Dive for Cover rules silly?

[tesuji]

I still remain curious for those who make it so how much of an advantage (+1/4 +1/2) having "my attacks are not obviously what they are until its too late to abort actions against them" is worth.

 

I can imagine the experienced and veteran HERO gamer who defines his multipower as "each of the powers when used emits a glowing blue ball which releases its effect when it strikes or reaches the desired range. All the blue balls look identical, regardless of power."

 

His multipower includes various single target attacks, a couple area attacks including NNDs, darkness effects, and the lot of them.

 

Now, by FX, the guys who are already immune to the NNDs and know it won't know until "its too late" and so will still be tempted to D4C against attacks that cannot affect them. Guys with senses so that fog clouds are no problem or other reasons not too still won't know its darkness until "its too late" and will be diving for cover or dodging anyway.

 

It seems to me that once your Gm adds in the "you must decide against some attacks whether to dodge or D4C before you have any credible knowledge of the threat" that this becomes a very useful ability.

 

Why should it be free?

 

What's the balancing downside between Arcane Guy who defines his attacks as spells firebolt (RKA), lightning ball (EB area), fog cloud (darkness) and spirit storm (EB NND Area not vs force fields) where each of his spells has a unique look from the get go (allowing the enemies to decide with knowledge whether to dodge or d4c or not) vs Alien Juggler who throws identical blue balls for each of those attacks who only reveal what they do AFTER they "hit", after an attack roll is made and too late for knowledgable choices?

 

How much would you charge for this advantage?

 

If I were playing under a GM like listed above, where you have to make these decisions blind, but only for some SFX, then I would certainly expect to see a cost difference.

[Alibear]

Originally posted by tesuji

If I were playing under a GM like listed above, where you have to make these decisions blind, but only for some SFX, then I would certainly expect to see a cost difference.

 

When I am GMing, and I have done this nearly weekly for 15 years, I let the players work this out on thier own. Experience counts.

 

How many times in the media do we see characters lose the first battle, learn from thier mistakes, and ultimately win out in the end?

 

Oh, and BTW I would not allow the blue balled alien in my campaign. All powers should look a little different to people that have seen thier effect.

 

Perhaps I am being strict, but, do we have any comics, or other sources, which support the one special effect, lots of powers, example?

[tesuji]

Arguably, the green lantern... one green glow which forms different shapes for different purposes.

 

However, depending on the GM, this may or may not be a genre fiend game where you are limited to only things which have been published in a cimic. For instance, i might envision a cuborg with a demonic hand and an alien grav sled... which probably has not been in a comic... as a decent character. Not all GMs would dismiss that solely because it hasn't been seen in print.

 

Still, to stay on point, it seems like a power "whose nature is obvious only after its too late to abort" has an inherent advantage of reasonable and palpable proportions over a power "whose nature is obvious when there is still time to abort" and IMO if a Gm is going to enforce these and have them play a definitive role IN PLAY then they should not fit within the relatively narrow constraints of FX and should be accounted for.

 

It is at LEAST as significant an effect as "not in intense magnetic fields" which IIRC is -1/4 or any number of 1/4 level disads or limits. heck, reduced penetration is worth -1/4 and it is the best way to handle "stun only" I have seen. (-1/4 reduced penetration -1/4 no KB OR chose to take for free stun only???? Works great with non-protective entangles and rapid fire!)

[Markdoc]

The question as to whether "nature of attacks is inobvious" is a worthwhile advantage - and if so how much - is a fair one.

 

But on thinking about it, it does not seem to be worth much - in about 20 years of Hero system gaming, it has simply never been an issue. That clearly makes it worth less in practical terms than "not in magnetic fields", which has come into play at least three times that I can recall. Of course, the fact that the latter is in the rulesbook may have had something to do with it :-)

 

While a player could plausibly come up with such a power (a bow that shoots arrows with different special attacks, for example - such devices have been used in games I have run or played in) it has never given the player a significant edge. That may be because - in my games at least - the general approach if you are worried about the nature of an attack is a dive for cover BEHIND something. That protects against explosions, but not against gas. And I am not going to go round changing the cost of every attack based on special effect: EB, explosive 5 points/d6, energy blast explosive, gas, 7 points/d6, Energy blast explosive, heavier than air gas, 8 points/d6, etc, etc

 

In short, special effects can be advantageous sometimes and that should be balanced in use by the occasional disadvantage. To me, this one does not affect play enough to worth a +1/4, although depending on your players, YMMV. One day BluBall the Alien Juggler is going to accidentally load a Mega-explosion ball into the holster normally used for the Laserbeam ball and use it on a nearby target. After all, if they look the same to everyone else, he's gonna need to buy a special sense himself to be able to tell them apart - and a player who wants to min-max the system like this is hardly gonna cough up 5 whole points for "can see multiple shades of dark blue"

 

Cheers, Mark

[Tasha]

Originally posted by tesuji

Still, to stay on point, it seems like a power "whose nature is obvious only after its too late to abort" has an inherent advantage of reasonable and palpable proportions over a power "whose nature is obvious when there is still time to abort" and IMO if a Gm is going to enforce these and have them play a definitive role IN PLAY then they should not fit within the relatively narrow constraints of FX and should be accounted for.

 

There is an Advantage that covers that. It is called Invisible Power effects. I would limit is someway so that only the specific power is masked, not the attack streaking to the target.

 

Tasha

[tesuji]

Originally posted by Tasha

There is an Advantage that covers that. It is called Invisible Power effects. I would limit is someway so that only the specific power is masked, not the attack streaking to the target.

 

Tasha

 

I tend to agree.

[Killer Shrike]

tesuji has a point on this one.

 

Probably a variation of IPE or Variable SFX,

 

+1/4 Inobvious SFX: This Advantage is usually applied to Multipower Pools containing numerous attack slots or applied to several attack powers with a common theme or SFX. This advantage allows all of these attack powers to have a common and indistinguishable SFX which does not communicate any useful information to observers regarding the capabilities of the attack. Thus a character with an Archer Multipower of various Trick Arrows that applied this Advantage to the Multipower could use any of his Trick Arrow slots without indicating to an opponent that 1 is Armor Piercing while another is Explosive, and yet another contains a Gas attack. Similarly an Energy Projector with a fine-tunable attack power (via Variable SFX or Variable Advantage for instance) that took this advantage could 'tune' his attack to affect a certain SFX or to have certain Advantages without indicating what type of SFX or Advantage was in effect; to an opponent each attack looks identical, its effect becoming obvious only after the attack has resolved.