Balabanto

Re: Cyberpathy vs. People's Foci The problem with that theory, and the "Ego is as good at resisting this as anything else" is that objects in Champions do not have ego scores. The "Transform Off to On"/"Transform On To Off" is that the transform is cheesy. If it were that simple, how many dice of transformation do I need? I need 2 dice penetrating, pretty much ever, because no one hardens their power defense, and all foci have ONE body. That's right. Fragile foci have one DEF. But all Foci have ONE body. You do not need to transform the character to transform their focus. This is way too broken for it's point cost.

Re: Cyberpathy vs. People's Foci It is, JT. But the thing is, everything else in the game "Attacks a defense." This doesn't seem to adequately locate a space within the game for which defense it should be and how it should work. That's why it's kludgy. When I attack your body, you resist with PD. When I attack with energy, you resist with ED. When I attack your cybernetic systems, I resist with... So far, GA seems to have the right of it, which is a system I already use, but is kludgy.

Re: Cyberpathy vs. People's Foci I think you misunderstand, JT. The problem isn't the powers of the cyberpath. The problem is the resistance test for said powers.

Re: Cyberpathy vs. People's Foci Currently, I'm thinking of Granularizing Mental Defense as well as Flash Defense. (See my rant on the 6th edition boards about secondary senses and flash) The problem is working on ways to do it without breaking anything.

Re: Cyberpathy vs. People's Foci Yeah. We tend to divide AP by 5, and use that as the base value, but the problem remains. The system does not deal with this in a logical or reasonable way.

This is a complex issue, and with new editions come old problems. Cyberpathy is one of those problems. The game does not adequately find a way of representing how Cyberpathy functions. Steve Peterson and George MacDonald never conceived of a power that could be used to control machines. For intelligent machines with an Ego Score, the Machine Class of Minds works fine. But how do you take over someone's powered armor suit, or technological device? The problem is, according to the current rules, this is how it works: You use mind control on a machine class of minds. 1) Machine has no "Mind." It is automatically taken over. Some GM's rule this way. 2) Machine has no "Mind." Your PC fails. Some GM's rule this way. Neither of these is really an acceptable alternative. I've brainstormed having the PC's INT be involved. This is a common trope in 4th edition, basing the Mind Control on INT, BUT... What if the armored character didn't build his own stuff? Whose Int do you use? If a character is Foosh Gordon, and his devices are built by Doctor Zonkov, then does he use his INT, or Doctor Zonkov's INT? We all know that Champions is based on what you pay for. Foosh didn't pay for Dr. Zonkov's INT, so he can't use it to resist with. Mental Defense vs. Machine Class of Minds: Yes. Characters should be able to build a device into their armor that prevents people from taking control of it. But, without a system that makes cyberpathy function, this works about as well as chewing grapes with a straw. There is a correlatory solution, which is granularizing Mental Defense according to the class of minds it uses, but this makes Mental Defense much cheaper. Why? Some people build cyberkinesis with TK. So in theory, the Mental Defense should work against this, but again, it doesn't. I've debated adding a Tech stat to the game, which would decouple Mental INT from technical INT, and this would solve the issue completely. Ego would become "Mind," and Int would become "Tech," and point values would have to switch around. I am not fond of this idea, because it punishes characters with gadgets too much. What I currently do: Calculate the Active Point Value of the Device that the Cyberpath is trying to take over. The Cyberpath then uses his "Mind Control vs. Machine Class of Minds" to attack that value. If he beats it, he gets to do what he wants. This means that taking over a single system or shutting it down is relatively easy. Shutting down the whole suit at once is relatively difficult. Here then, are my questions. How do you get cyberpathy and cyberkinesis to work within the rules of Champions WITHOUT breaking the game and turning armored characters and high-tech wunderkinds into swiss cheese? And by this, I mean the swiss cheese of mechanical nightmares where the system doesn't adequately represent the power. How do you create a single unified system for dealing with this without breaking the game?

Re: I killed a fellow PC last night... That +5 points for an additional focus rule? I really should have thought of putting up that it needs to go. The higher powered the campaign, the more broken that becomes.

Re: I killed a fellow PC last night... Yeah. I don't run a high enough powered game to really allow that. Hardening stops one level of Armor Piercing and one level of penetrating when I run, because it's just too easy to build "AOE Cone Focus Destruction Man who kills everything else."

Re: Superbeing Rights Debate My game also has this Forgery Subskill: Forgery: People: You must also have the appropriate sciences and skills to take this category. If your character is discovered to be in possession of this skill, likely, you have either cloned someone or been forced to do so. This skill represents the ability of a clone designer to design a convincing copy of a pre-existing human being. Ordinary appropriate science skills may oppose “Forgery: People.” This skill is very rare. Most people don’t know how to clone anyone, let alone get it to be a convincing copy of the original. This represents the perception roll necessary to locate the “genetic marker” that identifies the clone.

Re: Superbeing Rights Debate Uh, Spider Man Clone Saga.

Re: Superbeing Rights Debate Using realism as a shield will not be a sufficient answer for most player character groups. It places an unfair demand on people who have more scientific knowledge and leads to a SIGNIFICANT problem. That problem is this: Falling back on realistic science destroys four color comic book games. Completely. Without fail. People inevitably make darker, grittier and more realistic characters, and the game falls apart. This is a bad answer. It also requires more science than everyone is willing to learn, and if the PC's don't understand the science behind it, the PLAYERS WILL COMPLAIN. Trust me, this is not a road you want to go down. Real World vs. Championsworld has caused fights between players and GMs before, and it will again. If you use real world science as a shield for this argument, you ALSO have to deal with it's CONSEQUENCES. The Religious Right, the political issues surrounding stem cell research, etc. And I have some VERY left leaning and VERY right leaning people in my group. You cannot seriously suggest that this will not boil over. It always does. Perhaps your group is neatly homogenous, but what you're suggesting, quite simply, makes no sense within the social and political dynamic of a diverse group of people between the ages of 30-60. As for the idea that eventually we correct the injustice? Really? The Red Scare. Mccarthy Walked. Nixon Walked. Ronald Reagan Walked. Bill Clinton Walked. Dick Cheney Walked. They all WALKED. They did the crime, and they did not do the time. Some of them didn't even get arrested. These injustices were not "Corrected" Tasha. They GOT AWAY WITH IT! Truth is not a substitute for punishment. In a superhero game, the superheroes are the ones responsible for upholding those high ideals. That means that when the bad guy walks, they say something like "We'll be waiting." But do this enough, to PLAYER CHARACTERS, and you will find that the lengths that they are willing to go to just to keep ANY villain in prison are outrageous. It makes the game "not fun." Therefore, a mechanism by which ALL Clones are allowed to "get away with it" is not fair to the PC's.

Re: Help with naming a spider themed character.

Re: Balancing Mental Powers Another few things you can do, now that I've had some time to think about. 1) Zen No-Mind. The Clouded Mind Perceives My Mind Not. A martial artist goes before the mentalist. He can have mental defense, and he hits really, really hard. 2) Darkness Lad. Darkness Lad is just like what's above, only he just moves up to the Mentalist, puts him in the dark, and beats him up. WARNING. This is broken beyond all rational belief. Darkness+Grab+High Strength equals a total victory combo that is excessively difficult to defeat without being a powergamey cheesemonkey. I tend to limit characters who have this combination of powers a lot. This doesn't just beat the mentalist. It beats everyone without special senses except a Brick. 3) Agents Part Two: Agents can have DMSO grenades. That's right. They can throw grenades that drain the target's EGO score. If there's eight guys, and each one throws a 2d6 Ranged Ego Drain, he just lost 56 points of EGO. Now his ECV is a 1 if his EGO was 30 to start with. If, as is more likely, his EGO is 23 or so, he's making EGO rolls to take actions himself. 4) STR Drain Bombs. Rude? Yes. Debilitating to the Brick also? Yes. But the MEntalist, at most, will have a STR of 10-15. If the hero can't lift his own weight anymore, he can't move. Then the villains do whatever they want after turning him in a direction he can't see, and leave after pinning a "Help me, I was a mentalist and they stuck a note on my butt with a clue to their next crime" sign on his behind.

Re: Help with naming a spider themed character. Well, I play a character on a Mush called Silver Spider, but really, any Color + Spider should be fine except for Black, which is a Batman Villain, and Scarlet, which is the Spider Clone. Arachnos is not taken. It's just taken in my game world.

Re: Balancing Mental Powers 1) Try using agents. That automatically lowers the character's effectiveness. If he gets to affect one agent, then three or four agents just blast him. Who cares if a guy with a 10 EGO and an 8d6 EB shoots another guy with a 10 EG0 and an 8d6 EB? 2) Build a brick who's powers are based on his psychokinetic field and give HIM mental defense. Let the misery commence. 3) Entangle the mentalist in a 5d6 Entangle that stops sight. Not only have you shut off all his powers, but his STR will likely prevent him from escaping. He's done. 4) MOST agencies and supervillain teams have a "Get the Mentalist First" strategy. If he's not hiding behind cover or something, tag him right away. Force him to dodge, abort to throw up a force wall, or get behind some cover. 5) Not everything has to be about his hero ID. If he's super-effective, have the villain agencies find out times when he's alone, and offer recruitment. TEMPT him. Of all the character roles, the moral slippery slope for the mentalist is the steepest. Use it. 6) An enemy mentalist can be this PC's worst nightmare. Tamper with the minds of HIS friends. And yes, I have run combats where, literally, no one knew who anyone was, where they were, etc. Everyone's places were switched, there was no idea of who was who, and "The Jeep of Doctor Brutallo" was disabled.

Re: Hero System 3rd Party Products I wrote it. Dave is editing it. We're serious. This is not a joke product. I did most of the work in 2007, and the adventure has about 7 maps and runs about 83 typed, single spaced pages in Word 10 point. It's long. But it has all the old characters in it. I worked hard to make it the best Foxbat adventure ever. My players still talk about it.

Re: Hero System 3rd Party Products Foxbat For President is being published by Blackwyrm Games. It is slated for an Origins Release at this time.

Re: TK Techniques for a BIG FIGHT??? Who said that was a cardinal rule of GMing? YOU did. That's right. YOU. Not anyone else, for that matter. When I GM, I play the villain's intelligence score and his ability to come up with backup plans. If you're facing a guy with a 18 INT, you had better believe that the PC's will have to deal with a plan with multiple redundancies, backups, etc. If you're facing a guy with an INT of 30, you had better hold on to your seat, because that guy will have so many backup plans and plans within plans that you will need a good one just to get in the door. You are a Cinematic, Melodramatic GM, but that does not mean that everyone else always GM's the same way. There's a lot that goes on in my game that does work that way, but stating that there are rules of GMing that should never be broken? Well, you've got a lot of learning to do. I run 5-7 games a week, and I've done so for close to 25 years. Do not EVER insult another GM and their GMing style, because obviously, mine works well enough to continuously retain my players. What you're doing creates a continuous, predictable trope, and eventually, your players will realize that the scenarios are always beatable the same way. You also suffer from what I believe is known as "Full of Win Disease." People have forgotten this cardinal rule of comic books, because it's a superhero game. Here it is. Ready? Superhero games are NOT about wish fulfillment. Faithfully reproducing the superhero genre requires a lot of sportsmanship and understanding, because everyone in roleplaying, for about the past fifteen years or so, seems to have forgotten this key principle as far as superhero games are concerned. It's okay to lose. That's right. It's okay to lose. Unless everything is going to be totally obliterated if the PC's fail, and I do mean EVERYTHING, you have to be willing to take the good with the bad. You want to run the kind of game you want to run, that's fine. But you have to have a little faith in your GM that they can faithfully reproduce the genre that you want. It's okay to lose. You have to CHALLENGE your players. You have to put them in the crucible and set their bloody ***es on fire. You have to make sure that things get desperate, that the clock is ticking, that everything actually depends on what they do.... BUT... It's okay to lose. As a player, you have to be a good sport. It's not all about a player having a good idea. If the idea is good, you have to ask yourself this question. Would the NPC have found a way to plug this hole? "Unfortunately, I already thought of that..." is just as much of a part of the genre as beating the villain up. And when that happens, the hero gets captured, the hero gets placed in a deathtrap, the hero gets replaced by his own clone for a few sessions. It's okay to lose. A hero is not about what happens when they win and look all bright and shiny. You can get that out of sports events. A hero is about what happens when they get knocked down really hard and get back up. That's when they shine the brightest.

Re: TK Techniques for a BIG FIGHT??? Uh, Zed, if I tell my PC's: This Starship is filled with hundreds of my minions and they don't have a good plan for dealing with the minions, then the minions shouldn't just sit there while they fight this guy and do whatever it is that minions do. This is the difference between Drama and Melodrama. Superheroes do not have to have melodrama. You're assuming that the villain A) Does not possess an obscenely high intelligence to put in backup systems Has no ordinary backup supply for his starship. C) Has absolutely no information about the PC's whatsoever. The problem here is that clearly, he knows about their leader and what he might do! (See Golden Age's comment about how similar they are) I could understand it if some guy who WASN'T his hunted completely screwed the pooch on this, but not the guy who is OBVIOUSLY meant to be his archenemy. That's like having radiation powers and your evil Scientist archenemy not thinking of sending a guy in a cadmium coated suit after you. D) He DOESN'T know that the PC's have a guy who can teleport on his own. So he's NOT going to pull that tactic on their teleporter because he can automatically resist it. (Once he sees it) This is not my NPC, but Golden said he wanted the MEANEST, NASTIEST THINGS you can do with this character. That means he's going to use every dirty trick in the book to win. E) Yes, the PC's CAN outsmart a villain, but if I knew I was going to be attacking the villain on his starship, I would think of a creative way of getting the minions into escape pods and forcing the villain to abandon ship, and teleport himself to Earth, where MY SIDE has the advantage and he DOESN'T have galactic level weaponry. Unless the PCs have beaten EVERY thug on that ship, unless the PC's have gotten them all to surrender, there's no way that this Solbreaker guy is going to be less fearful to his own goons that he paid points for. Villain: I'm on Earth? NO! Hero: Yes, you are....KA-POW! (fighting ensues)

Re: Your PCs might be Underpowered if... When snails move faster than your speedster.

Re: TK Techniques for a BIG FIGHT??? 1) Solbreaker is well aware of this battlefield and knows it's advantages and disadvantages. The teleportation device can be used to his advantage as follows. Pre: 12. Solbreaker has set the teleportation device to teleport the first PC into one of the transmogrification capsules. This shuts down the action of one PC and forces him to save PC 2, who is now helpless. That leaves four. Combat starts, 1 PC is being transmogrified and someone will probably have to get them out, since the Martial Artist or Speedster probably lacks the strength necessary to escape. Solbreaker promptly activates security protocols for the starship (Free, It's a computer with it's own INT), and deactivates one of the 4 transmogrifiers that the PC is not in. Now he has a transmogrifier device the size of a house in his telekinetic grip and it's got INNOCENTS inside it. He begins smashing the PC's with that. Don't let up with this. Force the PC's to rescue the people while he beats them down. This will cause at least two more people to either try to save the innocents or dive for cover. The Computer resets the teleportation device for the center of the nearest star. Phase 2: The teleportation device is now reset for the center of the nearest star. Solbreaker will pick up a transmogrifier capsule and try and sweep as many PC's into the teleportation device as possible. Remember, he needs to hit a hex. Just make sure he tells them that they'll be teleported into the sun. The teleportation device now resets to the nearest totally uninhabitable planet. Phase 4: Whoever is standing, and there shouldn't be many of them, gets to witness Solbreaker tossing the nearest hero without life support towards the teleportation device. Remember, this is a one-way ride, so once they're through, they're through. Someone will probably try to save this person, but someone is likely going to wind up on another planet, far from combat. He should pick the slowest hero possible. Phase 6: This is the last transmogrifier device. Solbreaker gleefully throws it into the teleportation device and sends it on, full speed. 16d6 of physical damage from the hurled device plus teleportation scatter chart damage to anyone in the area of the transmogrifier device when it arrives. The teleporter resets to teleport only Solbreaker out of the ship. As long as he's about a kilometer away, he should survive. Phase 8: If there's anyone left standing by phase 8, congratulations, that's quite a lucky group of players you have there. Solbreaker flies to the teleporter and leaves. Activate Self Destruct. Good luck. Even if Solbreaker (For whatever reason) has the Teleportation Device shut down, he can still make use of it as long as he's only willing to teleport the heroes right outside the ship in front of the engines. Activate Thrusters! Oooh. Messy. Remember, if one guy can shut it off, another guy can rewire it. And unless this guy's a total idiot, he's got dozens of goons trying to restart this system. What's this guy's INT, anyway?

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... So, for those who remember the Gurgoyle in a Thong bit, tonight, this quote took place while the characters were trying to pincer their enemies. Emerald (Radioed): I hope that these guys like being in a sandwich. Callie (Radioed): After what you did in Kingsdale, never say ANYTHING like that ever again!

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Tonight, the Heroes of Northguard believed someone was shadowing Exodus, a super who desperately wants to be a hero, despite the fact that he has the power of the ten plagues of Egypt. So they find his shadower, this mercenary named Micron, because Scarlet Angel is waiting in a blind and spots him half a mile away, THROUGH his holo-imager (No one asked why the Lotus Esprit had a holo-imager, however, this is not my problem). She fires a smoke arrow and delays him at a traffic light. So Nightingale, the group's dark vigilante, sneaks up on the car and tries to pick the lock on the trunk. I was like "We have to go to phases now." Macrobot, Micron's amazing Robot Ally: Attention, Micron. There are lockpicks in my ass equivalent. Preparing to engage. (Massive Giant Robot Transformation from Holographically induced Lotus Esprit Occurs) Macrobot: Attention, Nightingale. Although you are extremely attractive, being anally probed is not part of my programming. Allow me to introduce you to my jackhammer fists. (VRUMMM) So combat ensues, as Micron is dragged halfway across the battlefield by Scarlet Angel's boomerang arrow. The Macrobot ONE PUNCHES Nightingale, rolls 12d6 and 55 Stun/17 Body, followed by a knockback roll that smashes her into a nearby building for 48 STUN/15 Body. Kodiak: Why didn't you attack me? Macrobot: How would you feel if someone stuck lockpicks in YOUR ass equivalent?

Re: What would your sidekick be named? The Brawling Balabanto's sidekick is... The Awesome Robot Balabantoid! It stands two feet high, three quarters of it is robotic boxing gloves, and it's made of Balabantium, an element named after ME!

Re: Most dishonourable Chinese supervillain team You forgot that Guan Di is also the god of Literature.