Balabanto

Re: Nano-Gadgeteer This is just a power manifestation with IIF. Targeting the IIF is weird, but possible, especially if you're already playing around with nanotech.

Re: Confusion Field Just have him carry around a copy of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. That will create a confusion field for almost everyone!

Does it really cost twice as many movement skill levels to eliminate turn modes, or is this a typographical oversight?

Re: Super Zeroes The Zookeeper: The Zookeeper is invulnerable to normal animals. He can't be bit by sharks, trampled by elephants, or impaled by a charging rhino. This does, however, make him in great demand for events which require animal handling.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Currently, one of the D+D 3.5 games I run is set in the Moonshaes, a Celtic/Scottish/Irish setting in the Forgotten Realms. Me: So you arrive in this wonderful roadside inn, and there's even music and dancing after dinner. PC: So there are bards here (All excited, looking for information on the place they're going) Me: Yes. PC: I ask around a little bit. What are their names. Me: Well, the skinny guy is Fymmych Mac Tan, and the large, robust gentleman with the deep bass voice that I cannot replicate is Ruommyggh Thryggh. Another PC: We don't have enough phlegm to pronounce those names.

Re: Alterate Timeline: 9-11 Averted It didn't happen in mine. The base of the most powerful Superhero Team in the world is right below the World Trade Center. What idiot would risk that attack knowing a 95 percent chance of failure exists. The fight would take less than an action phase, and the planes would never get that close. The moment the planes were detected approaching the center, the heroes would gather in a few minutes and get on board, and that would be it.

Re: Post "gotchas" here A VPP can have a radically low control cost if you want to have hundreds of low point powers in it. If the biggest power I want in my pool is 50 points, I can have a lower control cost than my VPP max. This is great for power cap games, but can lead to a lot of confusion for old schoolers.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... This past tuesday, I wrapped up my last SPIRIT arc before 6th edition. The PC's were dealing with an unusual threat. Mandala, India's most powerful supervillainess, who can split into eight different superbeings, threatened a town in Jordan with Nuclear Destruction. Her sister had been honor killed there. When the PC's investigated the crime, they discovered that the man's father had turned her over to a mob that clubbed her to death. One of the PC's told him this, and told him they had enough evidence to prosecute him in court. The man then shouted "Efreet, help me." One of the players was like "And he's summoning a Genie? That's not very islamic." Me: No. That's the name of an islamic superhero. They will defend his right to honor kill his son and his son's wife. Players: You have GOT to be kidding me. The fight was pretty nasty, but the PC's did win, thanks to one of the PC's having the foresight to bring Mandala with them everywhere, and the islamic sorcerer getting stuck in his magic bag for three days. (Don't ask) Fedayheen: Well, it looks like you're very well physically defended. Let's see how your mind survives. Mandala: My mind exists in 632 subdimensions simultaneously. Do your worst. (Fedayheen rolls to hit Mandala, deals 32 EGO stun on 6d6) Lightbinder (OOC): Looks like he hit a hundred and fifty seven of them. Mandala: It looks like you get all of your powers out of that little bag. Let me leave you holding it. Fedayheen: Don't be ridiculous. You can't do that. (ZARK-Fwoom!) (Fedayheen stares as the bag pops open from the eyebeams and then is rudely sucked in)

Re: Any interest in a Zodiac villain group? I am actually working on a Zodiac Book when I have time. You'll like them. I promise. Nothing like the originals.

Re: Captain Undrainable!!!!!! Actually, in 5th edition, this was not an issue, because an EC was not a power advantage. Instead, it was a framework with collective drainability, which meant that you just couldn't put Inherent on powers in an EC, because of the "Essence EC" rules. The moment that you made everything intrinsic to the character, it couldn't be put in an EC. The difference is, in 6e, it isn't clearly stated. Obviously, no one with any common sense would ever do this, but from a textual perspective, rules as written, it is POSSIBLE that someone might attempt to be this big a jackass.

This is an interesting construction of which people may wish to be aware. Inherent is now +1/4. A power cannot be drained or suppressed, etc. However...Unified Power is -1/4, which links all powers together for the purposes of what can be drained together. So...effectively, for no points, or close to it, every character is immune to drain. There are several choices that I can see here. A limitation that is not a limitation is worth no points, however.... 1) Inherent powers may never be unified. 2) Inherent is now a +1/2 3) Drain and Suppress are separate for the purposes of Inherent. 4) Drain is effectively ineffective. Remove from game. Personally, I just won't let my players do this. Your mileage may vary.

Re: Post "gotchas" here It counts as a gotcha because of the subjective interpretation of "Has the Means to Do so" You should at least have to overcome the character's resistant defense in order to just walk over to someone and kill them as a full phase action.

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e I'm ahead of you guys on that one. I've been running minimum costs for a long time. It does help, but it's not perfect. And I am a perfectionist.

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e Not enough. The most megascale you ever need to buy has a base of 5 meters and everything else is advantages. It's cheaper to go up the advantage chart than to buy more distance.

Re: Back In The Flesh... I don't know if the law covers crimes that were committed in the previous Age of Man! Uh, is he dumpy and evil, with a goatee and male pattern baldness, and using wicked magic to get the nymphet to go with him?

Re: Oyster-Woman I think this character may be too silly, and has a lot of dirty jokes associated with it that she might not recognize.

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e When an NPC lies to someone, the PC's get a roll to see through it, the same way that it always works. If they make the roll, they know he's lying. In general, the difference between a PC and an NPC in my game is that the PC's are played by players. I don't like the idea that there's this PC T-shirt that immediately identifies player characters and gives them all kinds of special privilages.

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e Where I come from, sbarron, that's called "Railroading." My players don't like being Railroaded.

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e I understand your argument, but the point of mine is a little different. I don't believe that magic fire should be any different from a flamethrower. Magic fire shouldn't be magic and fire, it should be "I use magic to create fire." If I shoot someone with magic, that should be it's own energy type. I shouldn't reap rewards for buying a power with TWO special effects for free. I don't believe that using an assembly line to make oatmeal creates "Technological Oatmeal." You use technology to create oatmeal. It's just oatmeal. You use magic to create fire. You use technology to create oatmeal. That makes a lot more sense. A character shouldn't be vulnerable to Technology and Oatmeal and take both. Granted, a character being vulnerable to Oatmeal is STUPID, but why is magically created grain and water any different from technologically crafted grain and water. Oatmeal is oatmeal. Fire is Fire. And two of the most common PC types are "The Gadgeteer" and "The Mage", which are, not coincidentally, two of the most powerful types in the game and have Variable Power Pools that can generate, with a little smarts, exactly what's needed fairly frequently.

Re: The Ten Things I Love About 6e and the Ten Things I hate about 6e The Barrier vs. Mentalist doesn't matter because Mind Scan exists. Just establish a lock and hide in your barrier. Who cares if it isn't transparent? Technically, you can also Hide the mentalist in a building, etc, but all you're really doing is trading time for attack actions instead of movement actions. And attack actions have the benefit of ending your action. "I half move to X. Do I see the mentalist? If so, I shoot him." Vs. I attack the barrier. Your action ends. Now you get shot four times. Out of combat. Unless someone bought "Safe Blind" on their teleport, which isn't valid for every special effect, you just stopped teleporting into the barrier to deal with the mentalist, and unless the person in question can also see in the dark, the Mentalist is better defended than he would be out in the open. Vulnerability: They don't add. They multiply. 35+18+18+18=89. 35 x1.5x1.5x1.5=118. That's a 21 point difference, or two recovery categories. Not that most people in the game I run would be spitting up in deep negatives from the 89, but the 118 places people firmly in the location of deep optionland, where you awaken at the GM's sufferance. I completely understand the Tunnelling Argument. However, I did not say that the argument was simple or easy for new players to understand, nor did I say that it's uniqueness was bad in terms of how it works. I only said it was confusing and counterintutive to the way other movement powers work. As for shrinking, virtual invisibility (-12 to Perception Rolls), is not worth 5 points. Remember, the average person has an 11- for a perception roll. Their perception roll to see this individual is -1. Roll a 3 or else. This has always been my problem with Shrinking and why I heavily limit it's use. Stealth is an everyman skill at 8-. Even if your shrinker doesn't have stealth, 3 points will get them a DEX roll. So without any stealth roll, you're looking at around a 20-. With it, you're looking at around a 25-. (Assuming a 14- roll) Even in high powered games, this many bonuses to PER rolls for an average character is a stretch. I haven't played in a high powered game EVER (And I do play in one, as I have for 21 years) where someone had +15 to Perception Rolls, and that's a huge defense vs. attack ratio, effectively just to be able to see someone.30- 45 points to for a 50 percent chance to counter a 36 point power doesn't seem right to me. Defense Maneuver IV will stop being clobbered at 2x stun, but justifying Defense Maneuver IV is harder than justifying 12d6 of Blast. Even with a house rule that all Shrinking gains the Perceivable limitation for no points whatsoever, the benefits of massive amounts of DCV are radical, especially now that there are cover rules on top of it. (If I had an 11th thing I loved, it would be that.) Flash is different because of it's applicability: The defense should cost less than the attack, but commonality also has to be taken into account. To have 15 points of Sight Flash defense vs. all sense groups costs like 60 points, BUT...secondary flashes cost 3 points per die and can generate considerably more effect than the base sight flash, but are also much harder to resist,.because not only does the flash have more dice, but the defense costs the same amount of points. That's counterintuitive, because less common attacks that deliver more dice punch should not be more difficult to defend against. Flash Defense is 1 point for 1 point. So stopping Sight Flash, which costs 5 points per die, costs about 12 points if you want to stop Joe Sight Flash. But, stopping Joe Smell flash costs 20. (Assuming 60 points of power is thrown) The defense is too expensive for the frequency of use and the number of dice it generates with a comparatively rare effect. Because Flash is specialized, the defenses for Flash have become overspecialized. There's no reason that a helmet that stops sight, sound, and smell flash should cost that many points if you bought Life Support. As far as most players who complained to me about this are concerned, if you have LS, Self Contained Breathing, your Smell Flash Defense should be 1000+, because there's no reason why anything smell oriented would pass into your life support system. I understand the nature of your argument, but PD and ED have separate entries. Flash Defense is one entry. That's the basis of my argument, and that's the way I think it should work. Power Defense is One for One. Mental Defense is One for One. Flash Defense was originally balanced on the same scale, but got diversified. We don't have Right Brain Mental Defense, Left Brain Mental Defense, Medulla Oblongata Mental Defense, and Pineal Gland mental defense. We don't have Psychic Power Defense, Mutant Power Defense, Radioactive Accident Power Defense, and Magic Power Defense. Therefore, Flash Defense needs a boost, or it's a ripoff.

Re: 6E Mess That is now up to the GM. Temperature Levels are now subjective rather than absolute. (Thank God.)

Okay. Here we go. These are my ten favorites and ten stinkers. Your mileage may vary. We'll do the Ten Things I Love First. 10) Density Increase and Does Not Provide Defense! This is the single best power mod out of all of them. It makes it far easier to run a game where defenses are capped and not break the system into chutney. More important than this is that it's simple and self explanatory. 9) Invisible Power Effects Reworking: This I love too. It's not the granularity of it that makes it feel better, it's that you can have special effect based invisibility to things that is genre driven. If you really want to have a power that isn't visible to people, but is visible to animals, you can, and it's not hard. 8) Danger Sense requires an additional modifier for use with attacks you can't actually see. I love this to death. I think it's wonderful. 7) Change Environment Temperature Levels are now a straight number rather than an environmental nightmare where the GM sits there and says "Living in a Dangerous World Damage Time." This is great. One man's firepit is now another man's volcano. As it should be. 6) Automaton Powers got their own section in the Powers Section. This may seem kind of nitpicky, but they were so hard to find before, and now that they're easy to locate, hopefully players will understand why I generally restrict their use. 5) The New Darkness Rules cheer me up greatly. I like the extra qualifiers that make sure people aren't buying "Area Effect" on Darkness and the like. 4) Granular Entangle Makes Other Special Effects Possible. I really like this in terms of what I can do with it, and it doesn't feel or seem cheesy when I think about it's applications. 3) Healing is a separate power with limited usefulness. I like this much better than the way it used to work. 2) Regeneration is back. Oh, my happiness here cannot be contained. It is a fountain of reciprocity, a joy among joys, but I get ahead of myself. #1) (Drumroll Please) Killing Attack has a d3 Stun Multiplier. I don't think there's a single thing I love more about 6th edition than this. And now, the downside 10) I really don't like Armor Piercing at a +1/4 Advantage. I think that's too cheap for what it grants. The problem with this comes in when I looked at Resistant Protection and saw the fact that stopping Armor Piercing with Hardened is useless. That's right. It's totally and utterly useless. If I have 20 points of Resistant Protection or more, I don't care about armor piercing and buying Hardened. I would rather buy Impenetrable on my defenses if I have to choose between them. So what do I do about Armor Piercing? I buy STUN. That's right. I do nothing other than jack my STUN through the roof, especially in low powered games. If I have more than 40 points worth of Resistant defenses that come from anything, I don't care about anything except my stun total, because those 15-20 points that I just threw into Hardened reward me with 30-40 STUN. That's a much better tradeoff. Now, Hardened is still better if I can't justify the STUN, but nonetheless, mechanically, this leaves a sour taste in my mouth. STUN may be "Considered" a defense, but it shouldn't actually BE a defense. 9) Uncontrolled, Constant, and Variable Power Pool: This is more powerful than ever before, because getting your defensive powers to sit there and leave your VPP is cheaper than ever. I don't think VPPs really needed to be any more powerful than they already were. They're the most powerful construct in the game. Changing your pool doesn't matter if you pump in the END first, and END is now so cheap, that your VPP is a virtual bastion of endless defense generation. 8) Vulnerability Stacking: I think this may well be the worst change to the system overall. Who wants to sit there while running a game and multiply Damage by 2.25, or, worse, if someone has a tripartate 1.5x Vulnerability, 3.375? It's actually possible to take 8x damage from a single attack. Plus, it excessively rewards Variable Power Pool characters, (See Above) who don't need to be more powerful than they already are. The most powerful construct in the game should not also have the ability to activate multiple vulnerabilities at once. It's too convenient. 7) Tunnelling is inconsistent with other movement powers, and creates confusion. Usable as Other Modes of Movement makes Tunnelling a nightmare. This advantage is necessary, but pretty much, everyone's going to wind up buying other movement powers separately if they have Tunnelling, regardless of their special effect. (Whirlwind Drill Man, for instance) 6) Shrinking is 6 points per level? Say it ain't so! +12 DCV for 36 points is outrageous. Who cares about area effects? There's nothing to prevent shrinkers from being any less well defended than a standard character. 5) Flash Defense: It should cost only +1/4 Advantage for every additional sense your Flash Defense protects you against. Armored Helmets with Life Support Systems are stupidly expensive in Hero, and the fact that you can get tons of flash against secondary senses for very little points is counterintuitive to the attack/defense rules. Flash is one power. All Flash Defense should be one power, but if you have to buy Flash Defense against every sense separately, it becomes ridiculously expensive for no good reason. As a subset of this... Needing to purchase Resistant for Special Defenses. This is just cruel and unusual punishment. These attacks are so rare that requiring people to buy this for a +1/2 advantage is actually mean. On the oft chance that someone uses an attack like this against a specialized defense, the specialized defense should protect against it for free. I know people here think I'm a pretty mean GM sometimes, but even I, in the eyes of those who think I am heartless, wouldn't do this to my players. It's just cold blooded. 4) Drain. Removing Transfer from the game and making it a separate Aid is counterintuitive and adds more dice rolling, which really wasn't necessary. Power isn't conserved here. I could drain 4 and get 23 on the 4d6 AID roll. That doesn't seem to make much sense. Couldn't we just have a +1/2 advantage called Transfer which does the same thing? Also, the numbers on attacking defenses don't quite balance out against the fact that Drain is now a ranged power. I stuffed in a house rule that makes it cost +1/4 to do this. That's a little fairer, and now 60 points of drain drains about the same amount of END, STUN, and REC it used to and still has Range, which is better than it was. One of my players, upon reading the Drain rules, considered removing every single drain from his character's sheet. 3) Megascale isn't More Expensive: I really thought this was too cheap for what it did, and it still is. Megascale can turn carefully orchestrated time limit plots into hamburger with the blink of an eye. Yes, there's a reason there's a stop sign next to it, but for Price vs. Result, you are getting way more than what you pay for. The problem isn't the COMBAT usage of megascale. It's the NONCOMBAT usage of Megascale. Travel Times are cut to virtually nothing, which means that any plot the GM has that involves a ritual at time X or a specific action at time Y not only can, but will be interrupted long before it ever gets a chance to start. I'm not happy with an advantage in common use that eliminates all challenges in the way and forces every bad guy on Earth to plan for "What if so and so shows up?" When a PC has a megascale power, just like when an NPC does, the NPC's plan for when that character arrives if they have a reputation or have been around a long time. If a power forces every character in the world to be redesigned or have to take extra time to deal with anyone who has it, it is broken. (Once again, the 4e character creation checklist) 2) Focus still doesn't acknowledge that Powered Armor is effectively a separate, similar limitation with an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that most of your powers come from the focus, the Disadvantage being that every attack that hits you, not just your focus when it's specifically targeted, needs to be applied against your resistant defense to see if your armor loses a power. That's just common sense. 1) Barrier. I have spoken with at least five other gamemasters about this. They told me Barrier is completely and unequivocably broken. Regardless of being able to go desolid through a barrier, for a mere-smear 60 points, you can totally isolate characters and pick them off one at a time. Who cares how much DEF the Barrier has? Just buy 20 meters so you can encircle an opponent, and buy scads of BODY. The character will never get out without specialized powers devoted to doing so (Teleport, Desolid, Tunnelling 1" through DEF 23) while his comrades gang up on his allies and he beats on a wall, waiting for the time when he can actually do something. It's ten times more powerful than an equivalent amount of Entangle. Or, alternatively, if the GM wants to be a jerk (Which I don't recommend), the villains can put their OWN MENTALIST inside one of these things and just renew it every time someone knocks it down. This is better than PD, ED, special defenses, or any special effect you can name. All you have to do is make sure your group's own AOE attacks don't catch the Barrier. Those are my thoughts. Your mileage may vary.

Re: Natural Disasters? My advice is look at the Living In a Dangerous World rules (6e2, 147), and make some appropriate judgements based on the effects of other unpleasant naturally occurring things.

Re: 6E Mess

Re: Hero 5 and Marvel Continuity You mentioned the words Marvel and Continuity in the same sentence. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! You are better off creating your own world.