Snarf

Re: How would you write up the following power? Vanquishing is probably an RKA and Scrying is probably Clairsentience. I haven't watched the show so I'm not sure about the details, or totally sure if that would be correct at all.

Re: Phermones Just a thought, I do pheremones as a limited form of PRE. There's a more subtle effect and defined mechanism for how they affect skill rolls that way. But anyway, about the mind control, if you wanted to represent the unreliability of attraction, an activation roll could work. Or maybe a RSR: COM limitation.

Re: Statting up NPCs on the fly. What genre do you play in? If it's Champions, then Until Super Powers Database would help out a bunch in whipping up complex powers on the spot. If you don't know the game that much, you should check out the pages in the front of FREd on power levels. That helped me a lot in figuring out the range of values for Characteristics and combat stats at the various power levels. As long as you don't mind juggling a lot of numbers in your head, Hero can work for this, but if improvisation is your thing there's probably better game systems for you out there. Something flexible yet rules light like Tri-Stat would work.

Re: DCV from a character's size Another situation size could apply is when a character got stunned and his skill levels turned unassigned. Persistent or inherent DCV would still be working.

Re: How would you write up the following power? You could use the standard effect rule: don't roll and it's 3 damage per die of RKA. That would also eliminate the problem of bad rolls. If you wanted to go with a disadvantage, you could also consider giving the demons a vulnerability to demon banishment potions or a vulnerability to whatever special effect the demon banishment potions have. With the Banished by Potion physical limitation, I would just build the potion normally, as an atttack of some sort that could kill the demon in 1 hit. That would accurately simulate the point value of how much an attack like that would be worth.

Re: Agricultural Mecha Don't take zargliff too seriously. He's apparently editing his posts, so he's aware of his moronic spelling and must be making them as stupid and annoying as possible deliberately.

Re: RPG.net I don't know about that. I can't speak for anyone else, but personally I find non-toolkit systems an impediment to creativity. I like to create my own settings and power systems rather than using some other guy's stuff. Most of the time, I'm more inspired by telivision and comics and so on than RPG books. Unless I want to write my own RPG for every game or alter an existing game's rules nearly beyond recognition, I pretty much have to use one of the generic game systems.

Re: How would you write up the following power? This what depend on exactly what the demons were like in game terms. There should be enough dice of damage or other effect that a standard effect/average roll would kill the monster. If demons are done as a summon than dispel would work. A spell/potion/whatever that uses obscure ingredients is an expendable focus. You can look that up somewhere in the focus rules. The value of the limitation would be based on how hard the ingredients are to get. The throwing range thing is -1/4 and it's called "Range based on STR". It's listed in the Range limitations somewhere.

There's a ton of different ways to do transforming robots. If you want it to actually gain STR and Knockback Resistance and all that, then the growth power is good. If it changes a variety of functions, like one form is on wheels and another is on legs like optimus prime from transformers, then multiform is the way to go. If the two shapes have basically no game mechanical differences, I think at most you would need some sort of limited shape shift or maybe no power at all.

Maybe some agricultural tools or systems that can be used converted to weapons? Maybe some scythes, rotating choppers, chemical sprayers, or something like that.

A BOECV drain would work for a temporary effect. If you do it as a BOECV transform, you should probably buy that advantage that allows you to do a partial transformation and still have some effect, or else you'll be doing nothing to some people for a long time. I predict you'll get a different way to build this power from each person who posts..

I haven't done much with mental powers yet, but a good rule of thumb for figuring out the value would be to build something that's as close as you can get with the existing rules and check the cost. You're looking for immunity to mental attacks, so a comparable ability would be something like 30 points of mental defense, which would cost 30 points. Desolidification is 40 points, if I remember correctly, so if you're buying my reasoning this should approximately double the cost.

Star Hero is less substantial than Fantasy Hero, but it still has a bunch of very useful stuff. It can help you with stuff like how to make starships and include realistic science and cosmology in your games. I couldn't figure out starships at all until I read it. It has a lot of good premade equipment too. I wouldn't say it's required reading for a sci-fi game, but it will make your job a lot easier.

I agree with Toadmaster, the existing system of buying a power up to the highest you could reasonably need in a campaign works best, because it automatically scales the cost to what it should be. Even where the existing rules include absolutes there's always a catch. Like how with NND there is one defense that stops it and with desolid there is one special effect that ignores it. So if you made new powers for Always Hits, there would have to be one thing it couldn't hit, or some other thing that made defense remotely possible.

Thanks guys, that made it a lot clearer for me. My intention for the game is to make the armor equal to the average killing damage weapons are doing at any given time, so a little bit of body and quite a bit of stun should be getting through. But a lot of monsters will have no resistant defenses at all, so I guess it'll all cancel out.

I'm trying to make some weapons for a campaign I'm working on and I need some help from more experienced players. Basically I'm confused about how HAs and HKAs compare to each other. I haven't done many games with Hero and the ones I have done used only EBs and HAs. Do HAs and HKAs of equal APs have the same power in combat? For instance, would a 3d6 HA weapon be as powerful as a 1d6 HKA weapon in a typical fantasy heroic-level game? If not, how should I balance the two damage types?

From what I've seen, normally the AI itself doesn't have physical powers and such, but it can be directing a vehicle which does. If you want a machine that works more like a person, with stun and whatnot, you could make it using the ordinary character rules. One of the players in the game I'm starting made a robot character using superheroic character rules by buying a bunch of powers and applying appropriate disadvantages. I'm a little vague on the equipment rules, but I'm pretty sure you can just assume something built using computer rules acts how you'd expect from a machine, without needing any additional disadvantages or advantages applied.

Re: can some1 translate to stupid for me? Read the Hero System 5'th Edition, including the part about the Required Skill Roll limitation, and read the parts related to magic in Fantasy Hero. Start asking questions if you still don't get it after that.

You've laid it all out clearly. Sounds like it's going to be a great game. One thing you could include is a direct statement of what you seem to be opposed to in your introduction. By that I mean something like "This won't be like D+D."

That would be interesting to try. I might have to rewrite a lot of material to get it implemented though. Right now, I have a somewhat complicated campaign specific system that depends more on getting a certain combination of ingredients than accumulating an amount of points. But a system based at least partly on points would be a lot more flexible and easier to integrate into other campaigns. Hmmm.....

I haven't gotten grimoire, but I have Fantasy Hero and I think you've got it right. As I understand it, you buy the spell with the Independant modifier and pay it's real point cost every time you make the item. I don't make players pay points for items in my fantasy game, but I do make ingredients expensive or dangerous to get. I also heavily restrict what they can create and make it take a pretty long time. My campaign uses Alchemy combined with other skills as an item creation skill, instead of a spell-like system. For instance, you can create a magic sword with some magic iron and various monster parts. After some alchemy and weaponsmith rolls, you could have a 2d6 HKA sword with a 6d6 Aid built in.

Well, I'm starting a 75/75 Fantasy Hero campaign. That's pretty low powered but not at all realistic. I started a 35/35 campaign earlier, which was even less realistic.

+10 to concealment maybe?

I was thinking of using penalty skill levels for stuff like that but Hero Designer didn't allow it, so I gave up on it. I like the idea of complimentary skill rolls. It could help individulize the characters a lot in a game with a lot of magic users. I would probably set the scope of the knowledge skill at the school of magic level, like your necromancy example.

Also, as a negative aspect of the SFX, if your power relies on something in the environment being around it should have a focus limitation, like OIF (cable of opportunity, -1/2).