New powers that you think would simplify Hero

[TheDarkness]

Yeah, but you'd need a very large Change Environment to make use of it.  You'd need, what, a 200-something hex radius?  And then they'd have to hit something at the end?  And it takes several phases before it happens?  And it's stopped by somebody with 1" of Flight?

Oh yeah, I didn't think of that...

[Cantriped]

When I hand-waved it for a player wanting gravity manipulation, Altered Gravity Vector was a 150 AP Change Environment combat effect, and it caused the target to be drawn to an arbitrary point in space as though that point were the Ground. Meaning if the arbitrary point were on the ceiling of a building you were inside of: You could fall onto, or walk along the ceiling, that you moved at half-speed flying towards the floor, and double speed flying towards the ceiling, and that it was essentially negated by any amount of flight. That particular character had a few other modifiers placed on the power which changed it's use further, but those were the basics of the combat effect itself. Its active point value was determined based on the maximum amount of damage it could cause (30d6).

[massey]

When I hand-waved it for a player wanting gravity manipulation, Altered Gravity Vector was a 150 AP Change Environment combat effect, and it caused the target to be drawn to an arbitrary point in space as though that point were the Ground. Meaning if the arbitrary point were on the ceiling of a building you were inside of: You could fall onto, or walk along the ceiling, that you moved at half-speed flying towards the floor, and double speed flying towards the ceiling, and that it was essentially negated by any amount of flight. That particular character had a few other modifiers placed on the power which changed it's use further, but those were the basics of the combat effect itself. Its active point value was determined based on the maximum amount of damage it could cause (30d6).

 

Well, and really the problem with having a "gravity control" power is that it depends on how the player wants to use it.  One person says they want gravity control, and really they want to be able to step on the scale and weigh less.  Another person wants it, and they want to create black holes inside somebody's brain.  So while gravity powers can be a theme, it shouldn't necessarily be just one power.

[Cantriped]

It is important in this kind of discussion to separate the idea of "gravity manipulation" as a special effect, from the mechanics of a power which changes the direction and speed with which you fall. As a special effect you can use "gravity manipulation" for all sorts of different powers. Mechanically however it is currently rather difficult to write a power construct that changes the environmental rules for "gravity" so that you or your target can fall upwards and jump downwards.

[massey]

It is important in this kind of discussion to separate the idea of "gravity manipulation" as a special effect, from the mechanics of a power which changes the direction and speed with which you fall. As a special effect you can use "gravity manipulation" for all sorts of different powers. Mechanically however it is currently rather difficult to write a power construct that changes the environmental rules for "gravity" so that you or your target can fall upwards and jump downwards.

 

I think the reason that is difficult (or at least time consuming) is because of the many different ways it could affect the game.  It's a pretty poorly defined game effect when you get right down to it.

 

So you're in a city, and Gravity Bob uses his reverse gravity ray and shoots the ground near our hero.  It creates a 40 foot wide area with reversed gravity.  What happens to the 9 story brick office building that our hero is standing next to?  It is partially within the area.  It isn't designed to support itself like that against the stresses of partial reversed gravity.  What happens to it?  What if it is a hotel and has a pool in the basement?  What happens when the water flies up and slams into the ceiling?  Is someone disoriented when this ray goes into effect?  What penalties do they suffer?  If I run and jump across and area of reverse gravity, does that increase the length of my jump?  If I'm half in the effect and half out, do I hover?

 

None of these things are defined.  With existing powers, it's pretty easy.  You get what you pay for.  You define how you want it to work.  But a generic "gravity field" could theoretically do a lot of different things.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Gravity control is easy to do in Hero.

 

Not really.  It involves a very wide range of different powers each one tailored for one specific aspect of gravity control.  And for some effects it doesn't really give you the results.  High gravity field, that should make everything more tiring, slow people, reduce leaping, hinder attacks, etc.  Just a couple of G would be a huge change environment or expensive tons of related, linked Area effect powers for the fairly annoying but actually not enormous effect.

 

Or reversing gravity, now everything is exactly what it was, but you're on the ceiling.  What's that?  Clinging, usable against others after a telekinetic throw?

[Doc Democracy]

Oh! Light....just thought. 1d6 Blast, AoE, no Stun or Body. :-). Just the SFX of light generation....

[Tasha]

I would add a limitation, only light. At least then it's not equivalent in cost to a 2d6 blast.

The power is only 3 points. less if you limit the range mod on the sight it gives.

 

 

[TheDarkness]

The power is only 3 points. less if you limit the range mod on the sight it gives.

 

 

I know, which is still d3 blast, basically. Since it is only light, that puts it closer to the range it should be in. I know, nitpicky. It just seems like a 1-2 pt. power, unless the AoE or range is really quite large.

[Lucius]

I am currently thinking of switching from Mutants and Masterminds to hero. Mainly because when I'm doing stuff in M+M I find myself thinking hero could do this better. And have realised that it will be a lot easer to import some of what I like about M+M into hero rather than the other way round. Im having my first full read of the 6th edition rules, which is a slow process for me as im dyslexic and they are big books.

 

Anyway to bring this back on topic, one Idea i might 'borrow' from M+M is the feature power. This cost 1 point in M+M, I'd probably price it it 3 (maybe 5) in hero.

 

This just gives a feature that provides some minor benefit. So a character might have 'feature - thick fur'. Which would give a bonus to resist cokd environments, but fall short of full life support.

 

If I wanted to price it at all A car could have 'feature - headlights, feature - dark/light sensor'. 6 points job done. But I,d probably just assume a car had lights as standard.

 

Reluctant as I am to endorse complicating the game by adding still more Powers, I think there is something to be said for the idea of a generic "useful little trick" ability like this.

 

Batman needs to know how many points his Batlight and Batspork cost to keep in his Utility Belt VPP/Resource Pool!

 

I can tell him. Zero.

 

you cannot deal velocity based damage with a UAA Movement Power

You can't?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Dealing velocity based damage with a palindromedary

[Cantriped]

Nope, you cant. Last time I checked, it is specifically prohibited to use UAA Movement Powers to cause velocity-based damage by running them into things, as is turning off the power without first decelerating the victim to 0m. Of course it is always possible for me to be wrong. But I did a lot of research into this topic when my player wanted to build a character with gravity manipulation powers, so I don't think I am.

[Lucius]

Wouldn't eliminating that rule, or creating an Advantage that permits velocity damage, help to create a simpler power construct for gravity manipulation?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary defines knockback as damage based velocity

[Tasha]

I know, which is still d3 blast, basically. Since it is only light, that puts it closer to the range it should be in. I know, nitpicky. It just seems like a 1-2 pt. power, unless the AoE or range is really quite large.

Currently it is a cone that goes out as long as regular vision. if you you add a limit like reduced range modifier, you can get it down further.

[Cantriped]

Wouldn't eliminating that rule, or creating an Advantage that permits velocity damage, help to create a simpler power construct for gravity manipulation?

It totally would, but in its place you would need to define how much damage a UAA Velocity-Based Movement power does when you crash someone into something.

I believe the normal rules treat collisions as an uncontrolled Move Through (so the victim would do velocity/6 d6s of damage to the object they collided with, and take of half the damage they dealt... effectively 1d6 per 12m of velocity)... which means you would need 360m of UAA Flight (minimum 450 APs) to do the same 30d6 of damage that Falling does with 60m of Velocity per Segment (and 72m of space to accelerate them up to terminal velocity).

If you treat the UAA Flight like Knockback or Falling, then you only need 60m of UAA Flight (minimum 135 APs); slightly less than the 150 APs required to dish out a straight up 30d6 Hand to Hand Attack, it has the advantage of being able to move the opponent, and unlike actual falling you only have to move the opponent 12m to get them up to terminal velocity (meaning they don't have to "fall" for 6 segments first, you could slam them into the wall over and over every phase as a half-phase Attack action)

[Chris Goodwin]

Currently it is a cone that goes out as long as regular vision. if you you add a limit like reduced range modifier, you can get it down further.

 

When the pre-6th edition discussion was going on, I had an idea for denoting light levels similar to the way we denote temperature levels.  Every character has a "native" light level; the typical amount of daylight at noon on a "standard day" (whatever that would end up being) is defined as 0; brighter levels are +1, +2, +3, etc., darker are -1, -2, -3, etc.  Within one level of your native light level, you are at no bonus or penalty; for every level beyond that you take a penalty equal to the difference between that level and your native level.  So, if you were a normal human, you take no penalty between light +1 and light -1, though once it hits +2 or -2 then you're at a -2 penalty, and on from there.  (Higher levels are too bright for you, which is why you still get the penalty.)  -4 is considered "night" and is based on the -4 penalty to Sight PER rolls at night.  Then, Change Environment could be used to increase or decrease the light level.  Also, you could gauge the light level of Images; if it's night (-4) and you have Images at +3 for light, then it's at a net -1, which is within one level of the typical human's native light level, and thus no penalty.

 

I haven't worked it all out, though, as I let it go as soon as the 6e prep discussion ended and never picked it back up. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

A couple of quick thoughts.

 

Maybe an "effect" power that's super cheap and does nothing except special effects would handle a ton of little odd gadgets and devices like lights... or instant change.  Say, 3 points for a fixed effect and 5 for a variety, at most 10 for any?

 

The ideas about knocking people over and doing velocity damage etc all seem to play into the thread that sort of petered out where we were trying to build a power framework that actually let people build martial arts from powers (or other similar structures, even spell systems, skill trees, etc).  If we had powers that did what martial arts did -- or at least modifiers -- that would make that framework more viable and let us balance martial arts a bit more closely.

[Cantriped]

When the pre-6th edition discussion was going on, I had an idea for denoting light levels similar to the way we denote temperature levels.  Every character has a "native" light level; the typical amount of daylight at noon on a "standard day" (whatever that would end up being) is defined as 0; brighter levels are +1, +2, +3, etc., darker are -1, -2, -3, etc.  Within one level of your native light level, you are at no bonus or penalty; for every level beyond that you take a penalty equal to the difference between that level and your native level.  So, if you were a normal human, you take no penalty between light +1 and light -1, though once it hits +2 or -2 then you're at a -2 penalty, and on from there.  (Higher levels are too bright for you, which is why you still get the penalty.)  -4 is considered "night" and is based on the -4 penalty to Sight PER rolls at night.  Then, Change Environment could be used to increase or decrease the light level.  Also, you could gauge the light level of Images; if it's night (-4) and you have Images at +3 for light, then it's at a net -1, which is within one level of the typical human's native light level, and thus no penalty.

 

I haven't worked it all out, though, as I let it go as soon as the 6e prep discussion ended and never picked it back up. 

This is actually a really cool idea for handling light. It feels fairly similar to the way Pathfinder defines light levels, and because it can be penalizing in either direction depending upon other circumstances, it doesn't require an exception be made to Change Environment's prohibition on beneficial effects to be legal. I think I will be exploring this idea further in my projects, thank you for sharing it!

[Christopher R Taylor]

When the pre-6th edition discussion was going on, I had an idea for denoting light levels similar to the way we denote temperature levels.  Every character has a "native" light level; the typical amount of daylight at noon on a "standard day" (whatever that would end up being) is defined as 0

 

I remember that and thought it was a good idea, something that could be used for darkness as well as light.  After all, darkness doesn't necessarily have to be absolute; maybe its just really really dark and some people can see a little through it.

[Cantriped]

I think it would also be interesting to codify into the rules for Light and Sound levels that suddenly moving from a lower level to a higher level (from deep darkness to bright light for example) Flashs the relevant sense for a number of dice based upon the difference in sensory levels. Flash defense would apply normally, and characters could pay 1 or 2 CP for Life Support vs. Sudden Sensory Level Changes with a given sense.

[massey]

Nope, you cant. Last time I checked, it is specifically prohibited to use UAA Movement Powers to cause velocity-based damage by running them into things, as is turning off the power without first decelerating the victim to 0m. Of course it is always possible for me to be wrong. But I did a lot of research into this topic when my player wanted to build a character with gravity manipulation powers, so I don't think I am.

 

Really?  Because page 359 of 6th edition volume one talks specifically about Flight usable as attack being used to slam someone into a wall.

[Cantriped]

Really?  Because page 359 of 6th edition volume one talks specifically about Flight usable as attack being used to slam someone into a wall.

Huh... it does. Thank you for the correction, and for citing the page number. Apparently I misremembered that aspect of Usable As Attack. Frankly it has been years since I opened the 6th edition core volumes... these days I only use CC/FHC, and it makes no specific mention of using Flight to slam people into a wall. But then, CC/FHC leaves out most of the examples... that is a big part of how it cut the page-count down.

 

Of course, that also reminds me that UAA Flight "breaks" if the Recipient is Stunned or Knocked Out on impact, which is a problem for using it to represent altered gravity because then they'll fall back to earth whether you want them to or not. In addition, you'd still need about 25d6 of Triggered Blast linked to your 60m of UAA Flight to do "full falling damage" when the victim was forced to perform their Uncontrolled Move Through on the wall/ceiling.

[Tasha]

Really?  Because page 359 of 6th edition volume one talks specifically about Flight usable as attack being used to slam someone into a wall.

Though IF you are looking for an attack, TK is really the power that does that.

[Tasha]

Huh... it does. Thank you for the correction, and for citing the page number. Apparently I misremembered that aspect of Usable As Attack. Frankly it has been years since I opened the 6th edition core volumes... these days I only use CC/FHC, and it makes no specific mention of using Flight to slam people into a wall. But then, CC/FHC leaves out most of the examples... that is a big part of how it cut the page-count down.

 

Of course, that also reminds me that UAA Flight "breaks" if the Recipient is Stunned or Knocked Out on impact, which is a problem for using it to represent altered gravity because then they'll fall back to earth whether you want them to or not. In addition, you'd still need about 25d6 of Triggered Blast linked to your 60m of UAA Flight to do "full falling damage" when the victim was forced to perform their Uncontrolled Move Through on the wall/ceiling.

Why not use 10str Telekinesis AOE? That's usually the power that is used for Gravity fields.

 

ie from 5e Until Superpowers Database (don't have the PDF of Champs Powers and don't want to pull the book off the shelf)

 

Effect: Telekinesis (40 STR)

Target/Area Affected: 6” Radius

Duration: Constant

Range: 600”

END Cost: 12

 

Description: The character can create a fi eld of altered gravity. He can either increase the gravity, pinning everyone inside the affected area to the ground, or he can cancel gravity and hold them all motionless off the ground. He must choose one or the other each time he uses the power; he cannot pin some people down while holding others up in the air. Anyone in the affected area has to break out of the Telekinesis using STR before he can move his body in any way (including relatively trivial motions such as pulling a trigger or aiming an Energy Blast). If he succeeds, he can act normally, though he will have to make further rolls if he does not leave the affected area before the character’s

next Phase. Anyone who enters the affected area aft er it’s established has to make rolls as well (see

pages 99-100 of the HERO System 5th Edition, [6e1 pg 127]

Revised regarding Constant area-affecting powers). 

If he pins the targets to the ground, the character can also cause STR damage to them as if performing a Grab and Squeeze. He cannot do this if he’s holding them off the ground.

 

Game Information: Telekinesis (40 STR), Area

Of Effect (6” Radius; +1) (120 Active Points);

Only To Pull Objects Straight Down To Earth

Or Hold Th em Off The Ground (-1). Total cost:

60 points.

[DreadDomain]

But the game has instant change, it costs three points, what more do you need?

That they don't make it look so damn complicated everytime they put it on a character sheet. I have no problem whatsoever with the way Instant Change is built in 6E but I am annoyed when I see on a published character sheet:

 

3 Instant Change: cosmetic transform 1d6 (one set of clothing into one costume and vice-versa; method of healing back varies based on character), trigger (changing clothing is a zero phase action, trigger immediately automatically resets; +¾) (5 active points); limited target (the clothes currently worn by character; -½).

 

Instead of this:

 

3 Instant Change (one set of clothing into one costume and vice-versa)

 

It's like DOJ insists to perpetual the meme that HERO is complicated to the extreme. Granted, the real issue here is not Instant Change per say, it's the GUI. More on this below.

The desire for simplicity is a desire for someone else to be making decisions for you, close to anathema for many HERO GMs. :-)

You obviously don't know me. My favorite books on my bookshelves are 6E1, 6E2, APGI, APGII and HSS. I like the power HERO gives my. The possibilities are endless! I am annoyed by unnecessay complexity, even more so when the complexity is only perceived but happily perpetuated. Instant Change is an example of that. Another example is Equipment. More often than not, DOJ makes a point to write something like (from Adventure The Val of Stalla for Fantasy Hero Complete):

 

War Captain's Spear:

Game Information: HKA 2d6, Armor Piercing (+¼), Area Of Effect (1m Radius, Accurate; +½), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +½) (67 Active Points); OAF (spear; -1) (total cost: 33 CP) plus Reach 3m (total cost: 3 CP) plus Sight Group Images, Area Of Effect (16m Radius; +¾), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +½); OAF (spear; -1), Only To Create Light (-1), No Range (-½) (total cost: 6 CP). Real Cost: 42 CP.

The way to make HERO less complex for players is for GMs to put the work in upfront and create a GUI for their game. All the bits and kit with costs for players that they can pick up and use. HERO has done a lot of this groundwork in quite a few publications and, because this is HERO, you can pick that up and use as is or you can decide it doesn't fit your game, get in behind the builds and tweak to your heart's delight.

You are right, the GUI is important. I participated in the Extreme Earth KS as soon as HERO stats were included. As a long time HERO player, I believe the CS, the GUI, for HERO looks a lot more complicated than the others even though, I know it is not significantly more complicated than the others. DOJ has decided to use a Stat bloc that is very, uh, blocky. From the start, any character looks a bit complex just because of the long list from STR to STUN. A better organization would help. Reduction of hermetic write-ups (Instant Change, equipments), would help. None of this makes HERO more or less complex. A better GUI would make it look simpler (aka no more complicated than it really is).

 

Another aspect where HERO could decrease complexity is by providing the tools to make powers intuitively. As an example, building Super-Running with Flight is not intuitive.

 

There is not a whole damn lot that I would change in 6E for a mechanic perspective (and for some changes, I would lokk back at 5ER and even more so at 4E) and I believe 80% of the perceived complexity would fade with a better GUI and sourcebooks that actually make mechanical decisions as opposed to reshowing the engine every times.

 

EDIT: By the way, apologies but responding to a post a few days old, I am totally out of sync with the current discussion.

[TheDarkness]

The ideas about knocking people over and doing velocity damage etc all seem to play into the thread that sort of petered out where we were trying to build a power framework that actually let people build martial arts from powers (or other similar structures, even spell systems, skill trees, etc).  If we had powers that did what martial arts did -- or at least modifiers -- that would make that framework more viable and let us balance martial arts a bit more closely.

i understand the gravity of this discussion, and don't mean to take it too light...

 

That discussion about martial arts and pools is something I've been working on a good amount since. One of the issues, for me, is that my experience with fantasy is near zero, so I have been looking a lot at the system and how it deals with things. For example, in this thread, the idea of a spell that knocks down people came up.

 

At the point I'm at now, I'm heavily leaning toward very transparent builds(versus the martial arts system, which, design wise, muddies up the overall system). As such, I'm leaning toward getting rid of the absolutes, but making sure that their function still remains. So, block is an absolute, it adds effectively infinite DEX in order to allow a followup attack to go first(if in the same phase). That's the biggest sticking point, as it is important for allowing lower speed and DEX characters a fighting chance. I'm working on modeling things to fulfill this purpose. As already stated, throws, trips, and sweeps also include an absolute. I'm not a huge fan of 'the cheapest build is the right build', and since I'm planning on home brewing a type of pool that transparently allows the sort of things that the martial arts system currently does by manner of hand wave, cost issues should be mitigated by the end. Undoubtedly I will often ask questions, possibly to that thread, as I come across them.

 

But, it's going to be a process, so that the pool is something useful beyond martial arts, and is balanced.

I've played with making block have a trigger that allows an attack in the next segment. That would actually, in most cases, fulfill a similar role, without involving infinite unpaid DEX, but it might actually be too good.