Crazy Lou's page

Yes, we were already up on the second floor balcony when I kicked an entrance open. Nobody was very clear, I suppose.

I had a hunch that was the case; not a lot of experience with PBP, especially when initiative is in play

Are we all on the same page as far as our locations? It sounds like Anthem ran in the front door, but I helped us up to the second floor balcony. The door I intended to be knocking down was the one above the main entrance, not the main entrance itself. Adding to the confusion is the lack of communication between us all... Joe would have said something to Cliff if he saw him, but so far he only saw Warden and Cliff disappear around the corner before the fog was let loose. If we're actually on the second floor, Anthem wouldn't need to dodge tentacles as well. And the door I busted down matters; if I didn't come in the main door, how are the hostages getting out? Oy...

I know that was a typo, but "Eden City Knights" sounds cool. Cooler than Emerald City Knights, though I know that one's got a pre-established setting to it.

Considering my last real foray into MM was started by being conscripted into a government superhuman team because our GM didn't know how to convince us without punches, I feel like the beginning matters. When I attempted a PBP on Myth-Weavers (that failed because life happened and it happened kinda rough), I had my players go through one-on-one Secret Origin stories to explain where the character, and subsequently the team, came from, instead of forcing people to be a part of a team without really knowing one another. This had the amazing benefit of fleshing out the world a good deal, as well as accustoming myself to play-by-post and my players' writing styles. Here that looks unnecessary, as we've all got solid stories and live in the same city. I had to contend with heroes gathering from across the country after finding out this magical article of clothing they just put on is giving them superpowers. (It's an odd setting but I love it. Actually a very similar concept to this one, in terms of "first wave". I keep intending to reconnect with those players to apologize and such.)

Basically, worst case scenario we probably at least all know Meteor Man by reputation if not personally. Coincidence and called-in reinforcements could both work for us.

I was about to suggest going ahead with who we have and letting people fold in as the commotion (supervillain havoc or something) grows, but if we're almost ready then that's fine. Something like the classic bank robbery, being this genre's "You meet in a tavern," simple start, just to get the connections going. It'd be a bit forced to have five whole supers respond, but starting with two or so makes it a bit less... cliche, I guess. I managed a one-off prologue session a couple months ago that started with a bank robbery, but it was kind of deliberate since one of the characters owned that bank.

Either way, I won't begrudge you for however we start. Looking forward to playing.

Same, I just work nights.

Ok, let me clear things up. Your defenses' limits are set at 16; twice series power level. The sum of Toughness and Dodge, Toughness and Parry, Dodge and Parry, and Will and Fortitude must be below 16. An attack can't have more than 16 total to its effect rank and attack bonus. If you have an attack that lacks a roll to hit (Area attacks, mostly), it is limited to series PL in effect rank. Finally, any skill checks you have can't exceed series PL plus 10 in bonus.

Your calculations on defense are ignoring your powers. Your Toughness may be 5 thanks to your coat, but temporary bonuses still count toward the limit. The Aegis of Abbridon is providing you 9 points of Toughness when it's active, and that's where the trouble lies. Mind Shield is doing the same thing to your Will/Fort limit. You may need to tinker with the powers' modifers until you're happy with the reduced numbers they need to give you.

Check that Mind Shield, bro. I can't verify the other ones at the moment, so I could have slipped, but your Will breaks limit with that Mind Shield power on.

EDIT: Whoops! Posted without refreshing. Will double check when I get a couple minutes.

Poking my head in to also say you should add Strength-Based to your rifle butt. Makes 200% sense and you're well within limit to do so.

Also, how would a Subtle Quickness limited to understanding work? If you're expanding the limit to building tech, you might need to pitch that mod anyway unless you want subtle tinkering... Actually, that sounds solid. There's a gag there too; "We need a thing! Oh, you built it already."

I keep forgetting Affliction starts as Close. Even had to look that up when I was doing Joe. I do like the image of calling down lightning upon himself to heal even more than just mimicking a toddler who discovered the outlet. If that's the case, I'd recommend swapping Regeneration over to Healing (with the appropriate Self Only flaw). Regeneration works over time, but if you zap yourself you're only electrified for a short moment. The biggest downside to that is that (I believe) Healing is subject to PL limits, so take that into consideration.

ps. can someone show me how to make those spiffy spoiler character sheets

I'm using OpenOffice as opposed to Excel, so mine will look a bit different. You should have a Forums tab on your sheet, like this. On that tab, the sheet formats your character info for forums and for wikis. Copy where it says to under "Atomic Think Tank Forums" and paste it here. The only tag that doesn't work here on Paizo is the [size] tag, so remove that or replace them with [bigger] tags.

As far as putting things in a spoiler:
[*spoiler=Secret Info]Hello![/*spoiler]
becomes

Hope that helps.

Something that helped me do my sheets before I found that fill-in excel sheet was specifically writing out how much pp per rank my powers cost, so that if a rank here or there needed to be trimmed, it could be done more easily. A little unnecessary in the long run, it mostly helped with Dynamic arrays.

Here is a character I put together over a year ago on a whim. I carefully counted out my pp totals per power as well as section, so math errors were fairly easy to solve.

Your Will and your Fortitude defenses are breaking power level limits, actually. If you want to keep them even, you'll need to pull 2 points from each, bringing their sum to 16. At that point, I would recommend bumping Toughness up to 6 somehow. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what I can recommend you trim. His abilities look maybe a little too good for someone who told the weather for a living before taking up heroing. Also, you could probably make your Regeneration power an alt of your Thunderbolt; seems to make sense, seeing how Regeneration is a slow recovery. I've got the picture in my head of him retreating from a fight and jamming a fork into a random outlet to rest, so alting off of your offense makes some sense.

Apart from any issues, I love the character. Should be fun to play with!

Know what? Screw it. I didn't want to go this far, but fine. I'm saying it now.

His dream was to be a baker before he got into martial arts.
I really didn't want to use that pun.

Going through my DCs, I had to lower Strength by 2 anyway. His Strength-based Area attacks were too high. At 8 Strength, they can't even exist under PL limit. Then what I'm doing is bumping his Elongation up by 1 rank, then adding a Limited flaw to remove the Grab bonus. Justifying it as Joe's stretching not letting him thin out so much; his fingers can stretch a bit more for those Advantages, but not enough for the wholesale Grab bonus. Overall he's no Plastic Man or Mr. Fantastic; he stretches out, not thinner, not to something noodly, no detail. He has to wear a mask for disguise instead of mooshing his face into something different. It's a good justification for why I don't want to take things like Morph. It also leaves his Grab DC under limit unless I add some Strength limited to Grab maneuvers, which I went ahead and did. Language would work best with a bigger time frame (and a specific nationality for his sensei), but I can throw it in later.

Good(?) news is, he's already immune to Critical Hits! And it turns our Bludgeoning damage is a common descriptor (duh), raising the cost to 15 points! Funny how I've reached a point where I can be happy about that.

But with that, I believe all of the math errors have already been pushed out of the way, leaving us with this!

By the way, protip for your sheet: The Forums tab gives you an output that goes to this forum nearly perfectly, I just changed the [size] code to the [bigger] code and made some minor cosmetic adjustments.

If you elaborate within a Complication how he can fling a card at random (dice roll or, the more fun "your choice" option) if he doesn't take time to choose, that should work smoothly. Rounds out his complications, and once in a while he can do something unfortunate like scare some bystanders or web up his allies. I'm guessing stuff would originate from the card's destination rather than him, so it may need to clarify for some things.

I've been wondering about my Grab rolls and the Reaction power. With the addition of Elongation's bonus, does making a grab break limit? Is that bonus just applied to the initial accuracy roll, the DC, or both? Does the Reaction Damage alternate work how I think it does? I'm planning on moving the Immunity to Sustained regardless. Should I try and make the Immunity the primary power?

Of course, still taking suggestions from anyone about filling in the last 15 power points. I'll probably pick up Improved Initiative and Move-by-Attack to start.

Here is my guy. I will add in the complications and background later in the week when I get a chance.

** spoiler omitted **...

I'm gonna go ahead and help since I'm online and could use some experience helping others.

The first red flag is that I can see you're breaking Power Level limits on a couple of things, most notably your Protection power. I believe we're using the same excel document to generate our characters, so check out the Calc tab; it should be giving you red errors on both your "Dodge and Toughness" and your "Parry and Toughness" categories. That's because, since our set series Power Level is 8, the cap for the sum of those two is 16, twice series PL. The Protection power bumps your Toughness all the way up to 14, which totals 17 on Tough+Parry and 21 on Tough+Dodge. Your Will defense is also breaking its limit with that power in effect.

Then, with your offenses, your Damage powers are also breaking the 16 limit. Since your accuracy with your attacks is +7, the effect rank can't break 9. Your Mystic Bolt attack, with Damage 10, does. I believe the rest are fine, limit-wise.

Concerning your defenses, be careful. I wouldn't make them rely on your randomness mechanic; you'd hate to have to waste turns looking for your mind shield while the psychic is wailing on you. If you need a drawback for defenses, consider making it take a move action to change/activate one. It also helps the parallel between you and frontliner like my character, who's just always that tough.

Make sure you make a component for that Precognition power. This sheet heavily favors "Powers" made of several "sub-Powers", so it can look weird, but you don't need to name the component anything fancy.

Other than that, it looks alright. I know it doesn't fit the sheet, but punch in each of your attacks in the Calc tab to check that they're within limits. They appear to be, but I'm not looking that closely.
The reaction alt off of your defenses has a similar rules issue to mine, and assuming it works how we think I probably just need to make my Immunity power sustained like yours are.

With all that said, I love your character concept. I've been wanting to make a "casts magic from random cards" character myself. I envisioned in my head Fate's six defensive cards floating in a circle around him, with the active one glowing and facing outward. In fact, he's got a lot of Twisted Fate vibe (from League of Legends), but it's not like he's super original either.

As a helpful note to everyone, the Power Level limits are located on page 25 of the Hero's Handbook (Deluxe or no) or partway down the page here: http://www.d20herosrd.com/character-creation. It's frustratingly out-of-the-way for how important it is for keeping the game in balance.

Okay! So, I have a fully PL8 Dough Joe. Problem is, we've been given 135 points... I need a good 15 points more of things that actually work, and he already feels a little power-bloated. I could take a few ranks of Improved Initiative, but that's about it.

The "Abs of Dough" power is intended to be kind of modal; if he uses his reaction for the damage, he's not immune until he has another reaction to use (so his next turn) and he can't be immune to the attack he's reacting to. I believe rules-wise he has to choose before actually taking the hit, as well. I could pull the damage down a rank (or scrounge another fitting immunity) if it would make more sense to have the reaction as the alternate instead. Alternately, I could toss it, I'm not in love with the reaction damage but I need to fill out my points. I'm open to ideas.

Oof. I'm hitting more of a wall than I thought I would here, mostly thanks to power level limits. I've got another 50 or so points to spend, and though some of that will go to defenses and some to equipment, I'm having trouble figuring out what else would work. I'm simultaneously overpowering and underpowering my character.

Jumping over here from Reddit too. I'm building a tough and stretchy martial artist.