Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

[Sean Waters]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

For most wishes, Transform is sufficient.

 

You don't even need to affect the universe with it. Examples:

 

* I wish I was better looking. Cosmetic Transform (shifts points around into COM)

 

* I wish I was wealthy. Transform (shifts points into Wealth)

 

* I wish I had love. Transform (adds Disadvantage: DNPC with Psych Lim: In Love With _____)

 

For the ones where Transform isn't sufficient ("I wish _____ was dead") give the wish-granter a VPP as well, or use EDM.

 

If you need to "transform" the universe, use EDM. If you need to transform the character, use Transform. For everything else, there's VPP.

 

Transform and EDM* tend to be the big 2 when it comes to unsolveable problem solving, but I'm still keen to work out a summon option.

 

You can summon creatures and you can summon things, why not summon raw powers or, if that is too much to swallow, a god-like being that can grant your wishes for you.

 

Actually DnD Wish is not that difficult. It can:

 

1. duplicate any other spell (up to 8th level for wizard spells),

 

2. undo harmful effects, injury or death

 

3. transport you and/or others

 

4. undo a single recent event (you get a re-roll of a roll you've just blown)

 

I mean, that's really not that difficult at all.

 

1. Sufficiently large Spell VPP

 

2. Ressurection Full Spectrum Healing

 

3. Global TP/EDM

 

4. Time travel EDM (Back 1 phase)

 

 

 

 

*Subject to the understanding that a 'personal EDM' is simply a way to leave your friends to the fate whilst fleeing to a candy-coated universe of your own making

[hammersickle59]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

Thanks for everyones input. I've been working on a few versions with everyones advice in mind.

 

The crux of the problem is this. In this game world, you pay for the ability to learn spells, not spells themselves. Since spells cost no character points, its hard to objectively say how powerful it is to research them faster. It would make it so you have a lot more spells available than other mages, but not more powerful spells (your still limited as far as AP caps). I have to make it not too cheap and not too powerful. One version costs 18 points (treating it as a research skill and doing it faster on the time chart), too cheap. One version cost 6000 points (slow down whole planet to 0 speed), too power powerful. I'll go with the mid version that cost 50 points (this was the EDM one)

 

Dean

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

Sure you can. What is a lack of Time? it's a lack of movement.

 

How do we stop movement in Hero? Entangle!

 

One psychotic Entangle later.... NND, Does Not Take Damage, Area Of Effect: One Hex, Megascaled to the Universe, Personal Immunity, Reduced END should be a good start.

 

Actually, this proves my point exactly. There just isn't one canonical method. So many options it makes me giddy.

[Diamond Spear]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

Actually' date=' this proves my point exactly. There just isn't one canonical method. So many options it makes me giddy.[/quote']

 

Which is why, after spending three days trying to work out with Thia how to simulate the time stop power of Piper from Charmed, I gave up and just handwaved that it cost 120 points and since both players and GM knew how it worked in the show it should be fine.

 

I did some thinking about it afterwards and figured that was the best way to handle “timestop” powers: decide between player and GM what all the effects were, what limitations there were and have the GM assign what he felt was an appropriate cost for his campaign. Trying to build it “correctly” in HERO….well that way lies madness.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

For those of you who use 13+ Speed in your rules, a simple +12n Speed (either with activation and duration Limitations or done through Aid/Succor) that only works for n Phases might work well for a Time Stop ability (though it might take a moment to take effect since you have to wait until both your old and new Speeds would have had a Phase before using the new one). Possibly add Invisibility in there so no one else can see what the character is doing during that, "moment ouside of normal time."

 

EDIT: I haven't a clue about "Charmed" but if it is anything like the old "Out of this World" stopping of time, that could be a REAL challenge. Heh.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

Which is why' date=' after spending three days trying to work out with Thia how to simulate the time stop power of Piper from [i']Charmed[/i], I gave up and just handwaved that it cost 120 points and since both players and GM knew how it worked in the show it should be fine.

 

I did some thinking about it afterwards and figured that was the best way to handle “timestop” powers: decide between player and GM what all the effects were, what limitations there were and have the GM assign what he felt was an appropriate cost for his campaign. Trying to build it “correctly” in HERO….well that way lies madness.

 

Yeah, I tried to come up with something similar in 4th ed Champions for a friend who liked the power from "The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Everything"

I was able to squeak an approximation together using a suite of various powers starting with enough AOE SPD Suppress to cancel out everyones ability to move and built up from there, but the power suite still took the lions share of a 400 point character and wasn't QUITE right.

 

It's a bit easier now with Naked Advantages and Megascale, but still.... wicked evil high power ability.

[Diamond Spear]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

Yeah. When I was stating out the girls from Charmed I did them as 200 point characters so I felt that the 120 points for the time stop was about right since it ate up sixty percent of her available points. And like I said it had lots of limitations on it which were easy to come up with since the writers of the show had to carefully limit the power's use to keep it from taking over.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

Time stop/travel works OK in fiction because the author has complete control over what his or her characters do (although to listen to some of them you would nver know it). The freakish power that such abilities confers can be mitigated by circumstance and even emotion so that the whole book doesn't just read:

 

I stopped time, spent simply AGES working out what was going on, and it turned out to be the butler after all, so I built a cage round him, and carried half a dozen burly police men to stand around him so he could be arrested. I laid out the evidence in such an obvious way even inspector Knacker couldn;t foul this one up.

 

The END

 

Time stop works in Charmed, or Heroes or whatever because the protagonists are not likely to stop time then strap 200lbs of dynamite to their opponent's head with a half second fuse. The characters don't act like role players and, to be honest, most role players are not as good at role playing as they would like to believe. Even if they are that good, a time travel/stop game can go ANYWHERE, and is certain to go somewhere the GM does not expect.

 

I've run a Time Travel game before (and I'm doing a horribly complicated one at the moment which has time travel and freakish editorial tricks which almost act like time travel - the first scene was the penultimate scene from 7 years in the future. Why do I do this to myself?) and I can say with authority that you need to severely limit the players access to the actual travelling, ideally by having it under the control of a NPC, and even then you need your fingers crossed.

 

Time stop is not hard to do in Hero (nor is it cheap), it is just hard to administer.

 

Can I suggest a large AoE 120 point speed drain (that's 40d6 with standard effect, or 400 points). That should reduce the speed of everything, animate and otherwise, to zero. You might need PI on that...

[BNakagawa]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

Handwaving is the best way to do it.

 

SPD drains don't really work because even if all the animate entities within even a megascaled area have their SPD reduced to 0, it doesn't stop things like people from burning to death or falling to their doom. Also, the earth continues to revolve and orbit the sun, so when the power ends, the time of day or even season might be changed.

 

You can handwave away physics, but SPD drain won't help.

 

The Hero System Universe does not believe in Einstein's model of time/space.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

Handwaving is the best way to do it.

 

SPD drains don't really work because even if all the animate entities within even a megascaled area have their SPD reduced to 0, it doesn't stop things like people from burning to death or falling to their doom. Also, the earth continues to revolve and orbit the sun, so when the power ends, the time of day or even season might be changed.

 

You can handwave away physics, but SPD drain won't help.

 

The Hero System Universe does not believe in Einstein's model of time/space.

 

Is there any good reason why only animate objects have SPD? Personally I don't recall anything in the rules that indicates that you can not effectively drain speed from the inanimate*. Generally you're not going to notice, of course.

 

I'd suggest that whether SPD drain works as a time stop within a given AoE is a judgement call. I'd assume the inanimate has a nominal speed of 12 as, although it is not noted for zipping about, if you drop it, it moves every segment.

 

 

*Mind you I'm not famous for reading the rules properly.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

Is there any good reason why only animate objects have SPD? Personally I don't recall anything in the rules that indicates that you can not effectively drain speed from the inanimate*. Generally you're not going to notice, of course.

 

I'd suggest that whether SPD drain works as a time stop within a given AoE is a judgement call. I'd assume the inanimate has a nominal speed of 12 as, although it is not noted for zipping about, if you drop it, it moves every segment.

 

 

*Mind you I'm not famous for reading the rules properly.

 

That was more or less the same conclusion we came to (i.e. that segmented movement represented the de facto "physics engine" for the system, which gives the universe an effective SPD of 12.).

One possible way to easy the pain a reluctant GM might be feeling* would be to add the Trans-dimensional advantage to the Adjustment power used defined as Effects the "The Fourth Dimension", aka Duration aka Time.

 

 

*"The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That's pride f*cking with you. F*ck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps." Marcellus Wallace, -Pulp Fiction

[Manic Typist]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

One possible way to easy the pain a reluctant GM might be feeling* would be to add the Trans-dimensional advantage to the Adjustment power used defined as Effects the "The Fourth Dimension", aka Duration aka Time.

[/i]

 

...that's so crazy it just might work!!!!!!!

[Rebar]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

No matter how much this might SEEM to have thing to do with combat...injured mage enters sanctum and emerges a short time later fully restored, all his magic doohickeys powered up, all his charges restored and loads of defensive spells already cast and in place.

 

A sufficiently motivated player sees EVERYTHING as a combat opportunity.

"Having nothing to do with combat" does NOT mean it has no effect on a combat (eating, sleeping and stealthy movement have nothing to do with combat but they all have a potential effect on a combat to come...)

 

Specifically, one normally means one "cannot use the ability in combat". This is true of this time-stop ability (well, unless the combat occurs in the hex adjacent to his lair-room ).

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

Don't make me repeat my EDM is a TRAVEL Power, not an ALTER REALITY Power rant. It's not pretty.

 

 

 

That aside, to the OP, what is the EFFECT of this ability --> at the end of 6 months or whatever, what has the character accomplished? A discrete game effect, such as learned a skill that normally takes 6 months, or a skill task that normally takes 6 months, or learned or created a new spell, etc? Or just an undefined "I get 6 extra months of time"?

 

Can the character interact with other characters during this 6 months or otherwise have a permanent effect on external objects or persons? In other words, are the benefits of this ability purely mental or could the character run around and say cut the throat of every statuesquely frozen person they cared to?

 

 

Bottom line, you always reason from effect in the HERO System. What is the intended end effect? Then, once that is clear, you progress to figuring out the mechanic that gets you there.

[SteveZilla]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

...that's so crazy it just might work!!!!!!!

 

It's TOO crazy. Next a person will want the Transdimensional attack to attack in the past.

 

"I shoot before he becomes Dr. D!"

 

 

 

 

 

What?

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

Thanks for everyones input. I've been working on a few versions with everyones advice in mind.

 

The crux of the problem is this. In this game world, you pay for the ability to learn spells, not spells themselves. Since spells cost no character points, its hard to objectively say how powerful it is to research them faster. It would make it so you have a lot more spells available than other mages, but not more powerful spells (your still limited as far as AP caps). I have to make it not too cheap and not too powerful. One version costs 18 points (treating it as a research skill and doing it faster on the time chart), too cheap. One version cost 6000 points (slow down whole planet to 0 speed), too power powerful. I'll go with the mid version that cost 50 points (this was the EDM one)

 

Dean

 

Missed this the first time around.

 

So...the effect you are looking for is..."Enable a MU to learn spells, which would normally take weeks or months, with a 1 Phase Action".

 

So...how do you model "learning spells" in the first place? Does it require a Skill or CHAR Roll? If that's the case then there are already rules in place to move rolls down the time chart, which just imposes penalties to the roll. If this is the case, then modeling this effect is as simple as building a "spell" around Penalty Skill Levels to offset the time modifier for Learning A Spell. The SFX is, the caster slowed time, or whatever you want -- makes no difference mechanically.

 

 

If there is no Skill / Char roll involved and its just some flat or formulae driven amount of time that you've arbitrarily defined as part of the Magic System you are using then the solution for this can be equally arbitrary. You don't need to figure out how to twist the game mechanics to support your totally custom Magic System stipulation; that's just solving a problem that doesn't really exist in the first place -- trying to engineer a full-scale Time Stop or a half-baked and broken EDM hand wave to overcome a requirement that only exists because you yourself have asserted it is "solving" a faux problem. Instead just decide how powerful the ability to learn new Spells is in the context of your Magic System, define a Custom Power with an appropriate base cost, apply the "spell" lims of your choice, and you are done. The effect of the spell is to mitigate the time it takes to learn a new spell, as defined by you. And again the actual SFX makes no difference here.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

Seems like some variant of the SpeedZone from Ultimate Speedster would probably do the trick. At the basic level, millispeed, you're slowing things down by a factor of 1000; at microspeed, by a factor of one million; at nanospeed, by a factor of one billion; and so forth, all the way up to slowing things down by a factor of one quintillion. At that rate, light would seem to take days to travel very short distances, so I'd say that's pretty darn close to stopping time relative to the character.

[Manic Typist]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

Killer Shrike, for the win. Not the first to say, but certainly one of the most thorough.

[Roth]

Re: Time Stop (its harder than it sounds)

 

For most time stop stuff I'd use change environment, with various variable advantages, combined with a VPP with the limitation "Power must correspond to Effect being sought". Season to game limits. For small areas (time is stopped with in a Tower) The change environment works well for doing minor things. If it works for a speedster to do things super fast, it works for time stop character to do things 'outside' of normal time.

 

To do major things with in a small area (stop some one from being shot (Armour up to damage of ranged weapon, SFX - Missed them), To strap 200 pounds of dynamite to some ones head (Xd6 EB or KA, AOE One Hex Single Target (Character using said dynamite could strap it wrong or not set up the dynamite correctly, hence the "to hit" roll they could still fail)), etc use the VPP.