Vulcan

Re: Which is your least favorite archetype to play? I would argue that, in this modern age of 'less than lethal' ammunition. Rubber bullets (convert DC's of KA to normal) make a gun no more lethal than any other E-Blast. But then, if I play a gun guy, usually he has a M-16-Frame 30-06 or short .50 with an underslung M-203. And scads of specialty grenades (concussion, gas, smoke, rocket net )...

Re: Which is your least favorite archetype to play? Properly speaking, Power Armor is a subset of Gadgeteer...

Re: Star Frontiers: The Ethics of Needlers I'm not too familiar with SF, but it would seem to me that a needler would be pretty ineffective against heavy armors... you know, the types of armor the police and military would use...

Re: Changing Into The Powersuit So much for Secret ID!

Re: Changing Into The Powersuit

Re: Which is your least favorite archetype to play?

Re: Which is your least favorite archetype to play? I have to agree that mentalists tend to be 'all or nothing' in their effectiveness. Either they are really effective (in which case why did the rest of the party bother showing up?) or completely ineffective (in which case why did they bother showing up?), which leads to them being the most party-unfriendly archetype... granted, in my opinion. Martial Atists can be hard to play, beacuse they require a very tactical viewpoint to be effective. A Brick or Energy Projector can simply 'half-move and hit them' as their default phase, but a Martial Artist requires a lot of thought to be combat effective. That might be why I like playing them so much!

Re: Perks and negative cost All right. I have gone well out of my way to keep this reasonable, but the arguement continues. So here is my final statement: Tesuji, the reason various perks cannot have a negative cost is not that it can be abused, it is that it can easily be abused. The game designers don't want that, so they wrote in the 'minimum perk cost' rule. If you don't like that, fine. The general rule in chapter 7 allows you to house-rule it for your games. But it is not likely to change in the RAW, ever, because of the ease of abuse your house rule would entail - especially for new GM's who lack the experience to see how much of a problem this could become. Continuing to argue that the rule should be changed, in light of that reality, smacks of either trolling or munchkinism. That may not be your intent, but that's the way you're coming across.

Re: Perks and negative cost You are correct. If the PC takes a base with disads, the GM should definitely use them to mess with the character!

Re: Help me get into Bricks. There's also the 'taunt the villian so he keeps shooting at me' role for the bricks. That way the less well-defended memebers of the team get more shots at the villian.

Re: Favorite 60-point Power Construction From my lion moreau character, Pride: Roar (Total: 60 Active Cost, 25 Real Cost) Hearing Group Images 1" Radius, +8 to PER Rolls (29 Active Points); Set Effect (Lion's Roar) (-1), No Range (-1/2) (Real Cost: 12) +10 PRE [for a total of 30 ] (10 Active Points); Only for fear-based PRE Attacks (-1), Linked (Images, -1/2) (Real Cost: 4) Telekinesis (4 STR) (6 Active Points); Only to push away (-1), Linked (Images, -1/2), Reduced by Range (-1/4) (Real Cost: 2) Double Knockdown (+1/4) for up to 60 Active Points of PRE Attacks (15 Active Points); Linked (Images, -1/2), No Range (-1/2) (Real Cost: 7) The GM ruled that in order for the Double Knockdown to apply, the PRE attack had to at least exceed the target's PRE, which was fine with me!

Re: Favorite 60-point Power Construction Which is why our GM doesn't like KA based on ECV. He prefers Ego Attack Does Body... Although he did put it to a vote by the party if we wanted to allow it. The GM pointedly had Menton's character sheet out in front of him as we discussed it, though... Needless to say we voted it down.

Re: Perks and negative cost In a way, that is already in the rules. That whole bit about the GM being able to change any and all rules to make for a more fun game. It's not expressly mentioned in the 'Base, Computers, or Vehicles' section of the rules, but it is in the rulebook.

Re: Perks and negative cost Not really intending to criticize your style, but your 'no caps' thing does make it a bit harder to read. That's all.

Re: Perks and negative cost

Re: Tesseract Storage Device: Cheesy? Yeah, a custom disad "Restrainable OIF" at -3/4 sounds pretty reasonable to me too.

Re: UN Supers headquarters The United Nations doesn't work that way. The tyrant has his own representatives at the UN himself, after all. They would protest the 'high-handed actions' of the hero team as being 'illegal interferance with the internal politics of our country.' Being right doesn't have anything to do with it. Look at the UN's reaction to the US invasion of Iraq to oust Hussein for what would happen. Then remeber that in the case of the UN hero team, these are the people you are working for!

Re: Perks and negative cost I find the discussions here to be quite contentious enough for me; I haven't found the courage to brave the battles at rpg.net yet. That's a valid point. I suspect I would have to have an actual character (concept and build) in front of me, along with the proposed 'base' before I could actually make a hard-and-fast decision. That might be more easily handled by buying an actual Computer, or with limited skill levels (IIF Immobile comes to mind) than buying a whole base. Again, I'd have to see the full character to make a good decision. That's a really good question; one that I have never really considered before. I would say that in general a base should: be a separate entity from a character's home. provide benefits to their adventuring persona above and beyond what a normal dwelling would provide. be something that cannot be handled another way on the character sheet. But then, that's hardly a hard-and-fast rule, that's more of a general guideline, and even then it is horribly genre-specific, given that in fantasy games a 'base' often translates into a castle where the character lives... Too many variables. But a really, really basic 'base' that is really just some gear stuck into the back room of the PC's house probably shouldn't be bought as a base. Granted, in my opinion. Feel free to disagree, and run your game the way you feel it should be. Fair enough. But given how little effort it takes to make a base with a positive cost (or more to the point, how hard you have to work to make a base with a negative cost) I just don't see it coming up often enough to be an issue. But that's me. One base that got disallowed: Superhero game in NYC. Two PC's got together and made a HUGE base for their starting characters (with 15 pts. of Wealth each). Much of the area went toward two very tall towers - the two main towers of the World Trade Center - with the actual 'superhero' base being under the basement. But there was enough area left over to have 1,163 basic apartments all over the city... basically (they claimed) there was an 11- chance they'd have a 'safehouse' on any given block of the New York City metropolitan area!

Re: Perks and negative cost Now that's the spirit of things! If the GM wants to give the PC's a free base, that's his perogative. If he then wants to make the free base very problematic by giving it disads to ofset the benefits, again that's his perogative (and one I heartily endorse! ). It's just that not every GM is going to want to go that route. And so it makes a rather poor 'hard and fast rule in the book.' Edit: Out of curiousty, tesuji, what is your beef with capitolization?

Re: Perks and negative cost

Re: Perks and negative cost Finally! I was beginning to wonder if you were ignoring me, tesuji! Valid points there. I would guess that many - if not most - of the GM would rather just say no rather than have to make a judgement call on something like this. A bit lazy on our parts, perhaps, but most of us do have other things to worry about on our PC's characters and probably don't want to add another possible 'break point' to the game that we have to scrutinze. And if many - if not most - of the GM's feel this is appropriate, then it is not likely to be formally incorporated into the 6E rules. Although to be honest, all it takes is Steve Long feeling that the current rules are the best way to go, and it will continue to be that way in 6E. Which is a far cry from saying everyone has to play it that way. But at the same time, why continue trying to push something onto other GM's that they've already expressed a rather intense dislike for? Some do, some don't. Some just generically disallow Stop Sign powers. A few disallow even Caution Sign powers. Presumably this is so they will not have to worry about making a judgement call. Again, probably a bit intellectually lazy, but it is their game which they are playing for their own entertainment. Run your game as you will, as will everyone else. Fair enough. Again, fair enough. You don't mind the extra layer of work and character examination that would take; some GM's do and just say no. That's a pretty good point. The character does get more capability from the points he spends on bases/vehicles than he does from points spent straight on the chactacter. That is true. And add in the extra disads - that is, points of capability not paid for in points - and it does seem kinda strange to argue about whether a few extra negative point on the charcter belongs in the disad section or not. Of course, stuff in bases and vehicles (or the bases and vehicles themselves) are not always going to be available to the character, which is part of why they are cheaper... I suspect that the loudest critics on this thread are the ones who are visualizing lots of extra negative points on character sheets, not just a few.

Re: Perks and negative cost Well, some of us agree that you could do that. I would probably allow it, depending upon the specifics. But I think Ghost-Angel would most definitely not allow it. But then, that's our respective preogatives, running our own games. I have found that most GM's allow characters to have a 'home' of some sort for 0 points, appropriate to the level of Wealth for the character. A 'base' imples something special that would make it valuable for an adventuring character or superbeing. So if your character takes 'poor' as a disad, that base would have to be truly wretched before I'd allow it as a disad. On the other hand, a millionaire whose superhero 'base' was a shipping container hidden in a junkyard with no utilities, but that's where he hides his superhero stuff... That would be a disad. Sure, you can run things like that in your game. And if you can convince someone else your ideas are good ones, they can allow it in their games. But don't expect everyone to agree with you about what constitutes a good or bad idea, because not everyone will agree, ever. It's like an election. You could run Ghengis Khan against Abraham Lincoln (or JFK, to cover the other side of the aisle) and there will still be someone voting for Ghengis Khan, because they think it's a good idea.

Re: Help Make Energy Projectors Interesting People have been reading Superman comics for what, eighty years now?

Re: Perks and negative cost Here is where you are mistaken, tesuji. That is not a 300 point character, that's a 305 point character. When you refer to a character by his point total, you must include his entire point total. The one and only exception to that rule is when selling back characteristics, and there are practical limitations on how far that can go. But the reason you can buy back characteristcs is because every character starts at the same point. And no character starts with a base of any point value. Therefore, you cannot sell back your points in your base, because the base does not exist until you spend points on it! The difference between a 300 point character and a 305 point character is minimum. But I knew a guy once (call him Fred) who tried to pull this exact stunt. He gave his character a cheap base, a cheap motorcycle, a Yugo, a biplane, and (basically) a fishing boat - and boy, did he heap on the disads. Had the GM not said no to all of it, he would have been playing a 300 point character... in a 150 point game. Now you see why people are so leery of allowing such a thing into the rules as written. It's a bad precident for general use. Now there is nothing preventing you from coming up with a house rule to allow negative point perks for a campaign you're running. But be aware: It Will Be A House Rule. Don't expect to play in someone else's game and use it, because the odds are they won't let you. Usually the CP is a hard cap, and the other stuff is eyeballed, or judged according to a formula the GM has made up. Some, I imagine. I know some people have mentioned games where the player explained their concept to the GM, and the GM made the character the way the player envisioned regardless of points. But you notice: The GM made the characters. Big difference between that and the GM letting the players make whatever point-value character they want. Sure, if that's what the GM wants to run. But under those conditions, the guy with the crap base and 5 different crap vehicles is still breaking the spirit of the conditions the GM is setting for his game. Maybe I'll send Fred over to play in your game. If he doesn't convince you this is a bad idea, I don't know what will!

Re: UN Supers headquarters So no going into a county to oust a warmongering tyrant, then?