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Superspeed Side Effect


Foxiekins

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The Minor, Major and Extreme labels normally refers to the active points used for the side effect. Any other negotiated effect should be equivalent.

 

Accelerated aging sounds very much like a cumulative partial effect Transform to me. Maybe use that, at least as a guide?

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Accelerated Ageing Side Effect is not just for speedster characters. In the live action Jojo movie (based upon Diamond Is Unbreakable), Jotaru Kuno is noticeably older then the manga. And his hat covers a major bauld spot, the results of stop time using Star Platinum during his battle with Dio all thoes years ago.

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Another way to look at it is - exactly WHAT is being accomplished by the superspeed? You may be able to relate it to real time that way and get a handle on what seems reasonable.

 

So if the character performs at 6000 times faster for a minute, they've burned 100 hours of life (about 4 days).

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Right, but for how long in bursts? 400x normal means each minute (5 whole Turns) of continuous extreme superspeed equates to 6 hours, 40 minutes of life. He'd have to keep it going at that level for about 22 hours to lose a year.

 

Assuming this is an emergency power and that he might use it once or twice in a session, I can't see it being worth too much. Roughly, he's losing a day per adventure.

 

On the other hand, if it's always on he probably only has a couple of months to live.

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I just asked a similar question recently for my metabolic-based speedster. HERO System got rid of the Age disadvantage from 5th edition. There is only a brief mention of aging in the Life Support section of 6e. Other than that, unless it's actually affecting the character's performance (see 5er 329) then it's not really a disadvantage. 

 

It may, however, manifest as a psychological complication, such as depression or existential dread at one's own accelerated mortality. Other than that, if it's not really a disadvantage, as they say, it's not worth anything.

 

Check some of the suggestions in the thread I started: http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/95883-accelerated-aging/

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HERO really requires you to rewrite a character at different life stages. Once you get that old, even casual use of extreme superspeed might be fatal. So while it might pass in a 30 year old character, it may well be worth points for an old guy.

 

Just doing a back of the envelope calculation, that's a distance of roughly 8000 km, so to do it in 30 minutes he'd have been moving at an equivalent of 16,000 kph. At x400 speed he'd have been moving at 40 kph, which is not extraordinary for a peak human to achieve sprinting, but I'm not surprised that a nongenerian who maintained that pace for eight days (his metabolic perspective) expired from it. Certainly, losing eight days of life itself would probably not have killed him - if he'd used superspeed to perform a less strenuous task (say, computer research) he may have been okay... although if that was eight days solid with no sleep he may have been in trouble.

 

But it seems to me this is pretty much a scaled up version of the Marathon legend, where Pheidippides expired of exhaustion after running 25 miles to Athens to deliver the news that the Persians had been defeated.

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Okay. My take would not to build the passage of time aspect as Side Effects but as a minor Physical Limitation, probably a 5 pointer. It's not really the time aspect that's burning him out but running too fast too long.

 

Side effect damage does sound reasonable to emulate that.

 

You could also look at the END cost for the extreme version of the power. Using the rule for running out of END and burning STUN, you get a lot of the desired effect without having to build something over-complex.

 

You could also tier things: Cruising speed (which may even have reduced END); Full speed (a bit more power, normal END); Emergency speed (even more power at x2 END) and Desperate speed (more power yet again, but actually taking Side Effect damage directly).

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I think you're right...  His movement was all at Zero END, and I had Side Effects on his last 4 Noncombat Multiples, and also on a Variable Power Pool just for Incredibly Fast Speed Effects, but I couldn't build the Side Effects in a way that would let him do the Marathon Run...  (The original version of the character dated back to 4th Edition...)  So I changed the Side Effect out for only having Half Endurance, and I think that'll work better...  Thanks for your thoughts...

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I think you're right...  His movement was all at Zero END, and I had Side Effects on his last 4 Noncombat Multiples, and also on a Variable Power Pool just for Incredibly Fast Speed Effects, but I couldn't build the Side Effects in a way that would let him do the Marathon Run...  (The original version of the character dated back to 4th Edition...)  So I changed the Side Effect out for only having Half Endurance, and I think that'll work better...  Thanks for your thoughts...

 

You could also consider the effects of "Long Term Endurance" from his vantage point as a way of calculating side effects.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was thinking more along the lines of "Massive Coronary" (i.e. actual NNDK damage if you really want to specific damage rules). Ageing a year itself is still an undefined thing in HERO. Why would being 91 be any worse than 90?

 

Something like "Physical Complication: Old Age" would be enough. Or "Susceptability: 1d6 STUN and BODY from Pushing powers".

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If their aging is accelerating faster than they are then it will get away from them and they won't be able to age any more.

 

If I have completely misunderstood the question SOMEHOW, just add more points to Psychological Complication: Opinionated bigot. That way you get more points every time you run fast.  Until you fall and break your hip, anyway.

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