 'balance' of skills vs. attributes vs. powers; and on the very next page, you have the Character Ability Guideline Table. Let me loop that out for you real quick: Character Type: Standard Superheroic Characteristics: 10-40 SPD: 3-10 CV: 7-13 DC: 6-14 Active Points: 40-80 Skill Points: 25-80 Skill Roll: 11-15- Def/rDef: 20-25 / 12r-18r This is the Standard Superheroic version of 'Maximum skill rating 6 for starting characters'. 'Maximum 80 active points for powers' - or something very near. What you can do with 80 active points is pretty damn scary; Invisible Power Effects and Damage Over Time have awoken me to entirely new levels of 'Hi There, You're Screwed!!' on Very Few Active Points Indeed. (30d6 Transform Memory Alteration and 72 Body, both IPF/X, for only 45 AP? Sign me up!!) But what you must remember is that HERO is a universal system. It is up to the GM to establish certain baselines of 'actionability'. In AD&D and in SR, those baseline maximums are written into the game - X at start, then whatever you want to do with your +5/+10/+15 levels, or +25/+100/+2000 karma and whatever-you-get-for-cash. You can specialize, or whatever - but HERO's nature is that if you want to specialize, you can be Margarita Man, or The Landlord (you own the planet, and everyone on it is your minion), or whatever. For balance in your game, setting some guidelines - especially if you're GMing the system for the first time!! - is vital. Take it as advice, not as hectoring.

The heroes will not most certainly win; in one campaign I had to take over on HeroCentral, a revamped/retooled Professor Muerte's legions - okay, four squads of four - caused serious problems for the PCs, so much so that the high-movement group that was going against the flyer agents was getting its ass pretty seriously kicked. IIRC, I utilized a MPow - immunity to their own weapon (and thus the weapons of their squadmates), judicious use of Autofire, AoE, and Flash attacks, and a willingness to retreat/displace the Turn after the appearance of superheroes. It ... made for instructional reading, for me.

Pretty sure there's a bunch of SCA stuff online. Not sure about gaming sources, though.

Re: Throw people away Remember you can trade 1d6 worth of damage for an extra 2m. So, a martial arts maneuver: Swat: 1/2 Phase, +2 OCV, -1 DCV, STR + 1d6 Throw, +10 STR for Distance of Throw, Opponent Falls at Full Extra Strength Distance: 5 points. Apply to almost any sort of STR, such as TK, and they're going what, 4m per 5 STR you have? Build Notes for the Swat Maneuver: Swat: 1/2 Phase, +2 OCV, -1 DCV, 2d6 Throw, +10 STR for Distance of Throw, Opponent Falls. 5 points. Point Cost Exclusive Basis: 0 Strike (Does STR Damage, +0 OCV, +0 DCV) Non-Exclusive +1 Throw (Put the bastard on the ground) +1 +1d6 Normal Damage (Hurt the bastard when he hits) +2 Exert +10 STR (add STR to how far you throw the bastard) +2 Improved OCV (hit the bastard more easily...) -1 Reduced DCV (... but get hit more easily, too) --- 5 The character half-slaps, half-chops the target in a sensitive location, sending them reeling (or flying) the distance of a standing throw for what is appropriately excess STR for the character's STR + 10 against the target's weight, with the target taking STR + 1d6 Damage upon impact. For a typical human target, the character's base STR will be the excess. For Magdalena in particular, if she's using her hand, that's 7 STR -- she'll send her target stumbling back and falling on his ass (in surprise, no doubt) 5.5m (roughly 18 feet) away where he'll take 2d6 Normal Damage. Using her 40 STR 'Martial Strike' TK, though, that's a Swat with 9d6 normal damage, the target flying (40 extra Str) 32m (104') away. With the 'give up 1d6 to Throw an extra 2m' rule (particularly stated in the Ultimate Martial Artist), this could result instead in 50m worth of distance for 0d6 damage. So if you're looking for some good distance ...

Re: 250 Point Project When you load them up there, don't forget to add them to the list!!

Re: "Must cross intervening space" I go with 'you personally must be able to reach that location normally'. If you want to teleport into the middle of the air, you should have Flight as well; the middle of the Ocean, some swimming. IMO, 'Teleport, Must Cross Intervening Space' is used when the character has the ability to accelerate and move so fast, it appears they just vanished from A and appeared at Z - maybe with a streak through all the other letters. Speedsters, like Quicksilver and the Flash, are prime examples of this. They can't teleport into mid-air, because neither of them have flight, but if they have that 'running on water' thing, they could teleport into the middle of the ocean - so long as it's on the surface.

Re: Most PCs... To be specific: However the restrictions apply ("Slightly Limited Class, Magic only, -1/4"), they apply to the special effect, which means that the more restricted you get, the more ways it can be affected by other kinds of powers - to wit, Adjustment Powers. In all cases, however, the game-system Powers which are available for use in the VPP remains unlimited. Mutant Shadow Guy (which I would read as Limited, -1/2) can have Duplication, Growth, Healing, etc. etc. He gets drained, however, by things that affect shadow powers (i.e. a mystic drain on Shadows) as well as mutant powers. Very Limited classes (only drains and aids, only Necromancy) should be not only two SF/X, but specifically restricted as to what Powers can be used, too. I will confess I don't entirely like that setup. Two Special Effects restricting what powers, sure - mutant teleporter, mystic fire, great, -1/2. If the GM wants to limit what Powers the character can use, that (IMO) should go into a seperate disad; powers might be restricted on the type of power they are, how they meta-work, or the Limitation value might simply be decided by the GM. So a Mutant Psychic might have a -1/2 disad (Limited Class), while adding another -1/4 in limitation for not being able to take a handful or two of Powers - because a 'psychic form' could explain everything from Growth to Duplication to Summoning to the usual powers.

Re: Looking for the Faerie Queens I believe Champions in 3D (4e?) had a version too ...

Re: Lock-On System IMO, a lock-on would be best framed by the AoE Accurate - the larger area of effect, the more accurate (or rather, the better the lock-on) is.

Re: Reputation & Renoun Let's start first with the Reputation Perk/Disad. Reputation, 11-, What You're Known For, How Many People Know That Rep. All right, so this is the roll-based and 'Population-based' part of the reputation: 11-, A Large Group.