What happened to HERO?

[Duke Bushido]

2 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Gadget Pool in II, VPP in III.  Gadget Pool had a slightly different cost structure from VPP.  Gadgeteering Skill was given more to do than the default VPP skill; it was more like Power Skill is now.  

 

Thanks! 

 

(though Power Skill is another thing that we did fine without by finding alternate ways "to do the thing".) 

 

2 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

(Did you do that on purpose? )

 

 

I confess: two people I thoroughly enjoy hearing from are Lore Master Liaden and Chris "System Historian" Goodwin. 

 

 

 

[Lucius]

4 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

 

 

 

Honesty, I have questioned the need for pretty much every new power since (and starting with) Gadget Pool in.... Was it Champs III?.... 

 

I did not question the validity of the _idea behind them_, mind you: I just sat down to see if it could be done in 2e.  In every case but Damage Negation, it can.  Further, very few need custom limitations to do it.   And as I noted, even damage negation _can_ be done, if you're willing to do a tiny bit of handwa--  you know, it's not even handwaving: it's the same sort of metagaming that is the "mechanic" of Damage Negation to begin with.  If you can accept that, then 2e remains as complete as anything that's been rolled out today.  1e probably does as well, but it was so.... Disjointed...  Particularly in Frameworks. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm going to say the introduction of the gadget pool did it. 

 

Once you create a special new power that could have been created using already-existing rules, you've opened the floodgates to stop using the rules creatively and start hammering in blocks of pre-made "what I want.". Suddenly there are 2 ways to do it, and now the new player has to wonder why and which is right and when does he do which?

 

 

 

 

 

.. 

 

Okay, you have claimed to be able to reproduce a Gadget Pool using only rules from 2nd edition and excluding the Gadget Pool rules themselves.

I am skeptical. How did you do this?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

without using a palindromedary

[Scott Ruggels]

3 hours ago, Spence said:

 

Ahhhhhhhh!!!!   Heads exploding everywhere!!!   The HUMANITY!!!!!!    Aaaaaahhhahahhahhahhah!!!!!

 

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, Lucius said:

to reproduce a Gadget Pool using only rules from 2nd edition and excluding the Gadget Pool rules themselves.

I am skeptical. How did you do this?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

without using a palindromedary

 

Yes; I did it without using a palindromedary. 

 

I also said that custom advantages and limitations and those published in successive editions makes this more possible-- working better and better as newer modifiers inspired better designs, but you have chosen to ignore that. 

 

Still, it's at least disguised as a fair question, and against my better judgment, I will answer it.  Forgive typos and truncation; I am doing this on a phone,  and two-thumb typing versus autocorrect is not pleasant under any circumstances. 

 

 

We built the "gadget" as an unassigned multipower.   Decide up front if it's an ultra (one power at a time) or not.  If it is not, decide on a maximum number of slots in action at once.   This affected   the cost of the "pool," of course.

 

Limitations on control cost include "must be configured" (value determined by how long it takes to configure and whether or not an INT roll was required, (had a player once take three skill levels in "Gizmology" for that roll    ) essentially things related to the act of tearing apart and building a Gadget.    Other cost modifiers include needing to scavenge from your surroundings or if your current device or personal inventory will always "just happen" to have what you need. 

These types of builds started with a +2 Advantage owing to the utility (at least in most campaigns). 

Flavor with other modifiers to get the feel you want. 

 

 

The only thing the publication of Gadget Pool did for us was give us the name of an official Skill (Gadgeteering, though we stuck with Gizmology) and the idea that we didn't necessarily need to limit the idea to gadgets (though we still prefer to). 

 

 

I hope this is sufficient enough, because I have chased this damned cursor quite enough. 

 

Maybe Santa will get me a Bluetooth mini keyboard. 

 

 

[Solitude]

On 12/21/2019 at 5:36 PM, Spence said:

 

Eh... not really.  They did put together stripped versions of both 5th and 6th.  The Basic books. 

But they were just like CC and FHC, incomplete and designed as if they intended them to fail.

 

Think of it this way. 

 

Lets imagine you have a two game consoles.  

Console one sells games on a disc like the PS4 and XBox.  Buy a disc, load it and play.

Console two has decided that anyone willing to play a game someone else designed is daft.  So they sell the console, the source code and some resources and say "have fun". 

 

Which console sells and which one fails?  Easy to pick.

 

When Fantasy Hero Complete was put out it was also incomplete.  It is even more sad because they actually had partially built the other half in the Val of Stalla which was given out as downloadable content but never mentioned in the book itself.  If the material had been polished up and included in FHC plus the equivalent of a 1st level spell list so the people who wanted to play a mage had a starting point to reference, it might have taken off. 

 

The Basic books were not bad at all........as one part of a complete product.

 

But after 3rd edition, Hero never tried to make "playable" games except for Champions in 4th. 

 

Hero in 5th and 6th stopped being a game played for fun, and became a dry programming language for mathematicians.

 

In my opinion Hero has ceased to be a game, and has become a system reference document.

<hr>

 

I think it peaked there.

And really,  the one thing that fourth edition Champions gave me that I felt was needed wasn't a power or a framework or an advantage or a limitation. 

 

It was the campaign sheet to issue out power restrictions and requirements and forbidden combinations before my players designed characters so that I wouldn't need to reject as many power gamer monstrosities or broken basket cases.

 

If an anniversary edition is made please include disadvantages on the campaign sheet.

 

I never want to see a neophyte draw up a character who is a nurse which goes berserk at the sight of blood again...

On 12/21/2019 at 5:36 PM, Spence said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

1 hour ago, Solitude said:

 

If an anniversary edition is made please include disadvantages on the campaign sheet.

 

I never want to see a neophyte draw up a character who is a nurse which goes berserk at the sight of blood again...

 

 What? Really?  Yeah... no. That would not fly.

[Spence]

11 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

And I didn't realize it even existed until I read that post.  Thank you; is it still available; and does anyone have a link? 

 

IIRC it was bonus material for the FHC KS.

[Ninja-Bear]

Here’s the thing of practicality. As much as a Anniversary Edition would be best. And yes for that reason rerelease of 2ed is a good idea,  Hero system is really in no position to do something like this. Remember Champions Now is coming out. And as much has it was heralded as not being a nostalgic release. It Ron Edwards take on 3e. I’d say a fair amount of people will still look to it like that. What does Hero have in stock? I’ll check but I believe they have a bunch of 6th Basic still. So I would release VIPER’s Nest as 6th and maybe with standees and maybe a few extra Heroes/Villains (as they were done in 3ed.). The only build by the book that would be problematic as a straight conversion to 6th Basic would Crusader’s Missile Deflect. (I believe Ranged Block isn’t mention in 6thB  and Deflect is cut out but I’ll check).

[Scott Ruggels]

13 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Here’s the thing of practicality. As much as a Anniversary Edition would be best. And yes for that reason rerelease of 2ed is a good idea,  Hero system is really in no position to do something like this. 

This is why I suggested it as  Crowd Funding Campaign.  If ti works, Hero gets the money to re-issue, If the campaign fails, no loss. The point was to NOT burden Hero on things it cannot afford.

[Ninja-Bear]

Scott I must’ve missed the point about crowdfunding. That would be a good option.

[sentry0]

I'm skeptical that going backwards in time to release Champions 2 would attract anyone to the game who isn't already here.  Building a KS is hard work and many of them fail.  I personally wouldn't consider contributing to one for HERO that doesn't move the system forward.  The game has evolved over the years and is at a better place than it was, I'm not interested in paying money for a less capable version of 6th. I'm not one of these people who believe that 6th is a bad iteration of the game, I actually believe it's been a very good mechanical step forward but packaged to fail.  If you want a stripped down version of 6th you can use the BR and it would still be more capable out of the box than second.

 

I'm also not interested in backporting rules from successive editions.  I have zero interest in jumping through hoops to make a power that can easily be made on 6th.  So sell me on this idea that spending the time, money, and effort on this KS would attract anyone other than grognards who are probably already here.

 

As for the suggestion that the newer editions are built with programming in mind?  Highly doubtful.  I'm hip deep in revising my app right now to read from HD character sheets and there are many, many exceptions to rules that make writing the code problematic.  There are much easier system to code for like OpenD6... which coincidentally, I have.  My OpenD6 app includes tools to architect world's and build characters as well as play the game.  It was significantly easier to build a more functional app for that system than HERO.  If HERO was built for programmers in mind than shouldn't it be easy to code for?

 

The assertion that later editions were built by mathematicians for not other reason than to be pedantic about math falls flat for me too.  Balance is hard and a continuous process.  Anyone who plays MMOs or online video games that are actively supported by developers will get this.  Again, I like 6th and see it as a natural evolution to the game at this point.

 

Lots of things were simpler 40 years ago but the reality is that modern gamers are different now.  They have different expectations about how games should work and feel.  They like apps and tools to build characters with.  They like using tablets and phones at the table.  So tell me again why releasing Champions 2 would attract these players?  Because they can kill a tree to make a character and be unsure of the math?  Right.

[Ninja-Bear]

Friend I pulled out my copy of Hero Basic. It’s design philosophy was that it  has 6th rules and boiled down to the *ahem* Basics of play and if you wanted to upgrade to the full rule set you could easily because then it would be an extension of the Basic Rules. The opportunity is there. 
 

You know what happened to Hero? We have too many people saying that if you aren’t playing Hero their way (Either by edition or specific rule choice) then you really aren’t playing Hero.

[sentry0]

5 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Friend I pulled out my copy of Hero Basic. It’s design philosophy was that it  has 6th rules and boiled down to the *ahem* Basics of play and if you wanted to upgrade to the full rule set you could easily because then it would be an extension of the Basic Rules. The opportunity is there. 
 

You know what happened to Hero? We have too many people saying that if you aren’t playing Hero their way (Either by edition or specific rule choice) then you really aren’t playing Hero.

 

I ran a table for first time HERO players the other week using nothing but the BR and it went completely fine.  I count that as a successful test of the design philosophy behind the BR in my mind.  

 

I liked it so much that I plan on running like that for the foreseeable future with that group.  The Encyclopedia Heroica is there if you need it but honestly, the BR is a very solid product as is.

 

And yes, edition snobbery is a poison on the forums.  I like all the editions of HERO that I played but I like 6th the best.  That said, I wouldn't suggest you come back from 2nd or 4th to 6th unless you personally feel like it.  I'm not here to bash players for liking an edition and my eyes almost roll out of my goddamn head when I hear someone ripping on edition y because reasons.

[Lucius]

 

What's an "unassigned multipower?"

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Assigning a palindromedary

[Greywind]

We don't need another hero
We don't need to know the way home
All we want is life beyond the Thunderdome

[Duke Bushido]

Boom!  Called it! 

 

 

[Ternaugh]

On 12/21/2019 at 8:05 PM, dmjalund said:

Start with 4/4 so a +1/4 advantage is +1 n(umerator) and a 1/2 disadvantage is a +2 d(enominator)

 

 

Short answer: It won't work.

 

Technical answer: While addition and multiplication are commutative, division is not. Operation order is important when division is involved.

 

 

 

Full disclosure: I am quicker at calculating powers in Hero with a paper and pencil (using fractions) than I am with entering the stuff in Hero Designer.

[zslane]

Same here.

 

Of course, in my teens the budding engineer in me liked figuring how games worked (largely as a prerequisite for experimenting with my own designs), and understanding game mechanics requires a solid foundation in math, with particular emphasis on probability and statistics. Those areas of math are difficult to use as (design) tools if you haven’t internalized them to the point of being able to do them in your head to a large extent.

 

In terms of the Hero System, I have always found a substantial correlation between those who intimately know/understand how game design works (and the math that serves as the foundation) and those who get the most out of the Hero System, with the converse also being largely true.

 

[Ninja-Bear]

Btw I hope I haven’t come across as pre sixth edition.  Sorry if I did.

[Spence]

5 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Friend I pulled out my copy of Hero Basic. It’s design philosophy was that it  has 6th rules and boiled down to the *ahem* Basics of play and if you wanted to upgrade to the full rule set you could easily because then it would be an extension of the Basic Rules. The opportunity is there. 
 

You know what happened to Hero? We have too many people saying that if you aren’t playing Hero their way (Either by edition or specific rule choice) then you really aren’t playing Hero.

 

1 minute ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Btw I hope I haven’t come across as pre sixth edition.  Sorry if I did.

 

Don't worry. 

You were obviously referring to the superior one true Hero.

Not the fake stuff those other people are trying to play.

 

 

[Chris Goodwin]

This is a rare case of disagreement with my good friend @Duke Bushido (and I honestly consider him a friend, and I hope this disagreement is calm, measured, and respectful!).   

 

I don't mind having new Powers when the situation seems to call for it.  Looking back through the first-gen Champions corebooks, it's easy to go down the Powers and Skills lists and see which comic book supers Peterson, MacDonald, et al, were thinking of when they included them.  Clinging, Entangle, Swinging.  Missile Deflection, Armor, high Strength, Mind Control.  Enhanced Senses, HKA, Regeneration.  Growth and Shrinking.  Stretching.  Invisibility and Force Wall.  Desolidification and Gliding.  Acrobatics, high DEX, Passive Sonar, and Physical Limitation: Blindness.  

 

High Strength, Armor, Flight, X-Ray Vision, Instant Change.  

 

I mean, I wasn't there, so I can't say that's how they went through and decided which Powers to include, but... it sure seems that way to me.   

 

Champions II had some new Powers:  Energy Absorption, Gadget Points, Light Illusions, Presence Defense, Reflection.  It's less easy to point to particular characters and see where they came from, unless (like I was) you were obsessed with the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and the DC Who's Who.  But, I can look at that list and see a character that was -- maybe? -- overlooked in the core rules.  

 

Martial Arts, Stealth, Detective Work, and...?   

 

Hey GM, how do I do this thing where a certain caped crusader (it's in lower case so I don't have to include the TM's, R's, Pat. Pendings, and so on) always seems to have the right nighttime-animal-named-but-not-themed gadget for the situation?  

 

There were a couple of other new entity types and other things you could buy, included in the Champions II supplement: bases, vehicles, computers, AIs, and the Mastermind Option.  

 

So... I mean, you can do shapeshifting with a high Disguise -- but the corebooks had Climbing and Clinging both, and Stealth and Invisibility, and Security Systems and Tunneling...

(Incidentally, how would you have done visible-light holographic images using just the first-gen corebooks without the supplements?  And Duke, I honestly also am not sure what you meant by unassigned Multipower -- it sounds like a Multipower with unspent points so that you can define slots in play?)  

 

(It's also fairly evident that Champions III, and to an extent Champions II as well, were developed at the same time Fantasy Hero was.  Looking through the FH 1e corebook, it's easy to point to source material and see what they were thinking of when they included the spell effects they did, and how those then went on to be included in the supplements.  Dispel (Neutralization in C III), Healing, Images (Light Illusions in C II), Suppress (Neutralization), Shapeshift (Multiform/Shapeshift in C III), Transform (Transformation Attack in C III), planar travel (the +1/2 Interdimensional advantage on Teleportation in C II).  Those were pretty obvious folds back into Champions.  Aid became its own thing in FH because it seemed that the obvious way to do it in Champions -- Characteristics bought Usable On Others -- wouldn't work in FH, because they didn't seem to want Characteristics as a spell effect, and it wasn't folded back into Champions via III.)

I'd rather just add a new Power and call it good (I liked Change Environment in particular, but also Dispel/Suppress, Healing, Multiform, Shapeshift, Transform, the Resurrection and Regrow Limbs adders for Healing and Regeneration), than to try to fiddle a Power into something that doesn't quite do it (the 5e Regeneration as Healing build, or Instant Change as Transform build).  I'm less happy with the X-into-Y decisions that were made with the edition changes:   Healing into Aid, Regeneration into Healing, Instant Change into Transform, Transfer into Aid+Drain, Suppress into Drain.  (If I were going to mess with Suppress I'd have kept it its own Power and folded Dispel into it; Dispel is more or less an instant, all-or-nothing Suppress.)

 

I even like new entity types -- Bases, Computer/AI, Followers/Agents, Vehicles, Spirits.  I'd like have seen Robots (C II p. 30) make it into 4th as well -- not (necessarily) a mech or a vehicle, but a non-sentient construct (STR, DEX, BODY, INT, DEF, SPD, maybe PRE).  I was less happy with the second-gen "vehicles are almost characters" idea -- I liked that, for instance, in Champions II you could buy vehicle gadgets -- ejection seats, fire extinguishers, electronic countermeasures, radio control -- with the same "pay a few points and call it good" notion, without having to overbuild a Power to do it.  (Our long-unseen board colleague James "GamingPhil" / "Gaming Philosopher" Jandebeur had an amazing piece called Incomplete Rules, saved on the Wayback Machine here, which would have obviated the need for most of the new entity types!  I've long thought that should have been an official part of the game in some capacity.)

[Duke Bushido]

5 hours ago, Lucius said:

 

What's an "unassigned multipower?"

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Assigning a palindromedary

 

Slots that are empty but paid for.  Honestly, at this point it can mean anything you want it to; our original idea was to put controlling parameters on it to prevent everyone from simply dumping everything into a pool and declaring they were building  baby Superman. 

 

When Champs 2 brought the official version, even while it went on to describe control costs and such, boiled down to "dump ever how many points you want and pay a +1/4 Advantage." 

 

Ignoring the homebrewws version (a variation of which we still use), "dump some points and pay +1/4; talk with your GM about using a skill roll to reconfigure mid-game" is remarkably easy create with the original 2e rules. 

 

Duke 

 

Who cannot be held responsible for any individual's beliefs. 

 

 

[Joe Walsh]

Just for the record, I would totally be on board with a 6e quickstart, or a 6e patterned on the 4e BBB, or a 6e boxed set a la 2e / early 3e.

 

I like 4e (and, to a slightly lesser extent, 2e and 3e) because those editions are all over my post-AD&D years.

 

A 5e presented more like the BBB or the HERO System Rulesbook would have been most welcome. It just came at a time in my life when a giant tome simply was not practical and therefore not welcome. 5eR even moreso.

 

6e? I can get behind all the rules changes if presented differently....except the decoupling of secondary characteristics. I know the logic of it, and I tried....I really did. It just turns out that it's one of those things I can't get past. Call it nostalgia, call it old dogs/new tricks....for whatever reason, it just isn't something I can embrace.

 

Despite that, I would fully support a new, beginner-friendly core book or even starter set...were it to be on offer. Because further splintering HERO just doesn't seem helpful at this point. The issues just aren't that big, in the end.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

2 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

Short answer: It won't work.

 

Technical answer: While addition and multiplication are commutative, division is not. Operation order is important when division is involved.

It does work, it just wasn't explained perfectly.  Let me try again for him, but with more words. 

 

A power with no Modifiers has its base cost multiplied by 4/4 to get final cost.

Add Advantages directly to this: A +1/4 Advantage brings it to 5/4, a +1 Advantage on top of that brings it to 9/4, so on and so forth. 

"Add" Limitations to the denominator: A -1/4 Limitation brings it to 4/5, a -1/2 Limitation on top of that brings it to 4/7. 

If you have both, do both!  A +3/4 Advantage and -1/2 Limitation brings the multiplier to 7/6. 

More formally, what you're doing is taking Base ∙ ( 4 + 4 ∙ Σ(Advantages) ) / ( 4 - 4 ∙ Σ(Limitations) ).  The reason I phrased it as 1/1 was to rip out all those 4s.  I'd do it as Base ∙ ( 1 + Σ(Advantages) ) / ( 1 - Σ(Limitations) ). 

Once you've added everything up, multiply to get real cost.  If you're using the 1/1 method, you can also multiply base cost by numerator to get AP but the 4s screw that up. 

 

Of course, me saying it works doesn't mean it works, so I'll prove it works. 

Energy Blast 10d6, Penetrating (+1/2).  50 * (4+2) / (4) = 300/4 = 75. 

Energy Blast 10d6, Beam (-1/4).  60 * (4) / (4+1) = 200/5 = 40. 

Energy Blast 10d6, Penetrating (+1/2), Beam (-1/4).  50 * (4+2) / (4+1) = 300/5 = 60. 

Energy Blast 6d6, AOE 1" (+1/2), 1/2 END (+1/4), Reduced Penetration (-1/4), No KB (-1/4).  30 * (4+2+1) / (4+1+1) = 210/6 = 35. 

And HD agrees with all the numbers. 

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, Chris Goodwin said:

This is a rare case of disagreement with my good friend @Duke Bushido (and I honestly consider him a friend, and I hope this disagreement is calm, measured, and respectful!).   

 

Don't sweat it; Amigo. 

 

I have 12 siblings, put myself through years of school working with the public, and work 70+ hours every week (I am on break right now, as a matter of fact).  The upshot of all that is that I don't have any feelings left!    go ahead; cuss me like a dog!  If I like you, I like you.  An honest opinion isn't going to change that.  ;). I'm just not that fickle. 

 

 

Quote

 

I don't mind having new Powers when the situation seems to call for it.

 

We don't disagree as terribly much as you might think.  My contention isn't so much that new powers are _bad_; it is a matter of how necessary they are as their own thing if they can be relatively simply created with advantages and limitations on existing powers.  With that said, I _love_ new modifiers!  I find modifiers to be the best tool in any version of HERO, and the modifiers are _the_ key to the flexibility that makes HERO truly generic and truly universal.  Your other option is to create a unique entry for every single power. 

 

That is at the heart of my quibble with Instant Change as a build of T-form, but I have to get back to work in a moment--and really have no interest in getting into that discussion here anyway. 

 

 

 

Quote

 Looking back through the first-gen Champions corebooks, it's easy to go down the Powers and Skills lists and see which comic book supers Peterson, MacDonald, et al, were thinking of when they included them. 

 

I've heard a lot of people say "Avengers plus Spiderman," actually.  I can't say for certain if it's true, as I don't (to this day) know enough about the source material other than Spiderman (who doesn't know about Spiderman, really?  :D) and that the idea that the Hulk and a bow-and-arrow guy are somehow on equal level with each other. 

 

Brief aside: in a discussion with Hugh et others, comments were made about the way I scale things in my games to allow disparate power levels in characters be on the same team and still have something to do.  For those who might still wonder where I got the idea, it's from the idea of the Hulk and a freaking _GOD_ standing shoulder to shoulder with an archer and a ninja....

 

Totally unequal in ability, no matter _how_ you balance the character sheets, but it's in the source material.  I like that the movie writers couldn't really wrap their heads around it either and had lots of side-quests for the archer and the ninja. 

 

Moving along; break's almost over. 

 

 

Quote

Champions II had some new Powers:  Energy Absorption,

 

Ah yeah!   Thanks for that one! 

 

I had forgotten about that one; that is one of the few where we chunked our home brew and adopted it readily.  It was just faster and easier in game play. 

 

Also-

 

And this one I am almost proud of! - 

 

_I_ can name a character from the comics who has that!   I think.  Tell me if Sébastien Shaw is right.   It's been a long time, but another player back when I had my own GM who was wanting to emulate energy absorption claimed he was making a character inspired by Sébastien Shaw, who I _think_ was one of the X-Men....? 

 

Anyway: there's my surprise for the day! 

Quote

  But, I can look at that list and see a character that was -- maybe? -- overlooked in the core rules.  

 

Me, too: anyone with the ability to copy powers.  I used to constantly boan that HERO still, several editions later, emulates this poorly.  "Power Pool" is the answer I am usually given, and yes: to a point, Power Pool works, so long as your pool is beg enough that everything you want to copy fits in it. 

 

Then you stop play, write up powers, do some math-  still, I will grant that in all cases, a way can be found to make it work, so let me rephrase that as "to this day, HERO _animates_ it poorly. 

 

I would love to see a nice simple" clone power" Power.. 

 

Quote

y GM, how do I do this thing where a certain caped crusader (it's in lower case so I don't have to include the TM's, R's, Pat. Pendings, and so on) always seems to have the right nighttime-animal-named-but-not-themed gadget for the situation?  

 

Apparently by setting aside some points and paying +1/4.   Closer to +1-1/4 at my table.  Your mileage may vary. 

 

 

My apologies, Chris; I wanted to address more, but I've got about 2 minutes left on break, so quick hits:

 

Quote

I mean, you can do shapeshifting with a high Disguise --

 

Never used disquise unless you wanted to doppelganger someone / thing. 

 

The core rules allow you to define everything about yourself for free;

 

I am an alien.  I am a dwarf.  I am ten feet tall.  I have wings.  I am shaped like a doughnut (yes: I know the word "toroid;"; it doesn't amuse me as much.) I am made of living stone.  No problem.  All acceptable: all free.  Why?  Because they are, after a fashion, the special effects of whi/what you are.  You don't have to have powers or disadvantages to just "have wings" or be "made of organic steel." 

 

So what's the difference between being a person and being a dog?  In game terms, the powers and disadvantages you select are the only differences.

 

Tou want to play a character who is amorphous?  Fine. Nothing in the rules mandates I bonus or penalize you for that. (that's a thing that some GMs seem to have a hard time getting wrapped around; remember the one-armed adventurer thread? ). You want to be a character who is polymorphous?  Go for it. 

 

If you want those shapes to provide powers, buy the powers and changing into a dolphin is the special effect.

 

Now if you specify that the powers are only available in X shape, we have to get specific because you are imposing a limitation on your power. How long does it take to change shape? Is it difficult?  How long can you maintain a shape? Things like that help us to derive the value of "only in X ID." 

 

But let's move on: the old discussion when  5e was new taught us all that the intricate details of the various camps around Shape Shift.  It's one of those things that some of us "just did" because a player wanted to do it before there were formal rules.   Once there were formal rules, we didn't like them, so we don't use them. Every edition of the book tells us that's perfectly legal. 

 

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(Incidentally, how would you have done visible-light holographic images using just the first-gen corebooks without the supplements? 

 

Custom. Limitation.  The first player who did it (me, actually: I wanted to build a flare gun) got approved for "not mental" because the GM was in a hurry to get the game underway. 

 

We later revised it, using the 2e "basws on ECV" advantage as a guide.  GM decided that "based on Per" followed a sort of suit and ruled that a - 0 limitation (as there are pros as well as cons to having your illusion be visible to all) called "Projected Image" would result in a publicly-visible image.

 

Later another player wanted to use -  sorry out of time:  shorter veraion: someone else had the idea to make noise Illusions instead of sound illusions: a one-way sort of telepathy used to drive people crazy. 

 

Suddenly we had Televisions! 

 

Gotta run

 

Oh:

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 it sounds like a Multipower with unspent points so that you can define slots in play?)  

 

Yes. 

 

Exactly that. Apologies to both of you that it wasn't as obvious as I thought it would be. 

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