Doc Democracy

See! Now I am going to have to go dig out that AD&D Monster Manual AND it's 3rd edition progeny and check.... ...that's what happens when you have these kinds on conversations,... <flounces off>

Clockwork guy is an obvious candidate for duplication. I am wondering how far in front/behind thus duplicate comes from. Either way, one of them gets a peek into the future...there remains a conversation to be glad if you want to go into this in some depth... I am not sure about the magician. Does the simulacrum act independently? If so the duplication is indicated, if not you are tending to Summon. If the actions the simulacrum can take are limited then you might be moving to other things. I can see a simulacrum able to do one task being a mix of continuous uncontrollable powers with physical manifestation and possibly some other custom bits and pieces. I like the idea of a physical manifestation of a power 'holding' some of a casters STUN and/or BODY. The power does a particular thing for a time. It can be restrained and/or destroyed before it runs out of END. If destroyed the caster loses the STUN and/or BODY invested. :-)

We all started somewhere and we only learned the system by having to solve issues and problems, more often getting them wrong the first few times til you work out what works for you and your group. Again it all depends on what you mean by slow the opponent. Like Christopher suggested, slow does not necessarily mean fewer actions, it can mean each action moves more slowly and is thus easier to dodge and moves so slowly they find it harder to block your moves. That could be done through a drain (OCV and DCV) or any other number of ways. Like I said before, you need to sit down with the player and talk through a hypothetical fight, asking them what they expect the attack to do, how that should change the nature of the fight and what might people expect to have that would help them resist the effects of the attack. Would the attack be all or nothing - are the effects cumulative - do they wear off gradually or just disappear - what would partial success look like? You have an advantage over me in that you have a community of desperate opinion givers ready to unload those opinions at a moment's notice. feel free to use and ignore as you want - it really does accelerate the learning process. :-) Doc

I like the idea. I am wondering how often you will be able to use it as headgear must be quite common, possibly I would live with metal head protection, allows you to get those using leather etc. Other than that, I think it is a nice supplementary ability

Time bombs are one of those things that can mean many things. I would ask the player what it is he wants to achieve when he uses one. Messing about with SPD gets messy and bureaucratic in game. If he wants extra attacks, a time bomb could simply add autofire to his attacks. If he wants to move about the battlefield it could provide teleport. Actually, if you were confident enough, time bombs would be a decent SFX for a VPP as it is likely he wants to achieve different things. It would be best however to sit down with him and run through the various things he reckons those time bombs might allow him to achieve. Don't stray into game mechanics, keep it strictly narrative until you have a decent list. THEN you can think of how to achieve that mechanically. Doc

ooh! How interesting. I go about it exactly the opposite way. I describe the power, work out how I want to see it work in the game, the way it feels the way it reacts to stuff etc. I need a picture of it. Only then do I try to model the mechanics of it. I find if I try to come up with powers by game mechanic the whole thing feels a bit lifeless and I suffer from a severe lack of imagination and the powers look (and feel) vanilla. Doc

Are you asking for examples of powers, as Bolo suggested with Warehouse 13, the naming and description of the powers (tesla pistol) is pretty important to the character 'feeling' right?? Or are you asking for a mix of advantages and limitations that would reflect the nature of those powers (such as the time to put a power in play - wind it up etc)?? The build of powers is really key to getting the feel right but then you need to make sure that it is on the character sheet in a way that does not rob it of its colour...dont have it sitting there as 10D6 EB - clockwork -1/2, takes ages to use -1/2, unwieldy focus -1/2, etc... Use lots of descriptive words, get the mechanics onto the back of the sheet and the colour onto the front....

My first two thoughts were Burning Cross and Stonewall Jackson Jr

I prefer to make such things part of the story. I would go to the GM and say that you have XP you want to spend, in particular, you want to increase EGO and BODY and would like him to think about an adventure where a side effect of the story would entail my character gaining EGO, BODY or both. It might be useful to have that issue show an immediate increase with the potential for that to grow further, So. The heroes might take out a supersoldier factory where the key villain is holed up with over 50 hostages whom he intends to turn into super-soldier slaves if the heroes attack. There is a way that the heroes might prevent that but one hero has to expose himself to a danger that he will be soaked in the mind control fluid. He has to choose between that exposure and saving the hostages. We all know what a real hero chooses. The side effects are an immediate jump in EGO or BODY and there is no knowing where that might stop. You might even persuade the GM to give you more than you can afford if you take on one or two complications to reflect possible lack of control/rage/openness to mind control/etc etc which can then be bought off rather than buying up the stats. Doc

One immediate difference is that you can follow up a post 12 recovery with a second one, or an attack on segment 1. It is different because, when an opponent is stunned by an attack, you or a teammate make on segment 10 can be followed up with a floating action on segment 11 and another on segment 12. On the other side a floating action can be burned to recover. It is true that much of this can be achieved by holding actions but this demands some conscious thought in a way the SPD chart does not...

I was reading some other threads and this flashed into my head. Am just putting it out there so that I dont forget but also to allow those other board posters that are more mechanically minded than me to see what the problem might be... I was thinking that when you buy 5 SPD for your character you follow the SPD 4 profile on the SPD chart and get a single action to use on one of whatever phases are left. This means you can, once in a turn, seek to have two phases concurrently but can also provide the freedom for a team to coordinate to take advantage of a momentary opportunity. I have thought only about haymaker because it would seem a great use for it. I think it is but your opponent will also have that floating action and, if you begin your haymaker, can invoke their floating action to act before you connect and move out of the way. If your opponent has used his floating action then he is flatfooted and open to the haymaker. Interesting option or totally broken?? :-)

Wasn't looking to get at you Christopher and I can understand this view when viewed through the lens of our pretty rancid tabloid press. I think the things you raise are worth pointing out but I have a reflex habit of correcting this kind of stuff when it comes out my father's mouth. It is worth knowing the prejudices of a country as well as its facts. The areas of the U.K. most concerned about immigration wrt Brexit are those with the lowest levels of immigration.

I'm not sure where to even start with this. It seems almost completely informed by the right wing press and hits the stereotypes promoted therein. We do not call Muslims Asians. We call Asians Asians and a significant number of those are Muslim but there are also a significant number of Sikhs and Hindus and even Christians falling under that Asian heading. There are quite a few other Muslims that we label Arabs (though there is a grab-bag of nationalities and ethnicities in there) and we kind of miss that a lot of ethnic Africans are also Muslim. I think you may be correct that the favourite dish is of Indian cuisine but I think it was created in Birmingham, i.e., not ethnically Indian. :-) You may be correct that most of the low level crime in the South East is currently committed by Eastern Europeans but I do not think that is true countrywide. I do not accept that that is a politically correct term to refer to Gypsies. Gypsy is an actual ethnicity and they are the most discriminated against group in the UK. The uninformed may use Gypsy to refer generically to Eastern Europeans, tabloid rags may use Eastern European as a nod and a wink (and we all know what we mean here) to allow their readers to believe it means Gypsy.

There is no need for any of the current EU Members to agree. Article 50 says: “Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.” Once it is invoked Membership ends two years later. Negotiations can shorten or extend the two years but nothing can stop an exit two years later... Interesting piece by a constitutional lawyer here: https://publiclawforeveryone.com/2016/06/24/brexit-legally-and-constitutionally-what-now/

If you are asking me, then I would say you are either using a disarm (which could be done at range with a whip if the martial art was learned with weapons) or you are using a power... Obviously the special effect of the teleport could be using a whip but it would not be using the martial disarm manoeuvre. However, there is nothing that would prevent building aspects of the martial disarm into the application of the teleport power either.... Doc

I guess it depends on how much the setting accommodates unrealistic (not used in a pejorative way) outcomes. Superheroes should see this work almost without thinking - though there are likely to be more confounding factors. In heroic games there should be different confounding factors. All that is necessary is that there is some internal consistency so that the players do not feel that there is an abuse of some kind or that they are helpless to do anything (or get carried away abusing a loophole you created for them!). :-)

And this is indeed why the detail is necessary. I can see the motivations behind it and why it fits the character concept. Now it is all about making that work mechanically. You would agree that for the ninja to grab/disarm, it is not appropriate for the object simply to disappear out of a hand and appear somewhere else, this is not magic. Using teleport mechanically allows you to do this at range and remove STR from the equation. Of course, in game there would be the SFX that the ninja flips out, knocks the weapon away from the warrior who is so surprised he does not resist. The question is, what is the warrior's options for defending against that attack? Obviously we can now weight it towards the ninja as that is the point of spending points! :-) So. Perhaps we retain the range and size penalties for the disarm roll, or simply a targetting roll. Instead of a to hit we require the ninja to succeed in some kind of stealth roll versus the warrior's awareness. If the warrior is completely unaware then it seems as if the ninja comes out of nowhere and suddenly he is weaponless with the ninja nowhere near. If the warrior is aware then there is a usual STR vs STR roll (which the ninja is likely to lose) and if he succeeds the sword is knocked but not out of his hand while the ninja is still nowhere near. That all 'feels' right to me. It does not provide the ninja with a mystical power (though, in the right setting that might be appropriate) and gives the warrior a reasonable defence route. Doc

I think there is a place for a teleporter to have a cool disarm power. It may be simply the point and shoot power of Jay Ackroyd (Popinjay) in the Wild Cards series. What he can point at, he can send anywhere he can visualise (though he cannot teleport himself). The key thing about this to me is that it should not simply be a way of getting round the disarm rules. I think that there should be something built into the mechanic to retain a level of balance. So, disarm as a manoeuvre is free. It has to hit penalties and requires a STR versus STR roll. This costs points, is at range and it may change the definition of what is (and is not) accessible. There needs to be a defence (unlike in Wild Cards where the author is the only balance needed). This is why there needs to be some thought put into it. A STR versus STR roll does not 'feel' right for this, the objects simply pop out of existence. As such there needs to be some thought into how a person might hold onto the item. If the item is held then you 'might' allow a STR roll to be used versus the active points of the power. I would allow the teleporter to purchase levels in this to 'pull' actively resisted teleports. If the item is not held then there should only be an attempt to disarm modified by range and size of item. I would also ask the player to define what might prevent the teleport, like teleport powers (disrupting his ability to create the teleport field round the item) or electrical powers (same idea) or force fields (through which his teleport cannot pass) etc. Ultimately it is like Tasha says. To really get an idea of the best way to define the power, mechanically, you need to define it narratively. Doc

I tend to avoid Mind Control for long periods of control. To me, it is a combat style power for tactical gain. Long term control of people is accomplished by adding psychological complications through transform. I can see followers being recruited by soup kitchens and honey trap recruiters. Attending services exposes them to the transform attack, gradual effect. Over time they transform into initiates who can can set up other transforming stations. The initiates participate in inner circle stuff, exposed to further transformation that takes them to priests (who can create initiates). Those transforms add complications and powers. That is the back story, you don't need to play that out in game time except to demo it to an investigating hero. Powers and the removal of said powers can be built in reference to that back story. There may indeed be Mind Control (as a power) used for specific purposes but I would be using Transform with a Mind Control special effect.

Ninja, that is the game mechanic. Tasha is looking for the comic book explanation that might inform the mechanic she might use to achieve the game effect.

A big pool with a shared universe and three GMs rotating is a good set-up. Needs someone to coordinate though. My first cut would be the ones who initially said no, I can legitimately say to them that I would have loved for them to be in the game but when they said no, I asked someone else who said yes. I like my players to be enthusiastic...

Hmm. There is a line to be drawn when you are GMing. More and more detail is the lure of HERO simply because you can. It is also useful to have detail that you can share with the players later if they are the kind that like post-match analysis. :-) I like to have enough detail that I can understand what would happen in edge cases like, Dimension Man pulls the God into the astral plane, does he still get his worshipper bonuses?? Or what if Chemical Guy produces a huge cloud of knock out gas? Do the worshippers need to be awake? The players will often seek to solve the problem in a manner you never imagined and (IMO if you are a good GM) you seek to make that work but that means you need to be able to adjudicate stuff you never planned. For that you need to understand the power and what that means in game terms. However, I don't like the detail of having to account for every two bit worshipper in the area so that I can ensure I know exactly what power is available to the main bad guy. As such you need to find your own level - enough info to adjudicate and run the game - not so much that you are constantly scratching and scribbling on the paper while the players twiddle their thumbs. I think that you want the followers to be faceless masses and find a way to account for them in blocks of whatever denomination is convenient. You might have them in various locations that can be added or struck off as required. You could have those represent chunks of powers or REC/END/STUN that can be added or taken away as things happen. Your resolution there does not have to be too detailed. It should never take you much more than 20 seconds to know how many D6 you need to roll.... :-) Write up the priests with GodGuy as the source of their powers and if he is defeated, dont waste time rounding them up - have NPCs ready and waiting to capture (or worse depending on tone of campaign).

I reckon that breaks the rules of the OP! :-)