Wyrm Ouroboros

Re: Telekinesis Martial Arts

Weapon Element. Open Hand base, +1 point for your TK. Get it, love it, kick ass with it.

Re: Rail gun damage?

This is in space, am I correct??

Not meaning to offend you, Nyrath, but where the heck are you getting any of your ideas from? I mean, don't get me wrong, your math is great, but this 'causes an explosion' crap is, well, crap; the primary side effect of modern-day mass accelerators -- railguns -- is a short-range EMP burst out the front end due to the electromagnetic acceleration of a slug of steel. No continuing electrical explosion; that isn't how the damn thing works. No 'red-hot slug'; it's a piece of steel suspended in and sent down a tube by computer-controlled electromagnets that takes it from 0 to a zillion m/s in the time it takes to sneeze.

Does this affect the ship/base? Yes; the back-thrust from accelerating a 50g piece of metal to Mach 25 is considerable, and yes, it may not do much more to a 250 tonne ship than nudge it off-course, but the firing still has to be taken into account -- like A-10 Warthog pilots have to, especially if you're going for broke. But if it's a ship, then the ship's thrusters are already set to move around 250 tonnes; adjusting for weapons-fire is going to be computed into the ship's piloting equations.

The question of whether or not the target ship can dodge, however, requires a bit of forethought. First, does the target know they've been fired upon? Second, how long does it take the slug to get from Attacker to Target? Third, if #1 is 'no', can they detect the round, however big it is, in time to pilot the ship out of the way? In space, once the round is fired, it's going to go down that line for quite a while, until/unless something happens, e.g. gravity effects, etc. Presuming a low-space-tech environment (which I think we are, since we're still using mass weapons), I'd imagine multiple 'likely trajectory' shots instead of just one round getting spat out. "At the speed they're going now, they can only go in these directions. Lay fire down on this path; they'll likely get hit by at least one of 'em ..."

Re: Bullet Kata

Which I, at least, don't have.

Nexus, I'd personally go with the missile deflection/reflection with appropriate limitations to the target reflected into; after all, with sixty zillion people shooting at you, it gets harder every time...

Re: Base Transporter

... give birth?

Re: Atmospheric reentry

Still doesn't matter. Orbital speeds are major; hitting more than a few atoms per cubic meter when you're doing 18,000 mph means major heat generation, and whatever’s necessary to avoid it. Avoiding the generation of that heat is the first and easiest way to avoid the heat. Shuttles, capsules, meteors, earth-killing asteroids, the Hulk -- none of them have any way of controlling their descent, so they need a way to deal with the generated heat, thus heat shields, tiles, boiling rock, and 20 DEF.

If you have powered Flight -- not Gliding, because Gliding is just ‘falling with style’, and you need air to use it (can’t glide in a vacuum, y’know?) -- you don’t have a problem. Move at zero speed relative to ground, control your descent into the atmosphere, and you’ll be saying, "Heat? What heat??"

Re: ID known by foreign authorities

Honestly? Public ID, period. If he's been active in Aussieland, then pops up in the US, the US will ask the Aussies about him, the Aussies will ask for extradition if he's caught, the US will (probably) agree, and the Aussies will tell him. Optionally, -5 points for 'Limited Area', or you could ladle on a 'Aussie Cops' hunted, and give THEM the Limited Area -- but then they'd know his real ID.

Re: Grappling Hook, 1 tool, many uses

AoE Radius Selective attack; an Indirect EB. (If it's a 'superskilled' sort of thing, take extra time off the swinging and all.) Mmmm, I dunno. Add in a straight normal HA for gripping the hook assembly and punching with it, or an HKA for raking with the tines...

Re: Follower/Summon Question

I'd add a minor additional disad to that EB -- 'Bear can do nothing (-1/4)' -- considering that it's supposed to be adding power to the EB. Otherwise, yeah, Split seems to have a good version.

Re: "Hull? I can't be in Hull!"

M simply lives forward -- collecting massive resources along the way, but she's immortal and knows it, so she wouldn't mind the time, really. She would, however, probably change the world a hell of a lot, though....

Re: GM: Opinion on multiple Distinctive Features

I'd go with what G-A said; one for 'sight', one for 'sound'. Theoretically, someone could have 5-6 different DFs, one for each 'sense group', but for the most part they're going to wrap into only one or two groups. Anything more than that is just asking for the GM Whack Stick. Or Thia's Ice Cream Cone.

Re: If I could put END in a bottle

Huh. I'm rather surprised that Healing hasn't been proposed; recovering an Attribute is what Healing's all about. Doesn't fade, etc. etc.; you gain back to your characteristic max, and then you're done. Sure, it's normally used for, y'know, healing Body and Stun, but nothing says it has to be that, does it?

Bottle o' Whupass: Healing END 3d6 (standard effect: 9 points), Trigger (Activating the Trigger requires a Zero Phase Action, Trigger requires a Turn or more to reset; +1/4) (37 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x4 END; -1 1/2), 1 Recoverable Charge (-1 1/4), Costs Endurance To Set Trigger (-1/2), OIF (Phial; -1/2): 16 END, 8 Points.

With a Standard Effect of 9 points, you receive 18 points of END when it goes off.

Re: The Monster As Hero thread

Shark heros? The Master-Shark, ed'Rashtekaresket, in Diane Duane's Deep Wizardry. The sort of being whose certitude makes one weep for its purity. All my bad guys should be this good...

Re: Daredevil-like senses and PER Mods

You need to spread, etc. etc. for Eosin.

Re: The Monster As Hero thread

I used The Maxx as the source for a hero at one point; don't recall the name I used, though. He'd been a detective who got sucker-punched by some VIPER agent or another into a vat of Super-Being Originium -- you know the stuff. The Grond-like trauma pushed the majority of his intellect and personality into the toilet, but it still operated in a subconscious manner. Became a big block of a homeless man, but did good and protected people because ... that's what you do.

He had pretty good strength, superleap, and some armor, but his regen was amazing -- and his Armor was of the 'damn, I heal fast' F/X. Fun, for the short time I played him.

Re: Nuclear Explosion Man

Legatus, it's pretty well done; I'd've used AVLD (PowDef) instead of NND (LS: Radiation) on the radiation, however. LS is more for an 'high/dangerous background level' sort of thing, as compared to a violent background or attack. It's the difference between being able to survive in Chernobyl (now or inside the plant during the accident) and accepting a billion rems of hard radiation -- between surviving (being comfortable!!) at 180 degrees in the desert, compared to soaking a flamethrower to the face.

I, however, went by the 'Enough' recommendation others made. Simply put, if they were there, they were killed. A prospective player is, right now, kind of trying to be someone who was 'relatively near' the nuke zone. I'm working with him on the background, but I'm requiring at least daily Regen in order to have survived 'this long', and she'll currently have a 'side effect' of being very nastily radioactive -- she shows up hard on geiger counters, kills those taking care of her within a few months due to rad poisoning, that sort of thing. Hopefully we'll get the issues ironed out.

And while I do recognize that most poisons are attacks, most poisons are (or can be slash should be) built as NND -- doesn't matter how tough your skin is, once it gets inside you're pretty fragged. LS: High Radiation taking care of an atomic bomb, well -- see above. And realism does come into it at that point; 'realistic' LS:HR means you can exist in space without getting screwed over by cosmic bombardment from the sun and other sources; 'comic' LS:HR means you can sunbathe in Nuke City and as long as you can handle the blast (with them 45/45 rPD/rED and 50% resistant Damage Reductions for both) you can shrug off the fuggly nasty radiation -- because the radiation isn't being treated in a relatively realistic manner.

Re: Daredevil-like senses and PER Mods

First, put your Spatial Awareness as part of the Hearing sense group. Second, I might add analyze to your touch group as well; in some instances, DD could read the newspaper by running his fingers over the (printed) words. For Detect Lies, I'd build that as a Hearing Sense group sense; you have almost everything else on the group, you practically only need to add the Detect itself; 3 points. (Half-phase action, 'cause it isn't a sense, is part of it, natch.) Oh, wait, you look to have done so. Well, basically, if the individual a) knows it's a lie, and is not a pathological liar, it'd be damn near automatic. The tricky part is when someone can shade their words so that they're not lying exactly -- or if they don't know it's a falsehood.

Everything else? Heartbeat is almost a given; even 'noisy room' is something that he doesn't have to worry about, because he has +20 vs Range, Discriminatory, Analyze on his Hearing. For the cologne thing, use the time modifiers, varying on how well ventilated the room is; if not very, then halve the time modifiers. If well ventilated, then double them. Tracking a cologne through a busy city, presuming he's relatively nearby? Again, minimal if not another gimmie; he has Discriminatory, Analyze, Tracking on it. That's why he paid, like, 20 points for them. If he could normally see them, or an object that size at the distance you're talking about, then he's in like Flynn.

Do Not Underestimate The Power of Spending Points.

Re: Autofire disarm

Not as such, I don't think. However, in that example you have to spread your fire and all the other rules for autofire. I would think that Rapid Fire with the ranged maneuver would be more your baby.

Re: Sleep Is Food, Food Is Sleep

And I have to write up a guy with an aging ray. Oh, wait, I already have one: Mastermind, the post-heropocalyptic world's only surviving world-class supervillain...

Re: Nuclear Explosion Man

Radiation sickness would be a hefty RKA NND or, probably better, something like the following:

 

5d6 Drain, All Physical Characteristics Simultaneously (+2), Explosion (+1/2), Mega area (1" = 1 km; +1/4), Invisible Power Effects (+1/2) (212 Active Points), Gradual Effect (One Month; - Whatever), Extra Time (One Week; - Whatever), Only Affects Living Beings (-1/2)

 

Never would 2 points on LS: Immune to High Radiation be better spent!

Life Support is a matter of being able to survive in that sort of environment -- not in a violent environment or, more clearly, not against an attack. If it's an NND against LS: Safe in High Radiation, sure you're fine. This isn't that; this is an attack. So's a nuke.

The question here really is 'realistic effects or not?' Either nukes are real-and-really-dangerous (and Captain Quantum dies from radiation that causes cancer) or nukes are comic just-big-bombs (and Big Blue Boy can take one on the chin and smile). I am strongly in favor of the former and, as DC and Marvel have progressed, they have so become, too. In my campaign "After the End," humanity wiped out 98% of their Powers because the aforementioned failed to take the necessary actions and permanently stop the Earth-Shattering Bad Guys, Because We're Better Than Them. And they all died...

Re: A super-powered normal

I designed a character once whose only superpower was insane pattern recognition/prediction abilities. She didn't have any powers... but she was capable of picking out exactly the moment to attack to cut through armor, 'read minds' by profiling people based on the barest of information, that kind of thing.

 

Never got a chance to play her, unfortunately.

... post her? Please?? This is just the great sort of thing that can be fun and useful to have.

Re: Favorite 60-point Power Construction

Invisibility vs. the Mental Group doesn't do what you think.

I don't want it for what you think.

(See how irritating that is?)

What I want it for is so that Kièrshia can't be targeted with mental powers if he can't be seen; IIRC, mental powers, like every other, can be targeted using any Targeting Sense you may have. With most people, that's Sight; with psychics, that includes Mind Scan, which is exactly why I want it. I don't want to get smacked by a mind-dagger out of the frickin' blue because they might've detected a bad thought, or just because they felt like it; I want to be able to see their face if I've got it coming, and be able to dodge.

So yeah, it does exactly what I think.

Which makes me wonder -- do you still use ECV to hit if you're using sight to target (like I suspect), or would it be an OCV/DCV thing?

Re: Sleep Is Food, Food Is Sleep

And your background concept may call for it. Most of those concepts of mine which have the character having longevity at some point don't have that character starting out at age 16 or 30; they're already 60 or 90 or, in one case, 150,000 years old. I take the power because I want the power. I want the background to be 'he's an ancient dragon' or 'she's been around since Earth first went into space'. I take the power not because it's necessarily ever going to come up in-game, but because it adds punch to the background flavor (Bam!!) and because it's cool to have.

Re: New team on the evening news

M/Freedom would, like McCoy's Dolphin, shrug and be on her merry way. She's been doing that job for decades, so someone announcing they're going to do it now is sort of a SSDD issue. She'd probably also follow along with some interest, and likely amusement, when the team was declared outlaw in one (or several) major world powers and accosted by other super-teams. She's been there already, too ...

Re: Favorite 60-point Power Construction

This one came in handy throughout an entire campaign:

 

Invisibility; Mental Group; No Fringe; 0-END; Persistent; Inherent; Always On. (45 Active Points, 30 Real Points)

 

And yes, through the life of it that Always On did cause some issues.

I can believe it.

 

"Psi Man, our team mate Ghost Angel is missing! Can you use your famous mighty mental powers to help us find him?"

 

"Actually.....no."

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Invisibility to Palindromedary Senses

I'm in a campaign now (Until the Worlds Collide on HC) where I'm seriously considering taking something similar to this. Don't think it'd be 'no fringe' -- might actually be 'bright fringe' -- but it's mainly so that I wouldn't get assassinated by the BOECV RKA Mentalist (sorry, Kyper) before I could ... well, you know. Kill the President, if it came down to it.

(Hey, Kièrshia -- based off Riddick -- is a very not-nice guy...)

Re: Mental awareness for inactive powers

"If it isn't there, you can't see it." I can't tell the differences between intelligence and experience if I'm looking at five people dressed identically; this guy might be a hot computer geek, that woman might know six different martial arts, that guy might be the next Mario Andretti. I won't know until I start to talk with them, or see them 'in action'; I can't analyze without having something to analyze. Working off their name or costume can be useful, but sometimes the GM is going to dump complete ringers on you.

Of course, detecting powers helps to mess with Secret IDs....