Chimera 12

Re: WF: Thrown Weapon (5th) Of course, what is or isn't a 'common' weapon is going to be somewhat campaign dependent. Just for starters, I take exception to the book listing slings and staffs (!) as 'uncommon' missile and melee weapons -- just because they didn't play a major role on the medieval battlefield proper certainly doesn't mean there weren't plenty of perfectly common folk who knew how to use them! Conversely, it's debatable whether swords, axes, and polearms should really count as 'common' weapons in a modern-day campaign anymore... But that's mainly an issue of personal taste. Myself, I'd probably do away with the 2-point groups altogether but let familiarity with a weapon that's commonly used both in melee or thrown count for either purpose, and while sais (for example) probably don't get thrown much in real life (as I understand it, the real thing is usually blunt, so the best you could hope for would be to bonk your opponent on the head in a dramatic fashion), I'd let a player get away with that for a suitably cinematic campaign. WF: Thrown Sword, now, that would certainly be distinct from just plain old WF: Swords.

Re: 4th-6th VPP Question True. As you said yourself earlier in your post, a Cosmic VPP can be considered basically a Multipower with unlimited slots. (A less-than-Cosmic VPP can still be read as a Multipower that trades off ease of switching powers for unlimited slots, for that matter.) Thus, that kind of evolution feels natural enough that I'd have no trouble allowing it.

Re: 4th-6th VPP Question I'm still trying to puzzle this out for myself, to be honest, and I had a somewhat lengthy post mulling it over already written up...but in the process, it occurred to me that it may simply come down to this: The reason you get a cost break on a Multipower at all is that it's supposed to be a limitation. You get a bunch of powers cheaper than you normally would because you can't use them all at once at full strength. However, a VPP is already limited in a similar fashion. You get cheap access to a potentially infinite number of powers because, again, you can't use them all at once at full strength. So if you put a Multipower into a VPP? You're basically trying to make any given hypothetical power in your framework even cheaper...by claiming two separate cost breaks for what's essentially the same limitation on it. And that's a no-go.

Re: Female Master Villains Not to worry, I agree with you on that point. (I think -- it's really gotten way too late for me to still be posting.) I just dislike the Lady of Pain in particular; I may find the energy and brainpower to rant semi-coherently about my reasons some more another time, but no promises.

Re: Blindness and CSLs

Re: 4th-6th VPP Question

Re: Blindness and CSLs By the book, if your CVs are going to be halved or otherwise adjusted by a percentage (setting to 0 counts), that's the last step in the calculation and happens after you've applied your skill levels already. Now, you could come up with a house rule that states that Combat Skill Levels apply after that notionally 'final' step instead of their usual one, I suppose. It's your campaign (I presume ). Just keep in mind that such a rule will make CSLs more generally useful while lessening the impact of other factors in turn -- for example, if you have a couple of skill levels that apply fully even when blinded, then being able to succeed at that PER roll or having an extra sense to cover for your blindness immediately matter that much less.

Re: Female Master Villains So what? "Rocks fall, everybody dies!" can do the exact same thing...does this Lady do anything actually interesting besides that? (A cursory reading of the D&D4 Manual of the Planes would seem to suggest that the answer actually is, in fact, "No"...)

Re: Worst Hero Names (of your campaigns) I never saw that, but now I wonder if it could have been a shout-out to his work on Villains & Vigilantes. Where one of the villains starring in the scenario included in the box (Crisis at Crusader Citadel) was a power-armor user going by by the acronym/name F.I.S.T., if memory serves...I think it may have stood for 'Flying Infantry Shock Trooper', after the project he stole the suit from, but don't quote me on this. It's been years since I even remember seeing the book last, though I'm sure I still have it somewhere. That said...'Fist-man'? Ouch. Is it just me, or does that name evoke unfortunate associations for anybody else?

Re: 4th-6th VPP Question When you come down to it, a VPP that can fully emulate a Multipower without properly containing one is pretty much Cosmic by definition -- it needs to provide the ability to switch between powers as a zero-phase action without requiring a skill roll that Multipowers get for free by taking the appropriate Advantages or it just won't work as well. Of course, a Cosmic VPP has an immediate edge over any Multipower of the same 'size' (speaking in terms of Pool or Reserve respectively): it has a potentially infinite number of virtual 'slots' that don't need to be defined in advance. A "gadget" pool probably shouldn't have that flexibility unless you want to model the kind of super-gadgeteer who does in fact always have the right item to hand just as he or she needs it. (For that kind of character, it's just about right.) On the other hand, gadgets are in and of themselves pretty much a catch-all category -- buy just about any Power, put it into a Focus of your choice, and presto! Instant gadget! So, the "gadget pool" concept is not in and of itself particularly restrictive. So...a character who wants to use a VPP to pretend it can include one or more Multipowers, yet can only swap the actual devices carried in his lab back home or a similar situation? I'd call that perhaps a -1/4 Limitation, given that "can only change powers in his or her lab at all" is only -1/2 and this version is actually a good bit more permissive than that. (Having to pre-design the carried gadgets and get them approved by the GM is something I'd be inclined to call a -0 Limitation at most -- basically, a reminder that you should be doing that anyway for ease of play.) Of course, since we're talking about gadgets, the VPP should probably also take an appropriate Focus Limitation on its Control Cost -- another -1/4 if the character should be able to have the occasional IIF piece of gear, more if we're willing to have every gadget that's going to be in the pool more obvious and/or accessible than that. So, let's say -1/2 total. That may not sound like much, but this is still a character who has instantaneous access to every power of every gadget he or she is actually considered to be carrying with him or her. (And I don't see much point in distinguishing between 'single-power' and 'multipower' items in this respect, given that the player can define which is which to taste.) Knocking the Pool's final Control Cost down from 3x to only 2x normal doesn't sound too shabby in lights of that. Finally, a thought. Possibly a heretical one, mind. If all you really want your character to be able to do is carry along some equipment that may vary from one scenario to the next but isn't very likely to change during actual play...why not just ask your GM for permission to trade in old pieces of gear for new ones between adventures? If any part of your character sheet has a good excuse to be less than eternally unchanging and sacrosanct, any gadgets listed would arguably be it.

Re: What's in a name? "Watch your purse and your children around that one, he's a Virus." Sorry, it's the first thing that popped into my mind when I read the name of the Duchy. So don't be too surprised if it occurs to your players as well. Of the choices given, though, I'd be inclined to go with "Vironian" as well.

Re: More Complications, Please As an afterthought: It occurs to me that the idea that players are expected to load their characters down with Complications may owe something not so much to the rules of previous editions themselves or personal play experience as to the presentation of most if not all 'canon' characters in pre-6E supplements. I'm certainly the first person to admit that I missed out on Fifth Edition and so can't comment on that with any authority, but I can open practically any 4E book I still own to the character section more or less at random and within a minute or two at most find something that makes me nod and think "Aha, here is where the designer was desperately scrabbling for some more points". And if that's the case with 'official' characters that the players are going to take as examples and inspiration on how to build their own, it naturally sets a precedent. (Alternatively, maybe this just says something about me. But in either case I think it's saying something. )

Re: More Complications, Please Personally, I'm fine with the lowered point threshold on Complications. To me, it means I can better concentrate on the 'core' issues of my character -- those that are central to his or her concept first and foremost, above and beyond the routine call of duty -- and then stop instead of having to come up with increasingly far-fetched problems just to get my point budget up to where it should have been in the first place. To those who would argue that if I can't come up with enough Complications, I must therefore not know my character well enough and/or that he or she must necessarily be a two-dimensional cardboard cutout, I'll say only this: I truly hope that the day when the only things that are allowed to define my characters are the numbers and cryptic pieces of game jargon on a sheet of paper -- or in a file on some computer, I suppose -- never comes.

Re: Musings on Grab Yes, and if I take "Missing one hand" on a per-finger basis, I should get more points out of it, too. Honestly, a case can arguably be made that adding to hand-to-hand damage is the primary use of STR in combat. There are others, but they're kind of secondary to "each time I land a blow in melee, I get to roll this many extra dice". Taking Hand-to-Hand Attack is basically saying that you're willing to settle for getting only that main benefit in order to get a cost break, and for that sort of thing a -1/4 Limitation looks fine to me. A Limitation that restricts me to only using a power, skill, or other ability in the way I plan to use it anyway isn't that much of a limitation, after all.

Re: Musings on Grab Well, extra STR only to improve your hold and/or increase damage in a grab should technically still be a viable option (though off the top of my head I'm not sure what the best Limitation value for that would be). After all, Hand-to-Hand Attack is itself kind of explained as 'limited STR' in its description, so there's precedent for that sort of thing. That said, simply allowing a character to increase damage from a grab via appropriate CSLs, Martial Arts extra DCs, or a HA with the right special effect wouldn't strike me as horribly unbalancing. You still have to make an attack roll each time you want to actually deal that damage, after all; it's not 'automatic'. (Unless one wanted to argue that it indeed is that one time after the Grab has been established, but then you had to hit for that in the first place, too...) And yeah, the Grab rules do rather seem to unconsciously assume that everybody on the playing field is of more or less humanoid configuration (and usually size) by default, don't they? Is there any chance that we could get a representative of Tentacle Monsters Anonymous in here to comment on this?

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

Re: THE HERO SYSTEM BESTIARY: What Do *You* Want To See? I don't know if it's an option, but just because I've been spending some time recently trying to puzzle out how to best implement that sort of thing myself: how about a giant monster (of any type, really -- oversized amoeba, kaiju, giant space whale, whatever) with a proper "swallow whole" attack?

Re: Common 6E House Rules Is this still about my house rule, or yours? More seriously, the main issue isn't the precise OCV (or other) penalty. It's that the way you've worded your proposal makes it sound as though you're suggesting that a character who realizes his or her Haymaker isn't going to work out should be allowed to travel back in time -- to the "normal (non-haymaker) time" at which he or she could have decided to do something else but didn't -- and change his or her mind about performing the Haymaker in the first place. Which of course would imply rewinding everything else that has happened in the meantime,too -- including the target's decision to move, which might now turn out differently... On the other hand, maybe what you're trying to suggest is just that somebody who sees his or her Haymaker is going to miss should be allowed to 'abort' to a normal Strike right then and there, possibly at a significant penalty. I suppose that could in fact be an option; but to be honest, in this situation I'd probably stick with the normal rules for aborting an action and only allow the would-be attacker to abort to defend, not to switch to another attack.

Re: Senseless Thread The secret fear of shopping females across the multiverse: Flash vs. Fashion Sense.

Re: Shield of Thunder. That's exactly what I plan to do. I just needed to get the previous post out of my system.

Re: Common 6E House Rules That, I think, would on the other hand be a bit too generous. After all, you could get pretty much those same benefits by simply using a Strike rather than a Haymaker in the first place; if you chose not to, well, the game doesn't support 'rewinding' very well. (Which incidentally struck me only yesterday while idly musing how one would model D&D4's 'reroll' powers like Elven Accuracy via Hero, which doesn't have much support for "okay, you can ignore this outcome you don't like and try again"-type effects that I could think of off the top of my head. Maybe Extra-Dimensional Movement, through time, only to the previous phase... )

Re: Shield of Thunder. Final comment on the shield OCV vs. DCV issue, now that I got my official "common sense" answer from the rules forum: Apparently, there really is a clash between three different approaches to the subject. (1) The "Shield rule" in the book, which says that your shield's DCV bonus can apply to OCV when blocking, but doesn't mention any loss of that bonus to DCV...thus implying by omission that a shield should really be bought to provide benefits to both DCV and OCV, the latter only to block. (2) The "obvious" way to do it according to people familiar with earlier editions -- including, apparently, Steve Long himself --, which is that "if you use the bonus for OCV, you can't apply it to DCV at the same time". The main problem with this approach is that, while logical enough in and of itself and makes a decent house rule, it doesn't actually follow from what's written in the 6E rulebooks at all. It also clashes with the way shields are built; see below. (3) And then there's the way shields are actually constructed in terms of game mechanics -- which is to say, as pure DCV bonuses with Focus and STR Minimum limitations. Let me reiterate, in 6E that means their benefit is a straight characteristic increase, not a combat skill level; the latter could be reallocated, the former not so much. (When was the last time your GM let you spontaneously apply the points you spent on INT to your EGO instead?) This clashes with both of the above approaches since it implies that a shield should provide no OCV bonus at all because none was ever paid for -- but then the "shield rule" makes no sense whatsoever. My conclusion? None of the above approaches is, in and of itself, any less valid than its alternatives. However, they are not particularly compatible with each other -- at least not on one and the same individual item, a campaign could certainly have different types of shields work differently if that kind of detail is desired --, and since there is no one 'obvious' default after all (some protestations to the contrary notwithstanding), it's up to a given shield's or similar item's/power's designer (who may or may not be the GM as well) to decide which one he or she is actually going to use for the item or power in question and be ready to explain that if necessary.

Re: Common 6E House Rules

Re: Common 6E House Rules

Re: Common 6E House Rules