unclevlad

That presumes the writers will abide by them, doesn't it?

The problem is that, the comics don't care about points. Each duplicate is exactly as effective as the writer wants him to be in that issue/book...and that may not hold true next time. Sure, that's always true...but duplication doesn't readily translate to simple comparisons and numbers. And writers aren't bound by the action economy, so for Company Man to split into 30 duplicates is nothing. And they want the rules to be as decidable as possible. To mimic a lot of the comic styles, the dups aren't as powerful. They've got a subset...but what they take is under the writer's control. If I as GM say, ok, you use your character sheet as a basis but you don't have to buy everything...the player tosses anything fluffy first. Or does things like drop Variable FX or Variable Advantage for specific ones...which might vary from dup to dup. Or, as archer noted...bricks and tough martial artist types are cheap to build to most reasonable XP and DC caps. (An air squadron isn't bad either; Blast supports some very straightforward Limitations that can be combined with Ranged Martial Arts nicely.) Writers do things that simply cannot be translated into points sanely because their conception simply doesn't match the rules. Or, force you into, IMO, serious distortions to try to make them work.

I've worked on that; the total mass is conserved during the duplication. In Hero, the problem can be that you need Rapid Duplication to do this, and that ain't gonna be cheap.

That kind of approach is also valid, particularly for a super who doesn't make that many enemies, and is popular in his area. massey: you've also got the indirect attack on the hero, through his friends/family. How many times did Lois Lane get used as bait for Superman? Or Jimmy. Spidey was terrified someone would attack Aunt May, so the presumption becomes...yes, some of the villains probably would do it. I do agree that there has to be a high degree of suspension of disbelief with regard to this. The difficulty of systemic cover-ups, be it broad (a la Vampire: The Masquerade) or narrower (individual secret IDs) just becomes enormous when cameras are ubiquitous, when information can be correlated so extensively (ever review your own credit report?) and when there's interest to do so. Don't forget that bad guys have hackers too. In this context, attack is easier than defense, so normally I'd say, piercing the ID is much easier than protecting it...but that's why we have to invoke suspension of disbelief, as long as the character gives us reasonable cause to do so.

School reopening pushbacks are growing. Michigan State is taking all undergrad stuff remote. School districts are reporting threats of lawsuits, strikes, and sick-outs. Notre Dame is going with online only for at least the first 2 weeks...which seems particularly silly to me. If you go to the trouble and expense of remote learning to the scale necessary, then why revert? Unless the plan is that the vast majority of class hours would be remote, and only things which really can't be done remotely (lab sessions, for example) might end up being held live. THAT has notable difficulties of its own, tho. Where are the students living, in order to get onto campus to attend these? And the China news...intelligence officials think that Chinese local officials just didn't report about the outbreak. THIS, I find entirely believable. China has a strong history whereby bad news is held back in order to avoid reprisals. And if you think the national government suppresses news that might put them in a bad light, well, how can you expect anything different from the minions?

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Hayes also does a good job of recognizing the real issue: if your ID is public, then --obviously your friends and family become targets --less obviously, you lose the ability to act outside your hero persona. ANYONE seen to be associated with you, becomes a potential target, or becomes a clear target for those trying to expose other Heroes. The reason doesn't have to be malicious per se; just figure how many gossip sites there would be. So, in general...I'd argue Secret ID is the default, and is worth NO points, for the supers genre. Public ID would be the problem, as it also creates a Social Complication in terms of dealing with other heroes. Building the cover story becomes a useful part of the hero background.

Being Superman's "real ID" would be an invitation to get killed, should a real enemy of his target you. (Altho they might not fall for the deception.) In Drew Hayes' Super Powereds books, a cornerstone point is that Heroes are licensed by the government; such a license is extremely hard to get. But Heroes are the cornerstone of the culture; you've got action hero, sci fi, and high adventure all rolled together. Support services have grown enormously. One of them was, building a cover job, which might well indicate being on the payroll of the (very extensive) firm that actually built these covers, among many other things. Through a shell, of course. One of the more common themes in the current supers novels I've read, is the serious use of shell companies or other forms of corporate masking to hide ownerships of a LOT of companies, property, etc. There was also legal support; the laws recognized the extreme risk exposing the civilian ID represented, and accomodated that in ways that probably would draw serious criticism from both sides of the ideological spectrum. So, TV coverage wouldn't be live-live; at least, it'd be delayed long enough so unlikely events that might compromise the civilian ID would be censored. BUT...if you got outed, you were outed.

That's hockey. Does anyone really pay attention? <ducks> More to the point, a hot goalie can be enough to carry a team through for a short stretch. Hockey upsets are far more common. There's an article from 2016; in the 28 series with 1 vs. 8, the 8 seed won 6 times. And figure this year in the NHL is even more abnormal; are those really #1 seeds by overall level of play all year, or due to the round-robin among the top 4 seeds? And who's really ready to play there? How many games did they have before they started these "playoffs"? 5? Not many in any case. It's a problem with every sport. If you like taking the occasional flyer, this might be the year to put down a few oddball bets, as the potential for a serious long shot to pull off the big surprise

I rather liked that one myself, altho Sir Charles was being an ass. Gee, big revelation there, right? Shaq was worse, tho. Those two are back at sniping at each other, which makes watching those segments almost impossible. Game was fun, tho. Be interesting if both top seeds fall in the first round...but I couldn't call it historic. Not in this Twilight Zone of a year.

And we have to blithely approve of the changes? We're pointing out aspects of the change that raise issues...not that you tweaked things in the first place. Seems like you're taking this personally; it's not.

Similar story with costs broken out a bit here: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/breaking-down-this-miracle-covid-19-survivors-11-million-hospital-bill-2020-06-16 The takeaway I think is simplest: 1 day on a ventilator in the ICU is about $12,500 for that alone. This one is, to be sure, relatively insane. The man's odds of surviving had to be tiny. More generally: Also note, that's the median cost...the point at which half pay more, and half less. It'd be more interesting...read, frightening...to look at a more complete histogram.

I tried Dark Reader for Chrome for all of about 2 minutes. Unwanted side effects galore with other things, such as my themes for my GMail pages, and with a dark theme I was using on a different site. And it slowed initial page display down a bit. Simon...I went to a dark theme for FB because the white was too much. And we are your customers, we have the right to gripe. I've NEVER liked pure white as the dominant color.

I'd also like to turn the sidebar off. And a font size option would be very helpful. As would the ability to change the colors, but that can be more problematic.

Trying to pull off Duplication in a VPP is gonna cost HUGELY!!!! Dup, UAA, of a 400 point character? UAA is the most expensive aspect of UBO; plus, you'd have to do something to force the duplicates to be on your side, so it sounds like Altered Duplicates. You're looking at something like a +1 1/2 advantage...on something costing 80 to begin with. So that's 200 Active, meaning your Control Pool is 200 or more. OK, if it's Duplicate a norm...nothing near as pricey, but still not cheap. Plus...drop the Duplication points from the VPP? Bye-bye duplicate. Wouldn't it just generally be easier to use Mind Control for many of those? I think Duplication is an implicitly hard power; by its core nature, it's hard to balance at best, and will often net out as unbalanced. There are at least 2 models, the "biological clone" and the "energy construct" and they really share very little. The system may have adopted the bioclone notion because the construct approach strongly hints at more extensive changes; the construct doesn't feel like STUN should be a problem. You don't knock something like that out, do you? You disrupt it and force to to disappear. And a construct duplicate would seem to have quite a bit of Life Support...immune to disease, aging, no need to eat or sleep, POSSIBLY self contained breathing. One thing you can do...the rules suggest that you should be spending your char ponits / 5...that the points spent on the duplication are still covered in the duplicates, but they're largely meaningless. Well, ok...instead of that, how about saying those points *do* cover the Resurrection regen and the LS? Shouldn't need to do Altered Dup to do this. Then you can use a bio-clone approach, spontaneously creating/absorbing back as needed. They have enough notions of a body to take STUN, to become stunned, to be subject to killing. The downside might be that you always send in a clone because you don't care if it gets killed; it costs you nothing, and you're never at risk. That's something to consider..especially given that extra dups cost nothing, really. It's expensive, but that can be mitigated to a great degree. So...yeah. Duplication as written may well need to be discussed, and if the campaign dictates a different model, adjusted.

Most duplicators also don't create "living" copies; they create non-biological constructs. Quite often they're treated as essentially energy constructs. I built one where the duplicate was fundamentally built as an automaton form, with the full-on "takes no stun" advantage. Low def but high BODY; they'd soak up several hits but eventually get dissipated. I really don't understand the sources underlying Hero's duplication. One thing you could do instead of Duplication...is Summon. Very specific form of Summon, so build in a big limitation for that to cancel out the honkin' big cost of Amicable. That lets you blow off the perma-death aspect. One thing to note, tho: a Dup under the rules, with little/no change from the character, is pretty hard to kill...and easy to replace. +5 points for 2x the number of duplicates. Of course, you can do that with Summon too...and you get all of them at once, for free. On the Multiform...even if you build them both on the same base CP, overpay on the true form. For example, if you're building on 400, then drop 100 of the true form's points into the Multiform, and might as well toss in the 5 for Instant Change. That lets you spend the first 100 XP on the alternate form, even if you're building on 400 to start with. Or, the GM should allow you to leave 20 points unspent on the true form; as needed, you just bump up the points on the Multiform from that, and assign the XP to the true form. So yeah, ok, they might start at the same number of points...but they might not *stay* there. Oh, and there's this... The example is building a 450 point character, which would normally require 125 points in complications. BUT, by the text, you could also do this AND buy off the core complications in the first place, if you like. So if basis is 400 points, the true form could spend: --80 for the basis character -- +10 to reduce the basic complications from 75 to 25, if desired, and then -- +15 to build at 475. Of course, this is why the GM is advised...several times...to check what the player's trying to do. This in itself feels like it warrants at least the yellow Caution sign, as this is a big loophole.

Looks to be pretty cold, yeah. December and January average highs are in the teens...but it's at least the + teens, not the - teens. But the averages are about 10 degrees lower than Minneapolis, and a few degrees lower than Fargo, just to pick a city I know in North Dakota. But it's NOTHING as bad as Fairbanks. Average highs in Fairbanks, from US Climate Data...November, 11; December, 5; January, 1; February, 10. That's Fahrenheit, and the highs. Still, I gotta agree, that's seriously cold. And apropos of...not much? The current temp when I was looking this up, in Saskatoon...was 95. Thank you, climate change.

One of the aspects here is that teams hardly existed before the Starguard. Partnerships? Sure. Small groups of friends, even...but the link was the friendship, and in general these tended to be 2nd- or 3rd-tier supers...highly useful for smaller-scale threats, but not up to major threats or disasters. This changed with the Starguard. More strong teams formed. Unfortunately, it wasn't just the heroes that saw the value; whereas before, the villains' egos, generally FAR more indulged than heroes, led them to run solitary, or in a pyramidal approach with subordinates and minions, in the aftermath the first villain groups started to form. ------------------ Sp we get a history where...who knows how far supers went back, it's not been mentioned. But we're talking mostly 40's style JLA/JSA power levels for a lot of them; that's my thinking. Yeah, some high-power ones existed, but probably they weren't really exploring the higher-level aspects. A general fear of supers? That's always plausible. It's pretty easy to say people were parochial about it. But after this, the visibility, the influence, and the impact of supers all skyrocket.

One more. This comes with the team's origin story. Life was normal until the day the first Xelarian ships were spotted as they passed inside Mars' orbit, inbound towards Earth. Their introduction of choice, as they entered Earth orbit? Tidal bombs, into the Gulf of Mexico, Mediterranean, and South China Sea. The resulting tidal waves killed millions, and did trillions of dollars in damage. Surface-based nukes, even the secret satellite nukes...useless. Blown away long before they could be effective. Scattered groups of heroes tried. They failed; several died. Finally, one elite group managed to work past their differences, their egos. They formed a strike force unlike anything before. Where lesser teams' weaknesses could be exploited by the Xelarians, this team worked together so that someone had a counter. In a matter of weeks, the Xelarian force was obliterated. The elimination of this force clearly could not be interpreted as a defeat of the Xelarians. Perhaps they wouldn't return...but that was a risk no one, even the least aggressive, was willing to risk, most particularly the heroes who had defeated them. Thus, they vowed...never again. And in the process, created the team we all know... The Starguard.

Hmmm. For this team, how about the Knights Errant. The building name's pretty open; one can incorporate Tower, Castle, or Keep with whatever concept you like. Castle and Keep might be off in Westchester or out on Long Island; Tower can be Manhattan easily enough. Some other team ideas... --The Valkyries, an all-female, perhaps all-flyer team. Their base might be the Valhalla Building. --Daoine Sidhe, or Seelie Court...could raise some hackles in the game world, so I don't like it as the major team's name. A central aspect? Everyone has to either be gorgeous (I wouldn't require Striking Appearance but it'd help) or connect in some way to Celtic myth. --IIRC, in one of the superhero novel series, the major European team calls itself The Pantheon. Kinda over the top but in an Avengers-style "world's mightiest heroes" mode, why not? --Fire Watch? The PR is kinda built in. Avoids Watchmen and Night Watch, which I like but will have a fair bit of player baggage...not necessarily in-game, but metagame. Note that this could be a very nice complementary team; less about combat powers, more about detection/intel/tactics. A similar vein...especially if these heroes aren't worried about small, local threats very much, might be High Watch.

Hmm. Just thought of one more. The flip side of writer...editor. Ohh, and a new job in the last few years...narrator, for audio books.

Anything you can do at home...and a job that suggests odd hours helps. Obviously, powers and skills come into play, but note that they may well be real income sources. --freelance software designer --artist, sculptor, potter --writer, nowadays, when you don't need a publisher, agent, etc. There are a few that might link to power sets: --metal manipulator: there are several options. High-end knives. There's a market for serious swords; the best fetch several thousand a pop. Watches...beautifully hand-finished steel pieces can easily get into 5 digit range. There's a specialized skill here worth mentioning. Railroad-grade pocket watches frequently had fired enamel dials; they're formed by melting glass or ceramic powders in a kiln. Extremely delicate, tricky, high loss rates. The skill never died...but it's been undergoing a renaissance. Enamel dial makers are specialized artisans. Even a simple enamel dial can take a $1000 watch up to...call it $1300-1500. --stone manipulator: gem cutting and polishing. The trick here is establishing the connections to get the supply in the first place, as this is a small world, and you're talking about extremely valuable materials so trust is essential. But if your powers let you split, cut, facet, and finish with extremely high quality results and yields, this can work. --my favorite: carbon manipulator. Covers diamond cutter, since diamonds are pure carbon. But almost all fibers are carbon-based; cotton is 90% cellulose, which is C6 H10 O5. Wool is similar; it also contains fatty acids...with are carbon-based. Kevlar includes some nitrogen...but that's it. So...on the side, as a cover? High-end clothing. By appointment only. For your team, if the GM allows? Armor maker. Lessee...some others... --the main character in Drew Hayes' Corpies is a freelance restaurant/bar consultant. This suggests things like food critic. --security consultant/analyst. Here, I'd want a power set that doesn't suggest I can exploit the systems I help with. But, this is a nice complement to hero work. --CAD/CAM programmer and related. Architect had crossed my mind, but there are serious issues there; an architect has to spend significant time with customers and general contractors. BUT, the plans are now built on a computer...so your cover's the guy who does that part, in the back. Extends to all kinds of CAD/CAM and 3D printing applications.

To a degree, sure...but... Remember that the blood alcohol level for DUI is usually about 0.08%. Not 0.8%...0.08%, or less than 1 part in 1000. 0.5%...coma, possible death from cardiac or respiratory failure. Not due to sepsis, either, so this probably won't kill a blood-borne pathogen. Many hand sanitizers are actually just alcohol. 60% is the minimum concentration for it to be effective but that's probably just related to the application involved. And ethanol is fine for it. (The ones the FDA have listed as unsafe, have methanol.)

So, the University of North Carolina just cancelled all in-person classes for the fall, after 177 students had to be isolated after testing, and about twice that isolated after potential exposure. Of course, the athletic department is still planning to continue. Nauseating but a foregone conclusion. Still, the termites in the House of College Football have spread to a new wall. Students have barely returned; what'll happen over the next 2 weeks?

The cornerstone point looks t be that their income stream is basically attendance. The US leagues...and I suspect, the European soccer leagues...are underpinned by the TV contracts. Obviously the CFL has been seriously deficient in its ability to hype its product.