HERO Philosophy: What is a Focus?

[Durzan Malakim]

From my player-observer-perspective, the focus rules only tend to come up in these circumstances.

• During character design you can select the focus limitation to save points.
• When fighting mooks with weapons its expected you can disarm or destroy their focuses.
• When the storyline includes the capture of heroes and you have to escape without your usual resources.

What I don't ever see is players or GMs going out of their way to remind each other about Obvious focuses that can be exploited. Nor have I seen many story lines where a villain or PC spent time wondering, "Where do Hero Protagonist's or Vile Villain's powers come from?" to identify Inobvious focuses.

 

More often, players run into a signature villain in powered armor who can never be deprived of his or her powers. It doesn't matter that we know the powered armor is the source of all our troubles; one does not simply remove or break Dr. Destroyer's armor.

 

So while the focus rules provide a lot of variety in point values, in actual game play, the decision seems to be more binary. Does the GM want to temporarily take someone's power away, yes or no? 

[mrinku]

I'd disagree somewhat with you about there just being three situations, Durzan, though I fully agree that it's a binary thing and of course there no points if they never lose the toy. Megavillians are a bad example though as they are really already in the zone of "whatever the GM requires for the plot" for the most part. You can build them however you need to and ignore the build accounting altogether if you wish. And although DD's armour hasn't been a focus since 3rd edition, his gadget pool does supply him with toys that are. 

 

There is however, the midddle ground between Mook and Master Villain in the enemy meant to go one-on-one with a PC in a technically fair fight. It's common for those to be built a bit hard for a PC to handle at first but with a major weakness for them to work out, and Foci are often used for that. Or they may have a focus that is handy, but not essential (Deathstroke is a good example there. He can be occasionally disarmed, but hardly needs his sword or staff to keep fighting and can easily replace them).

[massey]

Limitations can affect character's actions even when they don't come up.  The guy running around with a sword knows that he could be disarmed at any point in time.  Just because it's a -1, that doesn't mean that the GM needs to make sure it comes up every other fight.  Random Viper agents don't need to waste phases trying to disarm him just because it didn't happen in the fight before this one.

 

Foci have a lot of different factors to them in gameplay beyond obviousness and accessibility.  You've also got questions of how serious is the loss to the character?  Does an average opponent have the realistic ability to remove it?  How long will the character be without it?

 

A power armor guy has an OIF.  The -1/2 doesn't mean he needs to lose it every third session.  Most of the time, he's going to have his suit.  But... since it's a focus, it's going to be vulnerable to people who have telemechanics powers.  So he may not always have control of his suit when the plot requires it, and that's part of what he signed up for when he took a focus.  That doesn't have to happen all the time.  One story arc in the campaign is probably enough.  Some villain team appears and they've got a guy who takes him out of the fight immediately.  Now for the next 3 sessions or something, this player can't use his suit.  Even if the campaign runs for two years and like 50 sessions, those three where he was completely nullified justify the points he saved.  Likewise, power armor guy might get hit with a penetrating killing attack that puts Body on his suit, knocking out his laser blasters or something.  While he's still got most of his stuff, he's clearly hindered in a way other people aren't.  And since it's a power armor suit (putting aside the Iron Man movies), he doesn't have another in his back pocket.

 

Sword Guy, on the other hand, can be disarmed during a fight.  Now, he's got a 10 DCV, so most people can't do it.  But the risk that he could lose his weapon at any given time, even have it turned against him, still exists.  So that always existing risk is something that he has to account for.  Of course, if you do disarm him, he can like do a backflip or something over to where his sword is, and next phase maybe he has it back. So losing it isn't nearly the same as when Power Armor Guy gets caught without his suit.

 

Angry Gun Man can have his foci broken.  They don't magically return to his hand.  But he can just go down to the gun store, or his tinfoil hat warehouse, and get another one.  His foci often won't survive combat, but they're disposable so who cares.

 

Storm Hammer God, however, only has one of his hammer.  It never breaks, and he never loses it.  Except when the plot requires it, and then getting the thing back is an adventure in itself.  He is much less likely to be caught without it, but when it does happen, it sucks a lot more.

[mrinku]

An auxiliary problem for Power Suits with secret IDs is getting from civilian mode to hero mode. Movie Iron Man has no problem here since he's Public ID and it's set up so his suit comes to him, but that plot point was often used back in the Silver Age.

 

Mind you, they can make things easier, too. Even in the 80's, no one knew Tony Stark was Iron Man, even other Avengers. Rhodey stepped in to fill Tony's boots when he fell into the bottle and no-one really caught on.

[PhilFleischmann]

And then the problem is, if a guy buys a power with -1 OAF and then the GM *doesn't* take it away fairly often, that character may be getting significantly more than he paid for.

 

I'm reminded of an old cartoon, which maybe a few of you will remember:  Fearless Fly - a fly superhero who gains his super powers with a special pair of glasses.  In every single episode, his glasses get knocked off at some point.  And he always says, "My glasses!  Without them, I'm helpless!"

[Sketchpad]

Something else to keep in mind when dealing with Foci is prep and ready time. Take someone like Iron Man for example. He doesn't always wear the suit, and changing into it can be a chore unless you have something like Instant Change tied into it. Even then, the suit can be damaged, overridden, stolen, gain sentience, and be copied to use against them. The same, to some extent, could be said about Thor, Captain America, Batman, and Hawkeye, who have all had their share of complications due to their gear. 

 

Should this happen all the time? Of course not. Just like someone being Hunted by Viper shouldn't have the Supreme Serpent knocking on his door like a nosy neighbor. It shows up when the story needs it to. 

[mrinku]

"Accessible" doesn't always mean "hand held" or "unattached" either. There's a basic distinction between inaccessible powers that are built in to a suit and are protected by its defences and accessible ones that are not. So you might have one guy with Radar bought as OIF that would require you to target the suit itself to destroy it, while another character might have bought it as OAF with a big antenna dish that could be targeted and more easily destroyed. Externally mounted missiles as opposed to an internal missile bay is a real world example. 

[Doc Democracy]

Lots of SFX associated with answers. The absolutely factual answer is that a focus is a limitation to power, or powers, used by a character. The limitation tells the GM how often and in what circumstances the player will accept the GM depriving them of their power(s).

 

As such, a glowing badge can be an obvious accessible focus, or it can be a special effect of a power. The distinction should be entirely in the hands of the player and the GM's job is simply to tell the player what he thinks that limitation means and the player can either take the discount with that interpretation or can decide to do something else to manage the budget....

 

Doc

[Hugh Neilson]

Yup - you, the player, told me, the GM< by putting OAF -1 on the power that you wanted the challenge of being deprived of that power pretty regularly, even within a combat.

 

I am reminded of an old game with an Archer fighting RatMan. RatMan disarmed the archer with his tail, then quipped "How about you don't use your bow, and I don't use my tail?" The Archer agreed, and fell back on his Martial Arts.

 

A few phases later, RatMan lashes out with his tail, sending the Archer flying.

 

"Hey - you said you wouldn't use your tail."

 

"I'm the bad guy - we lie!"

 

Guess who had 20 points of "Honourable"?