Doc Democracy

D'oh. SHould have paid more attention to the content rather than the words. :-) However, I am not sure it feels right in this instance. Flight 10", variable +1/4 advantages (+1/2), [[Invisible [Hearing], Megascale [1km], 1/2 END, or Usable Underwater Only (-1/4)]] Cost 24 points Flight 10", 1/2 END would cost 25 points. Is it right that getting to switch between four +1/4 advantages is a point cheaper?? When I was costing the variable +1/2 advantages it looked reasonably OK, with the +1/4 advantages it looks wrong... Doc

Dont you mean Flight 10", variable +1/2 advantages (+1), [[Invisible [Hearing], Megascale [1km], 1/2 END, or Usable Underwater Only (-1/4)]] Cost 32 points ?? It should not cost less to use a choice of four advantages than it would to use just one.... :-) Doc

One of those occasions where I will be diverging from the wisdom from on high. :-) Or will change the way I use the rules - a trip I agree with - I will change your chance of knockback to be (BODY damage of attack-2D6-unused movement). If you get to 0 or below with that then you knockdown or knockback your opponent. if you do not, then you do not stop them. Doc

Looking from the outside, I am not sure this is something the parties can fix. I can see American folk, all of whom have more in common than they have that separates them, idly castigating the other half of the nation. It is like the experiment they did separating kids into blues and greens, purely at random. i can see us taking the same path in the UK, where large swathes of the country see no circumstance under which they could see themselves voting for the "other side". I detect it in myself. The initial gains for the parties are soon lost when those people don't want to vote for "their" side and "can't" vote for the "other" side. Where do they go? They become disillusioned with politics in general and disengage. Politics therefore operates in a smaller and smaller pool of extremities but the power remains there because that is how it has been set up. People then begin to feel politicians have no legitimacy as they pander more to their core group and engage less with the country as a whole. they also look at the past through the lens of the present, attributing failures and successes to the right or left, even when those terms no longer have anything approaching the meanings they did when they were attributed. It is a mess. I have no magic solutions and no actual hope that any will emerge before things become much worse.... Doc. :-(

Personally, I always thought that made a decent stealth roll significantly more efficient than bog standard invisibility and I don't think it should be. Doc

Sound is indeed a physical vibration. But the sense is not looking for physical vibration, it sense physical movement (which may include physical vibration, but probably not, I would rule, sound, unless that sound was setting physical objects to vibrating. I would rule out the vibration of air molecules. If I could sneak up on you using acrobatics in a way that was not contextual (that is, climbing an unscalable cliff to get behind you) then I would indeed say that it was worth no points. However, this sense is blind to someone making and acrobatics roll OR a stealth roll, it is a sense in addition to sight and hearing. It it is only +1/4, I think it is colourful and reinforces the SFX of the power as well as giving the heroes a written down way of avoiding it. Different games! :-)

That is what stealth does for sight and hearing, I would be less convinced it is what it would do against a Detect physical movement sense. Are you saying stealth hides physical movement? Bolo is taking a small limitation to ensure stealth is included and allowing acrobatics to count as well. Acrobatics is definitely not one of your core stealth skills. :-) if the simple ownership of those skills avoided the sense then I think it would be a far bigger limitation on the sense than +1/4. Doc

I love all my heroes having some power-associated sense that will give them a chance when other senses are removed in game. I encourage players in my games to do the same as my villains will regularly look to give them selves advantages through flash, darkness and invisibility. it is good for creative thinking. I like Bolo's build as it provides colour as well as function. doc

Well, it depends on how you want to play it. You are quite able to build it as a sense, n-ray vision where he can see anyone touching a surface within an area that has been prepared. Avoiding the strands would mean avoiding those surfaces. you could build it such that it does not work if someone can see the strands (and so avoid them) - which is predicated on not many strands that are difficult to see OR it does not work if someone can avoid the strands - which is predicated on the strands being obvious but difficult to avoid. you could allow for the sense to be blocked by area effect fire attacks which destroy the webbing. I would build it based on the heroes and what might make the better scene...

I would say if someone was running toward you and you hit them, doing 1" knock back that it simply takes 1" off their total movement that phase. you can use flight to brace against knockback and, if you do, you are not knocked prone if there is no knockback. doc

Almost all of the actions, except perhaps Trip or grab, do not explicitly prevent the opponent continuing their progress to the target. Trip would be a difficult manouevre on a flyer.

It is all very well being able to attack someone (the 1/2 DCV is welcome). I would rather have the haymaker bonus to damage than the better chance to hit....

There was a decent conversation on the benefits of being prone etc in this forum quite recently. I'm not sure the size thing works as part of the issue with prone is that you are also immobile. I might be tempted to half the size bonus due to the relative immobility involved in being prone. The value of that size is also dependent on everything being on a level. if the opponent had a height advantage or could quickly achieve one, then prone would become only a disadvantage. Doc

ooh! ooh! Can we find lots of ways to do the digital clock thing?! I propose 5STR TK, fine manipulation, only to change settings....

The question of interposing is a good one. I think that there needs to be some thought put to this as, rules as written, kind of allow folk to walk past others. If someone is going to actively interpose themselves then that is an action. It could be block or it could be move through :-) I like the block option as block can be repeated - so you might play it as the runner using movement to get to a target, if the blocker has declared intent to block as this action then the blocker can use movement to interpose between the target and the runner if the relevant roll is made. If the block is good then the runner cannot go by and must alter course. If they have enough movement they may try again and the blocker (if they have enough movement) may try to block again - the rules allow for multiple blocks. Alternatively, if the runner thinks they have the means, can attempt to knock back the blocker using casual STR, if they can manage that, then they get to blow away the blocker and continue on their way... I think that might work as a starting point. Doc

OK. You are talking about a movement power here definitely. Teleport seems the obvious one as you move from one location to another without passing through the intervening space and it either works or it does not - you dont get to go half way. In my understanding, the first change you state is requiring an entry point - it is limited from the base power which would allow you to enter from any location. The second change you state is that the movement is confined to an area (like a building or an aircraft) - it is limited from the base power which would allow you to go the maximum of the movement bought. The third change you state is that the exit point must be a flat surface of the building (or other area). These will all reduce the cost of the teleport, allowing you to buy extended range. I am wondering if the power is going to be fixed to an area, or whether you 'prime' an area by creating a doorway, either fixed or temporary? I can see the value in this. I 'might' recommend a two aspect power - one aspect is using the teleport, the other is 'creating the doorway' which I would buy as a sense which effectively maps the area and allows the teleport to work in that area with no blind teleport risk. Doc

Well, it sounds like Teleport with limitations. When you say "within a pre-defined space" do you mean forever and always the same space, or do you mean the character can use any space as long as it has been defined in advance (that is, has become a space the character knows"? Doc

Surely that provides you with an immediate limitation, only against electronic surveillance etc. Thereby bringing the SFX into the equation...

What you have here is a limitation that is conditional. What you , as GM, need to consider is how often that limits. If the vast majority of people that use it do not have 30 STR then it barely limits at all. If there are multiple examples of folk with STR 25 or 30 then it becomes more severely limiting... it is going to be heavily genre and game specific.

Ach! Was getting carried away with SFX (all the clairsentience in my group is airy-fairly mentalist types). Obviously the defence against clairsentience (mechanically) is Darkness (clairsentience).... :-)

What is the defence to clairsentience? Area effect mental defence??

Like Lucius says, the SFX are not dictated by the mechanic. XDM is one of those more difficult to divorce from SFX because when it moves from dimension hopping to moving through alternate realities the SFX become more difficult to divorce from the mechanic. I have real problems with movement powers used for other purposes, like changing the world to a different one. Where does that end?

I am not a fan of a power working for villains that does not work for heroes, they should all be within the same framework - even if I don't have to optimise the villains to work to a budget. If it is possible to move to another reality, then it is possible. If the ethos of the power is "moving to a dimension where that did not happen" then it should be possible for a player to do that. The villain may have minions and the heroes teammates but they all have opponents and the effects of this power impact everyone with few options to prevent it. Doc

I was being a bit tongue in cheek here and I strayed into the common problem of assigning special effects to what are game mechanics, something I remind people of all the time. I think the big issue here is when you are using a movement power to achieve other game effects that players have no reasonably common means of countering. Doc

Sound reasoning except that it does not reflect what the rules say. There is nothing in the description that indicates they cannot speak to their friends or cannot hear anyone else. Indeed it actually says that except for touch group senses, all of a desolidified characters senses, even active ones like radar, work normally. Not a scientific way of looking at it but consistent with the rules. :-)