Good Uses for Multipowers in Fantasy Hero

[pawsplay]

Feel free to add, comment, discuss and criticize.

 

A Spell With Multiple Functions

Simply put, some spells make sense as Multipowers, perhaps with Unified Power. This is a good concept for Three Secret Symbols of Power, or maybe a spell for controlling large amounts of water. This can work even in magic systems where Multipowers aren't generally used.

 

Magic Systems Were Powers Are Fairly Unified and Simple

Basically, if your spells are really more like psychic powers, it might make sense to put most spells in a multipower. If wizards basically just levitate stuff and read minds, and maybe have one or two unique abilities, and their abilities all require END and some level of mental focus to maintain, this makes sense.

 

Magic Systems Were Mages Are Extremely Versatile But Not Necessarily Sages

The earliest I know where this came up in print is a suggested conversion of the classic GURPS Magic system. And it works exactly like it does on the can. Magic is expensive up front to learn your main spells, but you can add other spells for a few points. Few spells are specialized or esoteric. Limitations tend to be unified more than not. There aren't a lot of thematic limits under this scheme but the GM should establish what does and doesn't belong in the Big Multipower. Without extensive research or learning requirements, spells are easy to learn.

 

Loosely Thematic Action-Adventure Games

If your game is on the cusp of Superheroic, maybe you can stick any old thing in a Multipower. Even journeyman mages have a breadth comparable to Doctor Strange or Zatanna. The main challenges are the GM needs to set some limits on what spells are and aren't acceptable, in principle, and non-wizards need some attractive options as well if they aren't going to be sidelined. Otherwise everyone will just a a wizard.

[Chris Goodwin]

I'd say the same could apply to a magic item with multiple functions, or a special ability with multiple functions or a "path". 

[Doc Democracy]

I notice that all of the 'good' uses are for magic and wizards.

 

I think that if you are going to allow multipowers then all archetypes should have that access, otherwise you are facilitating some archetypes over others.  I think that this is the point others were making in the other thread.  Are there no multipowers that you might be able to think of for rogues, rangers, paladins, warriors and other types?

 

Doc

[pawsplay]

Sure! Post your ideas.

[Panpiper]

A quiver with different sorts of arrows is both the most obvious and logical use of a Multipower in my opinion. A warrior's weapon like a reversible axe with a blade on one side and an armor piercing pick or blunt hammer on the other would also pass muster 100%. Expanding on that, if the warrior forgoes a shield, they might build a two hand halberd with several different powers, regular blade attack, piecing with a pick on the reverse, reach with the spear point, even a blunt attack with the shaft. Shields can be multipowers usable either as a DCV bonus or an area advantage bash. A bit more imagination might come up with more to put into a shield multipower.

[Old Man]

The one thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is creature powers.  An amorphous shapeshifter could alternately sprout claws, wings, or armored scales.  Vampires have a slew of weird abilities that might as well be in a MP.  Same goes for weird critters like basilisks or salamanders.

 

There's also kung fu, if your kung fu is sufficiently advanced.

[Duke Bushido]

31 minutes ago, Old Man said:

There's also kung fu, if your kung fu is sufficiently advanced.

 

Which plays directly to the first thing I thought of when I read the thread title:  

 

if you have multiple (and preferably mutually-exclusive) attacks / uses for your weapon, multi powers are pretty handy for that, too.  Staffs and pikes come up frequently in our games: you get a swinging attack, and poking attack, and some sort of AOE adjacent-hexes-only attack--

 

Yeah; there are probably martial arts builds for these, but-- well, I don't use them.

 

[Ninja-Bear]

Duke when making a Spear per say and it has two attacks for instance. Do you use the trick of making the MP big enough so the one slot is Stretching and then it can use be used with one of the other weapon slots? I do.

[Ninja-Bear]

9 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Yeah; there are probably martial arts builds for these, but-- well, I don't use them.

 

But you just said you use MPs? 😉 

[Duke Bushido]

Sorry:

 

The difference is Heroic or Super. 

 

Want a Super martial art that let's your I'm-a-ninja-hanging-out-with-godlike-beings-but-I-am-still-somehow-a-relavant character in a supers campaign?  You want things that are pretty much powers _defined_ as martial arts: karate chop a tank: 4d6 hka.    Catch bullets?  Appropriate defenses or deflections, etc.  Multipower. That sort of thing. 

 

Heroic level?   Buy a few flexible skill levels.  You're not going to expect to chop through a battle ship or actually catch bullets. 

 

Context decides a lot of things, and I should have considered that when answering. 

[Duke Bushido]

8 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Duke when making a Spear per say and it has two attacks for instance. Do you use the trick of making the MP big enough so the one slot is Stretching and then it can use be used with one of the other weapon slots? I do.

Let me get to a proper keyboard for that.  I'll be off work about eightish, I think. 

[Duke Bushido]

Well it turns out that I got off about seven-ish!   Yay, a day that came out in my favor!    

 

Okay: 

 

The Stretching thing:

 

_Usually_.  I _usually_ do that.  I don't always, because sometimes the numbers don't work out "just so" without enough fudging that the feel for what I or the player am / is working toward kind of falls away.

 

Sometimes I will instead build the slots in a way that kind of "imply" the Stretching, if that makes sense:  things like adding an inch or so of range  as an Advantage on the slot, or even a limitation that it won't work against a character immediately adjacent to the PC.   Bonuses to sweeps that apply only to adjacent characters is another one: it implies the weapon is large enough that, if surrounded, the character can get both ends of the weapon whacking opponents at once (though AOE is sometimes more appropriate, particularly for "supers" type stuff.

 

But yes:  I quite often find myself adding a Stretching slot (full stretch only, etc).  However, I've never considered stacking two slots on top of each other in regard to Stretching-- I tend to build the powers in the slot to indicate the range, etc (that, and with weapons such as spears and pole-arms, I tend to do Ultras, figuring you can't really use it sweep _and_ stab simultaneously), but instead use the stretching with the character's STR to provide a hard "poke" with the blunt end.

 

I'm curious to try it now, though.  

 

 

[Chris Goodwin]

In 6th edition, you can pay 1 point to add 1 meter of reach.  I think it's considered 1 meter of Stretching, but I think it just gets treated as an adder.

[Chris Goodwin]

But, for ordinary weapons, and even to an extent with magical ones... I as GM wouldn't require you to pay points for HA in order to use the blunt end, flat of the blade, etc., for normal damage.  To me that's part of SFX.

[Duke Bushido]

6 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 for normal damage.  To me that's part of SFX.

 

 

Oh dear God, don't say that!

 

We just tried that in the "push a group of people down" thread and ended up with what-- three different builds to "legally" throw them to the ground?

 

How the frack is 1800 pages of rules _better_, again?

 

 

[Doc Democracy]

On 5/24/2020 at 2:56 AM, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Oh dear God, don't say that!

 

We just tried that in the "push a group of people down" thread and ended up with what-- three different builds to "legally" throw them to the ground?

 

How the frack is 1800 pages of rules _better_, again?

 

 

 

I actually do not think we have 1800 pages of rules.  I think we have possibly twice as many pages as we had in Champions 2nd edition with a HUGE cloud of advice, guidance and chat around how to use the rules.  Now, it is sometimes difficult to determine what is rules and what is guidance because it all comes together.

 

I would guarantee that if we removed ALL the guidance and doubled the size of the rules, we might have a better game but I am not 100% sure I would like it better in the long term.

 

I liken it to management at work.  There is absolutely no need for any rules about working relationships - as long as everyone behaves like a reasonable and responsible person.  People dont, not at work and not at the gaming table.  And so we get guidance, and more guidance and even more - some of it changing or amending previous guidance until it all needs to be re-written and formatted into a different document - often twice the size of the previous one.  Annual performance reports grow in size when they are not usually needed for more than 10% of the workforce who are underperforming and may need to be sacked or to protect a chunk of that same workforce from someone promoted beyond their personal ability to work nicely with others. 

 

To make sure everyone is aware - I am equating the GM with the boss and the players with the workforce... 😄

 

Good employees under a good manager can effectively dispense with the HR rulebook.

 

[Duke Bushido]

It's kind of like that old saw about faith in God:  you don't have to believe in God for him to believe on you. 

 

Not including  bestiary or equipment guide, but including 6e1, 2, basic, martial arts apg1, and apg2, we have one-thousand, eight-hundred-and-twenty pages of rules. 

[theinfn8]

My favorite use is for representing martial arts in ways that aren't as accessible otherwise. I think I've already used the example of the use of a montante as an area denial tool (change environment with a ton of -running or some such). But there are also techniques for protecting someone else (Boost DCV gestures throughout?) and more. And that's real life martial arts without getting into more fantastical martial possibilities.

 

[Doc Democracy]

11 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

It's kind of like that old saw about faith in God:  you don't have to believe in God for him to believe on you. 

 

Not including  bestiary or equipment guide, but including 6e1, 2, basic, martial arts apg1, and apg2, we have one-thousand, eight-hundred-and-twenty pages of rules. 

 

Much of those words are economics.  Hero needs to sell stuff to remain viable, it's best seller has always been rules, so we got them.  However, I do not think I am playing a fundamentally different game than I was in 1983.

 

I absolutely have more guidelines and I know more detail about how the designer expects all the component parts to work together.  There has been a change of emphasis about the detail on the character sheet which has driven up the number of points spent (if you like that kind of thing).

 

I would bet that watching folk play 'pure' sixth edition champions would look, sound and feel almost identical to those playing 'pure' second edition. It probably uses ShapeChange to do so.

 

Doc

[Duke Bushido]

This is a first! 

 

 

I have never had two simultaneous threads where people have gone to a lot of trouble to make my points for me. 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

I have an old article for the forums where the Author talks about the benefits of using Multipower to represent Not only a martial art but then using it to represent a martial art with weapons. Mind you this was back when multipower were forbidden for martial arts. The author felt it was better to show how a hero could improve his art with weapons more logical with just a few points spent in each slot (and iirc the pool cost too if needed).

[Duke Bushido]

Sweet.

 

What's it from?

 

(As the first person to toss out most instances of "no," "can't," "never," and "forbidden," I'd love to see it.   

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

“Chews his popcorn, and wipes his fingers on his Duke T-Shirt”.

[Panpiper]

4 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I have an old article for the forums where the Author talks about the benefits of using Multipower to represent Not only a martial art but then using it to represent a martial art with weapons. Mind you this was back when multipower were forbidden for martial arts. The author felt it was better to show how a hero could improve his art with weapons more logical with just a few points spent in each slot (and iirc the pool cost too if needed).

 

I have a vague recollection of writing something like that once, at least coming up with a multipower to define special martial arts maneuvers. Wouldn't it be cute if I chanced to be the author.

[Ninja-Bear]

12 minutes ago, Panpiper said:

 

I have a vague recollection of writing something like that once, at least coming up with a multipower to define special martial arts maneuvers. Wouldn't it be cute if I chanced to be the author.

Maybe-I was perhaps a decade ago at least.