Vulcan

Re: Ship-Flipping for Evil Bricks But most (if not all) large ships are not 'self righting' beyond a certain angle of list. Liners, which are often very tall in comparison to their draft, are (granted, only slightly) vulnerable to capsizing because of this. Once you lean a liner over far enough that the majority of it's structure is outboard of the ballast tanks, it will tip over and not recover. It's just hard to do without a lot of force. Unless someone passed regulations about liners needing to be 'self righting' that I didn't hear about...

Re: How flawed is your Super? Just thought of another hero disqualifier. While being willing to kill (or even having actually killed someone) does not make one 'not a hero', being eager to kill - enjoying killing - does.

Re: Between a Brick and a Hard Place: Martial throw A baby Fastball Special!

Re: What happens when a new GM doesn't understand game balance More to the point, continuing to pick on you after you reduced the power of the character... another GM no-no. On the other hand, your character did have 15 AP more defense than the average - more if the DR was resistant. I have no problem with a GM saying "This is more powerful than I realized, can we tone it down a bit." We make some alterations and the game is the better for it. But don't pick on me for it afterwards, that really bothers me.

Re: Terrible Movie or Awesome Back Story Good point!

Re: Between a Brick and a Hard Place: Martial throw A hero can throw a baby - to another hero. (Who had better catch said baby...)

Re: Logical Consequences vs. Conscientious Point Allocation Cars, dumpsters, sections of sidewalk or street... It's bought 'object of opportunity', not 'automobile of opportunity'. Comic said it best here. Review his post because he's right on this one.

Re: Phone back tracter ...I didn't know any of that. Thanks for the info!

Re: Reduced Endurance and Active Points Caps (Thread Split) For a MP, the answer pretty much takes care of itself. The additional attacks are pretty cheap, so having the niche attacks is an advanage in and of itself. If it isn't useful most of the time, so what? You've likely got 3-5 other slots you can use. The issue comes up when the character has one attack power. Period. And it's a nifty one, but under strict AP caps, it winds up being so low dice it's not worth bothering with. So the player goes back and redesigns the character into something more mundane, but more effective. Which, in my opinion, is tragic. The neat concept is discarded in favor of efficiency. AEH is one of the big sufferers here. In a 60 point game, 6d6 isn't going to do more than annoy most targets. And Double KB only reaches 7d6 at 61 points. Even if the GM lets the one point slide, it's still only marginally useful (the KB damage is going to average 7d6 as well, so it really is only good as a setup power). NND has a big advantage over the others here, in that 6d6 past defenses is a pretty good lump of damage. 8d6 AP is pretty useful, 8d6 Penetrating is marginal at best (6d6 NND is better under most circumstances). 8d6 AF works ok on low DEF (which take more damage per hit) or low DCV (which take more hits). AP caps and DC caps are useful tools for general game balancing. But the GM needs to be willing to bend a bit for the "One and only one attack capability" concepts. Or 'One BIG one and some lesser ones" (one above general limits, and the rest significantly under...).

Re: What happens when a new GM doesn't understand game balance Using an old, favorite PC as an NPC in a background roll is OK. I've done it several times, usually with 'retired' PC's from an earlier game in the same timeline. That can help establish continuity with the earlier game. The problem that crops up is when an NPC is a subtitute PC for the GM...

Re: Phone back tracter Always remember the dramtic "gotta keep the guy on the line while the cops trace the call" concept is bogus. The phone company by definition knows where the call is going as soon as it's dialed. Or where it's coming from, for that matter. And with the right legal documentation they will share it with the cops. Of course, for PC's it may not be that easy to get the information from the phone company. And cell phones are a whole 'nother matter. Generally the best you can do it figure out which 'cell' is relaying the call - unless you have radio direction-finding equipment at all the local 'cells'. On the other hand, this is a game with a rather tenuous grip on reality... For most purposes Ghost-Angel's idea should work just fine. Although I might add discriminitory on it just to be safe.

Re: Logical Consequences vs. Conscientious Point Allocation Well, not always. It is OIF after all. More often, certainly.

Re: How flawed is your Super? Attacking the helpless (not to be confused with ambushing someone of a similar power level). Rape/child molesting is a big one for me. Being promiscuous is a flaw for a hero, but isn't a disqualifying one. Burglary or Fraud for personal gain (Batman repeatedly uses both in pursuit of Justice, which I am okay with for a fictional hero). Severe addictions which control the character. Being willing to kill - or even killing - does not prevent one from being a hero. Ask any cop or soldier. Murder (unprovoked and/or for personal gain), on the other hand is a no-no. In general, motive is the big difference. A hero can be less than perfect - even a lot less than perfect - so long as his heart is in the right place and he is always striving to do better. And the general actions are heroic, whether he sees it that way or not. After all, the greatest heros rarely do things for recognition, but because it is the right thing to do. YMMV, of course.

Re: Logical Consequences vs. Conscientious Point Allocation For a simple lift & throw ability, I probably wouldn't require a skill roll on it. And what Doc said about objects of opportunity.

Re: Superhuman Bender The fun part of this one being that the players have no idea where it came from either.

Re: Characteristic inflation I used to do HEROs to denote the HERO System (rather than typing the whole thing out, I'm not a very fast typist), but a guy on the 6E thread complained that it should be HEROS. Don't know what differnce 's' vs. 'S' makes, but there you are.

Re: Martial Arts in Superheroic Games So saying that Siberian Tiger was given the magic amulet that gives him his (granted, uber-munchkin) powers because he was the best student Fu-Chiao Pai (Tiger-Style) Kung Fu wouldn't work? Not even if I took out the uber-munchkin part?

Re: Martial Arts in Superheroic Games BUBBAMANCY! A lot of my characters have had martial arts. I'd like to think that it was always an essential part of the character and not just my inner munchkin comming out - but I have to be honest to myself and say it's possible that I have occasionally engineered MA into a character because I wanted them... But even Siberian Tiger, my munched-out combat monster, had a good rationale for MA (probably better for that than for the rest of his ridiculous power suite). But MA and a lot of the archetypes work surpisingly well together. A gun/energy projector could easily know some commando maneuvers from military training. Shapechanging spys might get a little commando training as well. Bricks might be skilled at boxing or wrestling. In the final analysis, if MA both fits the character, and fits the AP/CV limits of the game, there really shouldn't be too much problem with it.

Re: Meta-Backgrounds You mean a background of the fictional character's appearances, as opposed to the background of the charcter himself?

Re: Superhuman Bender Except in bits and pieces on the news, from eyewitness accounts, etc. Reminds me of the old joke with the punchline "Clark Kent, you are such a jerk when you're drunk."

Re: Characteristic inflation

Re: Characteristic inflation

Re: What happens when a new GM doesn't understand game balance One of our newer players tried to GM a Champions game. The PC's were 350 points, but we lowballed things to not overwhelm him with uber-characters. There was a fight in the woods where 8 minions ambushed 4 heros. One hero was killed outright in the intital barrage, the rest were KO'd by phase 3. This was partially due to some phenominal damage rolls, but there was also the little detail that the minions were 200 points and munchkined out... By the end of the fight he realized what he had done and apologized. We replayed the battle the next week and things were... tough, but reasonable.

Re: The Addams Family DOH! I forgot about the stock ticker...

Re: Characteristic inflation Not to mention that many of them either fired from a braced postion around/behind cover, or a prone one to minimize exposure. Since they didn't have rPD...