Trading a Major Power for Minors

[Cardiac]

Well, personalyl - the 2 minors for 1 major is just a generalization. If one of my players has a cool concept, I might allow him to trade for more minors.

As for the heightnend senses - there are a few things I have done to remedy this;

1) Heightened Smell and Taste are now ONE power. The reason? They are THE SAME THING - the only main difference is that one detects chemicals in the air and one detects chemicals that touch the tongue. They are effectively the same sense - only they operate through different mediums. If one is "Super" - you can bet the other is "super" as well.

2) I created a Major power - Enhanced Senses - in which players can select a mix of 5 "Heightened Sense of..", "Super Vision" and "Detection/Sensor-type" powers.

3) I am currently toying around with designing "minor power packages" - you sacrifice a major power to get a set of minor powers that are related to each other.

[Preacher]

1) Heightened Smell and Taste are now ONE power. The reason? They are THE SAME THING - the only main difference is that one detects chemicals in the air and one detects chemicals that touch the tongue. They are effectively the same sense - only they operate through different mediums. If one is "Super" - you can bet the other is "super" as well.

2) I created a Major power - Enhanced Senses - in which players can select a mix of 5 "Heightened Sense of..", "Super Vision" and "Detection/Sensor-type" powers.
.

Man, I have to say I really like these ideas. Good job!!!
Question on the Major Power Senses combo of five powers. Would you exclude the sensory power of Radar or would it be allowed in the package? Your idea so I would like to know your thoughts if you wouldn't mind?

Edit Question.
Do you have any other package ideas? I think that maybe package ideas might be really cool specially for newer players who may have never played a HU2 type game before. Maybe as an option.

[Cardiac]

1) Heightened Smell and Taste are now ONE power. The reason? They are THE SAME THING - the only main difference is that one detects chemicals in the air and one detects chemicals that touch the tongue. They are effectively the same sense - only they operate through different mediums. If one is "Super" - you can bet the other is "super" as well.

2) I created a Major power - Enhanced Senses - in which players can select a mix of 5 "Heightened Sense of..", "Super Vision" and "Detection/Sensor-type" powers.
.

Man, I have to say I really like these ideas. Good job!!!
Question on the Major Power Senses combo of five powers. Would you exclude the sensory power of Radar or would it be allowed in the package? Your idea so I would like to know your thoughts if you wouldn't mind?

Edit Question.
Do you have any other package ideas? I think that maybe package ideas might be really cool specially for newer players who may have never played a HU2 type game before. Maybe as an option.

Thanks.

Now, as for your questions, this is the Major Power I came up with (and recently modified to take PU into account;

Super Senses
An ability comprised of the heightened senses minor super abilities. Select any combination of 5 powers from the "Heightened Sense of" powers, "Super Vision" powers, and any from the following list: Life Sense, Motion Detection, Sonar, Radar, Ultra-Hearing.

The only limit I would put on it is that the characters cannot use more than one power affecting a given sense at any one time, nor can he use more than one "extrasensory power" at any one time. In other words - the character can use Advanced Sight, Heightened Hearing and Sonar at the same time, but he can't use Thermal Vision and Nightvision at the same time, nor can he use Sonar, Radar and Motion Detection at the same time. To do so would be to cause sensory overload.

As for the "minor power packages" - I haven't really come up with anything yet, but it would probably be something simple like this: you give up 1 major power to get:

Fire Mastery: The character gets to select three of the following minor powers; Energy Claws (Fire), Energy Expulsion - Energy Aura (Fire), Energy Expulsion - Fire, Energy Expulsion - Flame Ring, Energy Expulsion - Plasma, Energy Whip (Fire), Exploding Spheres, Flight - Energy, Impervious to Fire/Heat, Power Weapon (fire), Supervision - Thermal Vision.

Kinetic Mastery: The character gets to select three of the following minor powers; Charge Object with Explosive Energy, Detonation/Explosive Power, Energy Expulsion - Force, Energy Expulsion Force Blast, Energy Shield, Flying Force Disk, Impact Resistance, Impervious to Sound & Vibration, Lifting Field, Manipulate Kinetic Energy, Personal Force Field, Power Bands, Power Channeling, Tractor Beam.

Damage Resistant: The character gets to select three of the following minor powers; Energy Resistance, Extraordinary PE, Hardened Skin, Healing Factor, Heavyweight, Hyperdensity, Impact Resistance, ANY "Impervious to" power, Increased Durability, Indestructible Bones.

Dark Dweller: The character gets to select three of the following minor powers; Energy Resistance, Heightened Sense of Hearing, Nightstalking, Radar, Supervision - Nightvision, Energy Expulsion - Cold, Flight - Hover, Horror Factor, Impervious to Fear/Terror, Impervious to Cold, Impervious to Shadows & Darkness, Lunar Strength, Shadow Meld, Shadow Shaping, Shadow Stepping, Sleeplessness, Sonar, Ultra-Hearing.

And the lists can go on and on - it's basically grouping powers under a common theme and letting a player chose from a limited set. Note that since these packages cost 1 major power - a player could have the opportunity to get another package my sacrificing another major power. They can selesct the same package again, gaining 3 more powers from that group that they don't already have.

[Cardiac]

I like the packages- Definitely in tune with the way Major powers are constructed. I once tried something similar for a totally different reason: Grouping powers in the random roll tables, so you could roll up different types of characters with some amount of control.

So, you agree that three Minors seems appropriate when building a Major, especially if they're part of a theme? Cool....

Yeah - I think if the character has a definate theme or idea for his PC - pick 3 powers. However, if he wants to trade a major power just for 2 slots with no theme in mind - he only gets two (the price you pay for slightly more versatility).

[acreRake]

As far as the specific problem (wanting EE:Fire Ring, Iron Skin or HyperDensity, EE:Fire, and some kind of low speed flight") I will tweak an existing power, like you said APS fire has all the things you want, you just don't want to turn into fire to have it work. So...Say you don't have to turn into fire to have it work!

I think a lot of people get hung up on the names of superpowers, instead of looking at what the power actually does or provides. Often times, a simple name-change (and possibly dropping aspects of the power) has made an existing power fit my idea...

2bits=25cents