Snarf

How would you build a power that a character gains from an animal or living creature? For instance, a character who gains flight by being carried around by a bird or one of those magic girls that gets magic powers from a talking animal. Focus is only for objects, so I've done it by creating followers with usable by others powers so far.

A friend of mine has been annoyed with the absorbtion power. Buying it twice for physical and energy absorbtion is awkward and the option that lets you switch between the two for twice the price is even more awkward. No other super hero RPG (that we've played) makes the absorbtion power this complicated and expensive and we can't figure why it's this way in hero.

A friend of mine who owns some Slayers box sets told me that Giga Slave write up was wrong. There should be a side effect where the world is destroyed if you fail your roll.

A Taco That Craps Ice Cream: 1 pip Cosmetic Transform (Nothingness to Ice Cream), 0 END (+1/2), (2 Active Points); No Conscious Control (-2), (1 Real Point). Gotta love South Park. Or not.

Most of the time I like to do action comedy, with action and comedy either taking turns or happening at the same time. I like to use Hero for parody games because it's pretty easy to simulate the most ridiculous shows or movies with balance and mechanical precision. The disadvantage system helps the comedy some, but only to a point. If the players really get into it and roleplay the disadvantges funny then it's great, but if not it's like words on paper which restrict the actions they can take. For completely comedy games, I think almost any system works as long as the players are into it.

Is this campaign realistic or rubber scienceish?

I have campaign where people can collect monsters but I don't charge any character point to own them. I treat the collected slaves more like equipment.

Are there an stories where they tired out quickly doing other things? Going by looks alone, I'd say they seem pretty tough and long lasting in general.

I guess nobody has tried it yet, but we can kick around some ideas here to get you started. These are all the common Puppeteer traits I can remember: -Herbivorous -Extremely Cowardly, except all the ones that leave the home planet are insane -3 legs with hooves, good for running and kicking -2 hand/faces with very dextrous fingers -Exceptional control over voice -Usually backed by their commercial empire on the rare occasions they interact with other species These are all the common Kzinti traits I can remember: -Carnivorous -Aggressive, Warlike -As predators they are Strong, Tough, Dextrous, etc., but rather dense -Claws/Teeth -Tail -Strong sense of honor and position, constant duels -Females had the intelligence bred out of them (I think there's a whole complicated situation with the females I can't remember) -They had an aggressively expanding empire, until the humans beat them down and killed many of the more warlike and violent individuals. Now, only the Kzinti with relative self-control are left. I'll start working on a package using this stuff...

Thanks fellas! I guess desolidification is more powerful than I thought.

This is a bit of a rules question but it has a follow up. Can a character abort to become desolidified? This would make someone nearly invincible for 40 points, so I'm guessing the answer is no. If you can't, how would you simulate the ability to avoid attacks by becoming desolidified? DCV? I vaguely remember a thread about this but I can't find it with a forum search or check on the FAQs.

Oh, I'm not talking about the 60 AP limit. I'm talking about the far more restrictive 10 point resistant, 20 point non-resistant limit. The one that guarantees an attack will always draw blood I think I'm just going to buy the control low most of the time, unless the EC powers are almost all attack powers.

On a related topic, do you follow the 5'th edition recommended defense caps? If I allowed 60 APs worth of Force Field, that would be 30 resistant PD and ED.

The only difference between that force field and armor is that it's not persistent. Do you think a lack of persistance is the most important requirement?

I notice there's a 20 PD, 15 ED, 0 END force field in the 5'th Edition EC examples of all places. The cost came out to 27 points.

I'm trying to start a campaign which uses a lot of Elemental Controls and I was wondering what more experienced Hero players thought of them. Why do ECs require things placed in them to cost endurance and under what conditions would you make an expception to this requirement? How do you handle defensive powers? It seems like if you bought a big EC, you would be forced to buy unusually high amounts of defense to meet the cost minimums. In a campaign where most powers are bought through elemental controls, nobody would be able to affect anybody. How do you handle characteristics placed in an EC? Do you normally just avoid this? Do you take No Figured Characteristics? Do you ignore the normal super-heroic characteristic limit of 40?

It kind of depends on what you want to use it for. If you just use it to communicate voice, the standard radio perception through focus works. If you want to use it to store photos, that might be some sort of limited eidetic memory. If you want it to do a whole lot of different things and have some ability to act independently, you could buy it as a minor computer with a whole bunch of powers, senses, and whatnot.

I'm pretty sure you would get Radio Perception with Transmit and possibly some other stuff. I think some of these newer phones could be considered computers.

That would be a lot simper and cheaper than a multipower, but I think they could normally choose any limitation. Unless you want to allow the option to set the limitation as x5 endurance costs or extra time, you should talk to the player and arrange some house rules. Hmmm, I guess I'm more used to the one on one type pair-ups you see in Champions style games. If multiple opponents are the norm, I can see how it would be useless pretty often. I could buy both limitations being worth -1.

Looks great oddhat! And it's made using only core rules. I'd suggest making the side effects on the final endurance reserve serious enough to kill or burn the magic powers out of casters, so they won't ever completely run out. Also, maybe the side effects should somehow be made even more random, although I can't think of a rules legal way to that. In the original system, both the likelihood of something bad happening and the specific effect were random.

I think Hero is just as encouraging to narrativists, because it allows you to create abilities, disadvantages, and so on to fit the story, rather than having to choose them from a list or completely ignore the rules. It takes some work, but you can usually create any character, world, or storyline you want within the rules.

At the very least, you would have to remove the limits placed on pushing. A maximum of double effect,10 character points, and such is not going to be as dramatic a difference as you're looking for. If you use the endurance reserve method, you could track the endurance you've exceeded the safety threshold by, and use that to calculate the APs of a side effect. I think a system like this could be useful outside of Fantasy Hero. It could just be a generic safety threshold advantage, representing a buildup of side effects. It could just be another way to fuel powers; an alternative to endurance, charges, and 0 END.

I think it might help to focus on the essential features of the UMana system in plain english, rather than trying to directly convert rules first. As near as I can tell, it should do these things: -It is not tiring to cast spells. -Enormous spells are possible. -Cast spells to excess and some horrible disaster will occur.

If you want to do it in a more complicated way, usually in these either/or situations you can use a multipower. Invisibility: Multipower, 40 Point Reserve (AP 40) 1u) Controlled Invisibility: Invisibility to Sight, Hearing, and Smell/Taste Groups, No Fringe (AP 40); Only Versus EGO/10 Persons At One Time (-1), (RC2) [this is psychic invisibility from Star Hero] 2u) Uncontrolled Invisiblity: Invisibility to Sight, Hearing, and Smell/Taste Groups, No Fringe (AP 40); (RC 4) What do you mean by only visible to his target? Under what conditions would someone be considered a target? If anyone could be chosen, I guess that would be some sort of small enhancement.

I've never tried it in an actual game, but 50 or 60 years of Batman comics/movies/shows can't be wrong. Certain episodes of Justice League have great examples of how to give a character like this his time in the spotlight.