Power Building Quandry

[Lord Quintus]

I've come to a difficult realization: I've dreamed up a power I cannot immediately create in HERO off the top of my head. What I'm thinking of is a tracking spell that allows the character to find a creature as long as that character has a personal item of the creature he is tracking. I've got nothing for ideas. Anyone?

[Rapier]

Re: Power Building Quandry

 

I've currently got a character with this power:

 

Locate Person or Object: Bump Of Direction (3 Active Points); Costs Endurance (-1/2), Requires A Shamanistic Magic Roll (-1/2), IAF (Requires a personal item or portion of item to be located; -1/2), Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4)

 

The character casts the spell like normal and then gets a feeling (N by NW) and can just follow the pointing finger. This is basically your very own magical compass.

 

To actually SEE the person or object, swap out Clairsentience for Bump of Direction and flavour to taste.

[Lord Quintus]

Re: Power Building Quandry

 

Oh! Thanks, I was thinking about doing something using Bump of direction as the basis. I guess I was just brain-farting on the limitations I needed. Thanks, that answers it.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Power Building Quandry

 

Bump of Direction only tells the owner where he or she is.

 

I would suggest using either Tracking Sense or Mind Scan. Tracking is cheaper but only shows you the path the target took. Not where they are right NOW. Mind Scan at +20-30 above EGO allows determination of current location.

 

4 I can see their trail!: Tracking with Sight Group (10 Active Points); Spell (-1/2), Requires A Skill Roll (-1/2), Conditional Power Requires a personal item or portion of item to be located (-1/4), Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4) - END=0

 

28 I know exactly where they are!: Mind Scan 10d6 (standard effect: 30 points), +20 ECV (90 Active Points); Neither Character nor Target Can Attack Through Link (-1), Requires A Skill Roll (-1/2), Limited Power Requires a personal item or portion of item to be located (-1/4), Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4) - END=9

[Lord Quintus]

Re: Power Building Quandry

 

I think the mind scan would also need a couple of other modifiers. Off the top of my head the +20 Mind Scan is Undetectable by target, and a limitation related to the fact that the Mind Scan is only usable to determine the target's location.

 

Although, even a cheaper version would at least tell one what direction the target is in, assuming the character had an even moderate success on his roll. I guess it would work well, since it would always allow the character to know at least what direction to go and would tell more if he did better.

 

It's starting to seem like it's pretty expensive for what it is. . .

[Dust Raven]

Re: Power Building Quandry

 

It should be expensive in most cases. Though you can make it cheaper if you'd like with a regular Detect.

 

Detect Person Related To Personal Item, Range, Telescopic +10, OIF (personal item of person detected).

 

Tracking optional.

[Lord Quintus]

Re: Power Building Quandry

 

These are all good ideas, but I think I might want to clarify a little? I want the character to always be able to know what direction he needs to go and about how far away he is from the "mark" until he gets within visual range of it. That sounds like some sort of detect, but the scale is bothering me. On the other hand, the first two levels of Mind Scan do that, but making them undetectable even if they are purely passive seems maybe too expensive for what I want the spell to do. I think I've gotten enough suggestions here to properly construct the power and I'll post it later tonight or tomorrow.

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Power Building Quandry

 

If all you want is the Undetectable effect, add +7d6 Mind Scan, Standard Effect (+21), Only For Making Mind Scan Undetectable (-1). 35 Active, 17 Real.

[Lord Quintus]

Re: Power Building Quandry

 

If all you want is the Undetectable effect' date=' add +7d6 Mind Scan, Standard Effect (+21), Only For Making Mind Scan Undetectable (-1). 35 Active, 17 Real.[/quote']

 

Unless I'm misunderstanding your suggestion, this is not needed. There's an optional 20 point adder for Mind Scan to make it undetectable in the rules.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Power Building Quandry

 

You can buy it as Bump of Direction, and stack it (PLUS) Tracking. You can also just purchase Tracking, +10, Mega Scale, with a scale reduction down to "1 hex = 10m" or something equally minute (smaller than the book suggests, but well within GM fiat for this case).

 

Edit: No, you can't. My original question (before my last post got blitzed) was "How big do you want this?" You can simply buy an absurd amount of tracking and the give GM power to the user.

[Rapier]

Re: Power Building Quandry

 

I agree that you could purchase this as Mind Scan, Clairsentience, etc.

 

I'm a simplist. What does Bump of Direction do? It tells you where you are in relation to something. By default it tells you where you are in relation to North. That way you can Navigate, because you always know in what direction is North.

 

In this case, instead of defining that default direction North, we are defining it as "the direction the object I am looking for lies." Can we model the build off of the 'official build' of BoD? Sure.

 

Bump of Direction Cost: 3 Character Points (Detect Direction [3 Character Points]; Passive).

 

So basically BoD does one thing, Detect Direction. Instead of Detect Direction, we modify that slightly to say Detect Direction of Object (of whom the focus is a personal object). Same cost, same points.

 

I'm also leary to chock up a 40 pt power to what basically comes out to a plot device. I am sitting here in Des Plaines, IL. I'm, literally, maybe 2 miles from O'Hare. I've got a sweater that a girl who lives in Seatle loves. I can tell she is NW of where I am. Is this power worth more than a couple of points? I certainly don't think so. I'm going to have to drop this power off every few hundred miles to actually zero in on her location.

 

Lets pretend that I'm on one side of the Grand Canyon (heck, lets make it interesting)...I'm in New York and she's in Bangladesh. I can tell she's East of where I am. BFD. It's a plot device. Only worth a couple of points.

 

Of course, you might disagree. You would be wrong, but you can still disagree!

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Power Building Quandry

 

Nah, I can disagree and be right. Here's the big bad. Here's the big bad's secret hide out that has been eluding the party for months.

 

"Hey guys, let's just buy Bump of Direction and head down there now. We'll get a pizza on the way, it'll be great."

 

There are plenty of lims on this power, but what you've got is this:

 

8 Nothing Escapes Me: Detect A Class Of Things [People] 14- (Unusual Group), Discriminatory, Analyze, Increased Arc Of Perception (360 Degrees), Sense, Telescopic: +5, Tracking (32 Active Points); OIF Expendable (Difficult to obtain new Focus; An object owned or used by the target; -3/4), Requires A Divination Roll (-1/2), Spell (Divination; -1/2), Costs Endurance (-1/2), Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4)

 

I'm assuming what threw Quintus off is that this is bought as a full blown detect. Bump of direction is cheap because all it does is say "Hey, there's a couple stars... got it!" It doesn't usually help resolve plots. This can help you find lost children, track big bad, so on and so forth.

 

This version is pretty decent one -- the END obviously is spent to continue tracking, although as always, flavor to taste. You may not have enough END, or prefer LTE. Lemme know if that helps.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Power Building Quandry

 

You can buy it as Bump of Direction, and stack it (PLUS) Tracking. You can also just purchase Tracking, +10, Mega Scale, with a scale reduction down to "1 hex = 10m" or something equally minute (smaller than the book suggests, but well within GM fiat for this case).

 

Edit: No, you can't. My original question (before my last post got blitzed) was "How big do you want this?" You can simply buy an absurd amount of tracking and the give GM power to the user.

 

The problem with a detect is range. Bump of direction detects north, but north is detectable at less than 4" range i.e. well within the -0 bracket for range penalties. You don't have to detect the north pole, just 'north', and north of where you are can be very clsoe indeed.

 

If you allow megascaled senses then:

 

1. Official problem - they are not useable close by (that may work well, depending on the power - I know he's around here somwhere...)

 

2. It utterly devalues the whole telescopic/ange levels thing.

 

Now you can do it with Mind Scan - that is certainly the most straightforward way, and you can do it with detect, that is probably the cheapest.

 

It is certainly not the only way though. A little lateral thinking will allow you to summon an invisible seeker demon that actually does and finds the target and reports back the location via mind link.

 

A Streetwise/Observation/Deduction superskill will let you determine the likely location of your target.

 

Tracking senses will allow you to find your target (probably) if you can find somewhere he has been.

 

Mind Scan will still require some sort of mental signature - the GM may allow an intimate item to carry that - but the item itself is probably just a hard to acquire object of opportunity focus.

 

Clairsentience (pre or post cognition) may well be pressed into service.

 

Personally, for a tracking spell, I like the invisible demon It just feels right.

 

Of course you then have the problem of what powers to build the demon with so that he CAN track the target. Nothing is easy, is it?