Can be used as...

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Can be used as...

 

A great summary, Markdoc

 

Some games come down on the side of flexibility: you can do what seems reasonable' date=' given your special effect (HEROQUEST stretched that out into weird fantasy territory where even your special effect was highly negotiable). The flaw in all of the published games so far (and in our own unpublished attempt ) that take this approach is that "reasonable" does not appear to be the same for any two people on the planet. As a result, you get a high degree of flexibility and a high degree of design choice, but very little control on balance and almost no SIM. A mature, well-balanced, group who is prepared for a little give and take can make a system like this work. That describes the sort of group you get after many years of play with other systems, so it's good for about 3% of gaming groups: it's a niche product in a niche market, which is why the designers of this sort of game pretty much all have day jobs . In every other situation, the game is likely to collapses into acrimonious argument by the second session, or the third, if you are really lucky and you spend the whole first session getting the characters to meet in a bar.[/quote']

 

At its ultimate extreme, this is simply group storytelling. No rules are needed, and the GM and players simply narrate the actions of the characters and their impact on the world. And, absent that highly mature group, it will have a similar result to "Let's Pretend":

 

- "my character shoots your character; he's dead"

 

- "No he's not - your character missed my character because he's agile"

 

- "Yes he is - my character is VERY accurate"

 

- "no, he isn't that accurate - my character would at worst get a minor graze from your shot as he deftly twists out of the way"

 

And so on...once we agree whether the hit landed, we will next debate how much damage was caused, because one character has incredibly powerful attacks and the other is invulnerable to all physical harm...

 

Another approach is to go with a fixed mechanic' date=' which can be applied to any special effect. There's no problem saying "[i']My TK should be able to do killing damage[/i]" because all damage is abstracted, anyway. This approach clearly works: it's one of the core mechanics of 4E D&D, though it's not restricted to that game. It's simple, but the price you pay is low SIM value and low flexibility: a disintegrate spell may be described as "You fire a green ray from your wand. Whatever the emerald beam hits disappears in a puff of gray dust." but the actual mechanic is pretty much the same as hitting the target with a big sword, or for that matter, seizing it with your TK and stabbing it . This kind of game is the exact opposite of the first one: it has an easy entrance path, but most gamers will become eventually move on from a game where options are fairly limited by the simple core mechanics.

 

We can take that one to its ultimate extreme too. All attacks resolve by the same roll. If you roll X or more, you hit. Otherwise, you miss. It takes Y hits to take out the target. No one is more or less accurate, defended, etc. We're all pawns on the gameboard. My Shoe buys Boardwalk. He haggles for the exact same price, written on the board, that anyone else would pay, and all his contacts with the construction unions won't save one red cent on building a house.

 

The third option is the crunchy one we are discussing here. That gives you a high SIM value and decent balance' date=' but middling flexibility. It gives you very high design flexibility but places hard limits on design power, in the interest of game balance. I don't see any games rule set as bridging all categories because the three approaches - despite the first glance - all take much the same approach. They are trying to balance flexibility and game balance. You can get more of one by skimping the other, but I honestly doubt it is possible to have both, because they are essentially opposite ends of the same spectrum.[/quote']

 

Every other game balances flexibility and game balance somewhere between the two, exactly as you say above.

 

My own feeling is actually that Hero has gone too far towards balance and too far away from flexibility, but to change that meaningfully would require some fairly drastic rejigging, and we'd need to be clear up front that increasing flexibility would be at the cost of balance/out of the box playability.

 

cheers, Mark

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Can be used as...

 

My own feeling is actually that Hero has gone too far towards balance and too far away from flexibility' date=' but to change that meaningfully would require some fairly drastic rejigging, and we'd need to be clear up front that increasing flexibility [b']would[/b] be at the cost of balance/out of the box playability

 

You think HERO is playable out of the box?? In my opinion it has never been that. I am also of the opinion that 'balance' is seen as differently by almost everyone as 'reasonable' is. I think that recent games have shown a lot of different mechanics that have potential for giving us something new and exciting. I do not think (in fact would hate to think) that the height of game design sophistication was achieved in the early 1980's.

 

Doc

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Can be used as...

 

We can take that one to its ultimate extreme too. All attacks resolve by the same roll. If you roll X or more, you hit. Otherwise, you miss. It takes Y hits to take out the target. No one is more or less accurate, defended, etc. We're all pawns on the gameboard. My Shoe buys Boardwalk. He haggles for the exact same price, written on the board, that anyone else would pay, and all his contacts with the construction unions won't save one red cent on building a house.

 

To be honest, this is what it feels like when playing HERO sometimes. Things are so codified that it can feel that a computer programme might be able to caculate the end result of any combat. Obviously this is not true but the greater the effort to strive for balance the more that this vision comes into focus...

 

 

Doc

[Markdoc]

Re: Can be used as...

 

You think HERO is playable out of the box?? In my opinion it has never been that. I am also of the opinion that 'balance' is seen as differently by almost everyone as 'reasonable' is. I think that recent games have shown a lot of different mechanics that have potential for giving us something new and exciting. I do not think (in fact would hate to think) that the height of game design sophistication was achieved in the early 1980's.

 

Doc

 

Is Hero playable out of the box? Yeah. I had the rules in my hand for about an hour and already had sketched out my first character (it wasn't very efficient, because I hadn't read all the rules!) and started to convert my D&D game over before I even owned my own copy. I know other people who started with the rules and went from there. It's certainly not as easy to pick-up-n-go as some games, but the basic mechanisms are actually pretty simple. The devil is in the details.

 

As for the "peak of game design sophistication" ... hmmm. That's a hard one (or more accurately a philosophical one: what is "sophisticated"?). I would argue that Hero has persevered largely unaltered where most of its contemporaries are either vanished or become different game systems, precisely because the basic design was highly sophisticated. It was, as far as I can tell, the first game where actual game design was an integral concern. But it's not been the last. There are plenty of games which show a great deal of sophistication in design.

 

But game design consists of two elements. There's "Design" and there's "Game" and they may, or may not interact favourably - or indeed, much at all.

 

I noted in my initial review of 4E D6D how impressed I was with the design of the game. The design team had a clear vision of what they wanted to create and the mechanisms worked smoothly to provide the experience they were aiming for. I consider it a really slick piece of design, even though the game itself was simple. Ease of entry and simple play were major design goals. Personally, I regard it as state of the art game design. Unfortunately, they designed a game that I personally don't really want to play, but that doesn't reflect on the sophistication, nor on the game. Plenty of people like it.

 

There's also another game I hate. We've mentioned HEROQUEST before. That had some interesting concepts. I'd say there's a great deal of thought behind the mechanisms and the style of the game. It also shows sophisticated design. Unfortunately, the designer didn't think much about the game aspect: it's a well-designed game (looked at from the designers' viewpoint), which is almost impossible to use for normal gaming. There are plenty of similar examples. These have mostly failed to make any impact with the gaming public and will inevitably be soon forgotten. Is this sophisticated design?

 

More broadly, is a sophisticated game one which has received a great deal of thought and introduces elegant new mechanisms or one which produces a beloved game? Does sophisticated mean "more knobs and whistles"?

 

I'll announce my own bias up front: for me, sophistication is a combination that delivers whatever function was intended, as simply as possible. In this regard, I regard early Ming or classic Attic pottery as "sophisticated". We've added more knobs and whistles since then, but we have not (IMO) significantly advanced in that particular area in several thousand years.

 

Hero system, oddly enough, meets this definition, because I have seen no evidence that you can build a system that offers a better balance between build flexibility and balance. The price you pay, of course, is in-play flexibility. Your build is, more or less what you get. It delivers - more or less - what it set out to deliver and does it as simply as I think is realistically possible.

 

So for me, sophisticated game design actually needs to meet two goals: it needs a design æsthetic that has specific goals and it needs to meet those effectively. But equally, it needs to deliver a game that is genuinely playable.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Can be used as...

 

To be honest' date=' this is what it feels like when playing HERO sometimes. Things are so codified that it can[b'] feel [/b]that a computer programme might be able to caculate the end result of any combat. Obviously this is not true but the greater the effort to strive for balance the more that this vision comes into focus...

 

 

Doc

 

Ironically, though, a computer simulation is probably the only practical way that you could deliver a greater degree of flexibility and balance than the F2F games we have now, since it should be possible code a VPP-like setup that the player could use without a need to configure it on the fly.

 

cheers, Mark

[Balabanto]

Re: Can be used as...

 

To respond to Doc's comment in quotations, let me only say this. There is a mistake that many people make with Hero System that grossly impedes their judgement. Mastering chargen will make you a powerful or flexible character, but it doesn't necessarily make you a competent one. Nothing in Hero replaces total mastery of the combat rules. Combat results can't be predicted with 100 percent certainty ever IF everyone plays at the same tactical and social level.

 

Yesterday I set up a group of villains against Millennium Guard, the most powerful superhero team in my game world. Their leader is currently on hiatus. Well, this meant the other team had better teamwork, and even though they weren't as strong, as fast, or as powerful, they managed to seriously put the hurt on them because their teamwork was superior. They captured ONE guy and a few agents. That was it. It was way less than I was expecting.

 

Next time they throw down with these guys, they'll probably use different tactics, and we'll see how that plays out. Mastery of the combat rules is far more important than how characters are built, designed, or how complicated they are. This is why I disagree with many people about the power level of characters in the game, and some, but not all of the rule change advancements.

[Ndreare]

Re: Can be used as...

 

Is Hero playable out of the box? Yeah. I had the rules in my hand for about an hour and already had sketched out my first character (it wasn't very efficient, because I hadn't read all the rules!) and started to convert my D&D game over before I even owned my own copy. I know other people who started with the rules and went from there. It's certainly not as easy to pick-up-n-go as some games, but the basic mechanisms are actually pretty simple. The devil is in the details.

 

As for the "peak of game design sophistication" ... hmmm. That's a hard one (or more accurately a philosophical one: what is "sophisticated"?). I would argue that Hero has persevered largely unaltered where most of its contemporaries are either vanished or become different game systems, precisely because the basic design was highly sophisticated. It was, as far as I can tell, the first game where actual game design was an integral concern. But it's not been the last. There are plenty of games which show a great deal of sophistication in design.

 

But game design consists of two elements. There's "Design" and there's "Game" and they may, or may not interact favourably - or indeed, much at all.

 

I noted in my initial review of 4E D6D how impressed I was with the design of the game. The design team had a clear vision of what they wanted to create and the mechanisms worked smoothly to provide the experience they were aiming for. I consider it a really slick piece of design, even though the game itself was simple. Ease of entry and simple play were major design goals. Personally, I regard it as state of the art game design. Unfortunately, they designed a game that I personally don't really want to play, but that doesn't reflect on the sophistication, nor on the game. Plenty of people like it.

 

There's also another game I hate. We've mentioned HEROQUEST before. That had some interesting concepts. I'd say there's a great deal of thought behind the mechanisms and the style of the game. It also shows sophisticated design. Unfortunately, the designer didn't think much about the game aspect: it's a well-designed game (looked at from the designers' viewpoint), which is almost impossible to use for normal gaming. There are plenty of similar examples. These have mostly failed to make any impact with the gaming public and will inevitably be soon forgotten. Is this sophisticated design?

 

More broadly, is a sophisticated game one which has received a great deal of thought and introduces elegant new mechanisms or one which produces a beloved game? Does sophisticated mean "more knobs and whistles"?

 

I'll announce my own bias up front: for me, sophistication is a combination that delivers whatever function was intended, as simply as possible. In this regard, I regard early Ming or classic Attic pottery as "sophisticated". We've added more knobs and whistles since then, but we have not (IMO) significantly advanced in that particular area in several thousand years.

 

Hero system, oddly enough, meets this definition, because I have seen no evidence that you can build a system that offers a better balance between build flexibility and balance. The price you pay, of course, is in-play flexibility. Your build is, more or less what you get. It delivers - more or less - what it set out to deliver and does it as simply as I think is realistically possible.

 

So for me, sophisticated game design actually needs to meet two goals: it needs a design æsthetic that has specific goals and it needs to meet those effectively. But equally, it needs to deliver a game that is genuinely playable.

 

cheers, Mark

 

Well said.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Can be used as...

 

Are you lot still here?

 

Sheesh…

 

Right: a MP allows a 60 point power to be a normal Blast or a RKA for +12 points (or a 20% increase in cost). You can put TK and a RKA in a MP, but that does not preserve the functionality as one is constant and one is not.

 

What I suggested was allowing a ‘damage conversion’ as a +1/4 advantage, which would add 15 points (or 25% to the cost) and allow you to use the TK STR to do Killing Damage. Whilst that is useful, bear in mind:

 

1. You are paying for it: it is not a gimme, and

2. The actual utility us relatively limited anyway as you only get 2/3 of the points in TK as damage, so it is not likely to be unbalancing.

 

It is not going to be actually abusive in practice. The ‘by the book’ way of a massive VPP is klunky and, worse, boring. The ‘Huge MP’ way is pointless: you would be better off just buying the powers and unifying them (although that does not work well because if it IS one power, which it should be, then both bits should be affected by Aid, but building that is SERIOUSLY messy). What we need here is a way to say ‘this is one power’, a sort of +0 version of ‘Unified Power’ so that adjustments affect everything that is defined as a single power.

 

You can do it all, pretty much, but the point is that this is not a complicated idea. TK can already do damage and so…wait a minute. Perhaps that is the problem. Perhaps we should simply allow TK to be bought on a point for point basis as STR at range BUT all it can do it is lift, move and hold. You want to do ‘direct damage’? Buy another attack power.

 

While we are on TK:

 

1. Having no action/reaction means that you CAN lift yourself, not that you can’t. I’m completely with TK not being free flight, but it is getting embarrassing having the explanation there through so many editions.

2. The indirect element of TK is all wrong. It should be indirect to the extent that it can react around things, not to the extent that it can reach through solid barriers.

 

Cross threading, to annoy Lucius, perhaps you ought to just buy STR ‘only useable with extra limbs’, extra limbs and 1 metre of stretching megascaled. Functionally that gives you TK but much cheaper. Now THAT is abusive J.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Can be used as...

 

Hero is not playable out of the box because:

 

1. It does not start with a sample scenario and four really well thought out 'starter heroes', and

2. It does not come in a box.

 

This is actually a point dear to my heart (not the box thing, the other one). Character creation should not be the first thing you see. It is terrifying for a lot of newcomers. Hero, the actual game system, is robust, quick and flexible, and if you showcased THAT at as the first thing you see you would attract more people in. Adds 10 pages to the length of the book for 'starter rules, characters and scenario' (and, believe me I could cut 10 pages without most people noticing) but makes it so much more user friendly.

[Ndreare]

Re: Can be used as...

 

Fantasy hero chapter 7 combined with Hero Basic could fill the out of the box need?

[Markdoc]

Re: Can be used as...

 

Hero is not playable out of the box because:

 

1. It does not start with a sample scenario and four really well thought out 'starter heroes', and

2. It does not come in a box.

 

This is actually a point dear to my heart (not the box thing, the other one). Character creation should not be the first thing you see. It is terrifying for a lot of newcomers. Hero, the actual game system, is robust, quick and flexible, and if you showcased THAT at as the first thing you see you would attract more people in. Adds 10 pages to the length of the book for 'starter rules, characters and scenario' (and, believe me I could cut 10 pages without most people noticing) but makes it so much more user friendly.

 

And I would argue that Hero is playable "out of the box" because

1. You don't actually need a starter scenario and most of starter scenarios are so laughably bad that you wouldn't necessarily want to run them, even if you got them free.

2. "Out of the box" means "ready to go". Many things these days that are ready to use out of the box don't come in boxes any more

and most importantly

3. If you have the core rulebook (now rule books) you have everything you need - either as player or as GM

 

I think what you mean is that it's not suitable to use out of the box for a neophyte GM, and there, I'd agree. When I picked up my first copy of the Hero system rules I already had 4 years experience running games and playing with various systems, including (shudder) C&S.

 

But as to whether character creation not being the first thing you see .... I dunno. It's usually the first thing I look for in a gaming system. If it's not the first thing in the book, then I start reading the book by opening it to character creation and go back to the start later (if ever). I know I'm not the only one who does this! I think you could however, make character creation a bit more newbie-friendly by starting that section with a few simple characters and then (very, very briefly) deconstructing them as a guide to the system. Basically "This is how you build a character".

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Can be used as...

 

Are you lot still here?

 

Sheesh…

 

Right: a MP allows a 60 point power to be a normal Blast or a RKA for +12 points (or a 20% increase in cost). You can put TK and a RKA in a MP, but that does not preserve the functionality as one is constant and one is not.

 

What I suggested was allowing a ‘damage conversion’ as a +1/4 advantage, which would add 15 points (or 25% to the cost) and allow you to use the TK STR to do Killing Damage. Whilst that is useful, bear in mind:

 

1. You are paying for it: it is not a gimme, and

2. The actual utility us relatively limited anyway as you only get 2/3 of the points in TK as damage, so it is not likely to be unbalancing.

 

It is not going to be actually abusive in practice. The ‘by the book’ way of a massive VPP is klunky and, worse, boring. The ‘Huge MP’ way is pointless: you would be better off just buying the powers and unifying them (although that does not work well because if it IS one power, which it should be, then both bits should be affected by Aid, but building that is SERIOUSLY messy). What we need here is a way to say ‘this is one power’, a sort of +0 version of ‘Unified Power’ so that adjustments affect everything that is defined as a single power.

 

You can do it all, pretty much, but the point is that this is not a complicated idea. TK can already do damage and so…wait a minute. Perhaps that is the problem. Perhaps we should simply allow TK to be bought on a point for point basis as STR at range BUT all it can do it is lift, move and hold. You want to do ‘direct damage’? Buy another attack power.

 

The trouble is that this is much more than more than just "constant vs not". It's that the two powers have very different functionality and uses. Had you simply suggested a +1/4 normal damage to killing damage (or vice versa) modifier, then I'd be prepared to consider it (though, to be honest, I don't really see a use for it: as you have noted, buying two slots in your MP or VPP covers that nicely), because the two powers are quite similar. TK, on the other hands has a whole series of integral modifiers, that HKA does not: range, indirect, etc. Worse, once you add an advantage of this sort, you need to consider the ramifications when you start adding it to other powers. What about adding it to Ego blast to get an invisible, line of sight, ranged killing attack that works off ECV ... for a fraction of the cost of actually buying that? Even better, you still get the option to use regular Ego Blast!

 

Abusive? Yes, I'd say so.

 

I'm sorry, but the more this is discussed, the more it seems like nothing about it was really thought out in advance.

 

While we are on TK:

 

1. Having no action/reaction means that you CAN lift yourself, not that you can’t. I’m completely with TK not being free flight, but it is getting embarrassing having the explanation there through so many editions.

 

I don't understand your point. Action/reaction means that when you pull on something, you also pull on yourself - hence you can lift yourself. In the context of the rules, I had always understood it as saying that no action/reaction means that you can pull (or push) on something but it has no effect on you.

 

2. The indirect element of TK is all wrong. It should be indirect to the extent that it can react around things' date=' not to the extent that it can reach through solid barriers.[/quote']

 

Why not? I've always seen the ability to reach through things (especially things that give you line of sight, like glass, or forcefields) as one of the common applications of TK. I suppose you could argue that not all TK works like this and therefore it shouldn't be the default, but I know from experience that some players would (and indeed have) argued the opposite.

 

Cross threading' date=' to annoy Lucius, perhaps you ought to just buy STR ‘only useable with extra limbs’, extra limbs and 1 metre of stretching megascaled. Functionally that gives you TK but much cheaper. Now THAT is abusive J.[/quote']

 

It doesn't give you "normal" TK if one can use that phrase - nor is it especially abusive since it's not indirect, not invisible, and not useable close up. It could be a viable build for some powers I suppose (it's probably exactly how I'd start to build the powers of the mutants in Elfen Lied, just without the megascale and with invisible effects instead), but a substitute for TK it's not.

 

cheers, Mark

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Can be used as...

 

Are you lot still here?

 

Sheesh…

 

Right: a MP allows a 60 point power to be a normal Blast or a RKA for +12 points (or a 20% increase in cost). You can put TK and a RKA in a MP, but that does not preserve the functionality as one is constant and one is not.

 

True, but you can have TK outside of the Multipower, and then inside the Multipower a bit more TK, an RKA, and whatever else you want.

 

I once tried to argue that TK shouldn't do damage directly, or if it did it ought to be able to do both Normal and Killing: if you can smack someone around or throw them against a wall, why can you not reach inside and squeeze their heart? It probably ought not to do damage directly, but for the last few editions at least, it does.

[Ice9]

Re: Can be used as...

 

The trouble is that this is much more than more than just "constant vs not". It's that the two powers have very different functionality and uses.

Not really. TK, when used to crush or strike, injures/kills people. Killing Attack injures/kills people. There's some mechanical difference where normal attacks are more effective against high defense targets and KAs are better when rPD is low or you only care about BODY, but the "in game" effect is not that different - you wouldn't even necessarily be able to tell the difference from seeing them.

 

So for example, let's say we buy both powers.

TK (40 STR), RKA 2.5d6, 100 points

Average Result: 9 BODY, 18 STUN

 

Or we could just put those points into more TK

TK (65 STR), 97 points.

Average Result: 13 BODY, 46 STUN

 

Now maybe there are some instances where the KA has more effect, but in general, the straight TK is doing more damage. And to boot, it can also lift more, grab better, and generally outperform the TK/RKA combo. That doesn't seem like an RKA that's appropriately costed.

 

 

Personally, I'm still in favor of the "TK Martial Arts, Killing Strike, done" solution. Simple, reasonable cost, no new rules needed.

[Ice9]

Re: Can be used as...

 

You know, thinking about it, this comes from the same root as several other edge cases in HERO - the fact that Strength breaks all the rules. The Strength stat gives a large number of abilities, many usable simultaneously, that should really require a number of separate powers and probably cost a lot more.

 

The reason it doesn't is so that "high strength guy" can be a viable character. That's an important goal, and not something we want to give up, IMO, so maybe we'll just have to accept that anything relating to Strength (TK, HA, HKA) is going to get a bit wonky sometimes.

[Ndreare]

Re: Can be used as...

 

I do not understand why martial arts combined with TK is undesireable for this effect when it fits the concept of skilled with TK and the game mechanics desired of NND & RKA?

[Balabanto]

Re: Can be used as...

 

I do not understand why martial arts combined with TK is undesireable for this effect when it fits the concept of skilled with TK and the game mechanics desired of NND & RKA?

 

Because then you get a skill that is fully invisible and has insane range for free. How do you dodge it?

 

To represent this, use stretching that does not cross intervening space so that normal hth rules apply.

[Lucius]

Re: Can be used as...

 

Now that STR no longer provides freebie figured characteristics, there is no reason we can't eliminate Telekinesis as a Power and replace it with Range on STR.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary thinks that should have been done with the last edition change

[Balabanto]

Re: Can be used as...

 

Sure there is. Ranged Str costs less. Always use the more expensive means.

[Ndreare]

Re: Can be used as...

 

Sure there is. Ranged Str costs less. Always use the more expensive means.

 

I always hated that meta rule. I figured if a player wants to fid an alternate build let him.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Can be used as...

 

Sure there is. Ranged Str costs less. Always use the more expensive means.

 

Probably only true as long as you do not buy the other advantages of TK such as indirect. I am in favour of simplification and would happily remove TK from the powers list with a note that telekinetic powers can often be purchased by buying advantaged STR.

 

Doc

[dmjalund]

Re: Can be used as...

 

remember that by default, telekinesis is NOT invisible

[Sean Waters]

Re: Can be used as...

 

Quick point: TK is not invisible.

 

On Indirect TK, the ability to reach through barriers is a function of being able to put your origin point where you like, at least in 6e. It seems to me that, although the TK description says that TK is indirect in some ways, it is actually fully +1 indirect in that you can attack from any angle and ignore intervening barriers. That is a substantial hike in utility, which seems disproportional.

 

As to turning TK damage into Killing damage - well, you can do that if you buy ranged martial arts anyway, as has been pointed out, and the cost is 10 points for the basic martial arts including a killing strike and then whatever you want to spend to bump up the damage with extra DCs. In fact spend 12 points and get Choke Hold, Killing Strike and Offensive strike, so you can do a killing attack, NND or bump your damage up 4DCs, all without having to worry about the damage adding rules as the attack is technically not advantaged.

 

Chris Goodwin mentions removing direct damage from TK, which would help with balance, and Ice9 takes that thought further pointing out that the problem is that STR is still too cheap - hallellujia!

[Markdoc]

Re: Can be used as...

 

Not really. TK' date=' [b']when used to crush or strike[/b], injures/kills people. Killing Attack injures/kills people. There's some mechanical difference where normal attacks are more effective against high defense targets and KAs are better when rPD is low or you only care about BODY, but the "in game" effect is not that different - you wouldn't even necessarily be able to tell the difference from seeing them.

 

My emphasis in bold: yes, when used to crush and strike. But that's only one use of TK, and in my experience not the commonest one. TK is commonly used to grab, to squeeze (doing damage, but also restraining). It is frequently used outside combat to move objects (including team-mates). And in addition, it is indirect, which killing attack is not. Mechanically, it's a very different beast from RKA/HKA.

 

cheers, Mark

[Sean Waters]

Re: Can be used as...

 

Originally Posted by Sean Waters

While we are on TK:

 

1. Having no action/reaction means that you CAN lift yourself, not that you can’t. I’m completely with TK not being free flight, but it is getting embarrassing having the explanation there through so many editions.

 

I don't understand your point. Action/reaction means that when you pull on something, you also pull on yourself - hence you can lift yourself. In the context of the rules, I had always understood it as saying that no action/reaction means that you can pull (or push) on something but it has no effect on you.

 

If there is reaction to actions you can not lift yourself off the ground, no matter how strong you are, without something to pull against. If there is no action/reaction - which is what the rules say - then you can pull yourself off the ground even if there is nothing to pull against.

 

What TK needs is simply to say that you can not use TK to move yourself, not to try and explain it, as the explanation is wrong either way.

 

The weirdness creeps in when, say, a TK character can lift a car that they are not in, but can not lift a car that they are in, or weirder they can lift a car and move it, but if they jump on it they can no longer move it. It does not make sense because TK is not real. Generally I make TK characters buy flight too, or a limited version of it, just to prevent this kind of paradox occurring.