Chimera 12

Re: Armor Wars

One way to do it would be to have most "super" suits be what they call "devises" over in the Whateley universe -- basically gear that by all rights shouldn't be able to work because it flat-out violates the laws of physics, but that thanks to its creator's mutant gift or other superpower and faith in his or her work manages to do so just fine all the same. Well, just fine with the occasional reliability issues usually associated with mad science, in any case...especially when used by somebody else. And of course it's basically impossible for anybody other than the original creator to replicate, let alone patent and mass-produce...

(The setting does, as I understand it, have non-devisor battlesuits as well. They're noticeably more down-to-earth and the long-term power supply issue in particular apparently hasn't been solved to anybody's satisfaction yet. Bluntly put, for extended action these things depend on somebody else carrying the spare battery packs or otherwise providing the power they need...)

Re: Looking at characters in Champions 6E

Everyone should have a base mental defense level.

Yes, but what's in question here is the base mental offense level -- OMCV, not DMCV. There really isn't much use in that one for characters who have no way to actually use it to attack anybody...

(Random tangent: I've noticed some people on these boards complain about PRE being too effective. Part of that would probably be that Presence Attacks always automatically hit...might it make sense to tie them to the mental combat values instead?)

Re: Full Sensory Mind Link?

Well, the canonical way to get sensory impressions via Mind Link, according to APG 110, is apparently to buy Clairsentience Linked to the Mind Link and with an extra -1 "Only To Use Subject's Senses" Limitation.

However, on page 126 the APG also introduces a +5 point "Sensory Impressions" adder for Telepathy, which seems to do for that power what we're looking for here -- it allows the telepath access to actual direct sensory input from the subject of his mind-reading, which as 6E1 297 points out isn't normally the case. Given the other similarities between the two Powers, I don't think it'd be a massive game-breaker to just copy that one over; after all, pretty much everything about Mind Link is voluntary, so you couldn't use it as a cheap way to peek through somebody's eyes against their will.

(The adder doesn't technically say anything about the telepath being able to send any such input in turn, but given that the communication aspect of Telepathy tends to get short shrift compared to its information-gathering angle anyway I'm inclined to consider that an oversight and would allow it.)

Re: [Request] West Coast Avengers Write Ups

Well, part of the problem is that 'real' comic book superheroes probably don't have anything like Hero-style character sheets lying on the author's desk for reference. Within certain rough guidelines -- and even those can be violated in pursuit of "a better story" --, their power level is always exactly what the plot demands. (Of course, the characters themselves may not know that. From their perspective, their overall performance is probably a bit more consistent on a day-to-day basis, but the everyday parts of their lives tend to get glossed over and so we most often see them when they're charged with adrenaline and quite possibly Pushing their powers beyond their normal limits.)

So in a way the Hero System, by modeling characters in rather more detail and with more consistency than we usually see in the comics, is itself at odds with the source material here. Any writeups of 'canon' characters are bound to be just as subjective as any other fan work because it's doubtful that even the characters' original creators put that much thought into every facet of their being. (Quick, what's Spider-Man's BODY? Hank Pym's exact Computer Programming skill? How many dice of damage should getting smacked with Mjolnir inflict, and should that be normal or killing? Whatever your answers may be, be prepared for somebody out there to violently disagree with you. )

Re: Impact of Multiple Attacks

Keep in mind that if you mix hand-to-hand and ranged attacks in a multiple attack, that's an extra -2 to OCV above and beyond the standard multiple attack penalty. The same applies to mixing mental and non-mental attacks. (6E2 76) So maybe it's not quite bad enough to require banning...

Re: Special Report: The End of Superheroes!

The main problem is that these governments lack social roots. Most Real World autocratic governments are based on the support, or at least tolerance, of ruling elites. This does not necessarily apply to metarchies, which are based on the individual abilities of the ruler or rulers, and subject only to their whims.

 

Once those rulers leave the scene for whatever reason their policies are likely to be completely reversed, leading to a situation of perpetual social and political flux.

Well, yes, most successful autocratic governments are based on the support of ruling elites. We rarely hear about the failed attempts for long for some reason.

That said, nothing specifically prevents a superpowered individual or group from gaining that support just like "baseline" autocrats manage to do from time to time; there is no mandatory correlation between the presence or absence of superpowers and political skill...

...Of course, the downside of that is that they probably also won't find the job significantly easier. Most of us couldn't pull off a political coup if our lives depended on it, after all; how many supers will be any more qualified just because they got bitten by a radioactive suit of power armor from another dimension?

Re: Special Report: The End of Superheroes!

GURPS I.S.T. looks at this topic. Several non-UN nations are "metarchies"' date=' ruled by a super, or a cabal of supers. The book does point out that it's an unstable setup, unless the ruler has piles of Mind Control or is indestructible... [/quote']

 

Is that a comment aimed at the instability of these systems in general, though (which would be debatable, anyway -- autocratic systems of government of some stripe or other have been with us throughout human history), or is there some factor at work in that setting that specifically jinxes that kind of approach for supers in particular? I mean, how would El Jefe Magnifico's reign in La Republica de las Bananas suffer from his having superpowers instead of being just another guy with a moustache, exactly?

Re: Full Sensory Mind Link?

An addendum to that question-with Clairvoyance' date=' do you stop using your own senses while using Clair?[/quote']

Not immediately sure about the rest, but this one I think I can answer: to be unable to use your own senses while employing Clairsentience, you'd take the Blackout Limitation (6E1 181) on it. So it's probably safe to say that that's not the default.

Just a brief clarification, please: According to 6E2 74, a Combined Attack lets me use multiple powers against a single target -- once -- without suffering any of the penalties normally associated with the Multiple Attack maneuver.

What I'm not clear on is whether I would then make individual Attack Rolls for each power involved or just a single one that decides whether or not the entire 'batch' hits or misses; the section on Combined Attacks never actually says one way or the other. On the one hand, a Combined Attack is a "type of Strike", which argues for the latter interpretation; on the other, the example robot firing a blast from the one hand and a laser from the other muddies the issue because rolling once for each would seem to make more intuitive sense here.

So, which is it? One roll per power or one for the entire attack at once?

Re: So....Dynamite jumps into The Phantom's boots.....

Heh, that First Pick, is from WAY WAY back in the day.....

 

As for the outfit....it's color changed depending on the country it was being published in.....Like so...

You'll notice it's not just his outfit that's so afflicted in those two versions.

But yes, that does make it a bit tricky to pin down what the 'real' color is supposed to be. You could say that the US version has the canonical one, but even that has evidently gone through changes over time...

Then again, every practical-minded superhero should have a spare costume or three just in case an emergency pops up while the first is in the laundry, anyway. So maybe it's just a case of that principle in action?

Re: Five Creatures That Prove Life Could Exist On Other Planets (Or In Space)

It's nice to know that life on Earth can exist in the weirdest of places. It does, in fact, make me feel a little bit more optimistic about life 'out there'.

That said, we are still talking about lifeforms that ultimately got their start here on our blue marble, same as all the less exotic ones we're already familiar with. It's nice to hear that alien life, if it exists, may be tougher and more adaptable than past generations of SF writers have given it credit for...but there's no new data here with regard to the likelihood of whatever original accident it was that brought life into being here repeating itself with recognizably similar results elsewhere.

Re: power to delete bank accounts

You don't want to Transform the character for this, assuming you're going for a Power-based approach rather than just using Computer Programming (which already generally covers hacking and could probably be supplemented by an appropriate Knowledge Skill or two).

You want to do a (probably Major, going by the Psychic Surgery section in the APG) Mental Transform of the computer holding the relevant information. "Healing" the Transform would be done by restoring the account from backup data or manually once the damage is noticed.

Re: VPPs in 6th

If there's an AP cap for the campaign, I'd be tempted (more on a theoretical basis, I haven't actually tested this) to go with a guideline like "no single power in the pool can be bigger than the cap and the total of control + pool cost can't exceed the cap either". So, a 'basic' VPP for a 60 AP campaign might be one with a 20-point control cost and a 40-point reserve for effective access to 40 AP of freeform power with no major constraints other than the default VPP ones. Or it could have a 30-point control cost (maximum) and correspondingly only a 30-point pool, forcing the user to come up with at least -1 worth of Limitations for any actual 60-point power drawn from it. Or some other configuration adding up to no more than 60 points total (counting Advantages but not Limitations since we're concerned about "active" rather than Real Points).

Obviously, any actual 'cosmic' pool following these guidelines for this kind of campaign would be pretty darn small. I'd consider that more of a feature than a bug, though -- IMO, in a campaign where one character's just a 60-AP brick and another a 60-AP flying blaster character #3 really shouldn't have 60 AP of INSTANT DO-ANYTHING PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWAH!!!

*cough* *ahem* Well, you get my point.

Re: Not D&D

Regarding religion: if what bugs you is having so-called divine spellcasters and deities that regularly appear in front of mortals in your game, nothing says you have to use those just because D&D is fond of them. (In fact, while I could be mistaken, I generally consider the modern "cleric archetype" largely an original D&D invention in the first place.)

There's nothing wrong with a setting in which deities are invisible and mysterious and their priests, while still performing all the duties of their real-life counterparts, get no special magic powers granted from on high at all. They could after all still learn magic just like anybody else, faith permitting of course...

Re: CON Only to Resist Stunning

The only drawback to this is that it reduces versatility. If I want to represent a character that is large (high body) but for what ever reason easily fatigued (low con) I can't do that if there is only one stat. unless I buy a limitation on a portion of the characteristic which makes it MORE complicated not less so. I like the distinction between body and con for that reason.

If you want him easily fatigued, that's more up the alley of low END than low CON.

Part of the issue is, I think, that most things you might intuitively use CON for in other games tend not to come up in Hero so much. There's no "fortitude save" vs. poison or sickness, for example; the usual Hero examples are built as simple straight-up NNDs, Drains, or the like, and work just as well whether the target's CON is 8 or 28. You don't make CON rolls vs. exhaustion, those effects are governed by END and REC instead. And so on.

Re: Damage Class and Balance

While true' date=' the impact depends a lot on DC's. Once the target is knocked down or back, he's at half DCV no matter how far he travels. It takes a lot more for the Knockback to do significant damage, and unless he takes a lot of damage, I prefer him being close, especially if I'm attacking HTH.[/quote']

 

*nod*

 

That, plus knockback is effectively an optional rule in the first place -- whether it's used at all (and if so, then under what circumstances) depends on what kind of campaign one wants to run. Superheroes and over-the-top martial arts action, sure; 'gritty' low fantasy or semi-realistic modern-day stuff, not so much.

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

In all honesty, I feel that one can do quite a bit with just plain humans already. So not every conceivable niche necessarily has to be filled with its own separate intelligent species; if elves are just humans with pointy ears and Better Than You syndrome, for example, the setting will work just as well by replacing them with humans in the first place -- maybe even better. Also, by extension, if one does go to the trouble of introducing a whole new race, they definitely should either pop up in more places and roles than just the one they were initially encountered in or else have a plausible explanation for why they don't. (The last few members of a dying species rarely if ever leaving their hidden valley is one thing, hundreds of thousands of dwarves all choosing to live underground, mine, and swill ale on a regular basis just because it fits the cliche quite another.)

On the other hand, I'll freely confess to being at least as fond of the freewheeling monster mash kind of setting embodied by classic D&D as the next guy, so this could just be a "what the heck do I know?" kind of post.

Re: Has anyone ever played a setting where the mutant's actually ARE evil?

and a traitor!

*raised eyebrow*

Are you accusing The Computer of treason, Citizen?

Re: Damage Class and Balance

when you use averages you get 3.5' date=' if you use standard effect, you get 3 (at least with normal damage)[/quote']

 

If I want to do accurate math, I use averages (and try to keep some awareness of the actual distribution in the back of my mind as well). Standard Effect is a specific game rule that kinda sorta approximates average results, but doesn't do so with any great precision. So yes, I do realize that there's a difference, and my only reference to "standard effect" was in response to Kraven's use of the term.

 

Still, the math itself stands. If you use a fixed STUN multiplier of 3 for killing attacks -- which 6E1 133 in fact effectively says is the "standard effect" for the older 1d6-1 roll and which I believe I've seen posters mention using in other threads before --, then by and large normal and killing attacks will be equally effective at stunning or knocking out targets. (In fact, the minimum damage rule may give killing attacks a slight edge.) Which basically means that normal attacks have nothing left to do that killing attacks don't do just as well or better for the same cost in points. One might argue that normal attacks are better for when you don't actually want to kill the target, but player intent alone makes for a poor balancing tool -- in any situation where the players honestly don't care about keeping their enemies alive (in other words, most genres other than supers and arguably for some darker interpretations of those as well), killing attacks are simply the smart way to go here.

 

Under stock 6E rules, of course, the average STUN multiplier for killing attacks is 2 (the average roll on 1/2d6), not 3...meaning that normal attacks will in fact on average do objectively more STUN before defenses than damage class-equivalent KAs. And thus far I think that works for me.

Re: How Do I Build This?

I thought Linking made it "one power," and all aspects subject to the Drain or any adjustment. I would split the drain proportionally amongst the Linked powers, no double dipping.

 

I'm not going to say Steve is wrong but I will say that is not how I intend to roll.

A fairly good example of Linked that's pretty clearly not "one power", I think, is ye olde poisoned knife. It's two conceptually very separate components -- namely, the knife and the poison coating its blade -- that just happen to end up being used in combination rather than separately, and something that happened to neutralize the poison wouldn't necessarily also dull the blade.

(The example hobbles a bit since most implementations of the concept have the poison only take effect if the blade penetrates defenses, which can create the impression that if you Drain the knife you actually do affect the poison as well. However, that's because the poison becomes harder to deliver effectively, not due to any actual loss of virulence...and it's due to a separate second Limitation, not simply to the two being Linked.)

Re: Damage Class and Balance

I think its logically risky to mix Standard affect with averages

Elaborate, please? I for one am honestly not sure what you're actually trying to say by that.

Re: Damage Class and Balance

Sorry' date=' everything I say is 5E, not 6E, and I generally use the "standard effect" of x3 Stun on KA's.[/quote']

 

You may want to be careful with that. Here's why:

 

The average roll on 1d6 is 3.5. This means that the average normal damage die will do 1 BODY and 3.5 STUN. It also means that the average killing damage die will do 3.5 BODY while only costing as much as three average normal dice that only do 3.

 

So, 3d6N (=3 DC) will do, on average, 3 BODY and 3 * 3.5 = 10.5 STUN.

 

1d6K (=3 DC again) will on average cause 3.5 BODY and, using your standard effect rule, 3.5 * 3 = 10.5 STUN as well.

 

In other words, this setup does in fact make killing attacks more powerful than normal ones -- for the same point cost, they inflict on average the same basic STUN damage, a bit more raw BODY, and they still ignore nonresistant defenses vs. that same BODY part of the damage. So unless you're specifically worried about killing your targets (and the superhero genre, where that would apply the most, probably offers plausible special effect excuses to just go all the way to STUN Only attacks to avoid that), killing attacks are the way to go...

Re: Damage Class and Balance

STUN also costs 1/2 point, so the Drain would be 18 STUN.

 

Prior to 6e, STUN cost 1 point but was not a defense power.

Yeah, that. Goes to show what can happen when you try to address two things in one post and focus so much on the one that you don't pay quite enough attention to the other.

So, yeah. A STUN Drain that comes up 18 on the dice technically gets its effect halved, so it only drains 9 points. But those are character points...and since one of those buys you 2 STUN, it does in fact result in 18 STUN being drained after all.

(Strictly speaking the Hero rounding rules result in odd-numbered rolls being 'rounded up' to the next highest even amount of STUN drained, I think, but if it comes up often enough then for ease of play it's probably okay to handwave that and just drain STUN on a one-for-one basis. Unless you have one of those players who have to squeeze every last bit of effect out of a power, I guess... )

Re: Damage Class and Balance

I don't have books with me but I think STUN is considered a "Defense" Power when using an Adjustment Power so the above should be 9 STUN drained.

That's correct (6E1 141).

Also, the 4d6 killing attack in Kraven's example would on an "all 3s" roll only cause 24 STUN, not 36. Using the 6E rules with their 1/2d6 STUN multiplier for killing attacks, 3 halved and rounded up comes out to 2, and if we assume a 3 on the die in the 1d6-1 roll from earlier editions...the result is actually the same. And this is, I think, balanced against the 36 from the equivalent normal attack -- after all, the killing attack has an easier time doing BODY to a target because it ignores nonresistant defenses for that purpose. The increased chance of getting little or no more than the minimum STUN past defenses as well (here, nonresistant defenses apply even vs. KAs, something that's potentially easy to miss) is exactly how it pays for that.

Re: Has anyone ever played a setting where the mutant's actually ARE evil?

It'd be interesting to know why most mutants turn out "evil".

-- Is it a vicious circle-type scenario where 'normal' society just flat-out rejects mutants and they in turn lash out at a world they feel deserves it?

-- Or do their mutations commonly come with a side order of mental and social disorders? The human body including the brain is a pretty finely-tuned machine, it's not unreasonable to assume that the same changes that allow it to wield inhuman powers would also come with drawbacks...

-- Alternatively, could it be that most mutants, knowingly or not, tap into a common source for their powers and it's that source that is in some way 'evil'?

That's just off the top of my head, and I'm sure plenty of other options exist. Of course, for a really cynical take on it, you could always argue that those mutants are not, in fact, in any way, shape, or form inherently worse than normal humans -- that they only behave the way most everybody would if given the power to get away with it. (Even if it's not factually true, it makes a great bit of rhetoric for some mutant demagogue to use in 'rationalizing' his or her atrocities. )