Ice9

Re: The Death of Knowledge Skills:

One thing though, is that while the internet doesn't make you an expert at actually doing things - neither do Knowledge Skills, the way a lot of GMs run them. I think that if you do want to make most KS's useful in a modern-day setting, you should let them do things beyond the purely theoretical.

Re: The Death of Knowledge Skills:

It's a bit tricky, because there isn't really a single rule for how easy or difficult something is to find. It can vary from:

* Trivial, no special knowledge required.

* Needs some skill with internet research, but not subject-matter knowledge.

* Needs subject-matter knowledge.

* Can't be found on the internet, at least not fully/accurately.

And which is the case varies between subjects somewhat arbitrarily. How I'd model this in HERO is that when searching the net you can use either the Research skill or the relevant KS (or one as complementary to the other if you have both), and the difficulty is lower for informational questions.

Re: Adversarial Answers

Right after that is "nonsensical or incomprehensible" (and I include KS: internet access in that category).

However, I don't see anything "nonsensical" about the fact that in the modern day, most people can look up information without needing to be an expert on the subject. Sure, you could say it devalues some knowledge skills. But airlines, or even "being able to take a taxi" devalue some movement skills, supermarkets devalue wilderness foraging skills, and so forth. Or conversely, technopathy is lot less useful in a bronze-age campaign. What powers are useful is always going to depend on the campaign.

Heck, I often find the counterarguments against it to invoke some pretty nonsensical examples; in a thread recently somebody mentioned a particular piece of information as "not something you could just easily Google without a knowledge skill". I found it on the first page of results, in a few seconds (and it was not a subject I'm knowledgeable about).

Re: Disintegration Setting on Retro Ray Gun

I think you only need Ranged. Usable on Others would be if you could make the target move into the tunnel, such as a spell that makes the earth swallow them.

Re: Standard Effect and MoS

Actually, depending on how much MoS you need, the average damage could be lower, because "Standard Effect" is lower than average. For example, on 12d6, Standard Effect is 36 points vs 42 points by rolling - which could be huge against a 30 DEF foe.

As for the OP, it seems like a viable idea; the specifics would depend on how much damage you added from the MoS.

Re: Public vs. Secret Identity

Yeah, for someone like the Joker, it makes sense. I've seen several "ice cold mastermind" or purely mercenary types with it though, where no mention is made of them losing control at all.

Re: OIHID or Why Doesn't Billy Batson not Change Back?

Heart Beat of Sonic Boominess' date=' Glass-walled Skyscrapers of Not-Standing-Upiness To the Spontaneous Cracking of their Entire Curtain[/i']

Re: Public vs. Secret Identity

That's true - in many campaigns where CvK is used, it's pretty much free complication points, because the characters are unlikely to kill anyway and would already feel bad about doing so. For that matter, I'm not sure how much the "Casual Killer" PsyComp seen on a number of villains is really a limitation. Being bloodthirsty could definitely be, but a lot of the villains that have this are fully in control of their violence and won't be doing so when it doesn't benefit them. It seems more like a Reputation complication, if anything.

Edit: Ok, there is one situation I can think of - while under mind control, someone with "Casual Killer" could have less resistance to attacking their allies than normal. But that's a lot more niche than the complication value suggests.

Re: Resistant Defence/Defence and Defence Powers: Active Point Limit

Makes me think I should be stating my "average baseline" in terms of hits/DCs instead of DEF/CON/STUN numbers. Let's try it like that:

Captain Average

12 DC attack, 15 DC special

10 CV

3 average attacks to KO

8 DCs to bruise (do STUN)

15 DCs to Stun

---

6 special attacks to be bleeding out

14 DCs to injure (do BODY)

These are of course average values, so actual results will be variable, especially for the lethal values because they assume KA. For Champions, you may or may not want to consider those as part of the baseline, as KO is much more common than serious injury. These values were based on DEF 25, rDEF 15, CON 25, STUN 50, BODY 15 - and one thing I noticed off the bat is that it yields only 3 average hits to KO, which seems a bit on the low side. I may increase it to 4 hits (which would be STUN 65 or so with those values).

The interesting thing is that this allows some pretty wide variation in characters without being overall better or worse. For example:

Normal Guy in Power Suit

DEF 35, rDEF ?

CON 13

STUN 25, BODY 10

Takes slightly more hits (~3.5), but stunned more easily (14 DCs).

rDEF isn't affected by CON/STUN, so having the higher rDEF you'd expect from armor would be an advantage. Compensated for by NND vulnerability possibly.

The Mighty Bulk

DEF 10, rDEF 10

CON 40

STUN 100, BODY 45

Almost exactly the same as Captain Average, except for having a much lower "injured" threshold. But his durability against NND attacks probably compensates for that.

Re: Resistant Defence/Defence and Defence Powers: Active Point Limit

I personally find 2.5x a bit low for the "max" defense. That's still ~18 through on each hit, and it could be a lot more on a lucky shot. Ok if your concept is a typical brick that also has ultra Con and Stun, not so much if you're a power-suit type that's pretty much normal inside the shell.

Re: Is Speed underpriced?

I have no idea what gave you that idea. But I will say that when bricks are just as fast as speedsters and martial artists' date=' the result is that speedsters and martial artists look totally pathetic.[/quote']I'm not so sure about that. IME, the guidelines people set for brick stats vs speedster / MA stats tend to underestimate the significance of SPD. Let's take a look at the common differences:

 

* Damage Output: While Bricks have much higher Strength, that doesn't necessarily mean higher damage. For example, a MA with Str 20, a bo (+2d6 HA), and 2 levels with martial arts, using Offensive Strike does as much as a Str 60 Brick, often with a higher CV. Speedsters using Passing Strike can sometimes surpass a Brick.

* CVs: They're lower. This undercuts any higher damage the Brick has, and (to an extent) undercuts the Brick's greater durability.

* Defense: Ok, almost always significantly higher. But with a lower DCV, they'll be getting hit more. Still an advantage, but not even close to acting 1.5x-2x as often.

 

I think you could easily balance a Brick with the same SPD as a Speedster, just by trading off CV (and movement) for Damage/Defense.

Or conversely, you could balance a Brick with half or a third the SPD - the difference in their other stats would just need to be a lot larger than what I normally see. And the player might fall asleep during combat.

Re: Is Speed underpriced?

There's a factor that hasn't been mentioned here which is that while SPD is an in-game stat (albeit a very powerful one) that can balanced by other factors, it also controls how much the actual player will be getting to interact with the game vs waiting for their turn.

HERO combat is not fast. It can run at a reasonable speed if the players and GM are all on the ball and make an effort to keep things moving, but there will always be a while between turns. Having a lower SPD means makes that time considerably longer. While you could create a SPD 2 character that was mechanically balanced with a bunch of SPD 6 characters, that character would still not be as fun to play for a lot of people.

Someone on this board made the point that SPD could be considered more like screen-time or number of panels than physical speed. And in that context, it makes sense that a "slower" character could have the same or similar SPD. And likewise that mooks generally have low SPD and mega-villains a higher one.

Re: Would you allow this?

IMO this is why campaign caps become important, because they do affect others fun. With no caps on things like defenses it is far too easy to build characters that are basically invulnerable, but still able to put out high damage. Granted in your case you said that he built him so that he wasn't, but if your not using any caps that is a huge concern. Caps also serve to encourage players to branch out. Now I will agree that this is very much an opinion, and others will differ, but without caps you are basically telling your players "Put all your points into attack, defense, and move, everything else is a waste of time". Because as soon as you let one person do something like that, the rest of the players either have to do the same, or go grab a snack during combat as Mr. Combat Whore can solo everything you throw at him (and frankly if your building something that he cant solo it will just obliterate any other type of character).

 

This does lead to character uniformity problems, and I understand that, and it doesn't accurately model comics. But comics are stories, not games. They are supposed to be fun. And like it or not combat takes a sizeable amount of time. If you don't balance PC's to ensure that they all can perform reliably well in combat, your basically telling them to skip that part of game night.

 

Again, YMMV.

As for this particular character - it's not in danger of being overpowered, but it's definitely in danger of ending up too useless, and there's somewhat of a thin region for adjustments. I'd make sure the player knew what they were getting into, but not bar it outright.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

Sure, they knew the risks. So do most supervillains. I don't think you can really claim with a straight face that some random empire soldier was worse than the Joker or Red Skull.

The difference is easy to explain - different genre conventions. But it's not like there's an inherent line there.

Re: Blood-Fueled Magic/Powers

The problem I have with using End Reserves for this type of thing is that in many case, you end up paying points for a limitation. For example, the "massive REC" build above could end up more costly than just making the powers 0-END.

Potential Ideas:

1) Build it with an END Reserve, set it up to work how you'd like, then just house-rule the END Reserve to be cheap/free

2) Recoverable Charges, and also a "limitation buyoff" power, Linked to Feeding

3) Just decide how it works, decide what that's worth as a limitation, and make it an ad-hoc Limited Power

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

3) The Mob would cooperate to get rid of you. When Batman goes after one Criminal Enterprise' date=' it's in the best interest of their rivals not to help. After all, they might gain new territory and profit opportunities at least until the Dark Knight turns his attention on them. With a vigilante just killing any criminals it's best to get rid of him by whatever means necessary. Not only is he targeting your men, but you as well. No one is safe, and working with the other Mobs ends the threat ASAP.[/quote']The Dark Knight movie might disagree with you there.

 

(That's what the GM is suppose to do to the mad killers)

 

One thing that happens allot in these threads is people use terms like Normal Superhero games and "Comic book stories" like there's only one kind and anything that deviates from their preferred style is an aberration or even "Badwrongfun" to steal a term from rpg.net. Superhero stories come in a wide variety of moods and styles in the source material and various other mediums they've been told in. There really isn't a norm' date=' just styles that are more prevalent at the time.[/quote']Definitely true. In a Silver-Age game, superheroes probably shouldn't be killing anyone, but it's not a universal principle across all categories.

Re: Compound Power with limitations

I think the root of the pricing oddness is that how often you have to "activate" a constant power is a pretty fluid thing, and the difficulty of doing so depends a lot on the power and what other limitations it has.

For example:

* An energy shield with 3 charges that lasts a turn per use is a lot more limited than one which lasts an hour per use. But if instead of charges it had gestures+incantations, the difference would be much less.

* On the other hand, invisibility where you have to incant audible once a minute is definitely more limited than doing so once an hour.

* Or flight that only lasts a minute an then takes a turn to re-activate, for instance.

* Life Support that requires any down-time is pretty limited, even if that's just a single phase every ten minutes.

Re: Is VPP overpowered/How do you properly use it?

VPPs are generally balanced, at least combat wise. Unless, of course, the GM gives his villains way too many points.

However, as mentioned, they can easily fall into "omni-utility" unless there's some limit on their "portfolio" of effects.

So personally, I wouldn't allow a VPP with an ultra-broad portfolio like "magic" or "super-tech" unless I was running a very high-powered game. But narrow that down a bit - "divination", "chemistry", "thermal control" and sure.

Re: Usable By Others with a VPP to simulate a wish spell

... even a small room will require a roll of 48 Body to transform' date=' which is a expensive.[/quote']Unless I'm misunderstanding something, Transform is cumulative, with no maximum. So even a 1-pip Transform will eventually hit 48 Body (not even all that eventually - around 5 minutes with SPD 2). If anything, the reason I wouldn't use Transform for Wish is that it's too powerful - for any non-combat use of Transform, the sky is pretty much the limit.

Re: Remote directed Weapons & Stretching

Well ... actually he can get what he wants - just use the Stretching construct above. The only part that's custom there is the "Only to direct remote weapon X" limitation, and that's only -1/4. In fact, I've seen Stretching / Does Not Cross Space used to represent limited telekinesis before, and it seemed to work pretty well.

I've noticed that people are pretty quick to jump on the "stop trying to get free Strength, just use Blast" approach, and IME all it does is direct players to slightly different (and often more powerful/versatile) concepts. IMO, the Strength bonus on HA/HKA should either be eliminated, or it should be given out freely. Making it available but finicky to access just results in favoring certain concepts over others.

Re: Precision

I don't inherently have a problem with those abilities being Perceivable, but keep in mind that at the -1/2 level they are really blatantly obvious. For example, the DEF is a glowing force field or similarly obvious aura around him. The Regeneration is obvious even from a distance - maybe blood visibly flows back into him Hellsing-style. The Speed and CV boost is apparent even when he's not moving. And so forth. It would definitely interfere with him using his Stealth or Shadowing, for instance. If you're fine with that, then go for it.

Also, some description on the cloak would be good - from the abilities I was thinking "self-mobile huge-ass living cloak" ala Spawn, and telekinetic abilities are mentioned nowhere. Actually, some more description in general would be good.

Edit: Minor nitpick - drop the combat information sections from the OP, they take up a lot of scroll room and the main character sheet covers all the same info.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

Back on topic, think you can have two of these three, and everything works - but not all three.

1) Supervillains are seriously bad. They kill and/or maim people regularly.

2) Jails are a revolving door.

3) Superheroes never kill people.

If supervillains aren't really all that bad, or jails actually work (most of the time), then no killing works fine. Otherwise ... you get what is a rather ugly situation, if you think about it.

Now sure, I know that some comics do all three anyway. However, that's not an argument in favor, IMO, because:

1) It's a fact that comics sometimes have really damn stupid plot elements. Just because it's in a comic, doesn't make it a good idea.

2) Comics have many reasons to maintain the status quo. A Champions campaign has almost none of those reasons.

3) Players are not paid actors, and will not do something just because the "director" wants it. Forcing them to is a good way to crash a campaign.

So really, if you want to encourage a no-killing rule, just have villains who don't deserve to die, and non-joke prisons that manage to (usually) keep the really bad ones locked up.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

Welll...Mechanon could show up and make like Darth Vader with Luke Skywalker ("Come, join me, my cybernetic son --

it is your destiny.") ().

Re: Wealth and Super Heroes

Bottom line - Wealth (at millionaire levels) is a 10-15 point perk. Therefore, it's not only acceptable but preferable for it to have actual mechanical effects. So yes, it produce effects like Contacts, certain skills, and so forth - that's not a problem, that's the normal effect of a more expensive ability covering more ground than less expensive ones - see VPP, Universal Translator, Telekinesis, etc.

Of course, I feel the same way about Transform. You spend 60 points on something, it better have an actual effect.

Re: Wealth and Super Heroes

IMC, Wealth can be used to get things, including things with an actual rules effect. Now it's not going to be as good as actually buying the thing with points, but it's not useless either - after all, high amounts of Wealth are a 10-15 point Perk - that's pretty sizeable, and should have a corresponding effect.