1 - Not to be flip about this, but the book lays out 5 points.  Training, Combat level, Security clearance, Inventing points, and salary.  Now, of those, the ones I've seen a real benefit and use from are Training, combat level, and inventing points.  Depending on a particular character, their powers might get stronger as several powers have level in their calculations.

Going back to some of these, a 9th level character is +4 to hit a 1st level character.  A 1st level character is -6 to hit a 9th level character.  To top it off, the 9th level character may have invested his training in Accuracy every level, so now he is +8 to hit with a specific attack.

And having played a gadgeteer (mystical gadgeteer in an awesome PBEM game that I regret ended), inventing points are sooooo nice to have.

2 - This one is trickier, if only because the rules give specific lines about magical spells.  Mind you, the book even says toss it out if you want to.  But following the guidelines in the book, magical spells should be nearly as powerful as a regular superpower.  Also, you have individual spells instead of a broad power.

Alternatively, do it like this:

Magical Cosmic Power (cause it has to have cosmic in there with your request).  The character has access to great magical power and can channel this cosmic energy into various forms as he sees fit.  He can fashion the energy into any attack, defense, or movement form he can conceive.

PR cost for attack and defense are doubled from the base PR cost, or PR = 5 per use at a minimum, whichever is greater.  This applies even if a power does not typically have a PR cost.  For powers where movement is normally used to sustain, the PR cost is applied as well as movement.


That would be my take on it.  I hit it with the high PR cost since you have basically asked for a power to let you have any superpower.  I wouldn't change the statistics that the powers use because the cosmic energies would use the body as a channel in different ways.

That's my 2 cents. 

I've never been much of a fan of size-changers in the comics, so I've never played one.  In the old days (pre excel), size change was an auto drop.  However, with my auto-figuring character spreadsheet, it is not such a problem to make a sheet for each different size.

It would still require a bit of work, and I'd be more likely to just add a second page where I show what is affected by the size change instead of making totally new character sheets.

I think this is what people mean when they say a mechanic is "broken".

Now when I say there has to be a better way to do this, all I am thinking is either remove the size changes effect on hit points or something like that.

I don't know.

You're right, Hammer, Boosterman is similar (in having multiple character sheets).

To me it's a simple fix.  Definately not something that's 'broken' (though Size Change IS broken when combo'd with some other powers).  One member in our group had Size Change, and he simply did as you guys are mentioning (multiple character sheets in Excel).  I suppose it really comes down to this: players who enjoy (or can handle) multiple character sheets will go for a character like this, and ones who want the streamlined simplicity of one character sheet won't.  Some people enjoy making character sheets (or making new characters) enough that I can see them making up a dozen character sheets for one PC.  Others have trouble remembering to bring their one character sheet when they play, and they wouldn't be the right person for this power!   

Another thing worth noting (I've done this before - as GM helping players figure out which sizes they will use and with NPCs): Once the numbers are finally crunched, players will find that - even if they have a dozen different 'sizes' to choose from - there are only a couple of 'optimum' ones.  One of our PCs has numerous forms (and character sheets) with a character that absorbs abilities/powers (so very similar in the multiple character sheet arena).

Players will usually hone things down to "small form", "medium form", and "large form" (or something similar).  While the forms in between might have some nice features, the reality is that the extremes usually maximize the benefits.

Okay Doctor Foom;

Why are Ice Powers and Super Speed a deadly combination?  I have seen people refer to it but no one has really explained it.

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Eric explained it well; allow me to elaborate (as I witnessed it firsthand in our campaign).

This actually ties in a little bit with that thread about female players, as one of my long-time friends got his wife to join us.  She had a character, White Leopard - who had both Heightened Agility (really, really high), possibly a Speed Bonus (definitely lots of Movement), and Ice Powers.  We soon found how problematic this was (that's a nice way of saying that it's completely broken), but the dynamics were such that she didn't enjoy playing that much anyway, and the concern was that nerfing her character (or bringing it more into balance) would have potentially chased her out of the group.  They're now long ago divorced (and he's not even a part of the group except rarely as he moved out of state), but that was the dynamics of what we were dealing with.

See, the defensive abilities in V&V (most of them anyway - Invulnerability being somewhat the exception, though it sometimes might not work against every form of damage) have a downside, and end up being double-edged swords.

Armor (as has been written about here extensively) is supposed to have a chance of systems failure when it takes damage.  It's also really expensive to repair.

Force Field, one of the most powerful ways of avoiding damage, can end up taking double hits, costing damage to your Power AND your HP.

Evasion costs an Action, so it makes one sacrifice some of your offensive capabilities.

Ice Armor, especially when combined with any kind of speed or movement bonus (even high Agility) becomes problematic because the character could do something like this:

37: Character saves their action (sitting there with 100 Armor)

22: Character saves their action (still at 100 ADR).

20: Character gets hit by opponent; let's suppose it's a big hit and takes away 20 points of Armor, so now they've got 80.

20: The Ice character retaliates, using Movement to immediately bump their Armor back to 100, then attacks their opponent normally.

Note they STILL have a saved action (so can bump their armor to an impregnable 100 at any time) and they will still move twice again before the end of the turn.

The ability to constantly keep one's Armor at 100 (with no chance of it "getting through"), combined with no chance of damage to that Armor and no cost, makes this extremely abusive (read=broken).

So what's the fix for all this broken?

Or make a maximum allowed to be regenerated per turn, or making it have a much higher cost (an Action or PR).

Or simply not allowing that combo.   

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Only use basic ground movement (Str + End + Ag) for the number of points that can be regenerated each turn, which was the intention of the rule.

Or lose ice armor entirely from Ice Powers. Ice Powers is supposed to emulate Iceman all in one power, but Bobby Drake can't withstand a hundred points of damage in the comics, like Hammer said.
'Icing up' could just be him turning on his Ice Powers defense, like Torch's 'flaming on' just activates his Flame Powers defense.

What else ya got, AslanC? 
Great thread!

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Fair enough. Thanks.

Majestic wrote on Dec 18^th, 2009 at 3:48pm:


That was actually me quoting John from another posting...

Thanks for the credit though.