"Unremarkable" pseudo-invisibility

[Lucius]

Gone With The Wind:  Gliding 4", Invisible Power Effects (Fully Invisible; +1) (8 Active Points); May Not Draw Attention To Himself (-1/2), Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4), Ground Gliding (-1/4), no Noncombat movement (-1/4)

 

This seems like a good way to model the effect. The person is fully invisible so long as they move slowly and do not draw attention to themselves. I originally was looking at this as a "pass without trace" effect but

 

Invisible Power Effects makes the effects of the power invisible. It does not make the character invisible.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Invisible Palindromedary Effects

[Tholomyes]

Gone With The Wind:  Gliding 4", Invisible Power Effects (Fully Invisible; +1) (8 Active Points); May Not Draw Attention To Himself (-1/2), Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4), Ground Gliding (-1/4), no Noncombat movement (-1/4)

 

This seems like a good way to model the effect. The person is fully invisible so long as they move slowly and do not draw attention to themselves. I originally was looking at this as a "pass without trace" effect but

 

 

This doesn't seem too dissimilar to the running build earlier, which as eepjr mentioned, doesn't really do what you want it to:

 

Second, I don't get your logic? I am guessing you are talking about Invisible Power Effects here? If so, Running is only visible to 2 groups to start with I believe? Not sure on the math for your limitations, it looks like 5e and I am using 6e. But in any case, making 3" of running IPE does nothing to disguise your features or make you unmemorable. Al it would do it make people not perceive your method of getting from one place to another place if you move slowly. It might even make them more curious about you, since that is a very odd happening.

 

In HERO, while it's not true that the simple answer is always the best, more often than not, it's the right jumping off point. If the effect you want is, effectively, invisibility, then modeling it as invisibility seems to be the right way to go, likely with no fringe. Depending on how you want the power to work, the Psionic limitation in APG II might be right for the build, if you want to only not be noticed by other people, but be detectable by computers or the like (I believe that this limitation would also make it so that someone watching through a CCTV monitor would also notice the character, but the book lists an option, if reduced to a -1/4 lim to work with "mental traces". While not a direct parallel to CCTV, or similar circumstances, I'd allow something like that to affect people perceiving through CCTV, while still making the character visible to an AI detection system, for example). Obviously, with the logic that a limitation that does not limit the character is not worth any points, if the campaign features no (or very few) remote surveillance systems or machine classes of minds, this limitation would be a -0 limitation.

 

As far as the difference between being invisible, vs not being noticed, I'd probably just make that fall under the purview of special effects granting minor benefits and hindrances, so long as they generally don't swing too far in one direction or the other. An invisible character can't really move about in a crowded city, even with no fringe, people will still feel the character when they bump into them, and will notice that they bumped into something that isn't there. An unnoticed character will still be recognized as a physical being, so in a crowd they don't have to worry about being noticed when touched, but unlike the truly invisible person, sneaking into a secure area will be more tricky, because a guard can notice the character and alert other guards to their location, even if they can't quite remember any distinctive features about them.

[g3taso]

Close In For The Kill:  Gliding 3", Invisible Power Effects, Hide effects of Power (Fully Invisible; +2) (9 Active Points); May Not Draw Attention To Himself (-1/2), Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4), Ground Gliding (-1/4), no Noncombat movement (-1/4)

 

As I understand it now, so long as I move slowly I "disappear" only to "reappear" somewhere else. It costs END, I have to move along the ground and I must remain inconspicuous.  Or am I still missing something? Thanks to Lucius for pointing out a key flaw, and for everyone else for pointing out various shortcomings.

[eepjr24]

Close In For The Kill:  Gliding 3", Invisible Power Effects, Hide effects of Power (Fully Invisible; +2) (9 Active Points); May Not Draw Attention To Himself (-1/2), Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4), Ground Gliding (-1/4), no Noncombat movement (-1/4)

 

As I understand it now, so long as I move slowly I "disappear" only to "reappear" somewhere else. It costs END, I have to move along the ground and I must remain inconspicuous.  Or am I still missing something? Thanks to Lucius for pointing out a key flaw, and for everyone else for pointing out various shortcomings.

Not my understanding at all of the effect of IPE. Just instead of having some obvious method of gliding from point A to point B the IPE would not be obviously power driven, would not be perceivable (the POWER, not the character) in 2 or more sense groups as per normal, would not have an obvious SFX, and could not tell the "intensity" of the power. All of these are normally perceivable about a power without IPE. 

 

Here is a snippet from 6e 125, I am sure there is an equivalent in the 5e books.

 

Movement Powers are a slight exception to the general rules. While they’re Inobvious, the fact that a character’s moving from Point A to Point B generally cannot be hidden. A character moving at no more than 2m per Phase gets a +2 bonus to Stealth rolls; one moving up to a Half Move with Combat Movement suffers a -0 to -2 penalty; one moving up to a Full Move with Combat Movement suffers a -2 to -4 penalty. Moving at Noncombat Movement velocities, regardless of how far the character moves, entails a -5 or greater penalty

[massey]

Close In For The Kill: Gliding 3", Invisible Power Effects, Hide effects of Power (Fully Invisible; +2) (9 Active Points); May Not Draw Attention To Himself (-1/2), Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4), Ground Gliding (-1/4), no Noncombat movement (-1/4)

 

As I understand it now, so long as I move slowly I "disappear" only to "reappear" somewhere else. It costs END, I have to move along the ground and I must remain inconspicuous. Or am I still missing something? Thanks to Lucius for pointing out a key flaw, and for everyone else for pointing out various shortcomings.

You're still missing something.

 

Invisible Power Effects, the Advantage you put on a Power, makes the Power invisible, not the character. Forget about using it on Gliding for a moment, and think about using it on something else, like Killing Attack. Invisible Power Effects on RKA would make the attack invisible, but you can still see the character.

 

The problem here is that it's hard for us to visualize how a character can be visible and his movement be invisible. We have a hard time picturing what that would look like. The original IPE on movement was, I believe, used as sort of a "trackless step" power where you didn't leave footprints, didn't set off pressure plates, etc.

 

To make the guy himself invisible you've got to buy Invisibility as a Power (20 points, last I checked). Now generally that includes invisible movement as well, since it's your body doing it. But you can't turn invisible just by putting IPE on a cheap movement power.

[Alcamtar]

This is how we have been doing it. The poor guy has to make a scene at a resteraunt to get service. He also spent a night laying in a alley, injured, because the team couldn't find hum.

 

That aspect sounds like a Complication (that would be coupled with the power to represent the downside). Possibly a physical complication, but I think I'd model it as a Distinctive Features, only instead of being noticed when you don't want to be noticed, it is reversed and you are not noticed even when you want to be. DF already has a cost structure in place so you're just altering the sfx.

 

The "make a scene" also suggests reduced presence - if two dice of presence represent normal everyday interactions, then buying presence down to zero means you have to work a lot harder (+2d6 pre attack) to get any attention at all, to say nothing of influencing people.

[Christopher]

There are a lot of ways to build this.  Exactly how you build it will be determined by exactly how you want it to work.

 

To me, the easiest way is with Shapeshift, any humanoid form.  And you're shifting into "any random guy with the authorization to be there".  You're basically shapeshifting into a mook in the background.  And the description of the power is that you still look like yourself, but nobody notices it's you.  But as far as the Power goes, you're Shapeshifting into someone who nobody is going to pay attention to, because it's okay for that person to be there.  And nobody will freak out or anything if you open doors or get something out of the candy machine, because they can see you, you're just not important.

 

Now, this won't let you stand there and shoot people and have them still not notice you.  To do that, you probably want to have regular invisibility as well.  Sometimes you'd need multiple powers working together to get the type of effect you want.  Effectively you'd be switching between game effects, while the special effect remained the same.  Mental Illusions or Mind Control could work as well for certain odd situations.

But how does the Chracter/Power know who to imitate? And have enough of a picture of the person to imitate to pull this off?

 

If the goal was to appear as a random person, that is one thing. But a random person has no access to the FBI centrale. YOu want "a random person that has access here". Wich requires your character/power to have a reasonable way to figure that stuff out.

 

If I rememebr right there was a special Limitation "only to aid use of specific power (-1 or -2)" on senses. Usually it is used for stuff like triggers (where the set power might need senses you do not have yourself). But it should work for a Shape that "somehow" knows who to immitate too.

 

Close In For The Kill:  Gliding 3", Invisible Power Effects, Hide effects of Power (Fully Invisible; +2) (9 Active Points); May Not Draw Attention To Himself (-1/2), Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4), Ground Gliding (-1/4), no Noncombat movement (-1/4)

 

As I understand it now, so long as I move slowly I "disappear" only to "reappear" somewhere else. It costs END, I have to move along the ground and I must remain inconspicuous.  Or am I still missing something? Thanks to Lucius for pointing out a key flaw, and for everyone else for pointing out various shortcomings.

I am going to say it too:

Nope.

 

This will NOT make teh character invisible/unnoticeable. IPE makes the use of the POWER it is applied to invisible/unnoticedable. That there is a character is still fully visible.

Movement with IPE (hearing) would not make a sound. No stealth check is nessesary. You still have it hide from sight, of course.

 

Again:

Movement IPE (sight) does NOT MAKE THE CHARACTER INVISIBLE. There is not even a discussion about it.

The game effect to be invisible is called "Invisiblity (Sight)" and has a clear cost. There is no way around this cost.

 

You are trying to build a inhirently broken, abuseable build here. This does not work in Hero. No mater how much you try, any GM can shoot it down with a simple "No".

You need to model the actual game effect you receive. You pay for said game effect. And that is all the effect you get. If the game effect is broken/powerfull, then it will be accordingly expensive. If you don't have the points left for the game effect, you don't have the points left.

If the game effect was a lot cheaper in another rulesystem - either the original price was broken all along, or there were some restrictions in the build you can not copy/failed to copy.

 

There is no room for rules lawyering in Hero. No abuseable oversights. There is a bunch of Rule 0's that supersede everything else that is written in those books just so stuff like this does not happen.

If your GM wants to allow it is his decision. And his damn own fault the inevitable moment it bites him in the butt.

Everything you build, the GM can jsut say "No". And there is not a damn thing you can do about it, other then walking away from the table.

[g3taso]

Ok, I get it. I thought the power sounded cool, but it doesn't work. And if it did work that way, the result wouldn't be the cool "just shimmy over there invisible to sight and hearing groups while not making a ruckus" I was hoping for. 

 

That being said, I'd like to see one of massey's shapeshift or any of the other cool ways you might suggest (other than invisibility, the obvious one) that are "less than invisible" but awesome. And crunchy.  I'm 5th Edition, but jump in with the 6th (just let me know if you are) and I can get my feet wet.

[Balabanto]

There is a way to do it. 

 

Go to the Champions adventure "Pretty Hate Machines." I wrote this. I know it's selfish, but pick it up and look at the "Plain Jane" character. That is exactly what you want, only this is more than a minor ability.

[steriaca]

Bump for stealth tricks thread.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I like the idea of someone invisible only to targeting on senses though.  You can see her, you just can't seem to get a bead on her.  Not a huge limitation, but its worth something, maybe -1/2.