Chimera 12

Re: Lycanthropic Bite

Sorry, this referred to the Transform. The build has Transform as it's basis, right?

 

I think this is supposed to represent the fact that the recipient of the power (i.e. the werewolf) has no control on when to use the power. The minute it bites someone the Transform activates, and he could have created a new werewolf.

Yes, but that's not Always On; that's Linked, specifically the "jointly Linked" special case described in the writeup for that Limitation in 6E1.

Re: Weighted Net

The problem with an Entangle is that there isn't really a mechanic around the 'I make a Roll to escape.'

Actually, in 6E at least, there is. First, the GM can simply decide, based on the Entangle's special effects, whether or not some given escape attempt is likely to work. And second, an Entangle can be bought with Susceptible (-1/4 to -1) if it "can be completely removed by some substance or effect that wouldn't damage an ordinary Entangle". (The Handcuffs writeup has what seems to be an example of this among its other Limitations -- -1/2 for being escapable with a modified Contortionist or Lockpicking roll.) While I'm not sure off the top of my head what precise roll to use to escape a 'simple' weighted net in combat (though probably something along the lines of "unmodified Contortionist or a DEX roll at some decent but not crippling penalty"), it sounds like a good candidate for -1 based on the notion that pretty much anybody should be able to wriggle out again in pretty short order if not for the fact that somebody's likely trying to kill them at the same time.

Re: Possession? Huh?

Just curious: Did it get its own writeup as a new power or is it a built power?

It has aspects of Mind Control and Telepathy (and, if one wants, either the "Astral Form" of Duplication or else the Projection form of Desolidification also introduced in the APG), but it's very much its own Mental Power with its own writeup.

Re: Eldritch Wizardry VPP

Get around a "Suppress Magick" Field.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Curses! He's using "Suppress Palindromedary Powers!"

Just as magic in turn gets around "Suppress Technology"...well, unless it's 'magitech', I suppose.

Re: Lycanthropic Bite

Until reading the original post' date=' it hadn't occurred to me that there might be a problem with having an attack that's Persistent but not Constant in 6e.[/quote']

Well, applying Persistent to a purely Instant Power wouldn't really make any sense -- the whole point of Persistent is that the Power (and the Advantage description really only talks about Constant ones) gets to stay active at times when a regular Constant one would shut off, and Instant powers kind of by definition don't have to concern themselves with that in the first place.

 

Of course, if you make an Attack Power Constant so you can then make it Persistent, you first of all end up with a Constant Attack Power -- which means that it'll keep hitting its target with no need for a further Attack Roll as long as its user maintains LOS and keeps feeding END into it. We're talking about a high-powered 0 END Transform in this context, and making it Persistent means it would keep trying to transform its target even if its user was Stunned or Knocked Out...rather like an Uncontrolled attack, really, although Uncontrolled seems to explicitly cover a few more circumstances as well.

Re: THE Grim Reaper

If he is built as a villain you might consider summon anything with a high point total so he can do like Takofanes and raise the bodies of dead heroes and villains to serve as his undead minions.

Well, that depends on how one sees him. If Death is just the "doorman" into the afterlife, so to speak, then there wouldn't be much reason to ascribe powers over the dead who have passed beyond his care to him. And the undead could be argued to be somewhat antithetical to his entire concept in the first place -- after all, in a sense they defy him simply by existing.

That said, if the Grim Reaper does have power over the departed still, why stop at zombies? Let him summon up the actual ghosts of the greatest heroes and/or villains that ever lived...much more tidy, at least as much potential for drama, and he doesn't even have to necessarily be a villain himself for that.

Re: With Great Power...

It's not that uncommon a trope, actually. (My apologies in advance to everybody whose life was irrevocably ruined by following the link. )

It hasn't come up in my campaigns much, but that may be owed more to a certain dearth of such campaigns in recent years to begin with than anything else.

Re: Lycanthropic Bite

I don't think this is necessarily a case for Always On at all. Rather, it looks like what you want to do is Jointly Link the werewolf's bite attack and the Transformation power so that neither can be used without the other.

Also, this looks like a power designed to turn the victim into a new werewolf right on the spot. Which for a superhero setting may be an appropriate choice ( "Defender, are you all right?" "GRAAARRR!!!" "Um...my, what big teeth you have..." ), but if you're willing to let the 'curse' take hold more slowly, you could potentially buy a smaller base Transform with Damage Over Time.

Re: Eldritch Wizardry VPP

He can use the pool within his own self-emposed limitations. Assisting yourself and your allies in getting from Point A to Point B is not an attack. Attacks Only means the pool can only be used for attacks. Therefore, the pool cannot hold powers for the purpose of assisting yourself and your allies in getting from Point A to Point B.

 

I certainly agree that, if the player or the GM will interpret the limitation in a fashion that it is not limiting, then it's not worth any points.

Well, that's the problem with the book listing "Only Attacks" as an example for a "Slightly Limited Class of Powers" Limitation without then going into any detail, I guess. (Same as with "Only Magic", really...) Personally, if a player suggested taking that sort of pool (maybe as an OAF "all-purpose gun", for example) to me, I'd certainly want to spend a few minutes hashing out just what sort of constraints he or she thinks that would impose on it before deciding on the final Limitation value. (Since attack powers are going to be highly useful in all but the most unusual campaigns, my instinct would be not to go higher than -1/2 without seriously compelling reason by default...but the player might surprise me.)

Re: Duplication vs Multiform...

I don't know...for some reason, the whole "scientist has a bunch of remote-controlled drones" bit says "Followers" or maybe "Summon" to me more than it does "Duplication". Any reason why they couldn't be built that way?

Re: Eldritch Wizardry VPP

Ice9 nails it for me. If "Only attacks" is -1/4' date=' "not attacks" must be an extremely high limitation. And no, he cannot take "flight, usable as an attack" and use it for beenficial purposes. His VPP is only for attacks, not only for mechanics that are called Attacks.[/quote']

 

Well, I was working from the more or less canonical list of Attack Powers in part because it was the first thing that came to mind as a possible definition of "okay, exactly what can I have in here?". If you're going to randomly snip off parts of that or otherwise define "attacks" more narrowly, then it may indeed be a larger Limitation -- conversely, if "attacks" were "anything that requires an Attack roll", you'd be even less limited as there are 'non-Attack Powers' that do.

 

Regarding Flight with UAA -- if the character can get that out of this Pool to use on enemies, then he can use it on himself or on allies. Just like he could use a regular 10d6 Blast to hit himself or them with if he really wanted.

Re: Eldritch Wizardry VPP

Sure' date=' there's plenty of utility value there. But it's definitely a subset of the utility you can get otherwise. Would you say that "Not Attacks" was anywhere [i']close[/i] to a -4 limitation? Or even -2?

 

I just don't think defense, healing, illusions, survival in strange conditions, transportation, scrying, and aiding people are collectively "less than a quarter" of what you would do with an unlimited VPP.

The question is not "can you still do plenty with only attacks"? It's "can you do almost as much with only attacks as you can with no limits?".

I can't think of anything right now that I'd call a -4 Limitation (well, maybe something along the lines of "Character dies, no save, standard means of resurrection will not work"...), and I'd be generally wary of giving out as much as -2 for any one Limitation just on principle. That's because, while it's easy to look at powers in a hypothetical vacuum and say "well, obviously a Blast that only affects Demons is horrendously more limited than one that can damage anything", in practice players (a) can be expected to get creative in working around their characters' limitations -- which is actually a good thing, but means those limitations can easily end up not being quite as limiting as they look -- and ( will naturally expect to see a return on their invested points. That "Blast only vs. Demons" could all too easily belong to a character who's a dedicated hunter of said beings (which will of course exist in this campaign and play at least an occasional role, otherwise the player shouldn't have to pay points for it at all) and for whom it'll be convenient to be able to hit them while not risking harm to innocents or collateral damage in general...

With regards to the "Attack Pool" we're discussing here, remember that last point: "Powers with the Usable As Attack Advantage". This character wants to fly? He can! He just has to define his Flight as an attack and hit himself with it rather than anybody else -- it won't be as point-effective as buying the power straight, but I'd certainly consider it a valid use of the pool.

Re: Presence power framework

The 25 points would be for Presence with the "for Presence Attacks only" limitation (-1' date=' no defense vs Presence, no skills), as I was comparing it to a Mental Entangle/Mind Control.[/quote']

 

Is "For Presence Attacks Only" a -1 Limitation, though? "Only To Protect Against Presence Attacks" is, yes; but defenses are supposed to be cheaper than the attacks they protect against, presumably in part because you have less control over when they'll be actually useful. In this case, PRE only for Presence Attacks is arguably less limited than PRE only to defend against them because you can choose when to make a Presence Attack, but not when you're going to be exposed to one yourself.

 

I'd say PRE for Presence Attacks only (no defense, no skill boost) looks about like -1/2 -- based in part on the not too farfetched notion that you might, oh, be planning to use it for Presence Attacks at every suitable opportunity. So for +50 PRE bought as such we're looking at...33 points. Still cheap? At first blush, maybe. But then this character has only a PRE of 10 against the Presence Attacks of others, only a base PRE roll of 11-, and his admittedly awesome 12d6 Presence Attack (12-72 points, should by itself get PRE+20 on 'mere' Normals pretty reliably and PRE+30 more often than not) is still subject to a metric buttload of situational modifiers, all but requires him to deliberately draw (potentially hostile) attention, and loses effectiveness with repeated use against the same target(s).

 

(Interestingly, the rulebook never seems to say if and when that repeated-use penalty ever goes away again. Now, I'd assume that the intent is that it eventually does 'reset', if only to avoid the hassle of tracking each and every Presence Attack ever made complete with notes on attacker and target(s), but a more literal-minded GM could have fun with that on occasion: "After you've tried this trick five times during your previous three encounters, Doctor Felonious knows quite well what to expect from you by now. Roll at -5d6, please.")

Re: Eldritch Wizardry VPP

Okay, the nominal list of "Attack Powers" as per 6E1 144 is as follows:

Blast

Change Environment

Characteristics (STR only)

Darkness

Dispel

Drain

Entangle

Flash

Hand-To-Hand Attack

Images

Killing Attack

Mental Blast

Mental Illusions

Mind Control

Reflection

Telekinesis

Transform

Powers with the Usable As Attack Advantage

Limited selection, relative to "all powers"? Sure. There'll be things you won't easily be able to do with this kind of pool. Limited enough to warrant more than -1/4, in and of itself? You be the judge -- I for one still see plenty of utility value in here, especially with the character free to customize his or her 'attacks'.

Re: Presence power framework

Blunt, maybe, but Presence attacks have fairly definite effects that are quite effective. While you can get similar (and more customized) results with Mental Entangle and limited Mind Control, you'll probably end up spending 3x the points for the same or less effect.

 

For instance, a 60 PRE gives you a zero-phase attack with a giant selective area that automatically hits and is beyond most foe's chance to resist. While the results vary, the minimum (at full effect) is losing a turn and being at 0 DCV, and it could easily force a surrender right there. Try getting that for 25 points. If anything, the problem can be that really high levels of Presence become overwhelming.

*checks book*

Um, doesn't a 60 PRE cost 50 points? (Granted, it has other benefits as well, including the potential for truly awesome Interaction Skill levels. Still, at this point we are talking about a fair-sized point investment...)

Re: Eldritch Wizardry VPP

I'd say that's far too low' date=' as a lot of flexibility is given up. It is certainly not a marginal decrease in utility.[/quote']

 

While it's true that giving up all those defensive and utility options kind of hurts, an "Attacks Only" pool still isn't the kind of thing you want to make too cheap for obvious reasons. Among them the facts that it lets you customize your attacks to whatever enemy you're facing on reasonably short notice and that the formal list of Attack Powers on 6E1 144 is actually still fairly diverse and impressive.

 

I don't know that I, personally, would feel comfortable setting that Limitation even as high as -1/2. There's still lots of potential for a suitably sneaky player not afraid to push it to its legitimate limits here. Thus -1/4 on the Control Cost actually does feel about right, to me.

Re: How to model Jade (from Whately)

Duplication with Altered Duplicates (and both Ranged and presumably Easy Recombination, as well as Time Limit) would seem to be at the core of it, yes. The default condition of the duplicates should probably be to be both Desolid and Invisible -- while one can see and attack the animated object, or a 'person' duplicate with suitable makeup (like Shroud), in their natural state they're invisible, intangible, and basically immune to physical attacks. The Advanced Player's Guide offers some Desolidification options which might be worth checking out, too -- most notably Merging.

Re: My Heroes Have Always Been GIANTS! (Long)

That's pretty much how Pym Particles work. They shunt/ pull mass from another dimension.

In fact, that's IIRC the default Marvel way of handling growth/shrinking/density manipulation. (The mass for density increase has to come from somewhere, too, after all; a character altering only his or her density while keeping mass constant would necessarily end up shrinking or growing as well.)

Doesn't really explain why that mass is in that conveniently accessible other dimension in the first place, of course, or why it always automatically matches whatever it needs to be applied to, or why it shifting back and forth like that seemingly at random (that is, as needed by the character in question and/or the plot) never seems to incur any unexpected side effects whatsoever. It's Handwavium at its finest.

Re: THE HERO SYSTEM BESTIARY: What Do *You* Want To See?

But can't you just derive these things from the creature write-ups?

Well, technically you can 'derive' all these things from just the core rulebooks. So why do we need a Bestiary at all, again?

Honestly, there are people out here who want to throw more money in Hero Games' general direction and are just looking for the proper excuses. The least one can do for them is try to provide those.

Re: Eldritch Wizardry VPP

I agree, Only Magic as a Limitation greater than -0 on the pool only makes sense if that does limit you somehow -- say, in a fantasy or "mystic masters" campaign where defenses, Dispels, and so on vs. magic are fairly common. In a regular superhero game where a Magic VPP is basically "I can do anything as long as I call it a spell", Only Magic isn't really limiting (and if your sorcerer-type character needs to gesture, incant, or concentrate to use his or her pool powers, well, those are Limitations in their own right).

For comparison purposes, consider that the other example -1/4 Limitation listed is "Only Attacks"...

It may be that I'm just being dense, but...shouldn't the required 'minimum' dimension for explosions be a straight 2m per Damage Class, rather than (2 * DC) + 2?

Let me take Kasdrevan's 8d6 Radius Explosion Blast from 6E1 323 as an example of what I mean. If I understand correctly, that Blast does its full damage to anything within 2m, then loses its successive highest dice for every 2m or fraction beyond that. So it's 8d6 out to 2m, 8d6 - (highest die) out to 4, 8d6 - (2 highest dice) out to 6...until we get to 8d6 - (7 highest dice) out to 16m. That's it; beyond that range, we're removing 8 or more dice out of 8 and so not dealing any damage at all.

Yet Kasdrevan's Blast is bought with an 18m Area Effect Radius, not 16. (Which is indeed the by-the-book notional minimum for an 8 DC Explosion and also incidentally just happens to cross the threshold to the next larger AoE Advantage, making the power that much more expensive.) But, why? It's not as though he's actually getting anything out of those extra 2m at the outer edge, after all; the damage drops off to zero before it gets there.

Right now, I can see three potential explanations:

1.) Yes, Area Effects bought as Explosions are supposed to include and pay for that "no effect" outer edge (possibly to compensate for the reduced Active Cost relative to standard Area Effects), and the fact that this occasionally leads to spending points on nothing useful is a feature, not a bug.

2.) I'm misunderstanding how explosion damage is supposed to drop off and thus underestimating the damage radius by just those 2m.

3.) The formula in the book is just off. (It could happen. )

But which is it?

Re: Quick Question from a New Hero

I'm pretty sure that that is illegal by RAW' date=' but more importantly seems either counter-productive or munchkiny, not sure which...[/quote']

 

Oh, and here's a relevant quote from the Follower description in 6E1, emphasis mine (the same line is repeated verbatim in the Contact and DNPC entries, by the way): "[...] A character cannot take the same NPC as both a Contact and a DNPC, as a Follower and a Contact, or as a Follower and a DNPC unless the GM specifically permits him to."

 

So...while it's not the default, the GM explicitly can allow it on a case-by-case basis.

Re: Quick Question from a New Hero

Actually, I'd consider J. Jonah Jameson Spider-Man's main Hunted. No, really. All the assorted villains in Spidey's Rogues' Gallery, well, they pop up from time to time so he has somebody to fight for the readers' entertainment -- but who's the person who's always there and on his case, no matter what else is going on? JJ, that's who.

Re: Common 6E House Rules

I think you're getting hung up with the Mechanic (roll again after you've seen your roll) and the Effect (you hit more often). As I said, if you want to hit more often we already have a mechanic in Torg to allow that, and the recoverable charge simply means you can only use it once per day.

 

As an alternative, you could allow a miscellaneous advantage that allowed the CSL to be used after the roll (I'd reckon that's probably a +1/2 or +1 advantage).

Well, yes, it's entirely possible that I'm getting hung up on the mechanic.

Then again, if the mechanic is what I want to model in the first place, I'd say I'm just a little bit entitled.

Re: Common 6E House Rules

You wouldn't. All this does is affect the probability of hitting/missing. CSLs do that for Hero. Something like +2CSLs' date=' 1 Recoverable charge (charge recovers if attack hits without needing these CSLs)[/quote']

 

There is a practical difference between having to guess in advance when you might need your expendable resources and being able to delay that decision until you have more solid information. Elvish Accuracy is a case of the latter -- it lets you reroll as a free action after you've already seen the initial roll, but only once per encounter. That sort of thing isn't easy to model in Hero 6E; Heroic Action Points and some of the Luck options from the APG (including the one brought up by etherio) seem to come closest, but aren't quite as reliable as I'd like.

 

Hm...then again...

 

"Luck (to determine the number of re-rolls at the beginning of a game session as per APG p. 105), Standard Effect (automatic 1 reroll/die of Luck), Re-Rolls Apply Only To Attack Rolls (-1/2 or so, since besides not helping me much outside combat this doesn't let me re-roll damage but is still highly useful)"

 

Maybe we're starting to get somewhere after all.