Heightened Speed Variant
by Everett/Nuriko no da  AB2586@uokmvsa.backbone.ou.edu

We were never comfortable with the Heightened Speed ability.  Several of
us love the comic book superspeedster as a concept, but an effective
level of Heightened Speed usually meant that the other players sat there
and waited and waited and *waited* while the speedster went through his
or her action phases.  This interpretation of superspeed did not seem
very true to superhero comic books.

Variant Heightened Speed: With the usual Heightened Speed, the player
rolls 1d100 to obtain a number which is used to increase both movement
rate and initiative.  For this variant, increase the movement rate as
per usual but do NOT add this number to the character's initiative;
instead, divide this number by 8, rounding down, and subtract the
resulting number from the 15 phases between turns.  For example, a
normal character with an initiative roll of 31 will move three times:
phase 31, phase (31-15=)16, and phase (16-15=)1.  A character with a
variant Heightened Speed of 50 gets to subtract (50/8=)6 from the phases
between turns and so moves every 10 phases; with an initiative roll of
31, this character moves six times: phase 31, phase (31-6=)25, phase
(25-6=)19, phase (19-6=)13, phase (13-6=)7, and phase (7-6=)1.  This is
just as many action phases as would be granted with the 50 turned into
an initiative bonus (phases 81, 66, 51, 36, 21, 7) but without forcing
all the other players to wait and wait and *wait* during all those
actions.  More importantly, this works more like the superhero comic
book speedster, who does not take half of his actions before any other
superhero even moves but rather is able to do more than normal-speed
heroes within the time frame used by the other superheroes.