This is my list of house-rules. Most of it is sourced in personal experience. But some are drawn from other sites, other games' house-rules.
Power-Build Limitations
Hard No
The following are disallowed:
- “Bathroom Mentalists” — characters that can “attack” without being attacked in return are unacceptable and will not be approved.
Reaction Movement effects fall into this Category. - Takedown 2 combined with high Movement Ranks.
- Persistent extra for Healing & Regeneration powers
- Unrestricted Precise Create
These Need Discussion
The following are often problematic and
must be discussed with the GM, so that appropriate limits are put in place:
- Senses: Penetrates Concealment or Remote Sensing are key effects that may invoke this rejection. These will require discussion with the GM to ensure it doesn't make the story a headache.
- Variable — The Variable power is highly problematic and require discussion on mechanical/thematic limitations.
- Immunity
- High ranks of Damage Immunity should be limited in some fashion.
- Immunity: Toughness, Fortitude and Will — players may only have one of these, and Toughness must be limited in some fashion.
- Reaction and Trigger - can only be activated by an event that has already happened, not that is going to happen.
- Improved Critical - above 2 ranks is restricted in nearly all cases.
- Luck - Excessive levels of Luck (3+) will be heavily regulated.
- Regeneration
High ranks is not a casual choice and should be central to the character and limited in some fashion. What does this mean specifically?
- A Regeneration of 5 or under is acceptable with nearly any build.
- A Regeneration between 6 and 9 will be much more tightly scrutinized in relation to the build as whole and may require some balancing with a limitation of some kind.
- A Regeneration of 10 or higher will always require a balancing or limiting element of some kind.
- When combined with other strong defensive effects (Toughness, Insubstantial, Concealment) this may result in a Story-Breaking character. Use caution and be prepared to discuss it with the GM.
- Permanent Create
High-levels of create with the permanent extra work better with a source flaw (preserving the law of conservation of mass & energy). I'll gladly consider I>Continuous</I> Create or Sustained, but Permanent create looks too much like an edge-run around the volume and mass limits.
Everyone Gets the Move-By Extra
No need to buy it.
Passive Actions & Initiative
For sake of brevity, I will determine initiative when going into a potential combat situation.
I reserve the right to roll for passive actions (first impressions, alertness/notice checks. Asking for a roll then waiting for it and adjudicating it is three steps where I believe one would suffice.
If you can't imagine a dramatic positive and a dramatic negative result from a roll...
don't roll. However, if you
choose to roll,
you are obligated to play by the results of that roll. I am similarly obligated.
Punching Through Barriers
By a strict reading of the rules, a target behind a Toughness 1 barrier is immune to even a Damage 20 blast. This is a simple rule to get around that without requiring special extras. If you have Multiattack, or Split, you can attack the barrier and then target separately instead of using this rule.
If someone is behind a barrier (inside a vehicle, behind a Force Wall, etc.) but within range of your Damage attack, you may attempt to punch or shoot through it to hit him.
The DC is the higher of that needed to hit the barrier or the foe (considering cover, concealment, etc.). If you hit, the foe makes a Toughness roll, using the higher of his personal Toughness or the barrier's Toughness, plus half of the lesser value (rounded down). For simplicity, use this check for effects on both the barrier and the foe.
For example:
Zzap is fighting a foe in a helicopter. The helicopter is DC 6 and the foe is DC 14, so he rolls against DC 14 to hit. If successful, the helicopter has Toughness 9 and the foe has Toughness 7, so the effective Toughness is 9 plus half of 7, or 12.
Area Attacks
When targeted by any area attack, roll Dodge vs. 10+(effect rank). Add your Defensive Roll level (if any), and add the usual +2 or +5 if you have Evasion. Success means you take half effect; three degrees of success means you avoid the attack completely!
Ranks in Defensive Roll do not apply to Toughness checks for actually resisting the effect.
Spend a Hero Point for a Temporary Advantage
Any advantage can be added on the fly (at rank 1, if ranked) by spending a hero point, as long as prerequisites are met and it makes narrative sense. (so, no giving yourself Benefit Security Clearance without the story to back it up).
Array Builds
Arrays of powers require a thematic commonality or a mechanical commonality. If it isn't obvious, spell it out for me. Iron Man's "Weapons Systems" are a thematic commonality. If a character can't fly while he's communicating telepathically, that's a mechanical commonality.
All the elements in the array need to have the same Action rank. I
might allow Move-Action and Standard-Actions in the array together, but if you
use that move-action power, you can't use your Standard-Action powers until the next round. Better to just make them all Standard-Action.
Sustained-effects will come under closer scrutiny. There are special cases.
- Mimic, Morph, and Shapeshift are "slotting" powers. You use the action to switch different effects into the active "slot" and use the Sustained duration to maintain that, even while other powers in the array are in use.
- Create, Summon & Transform You can use the action to bring things into existence or (in the case of transform) change them and use the Sustained duration to maintain that even while other powers in the array are in use. Creating, summoning or transforming something new requires a new action. In addition, the cumulative amounts than can be affected still falls under the rank power of each power-effect. so no summoning max amount, then summoning max amount again and again.... you just can't bypass the power-limits.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:37, Sun 24 Jan 2021.
