Well all those who life is turned upside down by my rating system can now sleep better at night. I've went and edited my profile post, not because I felt I had to, but rather I felt that some people are just to caught up in the numbers game.

Let's all be happy and get back to playing a really great game!

Dawn, the nova philes ranking is not subjective...it is based in the numerical mechanics of the game and therefore presents everything on the same scale.

Katalyst, I second Couriers point..if you want to use a different system use a *different* system. I have no problem with it, but it defeats the whole purpose of a standardized ranking system if the numbers dont lie on the same scale.

Now I would have no complaint if you presented your own system, and then rules for conversion to our system.

Again, consistency please.

I only put up the Titans ranks because everyone else was, and if I had known that my painstaking attempt to make it accurate (Whitearrow helped me, and I had originally highballed a few things so he tempered me) was going to mean jack squat because people could just write whatever they want I wouldn't have bothered.

I hope I'm not being an asshole.

Ah. you know since its at the top of the page I hadn't seen your post katlyst as I was posting mine above. I didn't mean for this to become a bash-katalyst fest or anything, and I can see from the tone of your post that you are irritated with me. I hope you know that I love your character (as well as everyone's in this game..it is simply epic and I truly hope that it can be a long running affair) and that the power rankings is a minor detail. I have always been one who looks for consistency and organization in games (and I mean any games...as a kid I used to get upset when my friends would change the rules mid pretend!), and I apologize for getting hung up on the small stuff.

Hey it's really not that big of a deal. I'm not upset about the whole deal by any means(well maybe a little but that's passed). I was just trying to add my own little flavor to my character. Like you said it's a minor thing and it's not something that we need to get all hung up about.

Regarding the "Meet the Characters' thread, I would like to add more of a early Æon description for Michaels powers rather than an itemized list. Would anyone have any suggestions for what the Æon doctors would call various powers, or some in-house terms they would have?

Just to add some flavor to my character description.

Are all your powers connected by the same theme? A forcefield that generates light perhaps?

Most of Michaels powers have an angelic theme. He can glow a soft golden light, amplify that light into a bolt of energy, craft feathered wings of that same light and coat himself in a mercury-looking metal skin that covers his face in a cruciform mask. The rest of his abilities is a smattering of minor mega-stats.

If you want Aeons descriptors they are pretty much the dry ones from the book. In other words the are scientists so they are going to have the generic names. They will call flight, flight and q-bolts q-bolts (that is at least once they understand that quantum channeling is what novas are fundamentally doing...). If you want to get more specific and techno-jargony they might say his armor is a "dermally secreted metaloid sheath," or something like that.

As for how *he* sees his powers, it could be anything. For example, he could really believe that he was an avenging angel and call his q-bolts the "Wrath of Jehovah" and his armor "The Armor of God." You get the idea...

Note to Wraith:

You may have missed this part of Fox's narrative update post, but when Fang shut down Kleisner he reverted back to human form. In other words, he has eyes now...

This is for those still in the D & D thread. Is it still morning time? I want to pop back in there after doing my first run of training, which would be either during or after lunch time. Will anyone still be around?

The D&D thread covers a 2 week period of time, and can be used for flashbacks or to have ongoing discussions between players who are separated geographically. It is no particular 'time' in the thread, and continuity is not important. If you go in and say something, whoever wants to respond, can.

Ah thanks Titan that's just the answer I was looking for. How's the trip going so far?

Ah, well, it has rained most of the time... typical for my luck. We're stil having fun, though. I'll post some pics in the 'private' forum, for those who may be interested... It's late, I'll post some tomorrow..

Have fun! Watch fireworks!

Does anyone know what happened to Wes? He's going to be pretty embarrassed when he finally appears in the hospital and we're gone.

Sorry if I have run off without someone and I understand that a number of people are on vacation this weekend, but I didn't want to let things grind to a halt for everyone else that was sitting around bored and eagerly waiting for updates.

Fox is there any chance you could update some of the other's that's not involved in the Fiat Lux thread like myself?

Well, I'll take a look, but I only have a vague idea of what Titan has in mind for you guys.

How long do you guys plan to keep watch and how long does each person stay? The order is Michael and Cayrn. Does anyone else want to take a turn?

Titan, Katalyst initiative is 15 so while it is higher, I don't want you to think that I always get to go first.

I don't think you are trying to 'get away' with anything. I just wanted to clarify why I have always let you act first against baselines, and always will (MDex, MPer) Novas will be a different kettle of monkeys entirely

BTW: I'm loving the fight, sorry it took so long to get there...

Ah no worries then, I'm actually surprised how much damage that one strike does!

If anyone comes across a nice angel-man picture, stylized or not, please let me know. I want to change my picture eventually too

Ask, and you shall receive, seek and you shall find:

Male Angels

Baselines don't soak lethal damage and Crush adds auto-succ to damage, not dice.

And hey, the first nova on baseline elite action. Pity N! isn't around.

Yeah I'm sure that capturing some guy's head exploding from a punch would make for wonderful TV.

Based on what Gaal and Najaran make thir millions on? Yeah, it actually would, creepily enough

Okay, a question/concern about the rules. Before I go any further I just want to say that I am open to how Titan interprets the rules but thought I ought to ask for clarification, as the mechanic is being used in a way that I have never seen done in this system.

In the Revised Storyteller System, Difficulty means the roll requires a number of extra dice. One may use Mega Dice to cancel these difficulties. It does not say that Mega Dice may be used to lower the target number.

On the other hand, in the OWoD Storyteller system, the ST determines difficulty both in terms of target number and additional successes required. Things that lowered difficulty were often if not always used to reduce the target number required. In WoD where one does not have Mega Dice and often siginifigantly lowered dice pools (No NPs to max out atts and skills, this was really game altering. When trinity came out, this was simplified to just extra successes in the Revised sysytem that Aberrant uses.

More questions.

I don't have his sheet but I believe the ambush rules would have given Katalyst up to +5 damage dice as well as an additional +4 from accuracy. Not that it mattered in this case but it didn't look like those dice were included in the posts and as a shakedown its always good to keep things accurate.

The Fool makes a good point. I have played this way for 10 years, and I forget sometimes that it isn't that way in the book. So, a clarification of the rules on p. 154, italics marking changes:

She may apply her Mega-Attribute dots to the roll in one of three ways:

1) She may apply an additional number of Mega-Attribute dice to the roll, up to a limit of her Mega-Attribute rating. These Mega-Attribute dice are rollen in addition to the character's normal dice pool. Like other dice, Mega-Attribute dice need to roll a 7 or higher to be considered a success. However, if one of these dice scoreds a 7 or higher, the character gains not one, but two additional successes; and if a Mega-Attribute die comes up "10", the character gains threee additional successes.

2) She may subtract one from the difficulties of any rolls involving that Attribute, up to a limit of her Mega-Attribute rating. Thus, a character with Mega-Dexterity 4 attempting a Critical Athletics feat (+4 difficulty) may assign all of her Mega-dots to reducing the difficulty. Having done so, she rolls only her normal Athletics skill total, but makes the roll as though the task is of standard difficulty! This allocation cannot reduce any difficulty below standard difficulty (+0),as a success is still needed to accomplish the task, but it makes it much easier for superhuman characters to accomplish even the most heroic feats.

3) She may subtract one from the 'target number' needed to define success, up to a limit of her Mega-Attribute rating. Thus, the character with Mega-Dexterity 4 could lower the target number from 7 to 3, so that anything over a 3 counted as a success. This makes it possible for novas to accomplish some tasks with phenomenal success.

The player may designate some of her Mega-Attribute dots as extra dice, and others as difficulty redcutions, with still others assigned to reduce the 'target number'. She may also change the allocations of the dots from turn to turn and action to action. Please note, when assigning Mega-dice to rolls and combining with assigning dots to reducing 'target number', when rolling a Mega-die, the target is always 7.

oh, yes, and to the point about the ambush rules, you are perfectly correct again. I overlooked it.

...and attack successes adding to damage. Again I realize for this particular scene it doesn't matter since Nova vs unknowing unprepared baselines are going to get slaughtered. Just saying.

Also, I checked on the probabilities and Im not sure if either way really gives more of a benefit. For example lets assume Att 5 Mega Att 5 and skill 5. Normally this dice pool grants an average of 9 successes. If the Mega Dice reduce the target number to 2 and you roll the other 10 dice, it's still an average of...9 successes.

Lets say we reduce the target number to 5 with 2 Mega Dice and roll the other 3. Thats .6 success per die for the 10 rolled for an average of 6 successes but still only .9 per the 3 mega Dice rolled for an average of...9 successes...

What about when the difficulty is increased? Lets say you are going for a called shot to the eye: +3 difficulty. If you roll the above Dice Pool straight, you would net 6 successes on average.

If you use 3 Mega Dice to reduce the dificulty to normal and then roll 10+2 you are going to get, on average...6 successes.

So mathematically speaking one method is not more viable than the other. On the other hand Mega Dice are finicky so sometimes you can get alot more successes than normal if they come up as 10's...

We now return you to your regularly scheduled game...

Thanks for taking the time to do some rule clarification, i'm sure that info will come in handy!

Ditto. I think it varies depending on the situation and there's no hard and fast rule... but it does make things more interesting.

Katalyst- I've got good news and bad news. The good news is, you don't have to pay qp for Accuracy, it's free! The bad news is, it requires a turn to aim. You could spend that qp on Quickness instead, and attack both of them normally (probably a good option, considering your skillz), or you could spend the point on Quickness, take one turn to aim, the other to kill one of the guys, or you could do something completely different... let me know, and that's what we'll do...

I'll go with spending the point on quickness and attacking normally then.

Keep in mind that the time should actually be mid to late morning in Fiat Lux. You guys arrived back at the compound around dawn.