Chimera 12

Re: Common 6E House Rules

Another one under consideration:

When making an attack that takes an extra segment to go off, like a Haymaker or some power with the appropriate Extra Time limitation, you choose your target only at the time when the attack actually does in fact go off, not in advance. This should serve to close the odd "if your target so much as twitches, you auto-miss" loophole that for some reason seems to plague these attacks exclusively while leaving those with even longer startup times curiously alone. The Limitation value itself remains the same.

Re: Public ID or Secret ID

The real reason I tend to think of a Public ID as more limiting than a Secret one may just be that I tend to reflexively assume a background in which the possession of superhuman powers does not in and of itself grant you any special rights. That is, you may have pulsonic blasts and a snazzy costume, but as far as society at large is concerned you're still just another private citizen, no more entitled to take the law into your own hands than J. Random Vigilante Wannabe and his trusty shotgun.

In such a setting, a secret ID can be awfully convenient. If, to the public eye, Armor Man simply remains a mysterious figure in a shiny golden battlesuit who shows up out of nowhere to save the day, that's one thing. After all, the public does love its heroes. But as soon as it becomes public knowledge that A. M. is really 'just' Toby Quark, industrialist playboy? How long do you think it would take for the same people who were his fans last week to start questioning just what makes him so special that he should be allowed to go traipsing about in what amounts to military hardware? (There'll be people asking that question even if they don't know who he is, of course. But the number will positively leap upwards overnight if his secret ever comes out. Just human nature.)

But, as I said, that's a setting issue. You could just as easily have a world in which superpowers and a proven dedication to work for the common good genuinely do make somebody part of an acknowledged elite with special privileges, legal or otherwise. There, then, a public ID might actually be less of a hindrance for a hero than a secret one, on the principle that people are more likely to question and distrust somebody who hides behind a mask where others don't...

I guess, in retrospect, that it wasn't entirely clear that I was trying to ask an actual question in my last post. Let me rephrase it, then:

"If a character blocks with a shield and thereby gets to apply its DCV bonus to OCV for purposes of that block, should that character temporarily lose the shield's bonus to DCV as a result or should it continue to apply there as well? And if it's supposed to be the former, on what page in which 6E book would I find the rule that actually comes out and says so?"

(Because as I read things right now, it honestly looks as though shields and the Off-Hand Defense talent are for unknown reasons meant to simply get a possibly significant OCV-to-block boost completely free of charge. So either I'm suffering from a blind spot approximately the size of Pallas or there's a genuine bug here somewhere.)

Re: 4th-6th VPP Question

It occurs to me that part of the issue with 'stacking' Power Frameworks may simply be definitional. That is, a Framework is a game element paid for with Character Points that holds one or more Powers; but is it actually a Power (with a capital P) in and of itself? (Characteristics and Skills technically aren't either, but in these cases buying them as Powers is explicitly allowed. With Frameworks I'm not so sure, although it's possible that I'm simply missing something.)

There's also the issue of Active Points. Say I have a 50-point Multipower with two fixed slots both using the full reserve; what would be its Active Cost for purposes of deciding whether it fits into another Multipower or VPP? 50? 60? 100?

Re: Resistance to Poison/Disease

I don't think this part is. In 5th ed' date=' BOD added to STUN. In 6th, "Only to prevent death" describes the entire function of BOD. [/quote']

 

Well, yes and no. A character with 15 BODY will take longer to start dying and can soak up more damage total than one with "10 BODY, but only dies at -15". So I'd still call that a Limitation, though I'm not quite sure just how much it'd be worth both in terms of points and in practice.

Re: Public ID or Secret ID

Public ID means people can find you? oooo scary. I doubt you would have enjoyed the game much if your character just hid from all forms of adversity and you never had to roll a die or role play your reaction to a challenge.

That, I believe, was uncalled for. I simply explained my reasons why I think a proper Public ID is more of a hindrance than a Secret one.

Also' date='I don't think a lot of comic characters have Public ID's. The Hulk? Sure, everyone recognizes him, but the army has to search for him - they don't know where to find him at any given time. I think the 10 point "public ID" reflects the comic version - the character is easily recognized, but is not always in the public eye.[/quote']

 

No, I don't think the Hulk has a Public ID either. Sure, just about everybody recognizes him, but comparatively few people know he's Bruce Banner. (And incidentally, the Social Complication examples on page 6E1 428 rate both a Public and a Secret ID at an equal 15 or 20 points -- Frequent, Major (or possibly Severe) complications, in other words.)

 

Reed Richards, now...

 

Like most things' date=' the real value of these items is set by the game style far more than by the book rules. I dislike using the book value for complications as an automatic feature. Look at the mechanic and build it to reflect how often you view the issue as impacting the game, and how severe the consequences are. If you expect your secret ID will only rarely be an issue, and it will be a minor one, price the Social Complication on that basis. If your Overconfidence is not Strong, but Overwhelming (no books; exact term slips my mind; Total Commitment, maybe), note that and take the extra 5 points. And then play it out accordingly.[/quote']

 

This, on the other hand, I think I agree with. Just how much a Complication is intended to complicate a character's life really should be left up to the player, not the book; it's entirely possible to have a character with a secret ID who's never hindered by it at all in play because it never comes up, but then it should be left at the "background detail" level, not show up on the character sheet as an actual Complication worth points. After all, part of the purpose of said sheet is explicitly helping you tell the GM what you'd like the game to be about.

Re: Public ID or Secret ID

Public ID, I'd think. Maintaining a secret ID takes work and can be a proper hassle, but a public ID means that everybody with an axe to grind knows or can easily figure out where to find you and what some good ways of hitting you below the belt might be.

("Now that we know who Armor Man is, we can bill him for the all the damage to our fair city that his reckless super-brawls have caused!")

In lights of this, I might even be inclined to rule that a secret ID actually is worth fewer points than listed in the book. Of course, I'm looking at this from a comic book perspective now, and in the comics real, significant threats to the secret don't actually come up that often -- more usually it pops up as a relatively minor nuisance that the protagonist can get around with some quick thinking or through sheer luck, and the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

Re: Shield of Thunder.

If we change the wording slightly we get a more general statement:

If you use your CSL to "fill in the blank", you temporarily don't get to use it for "fill in the blank" anymore.

 

Keep in mind, at its base mechanics, a "shield bonus" is just a specific or limited CSL.

"fill in the blank" can be anything that particular CSL can apply to (like "increase damage", "increase OCV", etc...).

Well, no, that was kind of my point.

In 6E, the shield bonus is not a CSL anymore; it's bought straight as a bonus to the DCV Characteristic (6E2 211), and in fact the Combat Skill Levels description makes it explicit on page 6E1 71 that "Only for DCV" isn't a valid Limitation on CSLs in this edition. In other words, the old "Only to DCV" 5-point CSLs are now defunct. It's easy to miss the difference, though, because +1 DCV costs the exact same 5 points that they did...

Thus, technically it could be argued that a shield bonus shouldn't be applicable to OCV at all, not even while blocking; you didn't pay for an OCV bonus, so you shouldn't get one. The whole "shield rule" is thus something of an anomaly in the first place, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was just copied over verbatim from the older edition(s) without stopping to fully grok its implications in light of the changes to the underlying system.

Re: kinetic shield a.k.a. extra body for defensive purpose

Well, Entangling yourself for armor purposes isn't really the point of that power. I suppose you could do it, but then you'd also be immobilized as usual; the 6E writeup explicitly spells out that Personal Immunity does not let you wriggle out of this. (Pun intended.)

Other than that, I'm currently out of ideas. Arguably, losing defense points equal to the BODY absorbed should simply be a Limitation to the power providing said defense; the problem is in figuring out how much of one it would really be, which in part depends on how easy said power is to re-use. (Clearly, "those points are now gone until the end of the adventure" would be more restricting than "they're gone until you turn your shield on again as a zero phase action next phase".)

Re: Common 6E House Rules

We should at least have the ability to have a PRE based Power Skill to be aided by Striking Appearance

We do have that. Nothing in the book says that a Power skill can't be based on PRE, and as doing that would make it an Interaction skill by default it would benefit from any applicable Striking Appearance bonuses. +1/level, I believe.

Re: 4th-6th VPP Question

Well, allowing a Multipower -- or any given power, period -- into a VPP just because it's pre-defined somewhere but not otherwise isn't necessarily a good dividing line because, at the in-game mechanical level, once the power is actually in the pool the difference between the two is wholly invisible. A 6d6 Autofire Blaster with both a "standard" and a "stun" setting is going to have exactly the same in-game effect regardless of who came up with it and when they did so.

Part of the issue, I suppose, is that Multipowers and Variable Power Pools really seem to exist to serve different purposes which aren't always 100% compatible with each other. A Multipower is straightforward -- you have exactly these pre-defined powers available at all times, you just get a point cost break because you can't use them all at full power at once. (That's why using them for attack powers which you couldn't normally use all that well at the same time anyway is so popular, of course.) A VPP, on the other hand, allows you to avoid committing fully to a specific setup in advance by keeping a blob of 'generic' character points around that you can hammer into shape at your leisure, which gives you much more flexibility than the most elaborate yet still somewhat practical Multipower could; in exchange, doing said hammering isn't entirely nontrivial thanks to the likely crunching of numbers involved and by default best done in noncombat time. (After all, how often do we really need to hear "Hold on, guys, I need a few minutes to figure out how to squeeze the most out of my pool for the third time this turn!"? )

I haven't wholly decided yet under which exact circumstances I would allow a Multipower into a VPP, were I GMing. Since it's always easier to start with a restriction and relax it later than to do the reverse, though, I honestly imagine right now that I'd start with the default "not at all" and see where that leads first...

(After all, nothing technically stops you from building your Flashlight Laser as just two distinct powers sharing the same Focus object. It's just that, without the ability to put them into a Multipower, it's going to eat up more of your pool -- but as that's only a temporary commitment until you decide to swap it out for some other device, I think I'd be okay with that.)

Re: Shield of Thunder.

As an afterthought: I'm still not really seeing the "if you use your shield bonus to boost OCV to Block, you temporarily don't get to use it for DCV anymore" rule in 6E; if it's anywhere in Vol. 1 or 2, the APG, or even the Basic Rulebook of all things and I just missed it, I'd appreciate a page reference.

Failing that, a shield that provides an OCV bonus for blocking purposes while keeping its defensive benefits could IMO simply be built as a DCV bonus and an equal number of 2-point Combat Skill Levels ("only to increase OCV when Blocking with this shield") both provided by the same Focus. So it's definitely doable in terms of pure mechanics, and the result won't be all that much more expensive point-wise either.

Re: kinetic shield a.k.a. extra body for defensive purpose

Well, Barrier is effectively the 6E version of the Force Wall power from Fourth Edition. Except that where Force Wall was Constant (requiring END every phase to maintain) and the 'wall' created always had 0 BODY underneath the defenses it provided, Barrier is Instant and creates 'real' walls that can (but don't have to) have BODY and last without further END expenditure once created. (If you do want them to cost END to maintain as well, that's a -1/2 Limitation.)

So, okay, maybe it's not quite that much like Force Wall.

Anyway, it seems to me that one aspect of how effective your proposed ablative defense is going to be is just how quickly it can be replenished once part or all of it is gone. (One reason the standard versions of Ablative don't fly off quite as quickly as "extra BODY" should is that they assume that your defense stays ablated for the rest of the adventure, barring the GM allowing otherwise.) Part of what makes my Barrier-based version so expensive in terms of real cost is the fact that, as per the usual Barrier rules, the user can still simply 'reset' or 'heal' the 'force field' more or less at will by using the power again and that once it's up, it costs no further END to maintain. 'Properly' modelling what I think you want would take more Limitations than I've yet put onto the power...with the obvious fringe benefit of reducing the actual final cost further, of course.

Edit: Another approach that came to mind after I posted -- it sounds like what you want to do could be alternatively modelled by getting creative with Charges. The 6E Advanced Player's Guide offers a writeup for "conserved" Charges which aren't necessarily used up right away; this is presented mainly as a random chance, but can map to alternate circumstances. So, let's say that a Force Field that doesn't go away at all just from being turned on and off but can only ever absorb total BODY damage equal to one of the defenses it provides is about equivalent to "charge only burns out on a roll of 8 or less". (It could be higher if the defense is low relative to the attacks used in your campaign, but I wouldn't necessarily know that; in any case, I'm not too worried about whether or not the Field can stick around when there's no damage for it to soak up in the first place, here.) That would be the Charges Limitation reduced by 3/4 (1/2 for an 11- charge burnout roll or equivalent, 1/4 for a 14-), which can roll over into an increased Advantage.

So if you wanted, say, the same effective "extra 20 BODY" available to a character about once per adventure, that could be a 20 PD/20 ED Force Field, 1 Conserved Charge (-1 1/4, Only Used Up Upon Absorbing 20 BODY Damage), and possibly with other Limitations like (depending on the source) Costs Endurance (-1/2) or Focus.

Re: 4th-6th VPP Question

By the book, you can't put one Power Framework into another. I'd generally stick with that -- Frameworks provide pretty big cost breaks as it is (compared to, say, having to buy all the powers inside them separately), and stacking them on top of each other is probably usually not such a good idea.

Of course, also by the book, just because something is explicitly forbidden doesn't mean you can't do it -- you just need to get your GM's permission. For instance, while Enhanced Senses are Special Powers and thus technically can't be put into Frameworks (without said permission, that is), I doubt that many GMs would in practice deny a character the ability to carry a radio or set of binoculars in their Gadget Pool...

Re: Abstract Money System?

There's also the optional Resource Point system at the end of the Advanced Player's Guide, which while not dealing with game-world money directly basically allows characters to collect whatever gear they come across for later but puts a point limit on how much of that they can have available as their 'kit' for a given adventure. (You can earn increases to that limit much like you can experience, or you can just throw character points at it to get more Resource Points than the campaign standard in the first place.)

Re: kinetic shield a.k.a. extra body for defensive purpose

Sounds like what you'd want might be (under 6E rules, as I'm afraid my situation is the reverse of yours and I have no 5E rulebooks at all) a small 0 PD/0 ED Barrier that moves with the user and can't be projected at range. Since the book tells me that you need one at least four meters long or tall to 'englobe' a character, I'll go with that for a try:

4m long, 1m tall, and 0.5m thick Barrier with 0 PD, 0 ED, and 0 BODY, shaped into a suitable globe around the user: 6 base points (3 base + 3 more for the extra 3m, to be precise). Add 1 point for each point of BODY desired; let's say, purely for example's sake, that we want 20 BODY in our 'force field'. We're at 26 points now.

At this point, though, all we have is a small 'wall' that needs to be anchored (preferably to a horizontal surface), can't move once created, and interferes with attacks from both directions. This won't do for our force field. So...I'll apply the 10-point 'Non-Anchored' adder and the advantages Mobile (+1/4) and One-Way Transparent, the latter at the full +1 level so the person inside the barrier can use any and all available attacks against targets outside it. We now have a 20-BODY barrier that, if formed around its creator, moves with him or her "at the GM's option"; for argument's sake, I'll assume that the GM does in fact allow this. It also costs (26 + 10) * 2.25 = 81 Active Points and thus 8 END to create (but not maintain as Barrier is an Instant power -- it normally creates a 'wall' that then simply exists on its own). However, since the Barrier is intended to only protect its creator, it is effectively at No Range (-1/2), and we can also safely apply Restricted Shape (-1/4) because our force field has only the one shape that it ever manifests in, bringing the Real Cost down to a somewhat more reasonable 46 points. (We cannot, however, apply Cannot Englobe (-1/4) -- while it's true that this field isn't intended to be able to do that to another creature, since it lacks PD it inherently couldn't do it anyway. And a limitation that isn't a limitation...yeah. ) Expensive, perhaps, but this version is a barrier that can be recreated or restored to the full 20 BODY simply by re-using the power (a half-phase attack action that can be aborted to since Barrier is a Defense Power) and isn't yet dependent on any sort of Focus or Charges. And of course you can change the base cost by using more or less BODY than the 20 I did.

(As an afterthought: since Barrier normally creates 'real' walls, attacks that reduce its BODY to 0 usually 'just' blow holes into them rather than cause them to simply pop unless the Barrier is built with 0 BODY in the first place. However, the base size hole is 2m x 2m x 2m = 8 cubic meters and our force field technically only occupies 4 x 1 x 0.5 = 2 of those, so it's probably safe to say that once the BODY is gone, so is the barrier.)

Re: The best Superpet?

Might I suggest a miniature giant space hamster?

(The embarrassing part is that I'm actually half serious...)

Re: Shield of Thunder.

Steve's perhaps not made it clear in 6e2 211 but the old rule is still in effect. You can have extra dcv or extra ocv but not both.

I've put in my own question with regard to that, so we'll see. In the meantime...

If it's true that a shield can only contribute to OCV or DCV but not both (nor split its bonus between the two, for that matter), then I'd say the most obvious way to model that mechanically without a "well, shields are just special" rule would probably be as a multipower with two fixed slots: one for the OCV bonus, with suitable limitations to make it apply to Block only (and possibly some other plausible maneuvers, though I don't think that it should necessarily apply to actually attacking anybody with the shield itself), and one reasonably unlimited one for DCV. (I suppose that if you didn't want a buckler-sized shield to grant a DCV boost against bullets and such, you could put that limitation there, too, but the default shields are not so restricted; it's just an idea that occurred to me while writing this.) Then apply Focus and STR Minimum to the whole power and call it a proper shield.

I'm not sure I understand the question. Shields provide a DCV bonus' date=' subject to a STR Minimum restriction. The special rules for shields provide that if a character Blocks with a shield, he can instead apply the DCV bonus as an OCV bonus (since Block of course uses OCV not DCV to determine the defensive effect) (see 6E2 211, the equivalent page in 5ER or FH, etc., etc. -- AFAIK this rule's been around for decades). If a character chooses to use his shield's bonus for OCV for a Block, obviously he can't also use it for DCV until his next Phase... though of course the Block itself may provide a DCV modifier.[/quote']

What I think is in question here is in fact the "obviousness" of the shield bonus becoming unavailable for DCV if the shield is being used to block...because there's nothing in the 6E rulebook actually saying that that happens (unless I missed it), and no obvious reason to think it would do so by default. (It's not even bought as a combat skill level anymore, as I understand it, which kind of eliminates "you can only use it in either OCV or DCV because that's how CSLs work" as a possible justification.)

Re: Shield of Thunder.

As far as I can remember that was always the case since the original FH. You had extra passive dcv or extra active ocv but not both' date=' I doubt if that has changed in 6e. Or has it?[/quote']

Let me check what books I can find on short notice...

 

Champions 4E Hardcover: Says nothing about that, oddly enough, although it does briefly bring up shields in a couple of spots.

 

Fantasy Hero 4E: Does in fact state on page 100 that if the shield's DCV bonus is applied to OCV for purposes of blocking or attacking (!), it's (temporarily) lost for defensive purposes.

 

(No 5E books -- I kind of missed out on that entire edition.)

 

6th Edition Vol. 2: Once again no mention of this, neither in the section on Blocks (which does discuss "Weapons, Shields, and Strength" under this exact sub-header on page 58) nor in the short section on shields on p. 211.

 

Now, this could simply be an oversight in the 6E book. But I think -- wiser heads may correct me if I'm off target here -- that it's actually a reflection of the fact that DCV is now a characteristic in its own right rather than a fixed value derived from DEX, and that you no longer buy shields with combat skill levels dedicated to DCV (*), which indeed could only apply to either OCV or DCV but not both because that's how CSLs (still) work, but as straight DCV with appropriate limitations. A skill level you shifted to OCV would indeed be temporarily unavailable to DCV until reassigned again, but a plain old DCV bonus has, I think, some wiggle room.

 

(*) I'm not making this up, either. Straight from 6E Vol. 1 p. 71: "[...] (Limitations such as "Only for OCV" or "Only for DCV" are not legal for CSLs; if a character wants that, he should just buy more of the OCV or DCV characteristics.)" This is a functional change from the "5-point skill levels only for DCV" of yore.

Re: Shield of Thunder.

And how do we describe the ocv/ dcv thing of a shield? Lockout?

By the book (6E2 p. 211) a bog-standard shield's DCV bonus is simply bought as regular DCV with an Obvious Accessible Focus and STR Minimum, and that's it. That its bonus also applies to OCV when blocking with it is basically a special effect (also covered on 6E2 p. 58, where it's simply stated that yes, that happens, and that the same applies to the DCV bonus granted by the Off-Hand Defense talent).

Lockout arguably wouldn't apply because the standard Block maneuver, when used, is in addition to the normal DCV (failing to block does not result in taking an automatic hit) -- and at least on short notice I can't seem to find anything in the book that says that adding the shield's bonus to your Block OCV somehow prevents you from also using it on DCV as usual.

Re: Common 6E House Rules

While it currently looks unlikely that I'll be running any campaigns in the immediate or even mid-term future, my inner math geek inspired me to consider the following house rule:

When calculating a Combat Value, any halving or "setting to 0" applies to the total of base CV and any applicable positive modifiers; however, any penalties in effect are still subtracted in full.

Net result, the logic behind the calculation makes more intuitive sense to me -- something about the notion that, for example, being surprised should somehow partially cancel out the defense penalty I get from attempting a Haymaker has felt wonky to me for years at least, although it's been long enough since I even thought much about Hero that the memory took some time to come back to the fore -- but combat values will end up lower than they would be by the canon rules from time to time, and the fact that sometimes a situation will outright nullify, say, the +3 to hit that a character would otherwise have with pistols may not sit equally well with all players.

Re: Blue Stuff Battery

I've been thinking about this one a bit. Looking through my recently-acquired 6E rulebooks, my first impulse was to buy an END Reserve with no REC and then define each injection as Healing going towards the Reserve; but then I realized I was probably overthinking it.

Right now, I'd build this as simply an END Reserve with Limited Recovery along the lines of "REC only works for one minute (5 turns) after each Blue Stuff injection" (as the character's body takes a few moments to absorb the recharge). The default -2 sounds about right for that limitation on REC to me, but your campaign may vary.