massey

There's actually a legal defense here. It's the principle of "necessity". The example I remember from law school involved tying a boat to a private pier during a storm. You are liable for damage to the pier, but the pier owner can't go out and untie the boat. It also applies if, for example, you break into a private business during a blizzard. The law provides protection to the individual if the consequences are dire enough. My right to life outweighs your right to be secure with your property. When the guy realizes he is dying, and transfers his brain to the robot body (said body being property of the lab), he's operating under the principle of necessity. He's civilly liable for the loss of the robot parts, but he's not criminally liable. They can sue him to recover the costs of the parts, but as they're now required to keep him alive, they can't get the parts themselves. It's really no different than if you have an artificial heart put in, and then stop paying your medical bills.

What damages has she suffered? Sounds like none, unless her state have a specific law granting damages in a case of unwanted surveillance.

On the other hand, you probably don't want real laws to apply. Comic book laws are far more entertaining. I'd suggest a powerful corporation be "above the law" by paying off cops and judges so they can get away with rocket-launcher armed robots and things like that.

My 4th ed book has long since fallen apart, and I'd have to look at it again to remember. That's hard because it's in a landfill somewhere. I think your summon paid for the base points of the summoned character, and so disadvantages would make for a stronger summoned creature. It could just as easily be the other way though. So Summoning a 100 (base) + 150 (disads) = 250 point superhero could either be paying for 100 base points, or it could be paying for 250 points, and I don't remember which.

I'm not familiar with 6th edition. But I poked around a little bit with doing Star Wars in 5th edition, and here's what I came up with. #1: Heroic scale. Han and Luke run around in stormtrooper armor with stormtrooper weapons for half of the original movie. #2: Keep the low end of the scale low. For stormtroopers, I used 4 edition Viper troop writeups. Once you subtract their equipment costs, they're like 50 pts apiece. Stormtrooper armor didn't seem much better than the 6 PD 3 ED armor that the Viper guys wore. I converted the weapons over to killing damage (instead of an 8D6 EB they used a 2 1/2 D6 RKA). #3: Starting heroes are about 150 points. You can pretty easily do "1st movie Luke" on 150. His force powers are just beginning to show (danger sense, and, umm, that's about it). #4: Keep force powers cheap. I know there have been some video games where people were pulling star destroyers out of the sky with the force. That's dumb. Through the entire series, Luke is running around with maybe 15-20 Str TK, some telepathy, missile deflection, and enhanced senses. That's perfectly easy to do with a small multipower. #5: Be willing to fudge the big stuff (like Yoda lifting the X-Wing) as non-combat only, and don't worry about maximum ranges on anything. Otherwise your Jedi characters will end up being incredibly expensive for no real benefit. Vader does not throw TIE fighters at people. Consider giving people a Force skill and with a high roll, they can exceed their normal abilities for noncombat tasks. So Yoda might have 25 Str TK for his normal stuff, but his KS: Force at 20- lets him pick up small starships and things like that. Poking around with my writeups, Darth Vader still ended up being like 350 points, which is incredibly expensive in a heroic game. Even then, though, he's still like a 20 Dex and 5 Speed, with a 9 OCV with lightsaber.

50 End, OAF

A Rule of X should really be just a Guideline of X. It's way too easy to get around and construct a character that abuses it. Area of Effect attacks, characters who can rapid fire or use specialty attacks, or people with a good speed advantage and combat options that let them take advantage of it, those all can result in a character who is way more effective in combat than his or her peers. It also doesn't take into account powers like Desolidification or Invisibility. Really it's just a guideline to cooperative players. "I'm looking for people about this tough." At that point it's helpful because it gives your players an idea of what to shoot for. But even then you need to look it over to make sure people are within a good range. At this point in my Champions career, I don't think it's something I can benefit from. Just tell me what type of game we're playing and I'll hit that mark more closely without an artificial cap.

I agree with Vondy. Goons should stay goons. That's when the mentalist character should really feel powerful. Mook teams sent to subdue bricks don't usually go in with 30 Def each. They use a few tricks and they usually fail anyway. A moderately good ECV would be appropriate. Or they could be mind controlled to forget certain things. They aren't under active mind control that you can see with mental awareness during the mission, but if you try to read their mind later you're going to have to beat the opposing mentalist's roll before you get any useful info. If said mentalist is paranoid, he or she might have also hit them with a few mental illusions to prevent them from seeing certain things. That keeps the identity of your villain secret because any time the goons saw her, their brain translated it as a floating ball of blue light. Even if you discover they were under the effect of mental illusions, that's still what those guys saw. They can still be useful for taking down mentalists, just not PC-grade mentalists.

Superman probably won't be spending points to buy off his Code Against Killing. It's an integral part of the character that helps define him. But sometimes in future stories, Superman is shown as being more resistant to Kryptonite, having soaked up yellow sun for several decades. So that's an instance where he did spend his points to reduce or eliminate a complication. In your fantasy game if your character is hunted by the Ork Warlord, and you manage to kill him off in the course of the game, then it would make sense for you to buy off that complication. On the other hand, it may just go dormant for a few adventures until you manage to piss off Marvin the Sorcerer. In that event, you would switch your hunted from Ork Warlord to the new guy who hates you. No points spent, but the complication changed over the course of the game. Edit: And here I am, talking about Complications like they're Disadvantages in 5th edition and earlier. If they're something different than I withdraw my statement.

The most important things to learn about playing HERO (and not just building characters) are using the Speed chart, aborting an action, and a handful of the combat maneuvers (specifically, block, dodge, grab, and haymaker). The Speed chart determines the order in which people act. A player (or GM) who knows the Speed chart very well can stomp all over a player (or GM) who doesn't know it. It really helps to know if you will get to go before your opponent on your next action. For instance, let's say I have a character who is Speed 6. You have a character who is Speed 7. Other than that difference we are evenly matched (same Dexterity, same combat values, etc). My actions will come up on phases 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. Your actions will come up on phases 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, and 12. For until phase 6, we are the same. You will probably fight fairly conservatively because I can match you step for step. But once we pass phase 6, you have the advantage because your extra action starts to come into play. You get to act back to back in phases 6 and 7. I have to wait until 8. What that means is that you can be very very aggressive in those phases because I don't get a chance to respond. The difference is more pronounced at lower Speed levels (the difference between Speed 4, acting on 3, 6, 9, and 12, and Speed 5, acting on 3, 5, 8, 10, and 12, is very large). Knowing when you can commit to certain combat maneuvers and minimize your own risk is huge. "I can do this maneuver on a particular phase because I get to go again before he does." You may want to make a list before combat begins of each character and what their Speed is. Call out which phase it is and then go down the list by order of Dex. For this example we'll say we've got Ragnar (18 Dex, 4 Speed -- 3, 6, 9, and 12), Black Leaf (17 Dex, 5 Speed -- 3, 5, 8, 10, 12), and an Ogre (10 Dex, 3 Speed -- 4, 8, 12). "Phase 1, nobody goes. Phase 2, nobody goes. Phase 3, it looks like Ragnar goes first with an 18 Dex. Now, at 17 Dex, Black Leaf goes. Phase 4, the Ogre goes. Phase 5, Black Leaf goes. Phase 6, Ragnar you go again. Phase 7, nobody goes. Phase 8, Black Leaf goes first at 17 Dex. Then the Ogre goes at 10 Dex. Phase 9, Ragnar goes. Phase 10, Black Leaf goes again. Phase 12, everyone goes. Ragnar, you're first at 18. Now Black Leaf at 17. Now the Ogre at Dex 10." Pay attention to when certain Speeds get an advantage over others. After a few combat sessions you'll have a better handle on it. Aborting an action is also important. A few things on this. One, you can only abort to something that is defensive in nature. You can't abort to shooting someone in the face. You can abort to dodge. You can abort to block. You can abort to dive for cover. You can abort to roll with the blow. You can also abort to other, non-combat maneuver actions if the GM considers them "defensive" in nature. If you are holding a bomb or something and it's about to explode, you could probably abort to flinging it out the window. You may also be able to abort to heroic actions, such as throwing yourself onto a grenade, or jumping in front of someone to take a bullet for them. You can also abort to use a defensive superpower, like throwing up a force field (if you have it, generally your barbarian warrior cannot abort to erecting a quantum force field because he probably doesn't have one). As far as how you abort an action, there are two important rules. First, you cannot abort an action if you've already acted this phase. So if I punch a guy in the face on Dex 20 of phase 3, then if he tries to stab me with a sword on Dex 18 of phase 3, I can't abort. I can't abort at all until segment 4 rolls around. Once segment 4 gets here, I can abort. I can abort even if I don't normally get to act on segment 4. If I'm Speed 4, and I go on 3, 6, 9, and 12, then aborting on segment 4 means I give up my segment 6 action. I don't get to go again until segment 9. Now here I've used the words segment and phase almost interchangeably. People frequently do that so it's good to know the difference. A game turn is divided into 12 segments. A phase is the specific segment when your character gets to go. Most times when you perform a combat maneuver (like say, a martial dodge that gives you +5 DCV), the bonuses (or penalties) last until your next phase, not the next segment. So if I attack someone on my phase 3, and then on segment 4 they try to stab me with a sword and I abort my phase 6 for a martial dodge, then I've got a +5 DCV until we get to phase 6 (when I would have normally had an action). That's the second important rule on aborting an action. Everything resets once you get to the phase you aborted. In other words, if I abort my phase 6, I get all my bonuses until we actually get to 6. However, I also can't abort a second time until I get to that phase. So if I act on phase 3, abort my phase 6 so I can perform a dodge on segment 4, and then on segment 5 some jerk detonates a bomb or something, I can't do anything. I'm "stuck" dodging. I haven't had a chance to recover my balance (or whatever), or reorient myself, or anything like that. I took my action early and I'm completely out of options until my Dex comes up on phase 6. Once that happens I can abort again, if need be. Clear as mud? The third important thing are the basic combat maneuvers. They will go a long, long way in adding character to the game and giving it an action-y feel. They're one of the best things about the HERO system. Block is an opposed roll against OCV. You can abort to block. The Ogre swings his battle axe at you. He has an OCV of 4. You abort your next action (because getting hit with a battle axe will suck) and roll your OCV against his OCV. You have an OCV of 6, so you need to roll a 13 or less. If you do, the Ogre's attack is wasted. Your block can be defined as side-stepping his attack, ducking at the appropriate time, parrying it with your sword, or (in superheroic or other appropriate genres) letting it harmlessly bounce off your thick skull. If you successfully block an attack, you can keep making block rolls against everybody else who attacks you in hand to hand, but you suffer a -2 penalty for every person after the first. If you miss a block, you can't continue to block until you use another action for it. Missile Deflection is a power you can buy that lets you perform blocks against ranged attacks. Dodge is a defensive maneuver that you can abort to. The basic dodge that everyone can do gives you +3 DCV. That applies in hand to hand and at range. It also applies against everyone who attacks you. Martial dodge is a martial art maneuver you have to pay points for, it gives you +5 DCV instead of +3. Depending on the character and the circumstances it may be better to dodge rather than block. Grab is a strength versus strength contest. I believe it's -2 to your OCV, but if you succeed you roll damage dice for your strength against your opponent. So if I have a 15 strength I roll 3 dice. You want to score high on the body of the dice (rolling 6s and avoiding 1s helps). They do the same. If you score higher than them, they're grabbed and can't use their arms, etc. One their next action they'll get a chance to break out, however. You'll want to look closely at the grab rules because there are a number of different little things that I can't really summarize here. Finally you have the big one, the haymaker. Haymaker adds 4 damage classes to your attack, for free. You don't pay Endurance for it, you don't pay points for it, you just get it free. However, it carries penalties. You get -5 to your DCV while you are performing the haymaker. And it doesn't land until the end of your next segment. So if you perform a haymaker on your phase 3, it doesn't land until the very end of segment 4. If your opponent has an action during segment 4, and he moves out of the way, your haymaker automatically fails. This is when it's important to look at and understand the Speed chart. You don't want to waste time haymakering someone if they're just going to move out of the way. So if you are Speed 5, fighting a Speed 4, don't haymaker on 8, because your opponent goes on segment 9 and will just step out of the way. Then he'll hit you while you're at -5 DCV. Higher Speed characters also don't want to perform a haymaker when they have back to back phases. If I'm Speed 7 (and I go on 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, and 12) I sure as hell don't want to perform a haymaker on phase 6. That's because I will use my phase 6, and then still be performing the haymaker during my phase 7 (which means I lose the attack). It's much better to perform a haymaker during a portion of the combat when nobody is going to get an attack. Do a haymaker on phase 12, because that means it lands at the end of phase 1, and nobody goes on 1 except people with a 12 Speed. -- That's a whole lot of combat advice. I hope it's not overwhelming. Play a few mock fights out, and try using the maneuvers once you understand the Speed chart. When you get a good handle on the various maneuvers in the combat system you'll have a much more satisfying experience. My suggestion for starting out would be to find the old 4th edition 250 point superheroes. They have very simple powers, and their combats won't kill one another. So they're good to learn on.

As far as campaign averages go, back in the earlier days, in the first edition through the 5th edition of the rules, your primary statistics (str, dex, con, body, int, ego, pre, com) calculated directly into your figured characteristics. Your starting PD was your Str divided by 5. Your OCV and DCV were your Dex divided by 3. Your Speed was your Dex divided by 10, plus 1 (20 Dex divided by 10 is 2, plus 1 for a total of 3 Speed). Now people usually bought some of those starting values up, because you really don't want a character running around with 3 PD or a 2 Speed. But it gave people a common range to expect. People here are criticizing a dwarf with a 9 OCV and DCV because in the old days that meant you had a 26 or 27 Dexterity. When you remember that those stats are rough D&D equivalents, it makes a lot more sense. Now in 6th edition, your secondary characteristics have been divorced from your primary characteristics. You can have a character with an 8 Dex and a 10 DCV, or with a 30 Dex and a 3 DCV (as I understand it anyway, not having touched 6th edition I'm not positive on that). Now remember, they're just numbers. A 9 OCV/DCV is only impressive if it's impressive in your game world. If your average town guard has an 8 OCV then it's not an issue. But I think if you look at a lot of the published settings, that's a very high number for a fantasy world. A good rule of thumb for combat values is this -- if you have to roll less than an 8 to hit someone, then they are going to be so hard to hit that it's not really fun. If you hit someone unless you roll a 15 or above, then you're almost always going to hit. So if your ork chieftain has a 5 OCV, and they're swinging against a 9 DCV, then he'll need a 7 or less before he even makes contact. Maybe what you're going for is a dwarf who is really good at dodging. Maybe not. But you should understand what you are building when you build the character. Here's a probability graph that shows how likely you are to get certain numbers on a 3D6 curve. In most of the published material, OCV and DCV ranges for fantasy characters will be in a 4 to 6 range. Sometimes characters will go as high as a 7 or even an 8, but that's about the top end that I've seen. A 9 is one of those "best in the world" types. Superheroes tend to average a lot higher. Minimum superhero OCV/DCV is about 7, and going up to 9 or 10 is not uncommon. Again, these numbers are for the published settings, and many of which were based on older editions when the numbers were tied to stats. If you make your own setting you can peg the benchmarks wherever you want.

I'm gonna chime in on the general topic here. I've played HERO for a long time now, and while we still play 5th edition and never transitioned to 6th, I think I've generally got enough experience that my advice can be helpful. First, HERO went through a big transition from 5th edition to 6th edition, where a lot of the underlying philosophies of the game changed. Think of it like going from 2nd edition D&D to 3rd edition. There are a lot of people who didn't like that change and are quite passionate about it. You've seen a lot of that in this thread. A few old arguments have been dug up and some tempers can flare. You're also seeing people's general campaign averages come out in some of this thread, and I'll get to that in a bit. Now, one thing that is important to understand is whatever basic decisions you make at the beginning, when you are setting up your game, will determine a lot of how the game flows from there on out. For instance, heroic versus superheroic. Hit locations versus no hit locations. Those decisions (and probably some others) will dramatically change how the game is played. So advice from people on this board will tend to reflect the decisions they have made in their own games. As an example, I played HERO for like 15 years, in the Champions setting, before I actually tried Fantasy Hero. We went to heroic scale and used hit locations, two things we had not done before. We had a GM and two players that night. Our characters were attacked by two tigers. The tigers ran up and eviscerated us in one phase. So the GM waved his magic wand and said "oh, I didn't expect that to happen, here, let's say it's just one tiger". So the one tiger then ran up and eviscerated me, then in the next phase it eviscerated the other character. It turns out that the assumptions we had made in our superheroic game didn't quite translate over to the heroic scale. Heroic scale combat can be incredibly lethal. That's because killing attacks are a lot more likely to stray from the average, and almost everything in heroic scale is killing damage. A 12D6 energy blast (standard superhero attack) will average about 12 body and 42 stun. A bad roll on a 12D6 EB would be like 8 body and 30 stun. A great roll would be 16 body and 60 stun. As far as superheroic characters go, the average roll will do a fair amount of stun to an average superhero. A bad roll will do very little, and a great roll will probably stun them and put them dangerously close to unconscious. A 4D6 killing attack, on the other hand, concentrates your damage into a smaller number of dice, so it's a lot easier to roll very low or very high. An average attack will do 14 body and either 28 or 42 stun (the average stun multiplier being either a 2 or a 3). But a bad roll could easily be like 7 body and 7 stun. A good roll could quite easily be 20 body and 80 stun. When you add in hit locations, it becomes even more pronounced because you can do extra body depending on where you hit someone. A hit to the vitals or to the head, along with a good damage roll, can kill characters easily. And while we were experienced players, and theoretically knew these things, knowing it and understanding it are two different things.

If every appearance he has a new "thing you'll never see again" then he may have a gadget pool.

Mirror Master has shown a lot of different power sets over the years. Your writeup will need to reflect (heh heh) whichever version you choose. Generally, I'd give the Rogues either high Dex scores or a lot of combat levels. They are dangerous enough that they can hit the Flash in combat. They probably aren't high on defense, because they tend to fall to one or two punches, and Flash doesn't go full on Black Hole Punch on them all the time. Build-wise, I'd give him a multipower with the most common moves that he uses, and then a gadget VPP for his 2 or 3 one-shots that you never see again. He's a villain so points shouldn't really be an issue. I'd give him the following types of powers: Clairsentience Darkness Energy Blast Extradimensional movement (sometimes usable against others) Flash Force Wall (solid light holograms) Images Invisibility Mental Illusions Mind Control (hypnotic lights) Teleportation

Depends on your werewolves, honestly. How pure does it have to be? If it's got to be pure, silver nitrate might not work. It may be the mystical power of the metal, rather than anything chemical, that causes the harm. If that's the situation, whatever mystical force that opposes werewolves might even make it easier to make silver bullets. For whatever reason when werewolves are around, silver tends to melt at a lower temperature, and it doesn't shrink as much when it cools. A blessing from God, perhaps. We don't know. The PCs may try to make silver bullets in desperation, and succeed, only to find out later that the things they did really shouldn't have worked.

The exact makeup of a hard sci-fi universe will depend entirely upon which underlying technological, political, and economic assumptions you make (unless you, the author, happen to have a time machine and you know what is going to happen). The problem with hard sci-fi is that it concerns itself with a lot of details that aren't really all that interesting. If I'm a player then I want to get to shooting aliens or whatever, I'm not particularly concerned with the exact workings of the ship's waste treatment system. I have toyed with writing a hard sci-fi novel myself, though I never actually have time to sit down and write anything. I find myself most inspired by the Alien movies. I don't think space combat has to occur at all to have a decent quality setting. But in the end, doing all the mental gymnastics to plan out how my prospective novel world would function, I found I was going through a lot of details that only I would care about. The temptation to put in loads of exposition about why X, Y, and Z function the way they do is very great. My background is in the social sciences, so I'm much more interested in the economic and political conditions surrounding the creation of a colony rather than exactly how a ship functions. Ultimately even small changes in how something operates can result in fairly large changes to the world you're using. Does travel to a colony take a week, a month, six months? How many ships do you have and how frequently can they make the trip? How is financing arranged? If you have enough ships and you can make the journey in a week then life on a colony will be very similar to life on an island on Earth. Things may be more expensive but you'll have all the creature comforts of home. If the trip takes 18 months and ships are rare enough that you only get a visit once every year or two, your colony might look a lot more like the Old West, with everyone riding horses and having no electricity. My never-gonna-get-written novel's assumptions were that within the next two or three years (perpetually in the future of the date of reading) we discover proof of alien life. But analysis of the transmission reveals that life to be very, very hostile, and potentially able to reach us. This causes the world's governments to dump obscene amounts of money into developing an Alcubierre drive as fast as possible. When failure is not an option and you're willing to spend a few trillion dollars a year, you can jump start a pretty good space program pretty quickly. By 2025 (we'll say) we have a ship. By 2030 we have a small fleet, and six months later we've dropped about a thousand nukes on their planet, turning it to cinders while starting (and finishing) the galaxy's first interstellar war. In the fear that we've only destroyed a colony, and not their homeworld, humanity establishes small colonies (10-20 thousand inhabitants each, just enough to ensure genetic diversity) on every inhabitable world we can find. Preserve the human race from retaliation and all that. Unfortunately all this spending results in worldwide economic collapse and a cessation of contact between the brand new colonies and Earth. The story begins 50 years later, when the ships return. That world is going to have a very different reality than one that doesn't have such an aggressive timetable. Giving another 50 years, or another century, gives you lasers and rail guns, large populations and things like that. More futuristic science, even if it operates on real world principles. In mine even Earth-tech is scarcely more advanced than what we have today, given that all development was poured into building those ships, and then everything ground to a halt. So saying that one outcome is more likely than another depends entirely on which assumptions you make going into it. The question is, in a game universe, are your players interested in the background? Do they want to play in this universe? Is there good story potential there? If your eyes glazed over as I described my world, remember that your players are probably doing the same with yours.

Doc Savage is a fairly boring character. I never could get into the books because of the very 1930s writing style. What we've seen today is that the most successful pulp movies are those that use elements of the older stories but create entirely new worlds. Indiana Jones and The Mummy weren't existing characters. They were created for 1980s and 1990s audiences with the sensibilities of the times. Shoehorning in Doc Savage would be very difficult if you kept anything more than the name. And you'd have to explain how he got his abilities. Why is this guy so awesome? I don't think it would work for modern audiences.

Use a combination of those powers to get the results you want. Overall skill levels are excellent, and will do most of what you need. The special effect is not that he's good at a particular thing, it's that he gets infinite do-overs. Now sometimes he's just not going to be successful at something. I don't care how many possible futures I analyze, I'm not going to be able to scale the Empire State Building with my bare hands. I'd give him a very broad Detect. Detect stuff, 360 degrees, telescopic, N-Ray, good perception bonus. He stands there and makes a perception roll, goes through a million possible futures, and then remembers where he parked or left his car keys. Add some combat luck and you're golden. I wouldn't give him Danger Sense unless it's always on. If he's not purposefully looking into the future, say if he's just eating a sandwich, then it shouldn't warn him.

I prefer my government superteams to have a militaristic slant. Of the dozen or more Project Sunburst-style experiments that have happened over the years, you'll at least get one or two successes (ala Captain Atom). Add in a few people who have undergone a low-level augmentation program (Silver Avenger types), a super who is just naturally patriotic (or maybe just gets off on the chance to kill people with no consequences), and two or three highly trained agents who get handed a captured supervillain weapon (with some cosmetic changes), and you've got yourself a superteam. Their mission is to be the public face of the government in times of great disaster. Worried about Superman going rogue? We have Extreme Force to protect us. Giant asteroid going to crash into the Earth? The government doesn't have to rely on independents, Extreme Force will stop it. In addition to its public duties, the superteam can be dispatched to take out enemies of the state. The problem, of course, is these teams always always always slip their leash.

I've gone with the idea that superpowers tend to produce more superpowers. When the number of superhumans is small, there's a good chance they'll die out before they reproduce much. That's what happens through most of history. You might get a Paul Bunyan or somebody who is noticeably more than human, but if all he does is chop down trees and make giant pancakes then his role is fairly limited, and when he heads off into the wilderness, that's that. But when you have events like Superguy's shuttle crashing to Earth, followed by WWII and everyone coming out of the woodwork to fight, they start to feed off of each other and produce a chain reaction. Aliens come to Earth to find Superguy, people dig up magic artifacts to fight the aliens, evil scientists build intelligent robots to fight Superguy, unsafe energy experiments cause people to get more powers, etc. As those types of events interact, the level of superhuman activity will stay high. That will continue until some of the factors involved are removed. Superguy goes into space to find his homeworld. Supervillain scientist finally gets killed by one of his own robots. With the remaining super-activity high, that itself won't do anything. But enough events like that will gradually reduce the number of new powers that are generated. Eventually it fades away.

Yeah, certain powers. Certain ones he doesn't. That's kind of the point. If he's on an airplane and it's crashing, Clark changes into Superman, flies around outside, and lifts the plane. He doesn't go to the bathroom in his Clark Kent disguise and push up on the ceiling. Or dig his fingers into the wall next to his window seat and lift from there.

Haven't read comic books in a long, long time. I have no idea what is going on in any of the universes. Never played an MMO. Don't want to either. Only video games I play are little time wasters on my phone. Currently I'm playing a crossword puzzle app. Never seen Dr. Who and don't know anything about it other than he travels in a phone booth and the people who are always talking about it are ones I don't want to talk to. Never seen Serenity or Firefly. Or Battlestar Galactica. Saw the first Harry Potter movie and didn't care for it. Saw a girl naked once.

Well, you're really getting into philosophy of character design here. It's absolutely possible for you to build a lot of characters with OIHID representing their secret identity. The question is how does it function in your campaign world? I've been tinkering with a Pre-Crisis Superman writeup that uses OIHID for a lot of his powers. I used the fact that Superman of that era had wild swings in powers (caused by inconsistent writing) that wouldn't be properly represented by the standard 250 Strength, 100 PD/ED version that I saw so many years ago. Sometimes Supes doesn't even have his hair messed up by a nuclear bomb, and sometimes he gets kicked by a horse and knocked silly. As a result, I built Superman to function at different levels. The first tier has his "Clark" superpowers that he has on all the time. Clark is crossing the street, not paying attention, and gets hit by a car, he's still got a 50 STR and 30 defense. The front of the car is smashed, he looks around with a puzzled look on his face, and ducks out of there. There's no limitation on these powers. They're active all the time and he uses them without really thinking about it (this is "zoned out on the couch" Superman). The second tier requires a conscious effort. These powers don't receive a limitation either (a -0 perhaps). They aren't active all the time, but there's nothing Clark needs to do to use them other than use them. His STR jumps up to 75 and his defenses go up to 40 just by deciding he wants to use his STR and he doesn't want to be hurt. However Superman is also inherently lazy and unless he's in some sort of encounter where he thinks he'll need those abilities, he very quickly relaxes right back down to the first tier (this is why it's so easy to hit Superman - he's usually standing there with his default 5 DCV because he's not using his super-dex). The second tier has everything that he traditionally uses in Clark mode. He's got invisible heat vision, limited superspeed,etc. The third tier has a 250 point multipower of different powers and combinations of powers. It gets OIHID. This is because these are powers that he never ever uses while he's Clark. He just doesn't. He's not going to be mind controlled or forced to use his powers because it's not genre appropriate. There are lots of times when Clark could theoretically use his full powers and doesn't. He has to be Superman to use them, because that's how he's written. In that instance, I don't have a problem with a psychological OIHID limitation. People don't have to agree with that style of writeup. I was exploring it as a concept to see how it functioned. I've previously done a Batman and Robin writeup where they were one character - Robin was a street level hero who would get captured by the villains and then would activate his Summon Batman power. Batman then shows up and saves the day. It represents a particular style of comic very well. Whether that's something people want to play in a game is a different matter. At any rate, if used appropriately I think OIHID can work very well for a lot of characters.

I was looking to make characters who can still function as their comic book selves, but would fit into a standard Champions world without completely wrecking it. So Batman hits about as hard as a human level martial artist can hit. Superman is as strong as Grond. And the average villain should be about as dangerous as the average Champions villain.

Captain Cold - 270 points Str 15 Dex 23 Con 18 Body 13 Int 20 Ego 15 Pre 20 Com 10 PD 10 ED 10 Spd 5 Rec 7 End 36 Stun 30 +3 w cold gun noncom skills 3 lvls combat luck Cold gun - 70 pt Multipower 7D6 Entangle 5D6 Entangle +5 hexes 7D6 NND - LS Cold 4D6-1 RKA - Autofire x3 Change Environment OIF Cold suit 5/5 armor LS: Cold 8 pts Flash Def sight -- So I'm not just posting a million character writeups, I'll stop here unless people are just clamoring to see them. I think everyone has the basic idea behind it. Captain Cold.hdc