Jeff

I've seen Mental Defense as a figured characteristic for house rules often enough. I don't recall seeing a rationale for it though, and none spring to mind. Me, I like it that having any Mental Defense (or Power Defense) at all is something distinctive, and Power Defense seems too exotic to me to be appropriately based on a characteristic.

Re: Re: Scrolls Thanks! You know, coming to think of it, I've got a background in which powerful magic has been lost - a lot lost way back in the Twilight Age, a lot lost with the end of the age of elves and the beginning of the age of man, a lot lost with the War of the Gods, a lot lost with the fall of the old Empire of Phonnor, and a lot more lost most recently (three centuries back) with the Wizard Wars. (The entire school of thaumaturgy ceased to function as part of the collateral damage.) I don't need scrolls to have prepared spells you cast by reading them and then they fade away for oohs and aahs to do with scrolls - I can get that if some of them are just records of spells that have otherwise been lost. If you only have access to one of those and a rationale to buy that spell, a spell with capabilities no contemporary spell has - well, you've got something quite a lot better than a "mere" magic item, much less a single-use one.

I'm creating a campaign world and its magic system(s). Call it Middle Fantasy in aim - all sorts of non-human humanoids about, classic monsters in far-off places, and magic isn't just legendary. But it's not something that's a routine fact-of-life for the vast majority of humans at least, not in the current age, and you don't have mages taking on armies or reshaping the world in the current age either. I'm wondering about scrolls. Modelling D&D is in no way a goal. Given that, how much call is there to do scrolls beyond as normal non-magical written media? Magic suitable for combat use exists, assuming you can swallow typical full phase casting, gestures, incantations, Magic skill rolls, and frequently concentration, so they wouldn't be urgently useful as a means of packing away a long casting time outside of combat. Is that prepared spell role for scrolls common to much fantasy outside of D&D and clearly derivative works? If I don't want them for that, does anyone have any alternative visions of a role for scrolls that might make them fresh, new, and fun?

Me neither, but it happened anyway. You'd have to buy all the powers that can be in the VPP with a limitation "Only usable when no more than X real points in use by other powers with this limitation". How much is that worth? I'd be surprised at more than -1/2. It amounts to eliminating the point of VPP's from the game - which, incidentally, would make doing Batman pretty much impossible. We've got frameworks for good reasons.

Thanks, all. I was really hoping Usable on Others could be part of the solution, but I'm not married to it. Losing the focus limitation wouldn't do it, as the ultimate problem is just that cap on usable on others - it's just not going to be so glaringly wrong without the focus involved, but it's still going to be wrong. I think I'll plunk down on the Summon route. It'd be very tidy for my conjuration school anyway, since that's how I'm handling whipping up rafts, canoes, carts, and cabins for them already. I'd been reluctant to use Summon for this since vehicles and computers are written up as characters of sorts and foci aren't, but I figure that's a line I can tolerate crossing. I think Summon might do better than Transform since the actual capabilities of the finished product have a tighter relation there to the cost of the spell to produce it than they would with a Transform. Mechanically, this could open up a worrisome possibility of an alternative way to make magic items. But I'm the GM and perfectly able to quash attempts to use the mechanic to produce lasting magic items. I wouldn't mind it necessarily for some spell for a temporary magic item, but my conjuration school is all about the creation of mundane things through magic.

I'm trying to do a spell. I'd like to conjure a sword out of thin air. After it's conjured, it's a perfectly ordinary sword, for anyone to use, to take away wherever, a sword that can go on to have a perfectly ordinary sword-y life just like all the other swords that started life in a forge. I'd rather not just use Major Transform if I can avoid it, since, after all, we're not supposed to use Major Transform for creating weapons. We're supposed to use Usable on Others. So I go there. It starts off without range. If you get it range, it still requires line of sight and will go away if the caster is unconscious. But getting it 0 END and Persistent can fix that. Ordinary swords don't go poof when the swordsmith dies, so that needs to be fixed. Uncontrolled should do that, and it would cut off the range tie completely. The next kicker though is that a swordsmith isn't kept from forging new swords because he's already forged a few already. But at least normally, when you use Usable on Other to grant someone a power, you can't then go on and grant it to one person more after another while the first person gets to keep using it. You can increase the number of people who can use it simultaneously, but that doesn't get you true independence of the later applications from the earlier ones - it just delays, at a fair cost in active points, the time at which you run into the Conjure No More barrier. I'd find it plausible to rule that Uncontrolled might cut that tie too. If not, is there anything else that would, or are we forced back to Major Transform in the end anyway?

I'd second the Summoning route. They may not need to be quite slavishly loyal if arguing or going their own way is possible. Images won't do if they actually do anything but get seen and heard; you'd need to link it to attacks for them with a physical manifestation limitation - at which point you're essentially recreating Summoning the hard way. One-hit/one-kill is just a matter of BODY 1, STUN 1, and a physical limitation that it can't survive being Stunned or Knocked Out. (Probably a small one given a small BODY value.)

Much less one the character doesn't know about....

Pardon me if it's been asked before, but if it has, I haven't been able to locate the answer - Does Summoning require the Affects Physical World advantage to be used to summon non-desolid creatures while the character using Summing is desolid? Would it in case of Summoning Desolid creatures?

I'm content to see as many frameworks as a character needs to work right. I think I've seen some with two multipowers and an EC; an MP and a VPP; two different types of VPP and an EC for one character by the time she got about 300 EP - a gadget pool, a mental powers VPP, and a prepared chemical booster EC. I've at least pondered characters with an attack MP, a defense MP, and a movement MP. EC's just serve a different end than a multipower or VPP; it makes as much sense to make someone choose between having an EC and an MP as it does making them choose between SPD higher than base and an MP. Similarly, VPP's that aren't practically changeable in the field serve a different purpose than either; VPP's that are easily changed turn into super multipowers, with an appropriately high cost.

You know, if the character is just plain room temperature all the time, it's perfectly reasonable to take that as a special effect of what the character is and not try to assign it a point cost. You don't do that for the undead, for instance. For another example, it might be harder to see the Hulk against a green background, but we don't see a really limited Invisibility in his writeups, any more than we see extra PRE usable only versus people afraid of the color green.

Change Environment, either for direct PER penalties for IR vision or to jigger the local temperature so you fade in. It may depend on just why they're hard to perceive with IR.

Re: FH Perks I think it might be because the benefits they can provide are generally of sorts that mundane contacts simply can't. That said, I'm not sure why one couldn't simply take that into account in the normal Contacts cost structure. Another element might be that spirit contacts are possibly less geographically fixed than conventional contacts. But in that case, that multiplier won't be appropriate in case of spirits you can't contact outside a particular place, and FH leans against a discount in that case. It might come down to "This is an unusual perk - make people pay an arbitrarily increased cost for it." I wouldn't claim that as a good reason.

Ya. Enforcing the concept is key, END, 0 END, or no END. If you do that, you should be fine without the no no-END restriction, and you're sure to come to grief using EC's anyway if you don't.

Yeah, what he said. At +1/2, it's a relatively cheap advantage. Most advantages don't increase damage or the ability of the attack to get through defenses. If you're putting on a lot of those advantages - area effect, increased AE, reduced END, increased range/no range mod/line of sight, continuous, and so on - a little bit of armor-piercing is almost like more base damage when it the time comes actually to damage the target. More base damage with a lot of advantages is expensive; more advantages with a modest base cost and a lot of other advantages are dirt cheap. Increased STUN multipliers and to some extent Penetrating are like AP in this way. It still makes a good combo with autofire too.

One probable explanation and one reason for you: Probable explanation: It's part of the 5th edition crusade to remove all utility and sense from elemental controls. No naturally no END powers in there and "we all go down together" from Drains make no sense either and seem to be there just to punish elemental control users - no MPA's could be motivated by just the same urge. Reason: Folks might get multiple attack powers in an EC with an eye toward using them together all the time, effectively getting one big attack (and maybe in effect around campaign active point caps too) for a little more than half price.

Energy Control, although that runs some risk of being too broad. Even then though, it might still have some modest limits, like not against magic or other things using ED only because PD would be even less appropriate. Furthermore, plenty of powers would still be out - or by special GM permission, which is pretty close to what "out" means in HERO - just because they're special powers. Enhanced senses and the exotic defenses in particular fall into that category, and they seem to top people's lists of Horrible No-END EC Abuses. Thing is, they're already out on the basis of being special powers and (usually) on the basis of being unlikely part of a sufficiently tight special effect anyway.

Re: Limited Phenomena Nope. That's just a restriction on elemental controls, not VPP's and MP's too. The general framework powers restriction is just that special powers aren't normally allowed. But it is an obnoxious new restriction on elemental controls, especially since so many powers that are tightly based on a special effect are going to be no END ones, such as those conditional Damage Reductions or Armor. Between that and the "suck one, suck all" adjustment power clause, 5th edition EC's aren't useful for simulating all that much.

Let me know if I'm missing something, but isn't HKA without a STR min exactly the way deadly blows are built in FH already? As to getting additional damage out of it rather than just an additional possible attack - it's built specifically for additional damage, instead of being an alternative attack. Additional damage powers aren't exceptional, and that's how they're usually built. Aid wouldn't work, since it takes time and attack actions to set up and fades. This, by the way, is why I think it's grossly unsuitable for arrays and more than half of the applications to which it is put in examples. The martial arts route would involve putting limitations on martial maneuvers and allowing martial arts in this limited form with fewer than 10 point invested. I'm not comfortable with either innovation. In addition, it would prevent deadly blows from combining with conventional martial maneuvers, which just seems wrong for (e.g.) a highly trained paladin smiting demons. You could go the limited CSL route, I suppose, with an only to add damage limitation. One problem with that one though is that that limitation will tend to swamp the discount from having a deadly blow that applies only in a more limited variety of conditions rather than more broadly.

In fantasy campaigns particularly - the natural home for conventional usage of Dispel - preparation is the rule, rather than the exception. You'll find lots of extra time, Concentration, Gestures, Incantations, RSR (possibly with Side Effects), expendible Foci, and so on for constant powers almost as a matter of course. Transforms will include Dispelling them among their healing conditions almost universally. Uncontrolled and Triggered effects leave magic hanging around when the caster isn't even around any more, so there's no worry about it popping right back up immediately anyway, quite apart from how difficult reactivating it is likely to be. Even outside fantasy campaigns, Dispel can be good for foci-busting and as part of a one-two punch, with the second effect coming in before the target's next phase. It's not hard to Dispel a target's Flash or Power Defense, for instance, giving them a moment of vulnerability to Flashes or various Drains, supplied either by a teammate ready for the maneuver or your next phase and a multipower realocation. You might want to hold a phase so you can get the other off in the next segment if you're doing it yourself. This sort of thing would be most useful in a team fighting aagainst very powerful single opponents against whom just piling on STUN is less than reliably successful. Lastly, it's 3 points per die, so it's per-die effectiveness is going to be modest.

Re: Thanks You wouldn't have to name them when you're buying the power, anyway. I think you'd have to have some way to pick them out when you're using it; I wouldn't think you'd need to be able to designate the particular game-mechanical power at the bottom.

+2 advantage to affect all powers of a given special effect simultaneously (FREd, p. 99). +1 would get you four at a time, which, practically, may be about as good.

Darkness vs. sound to shut up incantations that's to follow the target around is specifically listed as something to buy usable as an attack (FH, p. 129). This follows FREd, p. 96, in the description of Darkness; without UAA, it's either immobile or centered on and following around the person using it if they want - not a third party. The same goes for Force Walls (FREd, p. 117). There is no mention of Images or Change Environment even being capable of attaching to the user in their FREd descriptions, much less being capable of tracking a target without being UAA. A GM might also permit something similar with Continuous, I guess - the power automatically retargets the target wherever he's gone since the last phase each phase without a new attack roll or half-phase action. But it'd be a weird effect for a sigil that chases after the target instead of just plain staying on it. The Images example of Defender on the bus is taken out of context. It's meant to illustrate the effect of special knowledge on being able to reject an illusion. Insofar as it goes, the Images might just have the area to keep the illusory Defender stuck on a real bus far enough to make the point. That's all.

Re: Blasphemer Not a bad idea. Magic is a Power skill, after all, so there's some scope for that anyway, and it'd be quite plausible to make it a function of that skill and/or some appropriate complementary one (e.g. KS: Sigils).

You'd want it Uncontrolled too if you wanted it to survive your death or a switch in framework allocation. Uncontrolled is going to run you into a stop sign, though in this case, I imagine most GM's won't ticket you for running it. It normally requires a set duration too, which may be inappropriate for a sigil. Then again, it's another likely spot for GM waiver. For that matter, it'll be cheap enough that even if the GM allows spells in frameworks, there's likely little urgency in this case to put it in one. And given the effect, the GM may let it survive you anyway, until Dispelling or ruining the sigil itself, which are likely to happen sooner and more easily than killing you. It's a viable alternative. I think it's just a little less tidy than Cosmetic Transform.