Jeff

Originally posted by Zan the Gamer

What I've decided on for my game is that FW counts as an advantage when determining how much DC's your attack can do. I am letting him have it with all attacks. I am saying that it can't be used 3 times on one enemy (and not giving it a limitation for that). The thing I'm now worried about, is that he has bought it in a Multi-Power Pool. So it's really cheap to undo my starting limit, like it was never there to begin with.

 

Would it be better for this campaign to not have FW or should it be left alone? Please, tell me what you think.

 

Thanks for your time and patience.

 

~ Zan

I think counting it against DC limits is just the thing to do.

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Originally posted by dugfromthearth

okay mental sense group.

 

what are the rules for a mental sense group?

It'll be vulnerable to mental sense group Flashes, Darkness, Invisibility, etc. Since it's an unusual sense group, there aren't the free adders you can get basing it on (e.g.) the sight group. It's going to be subject to normal range modifiers.

Originally posted by dugfromthearth

if someone has Fred handy can they look up mental powers.

 

I believe that mental powers are restricted to LoS, and require actually seeing the target to be used - unless you have a mind scan link to the target.

 

Since this detect is defined as a mental power it would function in the same way - the mentalist would have to see the target in order to detect the mind.

 

So this would let the mentalist note that the guy in front of him is actually an automaton, or that the statue in front of him actually has a human mind, but it would not let them detect an invisible person.

 

I could be wrong. I don't have Fred with me. But I am fairly confident mental powers require LoS unless you have a mind scan link.

Mental Powers are generally line of sight, yes. However, I'm not sure why on earth this would be defined as a mental power (for that game-mechanical purpose). I take it it's being defined as a sense in the mental sense group, but that's another thing entirely and doesn't carry a line of sight restriction any more than Mind Scan does.

I don't see a problem with it at all. It doesn't replicate Mind Scan, in that it does take range mods and so won't be usable across the planet like Mind Scan is. It's also a very natural power for a psi to have.

I don't see any reason to limit it to line of sight, not when it's not a sight-group power. (If it were, it'd get many of those adders free.)

It's not to do with the game mechanics - I think other posters have those covered well - but tapping the nexus of energies of a Demonlair for a magical boost seems altogether too much like asking Dr. Destroyer for some powered armor design help or Teleios for a boost to your physique or mental prowess. Great fun for a diabolical GM, mind you - but Asking For It on the part of the players.

Originally posted by Nightshade

Exactly. This is the feel I want (specialists are the norm), but I don't want to preclude someone getting more than one style. Powerful characters and villians may have mastered more than one style.

 

But, like I said, I need to make it such that there are enough spells in every style to make it worthwhile to take at all. I want every style to have enough versatility to stand on its own and have interesting effects, but have enough limitations and effects that there are always weaknesses to the style.

 

How many spells are necessary to get that feel? How many are too many?

 

Nightshade

I think it'd be enough just not to include some effects in any given style and make sure some limitations are universal within it. Let the variety fill out as much as you like otherwise.

Similarly, I don't think a minimum quantity of spells in a style will ensure that it will have enough to stand on its own, not if they don't manage to hit crucial functions between them. Just make sure they cover those when you're writing up the spells for each style.

Originally posted by Lestat

A lot of DCV would be more expensive and don't give the sicurity to avoide every blow, that is what my player wants. I am not very expert with Hero System, this power construction is abusive?

I wouldn't say abusive. But it will have some odd implications. Folks with Affects Desolid attacks will somehow be able to hit someone who's just fast where hyper-accurate light-speed supersmart homing missiles can't. You're not going to be able to carry someone when you're running like that unless you buy Affect Real World on STR.

Have you considered DCV levels for the effect instead of Desolidification? They're the usual way to be hard to hit, and the limitations involved seem to have the effect of just making Desolidification work like lots of DCV levels would in the first place.

Could you say a bit more about the magic system(s) in use, particularly about how magic is bought for the character? If they have to pay for spells normally, I'm not sure how much reason there is for a maximum number of spells in a given style. If they're paying a flat amount for access to all the spells of the style as in some of the FH magic systems, it's quite another story.

Originally posted by Lord Liaden

Thanks for the suggestions so far, gang, keep 'em coming. I think I should clarify that while the suggestions by OddHat and altamaros are poetically rich and very appropriate for the creation of an unholy artifact, they don't really relate to the "arcanokinetic" powers of the Golden Crown. I'd prefer that the Crowns have some connection to the quality of the forces they command, as well as to sin, corruption and Krim. OddHat's origin for the Shadow Crown out of darkness and torment does have possibilities, though.

It's hard to come up with an origin story with a very close connection to plain magic force. Maybe the thing to do is to embrace the symbolic connections. Gold is the symbol of wealth, and wealth is the form of power most familiar throughout human history. It can move things without the crass need for direct physical contact, much less sweaty labor, remaining pristine in its beauty and remoteness. That sort of context might make altamaros' origin proposal more suitable - the Golden Crown is created from the corrupt power of wealth itself in a forge of pain and death.

I can see a Bone Crown. In ancient times, priests of Krim searched the land to find the patriarch of the largest, happiest living family. They were all taken and imprisoned. One by one, they were tortured and killed in the presence of the loving patriarch, and their corpses were brought back in undeath to sing to him night and day of what they were and his utter failure to save them. In the end, all that was left was a horde of cackling undead and one tormented old man. The final tortures for him were almost an afterthought, but they still made it last months. When he was finally dead, his spirit was bound to his skull to bear witness to centuries of atrocities. The Bone Crown was crafted from that skull.

Most likely, it would be capable of summoning and commanding the undead - Takofanes most certainly excepted - and maybe manipulating living bone as well.

Originally posted by Farkling

I'd give old Bats Danger Sense...

He has vast experience, knowledge, perception, and practice.

As far as that goes, it's sounding like KS's, Deduction, INT, and PER roll bonuses - just in vast quantities. That's particularly fitting since you'd want those for Batman quite apart from anything to do with picking up danger.

Is this a KS: Supervillan roll? KS: Coal Processing? Or Danger Sense?

 

quote:

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"Alfred, I'm leaving. Tell Tim to monitor for my call. There's been a robbery at the coal plant by the Joker. There are only three things that he would want that much carbon for, and none of them are good for the city."

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Deduction, KS: Joker, various KS's and/or SC's - all things you can't model Bats without already. I can't see this as an example of Danger Sense at all, much less a good example that he's got to have it. (I'm not married to the notion he can't - I just think he's the world's best candidate for getting away without it on account of quite a bit else.)

quote:

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"Hmm. There's only five of them. They seem unusually confident. Where is the sniper then?"

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A good example of Deduction at work, possibly with complementary rolls of Tactics and KS: Thugs.

Again:

 

 

Or the classic one from Kingdom Come::

Voice from the Darkness in the Batcave "Bruce?"

Bats: "Oh...it's you."

Superman steps forth from the Shadows "You expected me?"

Bats: "I knew you'd be by sooner or later Clark."

 

That one makes it seem like Danger Sense to me...admittedly, he may have made a PER roll and a KS roll to realize it was Superman and that no harm was meant...but it just feels so much more like a PC saying "is Bats in danger?" and getting a firm No from the GM...

Can't exactly tell you you're feeling wrong there, but I can say it's not a vibe I get. Deduction and KS: Superman (ya, he's got that too - he knows the man) would lead to an expectation; a PER roll would recognize the voice.

I can't see this as simply the result of information he's not in danger, either. "Not in danger" plus "someone's here" doesn't get you to "it's just Supes" - not without things like Deduction and PER rolls on the part of the character or canny inference on the part of the player. And, alas, we can't model Batman saying he must only be played by canny players although that'd probably be better than 1000 points in skills and talents to get him right.

I think the difference is degree...in a Heroic level game...or Street/Dark Level Champions I'd probably opt for the PER approach.

Funny thing - in a heroic game, you could never afford the vast wealth of skills and PER roll bonuses that would account for his ability plausibly to get away without buying Danger Sense.

For Batman, I think Danger Sense is a bit of a cheat or a temptation to be controlled, since it may lead you to model the character without all the skills he should have and an awareness of their full application.

In Full Supers and higher, I'd put Danger Sense in the package also...that Danger Sense roll would do wonders for the callous attitude Batman has towards some emergencies. Emergencies that aren't really emergencies in the sense of "endangerment" of the populace. Gives a great reason for the serndipity effect that Batman has too...maybe a broader form of Clairsentience would be more appropriate in that case...after all...he shows up in adventures with other heroes when things have gone completely wrong...

He's got the Really Popular Character Perk for that.

The worry about cumulative Healing is that it would make damage pretty meaningless after a short while out of combat.

But if you're not worried much about it, you can take advantages to increase the frequency with which Healing may be usefully re-applied. It's +1/4 per step down from daily, so +1 1/2 gets you down to once per turn. FH allows AE radius to be a "voice radius", anyone within earshot, which should be another element you're after. So you might have something like:

1d6 standard Healing, reapplicable after 1 turn (+1 1/2), AE- voice radius (+1), extra time - 1 turn (-1 1/4), incantations (-1/4), or 14 real points if not for the likely additional limitations.

Since you've got a low base point level and you're piling on advantages, you might opt to get a Healing that covers several characteristics at once. +1/2, for instance, would do STUN and BODY together, for much faster BODY Healing than standard Healing offers.

Originally posted by McCoy

And FREd contradicts that opinion, p. 64, "(base ability is Detect Danger Detectable By Normal Human Senses In Combat, Including Range To Danger [5 Character Points], Increased Arc Of Perception [360 Degrees; +5 points], plus Targeting; Only If Make Half Roll [-1])"

 

"Detectable By Normal Human Senses"

 

Precognition or paranoia is a matter of Special Effect, not mechanics. Bat's Perception roll should be 13-, are we to assume his attackers NEVER make their stealth roll? That level of luck seems more supernatural that reacting to subliminal danger cues. He is sometimes suprised, not as often as someone with a 20 INT should be.

Should this be a new thread yet?

I think you might be underestimating Batman's PER roll there. I figure he's a good candidate for INT 23, paying past NCM or not. But more than that, chuckles has a PER roll that's boosted well above that, maybe from levels, maybe from the enhanced PER roll route, maybe both, and he's likely got a host of skills a GM would allow as complementary to PER rolls under those circumstances. A specific Danger Sense probably isn't necessary for him - the PER rolls are routinely high enough that any natural skill vs. skill contest is a losing proposition for the ambushers.

Sapphire's the only one with enough verve to her to make the exercise of creating a better origin worth the effort to me, and I don't really mind hers. The rest range from bland placeholders - Defender, Ironclad - to mildly annoying placeholders - Witchcraft, Nighthawk.

I can tolerate Witchcraft. The trick is not comparing her with anyone or anything, including quite possibly empty spaces. I can't quite pull that off in Nighthawk's case.

If you've tossed both of them, the quickest and easiest way to fill back blank spaces is to save Solitaire and Seeker from the 4th Ed Killer's deadly clutches and install them in their place. Solitaire's mysticism can be suitably downplayed, and Seeker's never brooded a day in his life.

Allowing multipowers should go a long, long way toward getting a variety of effects. So will writing them up yourself and providing a lot of non-combat applications.

One other reason not to put Stronghold in Antarctica is that you want to get supervillains there quickly - less time for them to wake up, less time for someone to intercept them. Transporting them in the U.S. also gives you plenty of PRIMUS and superhero backup nearby in case of incidents. Antarctic Stronghold may be reasonably convenient for Argentinian authorities - assuming they're locking up supervillains - but being out of the way provides its own problems as well as advantages.

I think the NND Standard is a useful sufficient condition for judging special effects as adequately tight for an EC. I'm not sure I would buy it as necessary. I think Telekinetic Powers would do too, but there's no readily available way to turn them off, other than the obvious render the user unconscious. Does that count? I should hope not, as it would then make any bunch of powers that are apparently non-persistent EC candidates.

I think someone should have some very useful information about your likely range of abilities if he knows you've got a particular EC, and that the GM should have a very good idea of the many powers that would never fit in there either. By that standard, Weather Powers are in, Mental Powers are in (not as a game-mechanical group, but as a special effects one), a suitably regulated Android Body is in, Mutant Powers are out, Andromedan Powers are way out, Powered Armor is out, and Robot is out. Other characters and the GM have no idea whatever comes in the Mutant Power or Andromedan Power box, and precious little what's in the Powered Armor or Robot package.

Part of suitably regulating the Android Body package is keeping it down to obvious and readily expected Android Body abilities - Armor, increased STR without figured characteristics, maybe some automaton powers, and some elements of Life Support. No blasters, no internal rockets, no teleportation systems, since none of those are virtually inevitable as an android. Mind you, a lot of these abilities that are in aren't normal for EC's - but I'm thinking they've got the best justification, in that they're filling the SFX requirement suberbly.

You might well on this basis disallow an EC that doesn't include some of these.

Another element in this is that perhaps the EC should imply a good bit about the character outside the EC as well. EC Werewolf Powers may be most palatable because we all know the laundry list of disads that will go with it. EC Android Body is going to imply a bunch of those too - and possession of those may be required to allow the player to take the android body powers as an EC at all, without having the change the way the EC itself is bought.

Magical Powers probably wouldn't fit, since they're so broad in range in a typical superheroic game. But if you're running a game with stricter magic limits, that might not apply any longer.

Many published characters are likely to fail by these standards, but we're used to that. Maybe they should just be rewritten with purely cosmetic, no game-mechanical effect, no cost savings EC's.

Re: that is forbidden

Originally posted by dugfromthearth

setting an amount of a defense is either against the rules or something the rules say you are not supposed to do.

 

I do it.

 

But I believe the rules say not to.

They do. But if you're going to make Mental and/or Power Defense a figures characteristic, they become a normal defense, so that restriction would no longer be appropriate.

Originally posted by Hugh Neilson

But if bricks are truly overpowered because STR is cheap, I would suggest that, when I set a campaign ground rule of "Everyone selects their character independently", I would get a disproportionate number of Brick proposals. I've done that. Getting two Brick proposals is pretty rare. Everyone (or even a large majority) having an EC is rare.

 

[before we start that thread, the idea is "send a brief character outline" indepoendently - if someone else already took that schtick, I'll reject the later one. But I have never had to reject a Brick. I have had a group co-ordinate character selection and argue about who would play the Brick - everyone thought we should have one, but no one wanted to play him.]

I have a hard time getting someone to play a brick. When they do, it's not because they get whomping heap-loads of point efficiency in figured characteristics - it's because they want to fling things around and soak up punishment. And if someone wants to play a martial artist, they're going to expect to have and are almost certain to get DCV's and plentiful phases enough to avoid the need to use lots of PD, REC, and STUN. Much the same goes for other non-brick character concepts. Demonstrating a high STR amounts to putting a great big "Hit Me" sign on - you're likely to scare people, they know you've probably got the defenses to make taking you down not a thing for half-measures, and most importantly, you're almost certainly elminating any range mod penalties for them voluntarily by closing in to whack them.

Originally posted by Alcamtar

Good call, I missed that. But I think that makes it awfully cheap... the costs would be:

 

up to 44 AP spell: "Scribe Scroll" is 11 AP, 1 real

up to 76 AP spell: "Scribe Scroll" is 19 AP, 2 real

up to 108 AP spell: "Scribe Scroll" is 27 AP, 3 real

 

For 1 CP, a typical heroic wizard with a 40 AP limit could make scrolls of any spell he knows! If you want scrolls to be commonplace and cheap so that every wizard keeps a few on hand, this would do it. (I'd enforce the INT/5 limit though; so you can trade scrolls with another wizard to obtain spells you don't have access to, but you can't collect and carry around a truckload of them.) But if scrolls are to be uncommon and valuable, then I think I'd have to disallow this method and stick to method II, so that each one costs CP.

 

Mike

It takes one day and it's Very Difficult to obtain inks. A guideline for that amount of difficulty is 100 times an average daily wage, comparable danger, or maybe a skill roll at -4. I think that secures you against scrolls coming out by the cartload pretty well if enforced already.

Also, the Incantation value will be -1/4, unless these are constant spells with incantations required throughout; I suspect they're not. That might have a minute effect on the round-off points.

Originally posted by TheEmerged

Rational is pretty simple, actually -- it's already true but for a technicality.

 

When you buy that first point of MD as a power, you get EGO/5 points of it "for free". In effect, you already had it but couldn't use it.

Okay. I'd take that as a very good reason for keep minimum costs for Mental Defense. I hadn't gotten out of the habit of assuming them.

Speaking as a GM that has done this with EGO for a long time, I find that it helps to mitigate some of the problems with ECV powers in the first place. This is especially true since 5th Edition made the earlier option from "Ultimate Mentalist" regarding Cumulative for mental powers official.

With little mental powers going past no defenses to build up to a decisive effect with a few repeated applications? Hmm. I can see that, but then, I think that cat gets out of the bag various ways already and I haven't come across it more than theoretically.

I'm a lot more worried about that with Transform.

My ex-wife used to plead for more disadvantages in play. The psychological limitations, Hunted's, and DNPC's she picked up were legendary.