Question to more experienced HERO gamers: Reality Warper versus Reality Warper?

[Ragitsu]

How does HERO handle a showdown between two characters that are each a "reality warper"?

 

Hold on: can it, or is this a level of power outside the scope of the system?

[bluesguy]

How would you build reality warping in the first place?

[Lord Liaden]

Not at all beyond the system, but "reality warper" is such an incredibly broad designation, many powers could easily fall under that heading: Change Environment, Extra-Dimensional Movement, Images, Mental Illusions, Shape Shift, Transform, and more. It really has to start with the effect you want "reality warping" to be, and the Power(s) that would best model that.

 

I will say that I've never read of more than one reality-warper at one time and place in a comic story, so the source material is pretty thin on precedent.

[Ndreare]

We had a group of panic clones once, each of the characters started off the exact same with normal characteristic maximum and a 45 point cosmic VPP.

 

Hero handled their fights very easily, and greatly rewarded the players who used modified attacks such as indirect.

 

Overall it really depends on what you believe is needed to represent reality warping, for us it was a VPP.

 

 

PS: The characters became distinct based on personality and skills purchased with experience, including the big bad.

[Ragitsu]

I wonder what the primary defense(s) each reality warper uses against each other (to resist transmutation/erasure from the space-time continuum), AND if the game tends to get bogged down by the many options each player has to choose.

[Lord Liaden]

The game always slows down when players have a lot of options, particularly if they're indecisive. I've been in campaigns in which the Game Master imposes a time limit for action selection, i.e. if the player can't decide within X amount of time, the PC loses his/her action that Phase.

 

Many players aren't good at improvising Power builds on the fly, even simplified builds; so for VPPs I've always recommended they write down a list of their most commonly-used Powers and configurations as a reminder.

 

In the case of specific Powers, most have suggested appropriate counter-Powers, or require that such be defined at the time the character's ability is written up, particularly for an offensive iteration of a Power which normally isn't used to attack.

[Doc Democracy]

Like folk have said, how you handle it in game is likely to depend on how you have implemented it in game terms.

 

Personally, I can see that any reality warper is going to have an element of power (brute ability) and skill (how refined their use of that power has become).

 

I think that they would declare what they hoped to achieve and then roll, skill versus skill, modified by their brute force, to indicate who won and to what extent they are able to exert their power.  The big discussion would be on how far 10AP of reality warping power should aid the skill roll of each and what the difference in the skill rolls would mean in relation to final utilisation of powers.

 

:-)

 

Doc