Taunt Power - Build Questions

[Waywardsoul]

Trying to build a Brick who can make people who are aggressive and will I get to attack to target him instead of innocents or comrades.  Looking at Mind Control as the power.  Looking for streamlining.  Mind Control 3d6 (Human and Alien class of mind) reduced End 0 (1/2), Cumulative (72 cap, +1), Set Effect “If you’re going to attack, hit me!” (-1/2), incantation (-1/4), Normal Range (-1/4), Does not Provide Mental Awareness (-1/4) Limited Power (Target must hear the taunt, -1/4) (62 Active, 25 Real)

[sentry0]

Cheap out and buy extra PRE with a limitation "Only to incite rage towards self".

[Christopher R Taylor]

I built it with a Change Environment; make an Ego roll or target and attack the taunter.  I know its a bit of a stretch but anything else is inordinately expensive for the effect, like 62 active cost above...

[Killer Shrike]

7 hours ago, sentry0 said:

Cheap out and buy extra PRE with a limitation "Only to incite rage towards self".

 

Yeah, first read up on PRE attacks and see if that can be applied to handle the 'taunt' concept well enough.

 

 

[ScottishFox]

9 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I built it with a Change Environment; make an Ego roll or target and attack the taunter.  I know its a bit of a stretch but anything else is inordinately expensive for the effect, like 62 active cost above...

 

I've found several D&D spells can be best simulated with Change Environment using a rough guideline of being roughly as effective as falling down (1/2 DCV) at base value or 1/2 DCV & lose your turn using the APG +20 point version.

 

Like you said, using other constructs makes the AP cost prohibitive for non-supers campaigns.

[Grailknight]

10 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I built it with a Change Environment; make an Ego roll or target and attack the taunter.  I know its a bit of a stretch but anything else is inordinately expensive for the effect, like 62 active cost above...

 

But it's not too expensive for what it does. 

 

The Taunt is effectively a Mind Control at +20, "Attack a less important or less vulnerable target". It should cost points for a power that puts your opponent in a less advantageous predicament if it works. You are forcing them to choose a bad strategy over a good one.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its a pretty minor effect, honestly.  I think Mind Control (and other mental powers) are broken in Hero and always have been.  They cost vast points for minor effects and simulate the genre material very, very poorly.  I would rather see a structure more like transform where the desire effect determines the cost rather than a flat build structure across all desired attempts.  

Transform has different costs for specific attempts to accomplish a goal: Making someone's eyebrows pink costs 3 points per d6, its not a flat cost for every type of effect.  Mental powers should follow the same kind of structure, and target the Ego of a character to overwhelm it rather than presence attack-like levels of effect.

[Grailknight]

Mental Powers in Hero show the game's roots in the Supers genre.

 

The average normal is pretty helpless against 60 AP Mental Powers, needing a 6 or less vs +10 effects or an 8 or less vs +20 to break out. PC Characters of course are better than this, as they should be, but Mental Attacks are still competitive at doing STUN to them.

 

Where they break down is at the Heroic level, where the same normal is now 9 or less vs +10 and 11 or less vs+20 effects and the PC's have 50% or better chances on most builds. I fix this with a campaign slider that gives normals 2x Effect and significant but lesser NPC's 1.5x Effect vs Mental Powers. It works for my games but YMMV.

 

In high power Supers, the Mental Powers usually grow faster than the defenses of the non-Mentalist PC's and the normals  are SOL. Notice how there is no Mentalist equivalent to DrD or Tak because that villain would be even more OP than they are. Killgrave in Jessica Jones is a good example here.

[ScottishFox]

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Its a pretty minor effect, honestly.  I think Mind Control (and other mental powers) are broken in Hero and always have been.  They cost vast points for minor effects and simulate the genre material very, very poorly.  I would rather see a structure more like transform where the desire effect determines the cost rather than a flat build structure across all desired attempts.  

Transform has different costs for specific attempts to accomplish a goal: Making someone's eyebrows pink costs 3 points per d6, its not a flat cost for every type of effect.  Mental powers should follow the same kind of structure, and target the Ego of a character to overwhelm it rather than presence attack-like levels of effect.

 

I find breakout rolls are too good in the current version.

 

12d6 Mind Control vs. Normal - Go kill your ally (requires EGO +10) which means it will generally work on Ego 10 targets with some reliability and become very sketchy against Ego 15-20 types.

 

Then before they even do anything they get a straight ego roll (42pts of effect minus (Ego plus 30) = 2pts to spare = Straight Ego roll).  A normal person has a 62% chance to break out of the effect before even losing a single phase.

This is no good at all.  The attacker had to make an attack roll.  The attacker had to commit his phase to mind controlling the subject.  And if both of those things work out (which is barely 50% likely) the target then has a 62% chance to snap loose before doing anything?

 

One tweak we've made in our game is to not allow the break out roll until after the end of the characters first phase of obeying the command.  I also like modifying the breakout roll to -1 per 10 points in the effect.  So, in this example -4.

 

Fantasy HERO is my favorite fantasy RPG, but you can tell HERO feel like it is built around a 50-75 point range for powers.

[Killer Shrike]

7 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Its a pretty minor effect, honestly.  I think Mind Control (and other mental powers) are broken in Hero and always have been.  They cost vast points for minor effects and simulate the genre material very, very poorly.  I would rather see a structure more like transform where the desire effect determines the cost rather than a flat build structure across all desired attempts.  

Transform has different costs for specific attempts to accomplish a goal: Making someone's eyebrows pink costs 3 points per d6, its not a flat cost for every type of effect.  Mental powers should follow the same kind of structure, and target the Ego of a character to overwhelm it rather than presence attack-like levels of effect.

I could get behind testing something like that. If you want to pursue developing it

let me know.

[Christopher R Taylor]

There's also the idea in one of the advanced books wherein ego attacks damage ego, lowering it each attack.  The concept of damaging ego to the point where you take control of someone intrigues me as well

[Doc Democracy]

I think the difficulty in achieving effect from mental powers reflects the hatred players have when used against them.  Players really want those achievable breakout rolls.

[archer]

I prefer building mind controlling effects with Transform if the person is supposed to be one of the most competent in the world at controlling minds.

 

The Mind Control power is for the riff-raff mentalists.

[Tech]

On 8/21/2019 at 5:45 PM, Waywardsoul said:

Trying to build a Brick who can make people who are aggressive and will I get to attack to target him instead of innocents or comrades.  Looking at Mind Control as the power.  Looking for streamlining.  Mind Control 3d6 (Human and Alien class of mind) reduced End 0 (1/2), Cumulative (72 cap, +1), Set Effect “If you’re going to attack, hit me!” (-1/2), incantation (-1/4), Normal Range (-1/4), Does not Provide Mental Awareness (-1/4) Limited Power (Target must hear the taunt, -1/4) (62 Active, 25 Real)

 

I would put the Limited Power (Target must hear the taunt) at -1/2, not -1/4. In a quiet setting, it'd be easy to hear the Taunt. In a city, particularly a busy one, it'd be noisy. If special effects of attacks make noise, this contributes to the noise level. People realizing what's happening can automatically nullify it with covering their ear. So, I'd go with -1/2.

[IndianaJoe3]

On 8/21/2019 at 10:12 PM, sentry0 said:

Cheap out and buy extra PRE with a limitation "Only to incite rage towards self".

 

I've used this as well. The character is trying to look like the biggest threat (even if he's not doing the most damage).