Having to buy powers for everything

[Basic204]

I wanted to know if is mandatory with in the rules of champions 6th to have to buy a power to do anything ?

 

For example 

 

Character has super strength and a sword and wants to cut lets say a tree down. I'm being told by my GM you have to buy transform to do that. Is that mandatory with in the champions system ?

 

Also just picking up weapons from fallen enemies you can use them with out paying for them right ? 

[Scott Baker]

I wanted to know if is mandatory with in the rules of champions 6th to have to buy a power to do anything ?

 

For example 

 

Character has super strength and a sword and wants to cut lets say a tree down. I'm being told by my GM you have to be transform to do that. Is that mandatory with in the champions system ?

 

Also just picking up weapons from fallen enemies you can use them with out paying for them right ? 

There's no such specific rule.

 

To cut down a tree, that sounds a little ridiculous to me. There are rules for breaking things (like cutting down a tree), etc. It certainly isn't a mandatory rule in 6E to use Transform for that.

 

Picking up a weapon and using it, not necessarily. I might allow it if it made dramatic sense. Since this is the Champions forum, I'll assume you're playing super heroes, so I would have to weigh that carefully. Most supers in comics don't pick up weapons to use them--usually they have their own powers. I certainly would not allow you to do so on an ongoing basis.

[Ninja-Bear]

To break a tree the GM should look at breaking things in the book. In a supers game the rule of thumb is you pay for everything however during a battle you can pick up a fallen sword to use it. As Steve Long mentions, there is no mystical force preventing that. If though you want to keep the sword for later adventures then you would need to pay points for it. Btw this is why taking focus with universal is limiting. Oh you dropped the hammer of double knockback? Now I'm going to hit you with it!

[steriaca]

Your GM is either young and new, or being stupid. I vote for young and new.

.

Cutting down a tree is covered by breaking things. You attack a DCV of 3, roll your attack, and count the body. If the body damage excedes the tree's Body, you cut it down. Just remember that trees have resistant PD.

.

The weapon: shure you can pick it up and use it. I can, as GM, simply have it break or dissapear of your going overboard with it. And if you keep on grabbing weaponry.... well, some of the villian's weaponry are from Hell...

[Gravitron]

As others have said:

 

1) You can most certainly chop down a tree.. or break a wall.. or destroy any physical object with an attack. There is a section of Hero 6e  called "Breaking Things" (page 170, volume 2).

 

2) You can pick up opponents weapons and use them in the combat you find them. Like grabbing a gun and shooting it. HOWEVER, you can not keep the weapon unless you buy it with points (the reasons for this are many and we won't go into this discussion here). ALSO, unless you are already familiar with the weapon (Weapon Familiarity) you are going to have negative modifiers to do so. If you pick up up a sword and don't know how to fight with a sword, you might be just as likely to hurt yourself as anyone else. Same for any other weapon. Imagine grabbing a whip and trying to use it effectively. Or forgetting to take the safety off a gun.

[assault]

It is a slight problem with the Hero system. It's easy to assume that since you pay points to be able to do some things, you can't do the things you haven't paid points for.

 

I suspect that the more detailed the system gets, the stronger this impression becomes. There was a broader range of things that were handled in a freeform way in the earlier editions. Most skills were handled like this, and there weren't anywhere near the number of power modifiers. Basically, a GM had to wing a lot more stuff.

 

4e D&D seems to have encouraged this attitude too, particularly since it will have been the entry game for a whole crop of roleplayers.

 

Disclaimer: I am biased towards simple character designs, and freeform GMing.

[Comic]

Cutting down a tree is cutting down a tree. A tree has PD and Body, and weight and there's space around it. All of those aspects of cutting down a tree are well within Hero rules.

 

Now, a sword or a fist is a clumsy thing to cut down most trees (beyond saplings or bamboo, say), but it can happen.

 

Turning the tree eventually into something actually useful requires at least a skill in that form of turning things into other things.

 

Instantly turning the tree into something useful and complex, that'd be a super power, like Transform.

 

Repeatedly using the useful thing the tree is turned into will cost points one way or another, eventually.

 

Let's look at the example of using a tree without knocking it down. Suppose Professor Pedantic has leapt high into the stratosphere, passed out from the cold and the lack of air and pressure, expanded like a weather balloon and got carried to the depths of the Great Siberian Forest. The good professor could use trees there to hang out and rest while he recovers his strength and the blizzard passes so he can get his bearings, safe from ground-based mutant predators. He could use firewood gathered from the forest to try to warm himself against the bitter Siberian cold, if, say, he happened to have the requisite knowledge, on a one-time basis. But it would be slow-going without fire powers, Survival skill, Inventor, a small variable pool or the like. It would be a real challenge for the urban-raised Professor.

 

If Professor Pedantic did survive, and repeated such experiences often, he'd definitely need to start putting points into Survival, some means to make fire, and if he made it his permanent locus of crime-fighting operations, possibly Base points.

 

You don't need Transform, or PS: Lumberjack to do it. You need them to do it instantly or competently. Any superbeing can knock down and destroy.

[JmOz]

As has been said: To use a picked up weapon is fine, but to keep it is something you need to pay points for.  IF YOU INTEND to keep the weapon you should get a VPP going on for them.  I have a couple characters who do exactly that.  A gadget pool that has items added to the inventory when they find enemy gadgets...

[Lucius]

I wanted to know if is mandatory with in the rules of champions 6th to have to buy a power to do anything ?

 

For example 

 

Character has super strength and a sword and wants to cut lets say a tree down. I'm being told by my GM you have to be transform to do that. Is that mandatory with in the champions system ?

No, you don't need a Transform power.

 

Swords are not usually used for cutting down trees; if it's an ordinary sword it may soon dull and become ineffective, or even break. If it's some kind of supersword, then it should be able to cut down a tree. It's basically a question of doing enough damage to overcome the tree's defenses and BODy score. Personally I wouldn't even make you roll to hit, or if I did, the tree would be DCV 0 (it's bigger than a person.)

 

 

Also just picking up weapons from fallen enemies you can use them with out paying for them right ?

If you're playing superheroes, then the answer is "yes, but." As in,

 

yes, but you'll probably be at -3 OCV for an unfamiliar weapon -

 

yes, but your super strength may break the sword, or it may otherwise be subject to being lost or destroyed -

 

yes, but if you start carrying it around and make it part of your regular equipment, it becomes one of your Powers and you must spend points for it.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

House of the Palindromedary

[massey]

The points issue is often misunderstood.  This looks to be the case with your GM.  It's one of the things about the HERO system that frustrates a lot of people, old and new players alike.  It frustrates new players because they say "this game is dumb, why can't I do that?"  And it frustrates old players because they say "I really wish people would stop telling everyone this, it's not how the game works."

 

Your character can do anything that a regular old normal person can do, without spending points for it.  You can chop down a tree, drive a car, plug in your TV, heat up food in a microwave, stab a guy with a sword you found, surf the internet, and all kinds of other things.  None of that requires you to use points or to buy it as a power.

 

Permanent changes to your character, or doing special things, require spending points.

 

For instance, as far as permanent changes go, Spider-Man does not carry a shotgun around.  It might make sense for him to do that.  I'm sure there are times it could come in handy.  He also can't carry around some of the Green Goblin's pumpkin bombs.  "Hey, these are pretty cool, I'm gonna keep some."  And then the next time you fight Venom you throw a fiery pumpkin at him and watch him freak out.

 

But Spider-Man doesn't do that, because this isn't D&D where the goal is to collect loot and carry it around with you.  The goal isn't to fight against genre conventions of a comic book, to come up with excuses why your character would carry around Dr. Destructo's Disintegrator Pistol from now until the end of time.  That goes in the trophy case and you go back to swinging around the city and punching people.  Now if Spidey is fighting the Punisher, and he needs to pick up a shotgun and use it, he can do that (he'll probably just use it as a club, because Spidey doesn't kill people, but there's nothing preventing him from shooting it other than his own morals).  If the Punisher throws a grenade, Spidey can grab it and throw it back.  That stuff is all fair game.  But at the beginning of the next adventure, Spidey isn't carrying around a rocket launcher saying "this is so cool".  If you really want to do that, you can.  But you have to spend the points so that your character can keep it.

 

Now, if it's 10 sessions later, and you're fighting some giant robot that you can't hurt, it's okay to say "hey, you remember that rocket launcher that the Punisher was carrying around?  Remember how I said I wanted to put it in my closet because it was cool?  Well I'm gonna go get it, and I'm gonna shoot this robot with it."  That's fair.  That's clever roleplaying.  But you can't keep going back and getting it session after session. 

[massey]

As far as using a sword to chop down a tree, it depends.  What kind of sword and what kind of tree?  Let's break it down into some game possibilities:

 

 

1)  A sword you bought on the internet for 50 bucks, and a tree that's 2 feet in diameter.  This is a sword with the "real world" limitation on it, and probably "fragile" and "reduced penetration".  Honestly this is just not a very good sword.  In real life you'll break it before you make a dent in that tree.  If this is the type of sword your character has, then no, he can't chop down a tree with it.

 

2)  An actual combat quality sword (but not one anyone bought with points) and the same aforementioned tree.  Maybe you took the sword from a random throw-away ninja or something.  This one you might be able to use to chop a tree down.  The sword will probably be ruined when you finish hacking on the tree.  If you have super-strength, you might break the sword.  But in real life, it might work.  An axe would still be better.  This is still a real-world sword and you're stuck with the limitations of that, including chopping at the tree for half an hour probably.

 

3)  A sword someone actually paid points for.  It is a 1 1/2 D6 hand killing attack.  With your super-strength of 40 (or whatever it is), you can raise the damage to 3D6+1 HKA.  That should be enough to chop that tree down in one swipe.  You're actually using a paid-for power to do it, so it operates by game rules instead of real-world rules.  Roll dice, count Body, compare to Def and Body of tree.  If you exceed that, tree is chopped down.  This can be a cinematic ninja slice where there's a flash of steel and then the top part of the tree slowly slides off of the bottom part of the tree.  Note that it doesn't matter whether you are the person who paid points for the sword.  If you grab Shadowninja's sword and use it, it still works the same.  You might not be as good with it, but the important part is, you don't have to worry about stupid "real world" limitations.

 

4)  A sword where you bought the Transform power in addition to the stabbing powers.  This is where superpowers get crazy.  This isn't just chopping down a tree.  You could swing the sword and turn the tree into a billion perfectly shaped toothpicks in one swipe (complete with boxes if you wanted), or a bunch of two-by-fours neatly stacked.  You could also swing the sword and in one action carve the tree into a beautiful statue.  You could use a regular sword to carve a statue, but it will take you hundreds of hours of work.  This is done in one action.  These are more like the effects a cartoon swordsman would use.  You don't need it to just chop down a tree.

[Badger]

The transform thing isnt quite making sense to me, unless the superstrength and sword are tied into Heroic ID or something.  I mean Superman can go flying around as Clark Kent anytime he wants.  Just that everyone will now know Clark Kent has powers similar to Superman.

 

So, while Hero Joe could just pull out his Awesome Magical Sword of Absurd Sharpness and use his superstrength to cut down the Giant Redwood in one swing.  People will now know something is up with your normal ID.

 

Or at least this is how I am picturing it all in my head.

[Christopher]

As a general rule, requiring transform to cutting down a tree is just plain stupid. Transform is explicitly NOT inteded to do stuff that can be done by another power. Killing Attacks are quite good at breaking stuff and people.

 

The exact answer depends on the setting. You have to seperate between Heroic Settings (think low level D&D or Shadowrun) and Superheroic (think Superman, Hulk) settings. And look if it is combat time or non-combat time.

 

In heroic settings the general rule is: "Equipment is bought with money, not points". And it can be used and shared however you like among the team.

In turn stuff like weapon proficiency apply. In turn stuff is usually more realistic. A sword is not a good tool to cut down a decent sized tree. You can't fell a tree with an frost spell (you can kill the three, however). We are using axes for that and not only because they are easier to manufacture.

Everyone can fell a tree with a woodworkers axe and enough time. Rules for longterm endurance (6E2) might apply. Normal rules for breaking stuff apply.

 

Being able to cut down a tree with a sword in combat time, not that is PERHAPS a different mater. The GM could slightly increase the effective PD/apply low penetration rules because the sword is not designed for it. Otherwise the rules for breaking stuff would apply.

If you could not break the tree (or other resistant object) after the penalities are applied fast enough, you will propably need a power to boost your damage. You can always use Haymaker while in combat, at the usual penalties.

This could be a simple "+X DC vs inanimate objects". It could be a naked advantage "Armor Penetrating" or "Penetrating" for use of swrods vs inanimate objects. It could be a naked buyoff (removing the reduced pen limitation with points) vs inanimate objects.

 

In superheroic settings the general rule is: "You have to pay points for what you use".

Wheter the blast comes from a weapon, your magic or the fearie floating around your head does not matter. That is detail, special effect and maybe some limitations.

At the same time the rule is also "you cannot use what you did not pay for". Just think about the balance problems of Hulk wielding Thors hammer. Or being putting him in one of Ironmans armors.

Picking up and using any weapon can be done ocassionally (1-2 per campaign, tops) without anything extra.

If you want to grant it to allies regulary, you might have to pay for the "Usable by others"(UBO) advantage and it has to be taken into consideration for overall effectivenss of characters. It might be easier if just the ally buys that power with a limitation "only when X nearby" - if it was not balanced in that case, it propably won't be balanced as UBO.

On the third hand, generally speaking the mundane world is made of cardboard compared to supers. Avoid using the values for breaking stuff in 6E2, those a geared towards heroic settings. They don't work well with superheroics. Apply dramatic sense here. As long as it is not a superhoic level tree (like the Tree of Life in Asgard), it could even just be a use of Casual Strenght.

[Lucius]

 

At this point, I think we may have scared Basic204 away. And further replies are probably more likely to create further confusion than to resolve it.

 

But I do want to question something and hope Basic204 comes back and responds:

 

Character has super strength and a sword and wants to cut lets say a tree down. I'm being told by my GM you have to be transform to do that.

The specific words you use are "you have to be transform" which doesn't make sense so I and others have been reading it as "you have to HAVE Transform" as in, have the Transform Power.

 

At least one of us read it as "you have to be transformED" as in, you have to change from your secret ID to a superheroic ID or something?

 

What is it you were actually trying to say?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Transform to Palindromedary

[TheQuestionMan]

Melinda Mei, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. - "I do not carry a weapon. If I need one I take it"

 

What it boils down too is;

1.) No, You do not have to pay points for weapons you pick up. You can keep them for the scene/adventure, but have to pay points if you keep them for the whole game.

 

2.) In a Superhero/Champions game you dp not pay points for everyday gadgets & gear. (ie; Smartphones, cameras, lights sources, transportation, resodences, family, friends, etc...)

 

3.) Supetechnology versions of normal gadgets & gear you pay points for.

 

4.) Your GM sounds new to Hero System.

 

Cheers

 

QM

[bubba smith]

i think that's Melinda MAY

[bubba smith]

Ithis thread inspired an apthorism for a superhero universe but I couldn't find the right thread

[Badger]

At this point, I think we may have scared Basic204 away. And further replies are probably more likely to create further confusion than to resolve it.

 

But I do want to question something and hope Basic204 comes back and responds:

 

 

The specific words you use are "you have to be transform" which doesn't make sense so I and others have been reading it as "you have to HAVE Transform" as in, have the Transform Power.

 

At least one of us read it as "you have to be transformED" as in, you have to change from your secret ID to a superheroic ID or something?

 

What is it you were actually trying to say?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Transform to Palindromedary

 

I think you might mean me.  yeah, the way transformed was used, it didnt mean "transform: the power" but  "transform into, etc".

 

I may have misunderstood.  But, it was the only way it made sense to me.

[Lucius]

I think you might mean me.  yeah, the way transformed was used, it didnt mean "transform: the power" but  "transform into, etc".

 

I may have misunderstood.  But, it was the only way it made sense to me.

Yeah, but unless Basic comes back and tells us what was meant, we'll never know.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Making sense to a palindromedary

[Mister E]

PS: Lumberjack based on STR.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

I think I know where this design philosophy came from, at least I recall where I first saw it because it drove me nuts.*

 

In The Mutant File there's a fire wielding character that has a multipower with a massive killing attack that would destroy most things. Then she also has a Transform: Into Molten Slag slot. Why? We used to argue about that all the time. It's really unnecessary. It wasn't more efficient that I could see, same END, and you still had to roll massive dice to get the effect.

 

At least when you buy the ability to punch through a wall as tunneling you're saving a dice roll.

 

 

 

 

*It's been many years, details may be muddied.

[Jazzidemus]

 

Character has super strength and a sword and wants to cut lets say a tree down. I'm being told by my GM you have to be transform to do that.

 

I don't understand why his/ your GM would have him/ you, Have, Need, Buy, pray to Cthulhu, Sacrifice your favorite D20, to use Transform in that situation for.

[Hyper-Man]

I think Transform should only be required if the effect increases 'order' in some manner.

 

I almost added a Transform version of Heat Vision to the following list of VPP examples but went with Healing instead.

 

*note that END is on the left and VPP slot costs are on the right.

 

 

[Armitage]

I think I know where this design philosophy came from, at least I recall where I first saw it because it drove me nuts.*

 

In The Mutant File there's a fire wielding character that has a multipower with a massive killing attack that would destroy most things. Then she also has a Transform: Into Molten Slag slot. Why? We used to argue about that all the time. It's really unnecessary. It wasn't more efficient that I could see, same END, and you still had to roll massive dice to get the effect.

 

 

 

She could need to destroy something with really high ED that isn't specifically thermally shielded.  A 4e M1 tank had 16 PD/ED (20 on the front) and 19 BODY.  Comparing her 6d6 RKA to her 4d6 cumulative Transform, it would take 3 hits with the Transform vs. 8 hits with the RKA to destroy the tank, rollling average damage.  It wouold take 38 hits with average damage if she were exclusively attacking the front armor.

 

"Heat so intense no Earthly object can withstand it" and all that jazz.  It's probably that or a double Armor Piercing, double Penetrating Killing Attack.

[assault]

At least when you buy the ability to punch through a wall as tunneling you're saving a dice roll.

 

Actually, the reason for this is that it is cheap, and doesn't blow campaign DC limits.