[Build] True Sight

[Sketchpad]

Hiya Gang,
Anyone know of a good build for this ability?
True Sight can cut through illusions, magical disguise or invisibility. The build I have now is:
True Sight: Detect True Form A Class Of Things, See Illusion and See Invisible 12- (Unusual Group), Discriminatory, Range, Sense, Targeting; OIF (Focus (Personal); -1/2)

Anyone else have one better? Many thanks :)

[Sean Waters]

Hiya Gang,
Anyone know of a good build for this ability?
True Sight can cut through illusions, magical disguise or invisibility. The build I have now is:
True Sight: Detect True Form A Class Of Things, See Illusion and See Invisible 12- (Unusual Group), Discriminatory, Range, Sense, Targeting; OIF (Focus (Personal); -1/2)

Anyone else have one better? Many thanks :)

Pretty much any sense built out of an unusual sense group will be unaffected by illusion or invisibility - unless an opponent specifically manages to 'tag' that sense with an invisibility or illusion power. It does not need to specifically detect invisible and illusion - although you could do it that way.

Note, however, that to make this power complete, you would need something like: +30 Mental Defence (only for seeing through mental illusions - as mental illusions do not work the same way as 'physica;' ones.

In addition it is not always going to work - you could build an EB as 'Illusionary Agony' and define the sfx as an illusion of pain - unless built with the limtiation 'doesn't function if illusion detected', well, it would still work.

If you are building the DnD True Seeing spell though, this shuold not be a problem, assuming you are playing Hero in DnDworld - you'll have illusions pretty strictly defined there, I'd have thought.

Here's how I'd do it:

Detect A Large Class Of Things: Whatever you can see with normal sight 11- (Unusual Group), Discriminatory, Analyze, Range, Sense, Targeting (37 Active Points); Limited Power Power loses about a third of its effectiveness (Works as normal sight but ignores illusions, shapeshifts, invisibility and other sense affecting powers with illusion/invisibility sfx; -1/2)

37 Active, 25 Real points (and add OIF reduce cost to 18)

This particular build would not allow sensing if it was dark, for instance, unless the dark was a magical illusion. Similarly you would not be able to use this sense if your way was only being lit by illusory light :)

[Killer Shrike]

Here's a version, but like all absolute effects in the HERO System its awkward to model, there are many different ways to do it, and none of them are exactly right.

True Seeing (http://www.killershrike.com/FantasyHERO/Content/Powers/Spells/Spells.asp?Category=Divination#True Seeing)

[mattingly]

Here's how we did Immunity to Illusions in The Algernon Files (http://www.blackwyrm.com/algernon.htm):

10 Mental Defense (30 points); For Mental Illusion Only (-2)
15 +15 PER; Only to Penetrate Illusions (-2)

I do like Shrike's idea of adding Flash Defense. I hadn't thought of that before.

[Sean Waters]

I'm not completely convinced we need flash defence if we are building an unusual sense, given that is never going to get flashed even if it simulates normal sight (so long as it is not using the simulated sense rule, and none of the builds presented appear to be).

Also there will probably be some things that interfere with even true seeing - staring into the sun, you'd see a bright ball of non-illusory gas that is burning your retinas.

[Killer Shrike]

I'm not completely convinced we need flash defence if we are building an unusual sense, given that is never going to get flashed even if it simulates normal sight (so long as it is not using the simulated sense rule, and none of the builds presented appear to be).

Also there will probably be some things that interfere with even true seeing - staring into the sun, you'd see a bright ball of non-illusory gas that is burning your retinas.

Its been a few years since I did the design on the Spell conversions, but IIRC the rationale was True Seeing works off of the Simulated Sense rule via Sight. Thus some FD to make it harder to temporarily blind someone using True Seeing.

But, as I said, there are many different ways of building True Seeing, but since it is such an absolute effect in the source material, nothing is going to precisely model that in the HERO System without being absurdly expensive since there are many different ways to affect senses.

There's also room in a campaign for multiple versions of a True Seeing like effect, with different pros and cons.

It's really just a matter of deciding what's important about True Seeing for your campaign and focusing on that.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

the only other thing, which was touched on briefly and I'll state explicitly, is people who have an invisibility to "true seeing" defined I suppose as an Invisibility vs. True Seeing (unusual sense group).

You could always not allow that in a game though, if you wanted true seeing to be truly true.

[Killer Shrike]

Yep.

As an aside and as a point of comparison, this supervillain character on my site has a power that is very much like a "True Seeing" and several other powers built off of it. I bought him sight as an extra sense and applied various detects to it, so to blind him you basically have to have a power bought specifically to do so, which is highly unlikely -- a cosmic VPP of some kind being almost the only plausible scenario.


Epiphysis (http://www.killershrike.com/EnforcersINC/Characters/Epiphysis.HTML)

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Funny, I once fought a team of super villians (genetic Nazi supermen actually), one of which was called "Incognito". His big shtick was not being seen (and he had a sword and gun of reasonable deadliness). He had invisibility to the regular sense groups (including mental and radio) bought outside the VPP, a detect built as “Detect: detects that are sensing me” and a cosmic VPP only for invisibility powers to cancel those detects. The end result, was any sense could sense him for a phase, but then he adjusted to it and recloaked.

His special effect was Heisenberg Uncertainty Invisibility , basically if his atoms were disturbed in any way “basically sensing him” they became immeasurable (invis), yeah, rubber science, but good enough.

We eventually beat him with images, useable as attack, area of effected everything, and the image stuck to him (I believe it was a rhine of frost, that left a blanket of mist on the ground he disturbed, for special effect)

[Adventus]

Another way to build it is to use N-Ray Vision. What can't you thru? Reality. I.E you see right thru Illusions to the true reality. So for example I create an illusion of a giant from a normal person. When using the N-Ray vision, you would see the person instead of the giant.

[Kdansky]

Mind that True Sight is a huge balance problem in D20, as it makes all illusions after the first few levels utterly useless. Barred school Illusion? Yay, no disadvantage, all these spells don't work properly anyway! TS should not exist anyway. :P