randian

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular? In higher-power games, 5-10 SPD. By well I mean everybody has their day in the sun. Typically, high SPD characters compromised on defenses and some damage, so any time area effects were common their SPD advantage evaporated in aborts, and against tough boss monsters they'd do piddling damage after defenses. Typically, low SPD characters compromised on CV and had high defenses, so high CV opponents were a problem, but they rarely need to abort and were great against most boss monsters due to superior damage output. It was a tossup against mooks. Both seemed equally bad or good against mentalists and sense-affecting powers. In Hero I'd argue there's no best determinant. It's too highly situation dependent. I've seen everything be "best" at one time or another. SPD is real nice, but what did you give up to get it? If the answer is "nothing", that's the problem right there. I was making an analogy, not starting a discussion of STR.

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular?

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular?

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular? Why is "face time" a problem? Players need to keep their ego in check, not whine about "face time". As it happens, I love bricks. I'm not wasting all those extra phases I might have had on defensive actions, and I know that when I act something is going to happen. When I play martial artists they're typically light on attacks and defenses to afford the extra CV and SPD. More often than not my extra SPD is just being spent on aborting, and I'm not doing much damage to the bad guys. Anybody who's complaining about the "face time" I'm allegedly getting needs to spend more time looking at what's actually happening in the field of battle.

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular? I've never understood the argument that "SPD is predictable". Nearly all other games are round-based, so characters have exactly the same number of actions as every other, and since initiative is normally done once per combat (redoing it once per round, for example, would be murderous on the speed of your combats) everything is perfectly predictable. If anything, constraining SPD as some advocate would seem to reduce Hero to D&D. Everybody SPD 4? How's that different than round-based combat? If Hero deserves demerits for "predictability", then all games do. Indeed, I find the use of the word "predictable" in this context odd. Generally, it is the result of a character's action (hit or miss, damage total) that is random. Though I am sure such an RPG exists, I've never seen one which attempted to randomize character abilities. "For this combat, you have d3+2 SPD". "You have 9+1d6m Running". "Instead of 50 STR, you have 40+1d20 STR (maybe the villians attacked when you were sick)". I'm not convinced of the merits of "unpredictability".

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular? I've found high SPD to be a "so what", generally. You want a 10 SPD martial artist to the other player's 5 SPD brick? That 50 points is going to really hurt somewhere. Your defense, your offense, whatever. You will frequently find yourself acting often but doing little or nothing, especially against Boss Villains. A properly done SPD chart and an aggressive GM makes combat fast; cards, tokens, and calling DEX/SPD out slows things down. Players should always have their move planned in advance so when the GM calls they're ready to go immediately. Most of the time, you can figure out your next move right after your last phase, and it will still be what you want to do when your next phase is called. Teaching neophytes that one thing tremendously speeds up combat. Other speedy things: Total up your dice in groups of ten Count BODY in an "up X/down Y" style

Re: Evasion Talent Forcing the player to guess at what they should do makes defensive maneuvers worthless. It's the sort of "gotcha" thing I dislike from GMs.

Re: Evasion Talent

Re: Evasion Talent I bought a similar power using Desolidification, but with a twist. I defined the special effect that ignores the Desolidification to be "any DCV-targeting attack", rather than just "fire" or "electricity". That's basically Improved Evasion from D&D (take no damage from area-effect attacks on successful save) while still being vulnerable to every kind of regular attack and being unable to attack (since I'm Desolid).

Re: Always on Death Touch

Re: +1 DC only with Haymaker Which rules are you talking about? The "advantaged attack" rule? Just buy more STR.

Re: +1 DC only with Haymaker Wouldn't "+5 STR, only with Haymaker killing attacks" be the simplest solution? No rules contortions are required.

Re: ISBN for Champions Deluxe (4E)? Thanks.

Is it 155806205X? It's weird, when I search for that ISBN I get references to a book called "First Heal the Children".

Re: Knockback Attack It's true that cosmetic Transforms are not permitted to cause knockback, but you forgot one of the most important caveats in Hero: "unless a power advantage says otherwise".

Re: Knockback Attack

Re: Knockback Attack

Re: Knockback Attack It doesn't. There are no mechanical alterations to the target. Their powers and abilities are as they were before. They just suffer a bit of sudden acceleration.

Re: Knockback Attack Cute. I was actually thinking of Transforming the target into a zero-mass object. This has no mechanical effect on the target, and hence is cosmetic, but does allow me the temporary ability to do as you say.

Re: Knockback Attack If Dispel doesn't work, Cosmetic Transform should. Still 3/die base, and no problems with the target lacking something.

Re: Knockback Attack

Re: Knockback Attack In my opinion, the cheapest and best way is Dispel Knockback Resistance, Does Knockback +1/4, Double Knockback +1/2. 5.25 points per die. For 58 points you do an average of 30m knockback ((22-7)*2) and ignore the first 15m of Knockback Resistance possessed by the target.

Re: Need help understanding Variable Advantage

Re: Need help understanding Variable Advantage A 50 base power with +1 variable advantage has 100 active points for all purposes, including END cost, range, Suppress, and Drain. It costs 10 END to use and has 100x10m range. If you take 1/2 End (+1/4) as one of your advantages it costs 5 END to use. If you take Autofire 3 as your other +1/4 it would take 5x3=15 END to use.

Re: Kill, jail, or rehabilitate, what happens to your villains? In supers, jail until their inevitable breakout/escape. Rehab is pointless, and unlike fantasy characters their powers are usually innate so you can't take them anyway. That, and the PC can rarely afford to pay the character points for the villain's super-gadget, since it's usually better than what the PCs have.