randian

The Analyze is more expensive, and range easily seems within the scope of it, along with things like albedo, emissivity, absorption, reflectivity, diffraction efficiency, etc.

Re: Ideas needed for a 600 year old hero

Except the captain didn't drive the boat.

He was a steersman before making captain.

Re: Ideas needed for a 600 year old hero

You could spend lots on flavor, if you wanted to. My take on the centuries old hero had no-tech skills like:

Combat Driving: Carts & Carriages, Riding Animals, and Wind-Powered Boats (navies need good captains)

Weapon Familiarity: Common Melee Weapons, Common Missile Weapons, and Siege Engines (he's been soldiering with sword, arrow, and primitive cannon for far longer than there have been machine guns and bombs)

PS: Blacksmith, Butcher, Cobbler, Farmer, Fence, Mason, Painter, etc

KS: Numerous Cultures

KS: Numerous Areas

Lots of languages

Re: Armour Piercing in Champions 6e

There's no double cost. Normal Body' date=' PD, and ED effectively cost 2 points for purposes of Adjusting them too; they are considered defensive powers.[/quote']

Then the passage in the description of Entangle is entirely redundant and unnecessary. Don't forget I specifically asked Steve if that passage was a redundant restatement of the "double cost for defensive characteristics" rule. He could have said "yes" and be done with it. Instead, his non-response leads me to conclude that said passage should be read to have an effect, namely that Entangle BODY is double cost before adjustment. You will note that no such passage is in the Barrier section of the rulebook.

Re: Armour Piercing in Champions 6e

It never would have occurred to me that you could Drain entangles' date=' let alone Aid them.[/quote']

You've never seen somebody try to use Drain on an object? Entangles are for the most part ordinary objects, except for the double cost to Drain and Aid them in 6E. Draining walls was always more efficient than punching them. It's amazing how after the GM realizes that, even ordinary objects and structures magically start getting Power Defense.

Re: Armour Piercing in Champions 6e

i think you might be mistaken' date=' someone just asked about that in the rules forum.[/quote']

That was me. I asked if Entangle BODY costing 2 character points per point meant it took 4 points of DRAIN per Entangle BODY, or

if that was simply redundantly stating the "defensive characteristics cost double" rule for Drains and it only took 2 points of DRAIN.

Steve's helpful response wasn't "A is correct" or "B is correct", but "the book is correct".

Re: Armour Piercing in Champions 6e

6d6 + 3d6 area affect - aim it at a person, and he suffers 9d6. Aim it at a hex and anyone in that hex gets 3d6

Ok, that works. I don't know why you'd want to, though.

Re: Armour Piercing in Champions 6e

That's what killing attacks are for (or BOD drains against inanimate objects, which are considerably better if we're looking at straight up point efficiency).

So long as the object isn't an Entangle. Entangle BODY/PD/ED are all double cost, so it takes 4 points of Drain per BODY. Drains are worse than Blast against them.

Re: Armour Piercing in Champions 6e

Technically a single point of Impenetrable still stops penetrating completely' date=' which I think is ridiculous.[/quote']

I compare the BODY of the penetrating attack (read as normal dice) to the amount of Impenetrable defense. A 10d6 Penetrating attack vs 8 impenetrable does 2 minimum stun on average. If you have at least 6 Resistant Impenetrable, you can't take any BODY from a 3d6 Penetrating Killing Attack. It's easy to adjudicate. Sure, you don't need a whole lot of Impenetrable to be useful, but then it rather annoys me how expensive defenses are getting with the proliferation of +1/4 advantages to defend yourself against alternate damage.

But technically you can make part of an attack Armour Piercing as well. I think it would be a bit of a PITA to work out what happens if you fire a Blast 9d6 + 2d6 AP against someone that has 20 PD, 10 of which is hardened.

You could, but I wouldn't allow it. How about a partially area-effect Blast? I can't think of a sane way to handle either. Partially hardened defenses are much simpler: just halve the non-hardened defense.

Re: Armour Piercing in Champions 6e

As a complete aside, can anyone see any need for the rule that you have to harden ALL of a particular offence - it cannot be partially hardened (6.1.147)? It may have made some sense in 5e, but I can not see the need now: you just halve the defence that is not hardened.

It does seem rather pointless. Why would it have made sense in 5e?

Re: Armour Piercing in Champions 6e

AVAD is still relatively expensive though. An AVAD versus, say, Mental Defence is a +1 1/2 advantage, meaning that a 12DC attack is 4.5d6, or about 16 STUN through. Considering the suggested maximum defence is 25 for a starting super, that's actually less than a 12d6 no-frills attack will get through.

AVAD Mental/Power/Sight-Flash/Hearing-Flash is a +1 advantage, not +1 1/2.

My problem with Armor Piercing isn't so much the change in cost of AP, it's the change in cost of defense, to wit that you now need separate advantages to defend against Armor Piercing and Penetrating, and presumably another +1/4 to defend against any future alternate damage mechanic. With the absurdly cheap cost of Reduced Negation (and no means to defend against it, not that I think Damage Negation is a worthwhile defense in most cases) and the equally absurd cost of flashing multiple sense groups (while the defender must still buy defense separately for each), the balance of power has definitely tipped in favor of offense.

Re: Pluses to OCV only used for blocks?

Isn't "+1 OCV with one Maneuver" a 2 point level? There is no reason to get 3 point levels, normal block is entirely redundant if you have a martial block.

Re: What is the advantage of buying Combat Skill Levels vs OCV?

My confusion is that "+1 with All Combat" is 10 points' date=' equivalent to buying [i']both OCV and DCV[/i] so my impression was that CSL's in 6E were +1 to OCV and DCV both unless otherwise specified:

No, Combat Levels in 6E are still +1 to one thing, they're just overpriced. I wouldn't buy any combat level in 6E bigger than 5 points. If I wanted the equivalent of all-combat levels I'd get an OCV/DCV multipower with variable slots, for a cost of 7 points per virtual "level", 8 per with a +damage slot. Happily, the same as the old 3rd-5th all-combat levels.

I don't know why you can't buy +1 OCV with a single attack in HD6, because those levels are standard in 6E1.

I'm having trouble thinking of one.

Re: Defense Maneuver IV

Really? That's odd' date=' because a few minutes of looking finds several places where "from behind" is addressed in the rules.[/quote']

You misunderstood my point. I wasn't referring to bonuses or penalties, but rather how does one determine from Hero's ruleset when one character is behind another in order to apply those bonuses. You may think this obvious, but it is not. For example, is it related to your Arc of Perception? If it is, and I argue it is, I arguably don't have to actually be behind you, launching an attack 90 degrees from your facing is sufficient since that is outside your Arc of Perception. Don't be stupid, you say, you can turn your head? When does your Arc of Perception becomes fixed for purposes of determining whether an attacker is within it? It has to happen sometime, because you take serious penalties for not perceiving an attacker with a targeting sense, and the only way to measure that is to compare your Arc of Perception with the location of your attacker. If you can turn your head any time you want, then you aren't enforcing a 120-degree Arc of Perception, are you? And if you're giving 180 effective degrees of coverage for a nominal 120, wouldn't it then make sense to give 360 for 240?

Re: Is Clinging a perfect substitute for Climbing?

Can you Cling to a rope or a scaffold? Neither are "surfaces" in the lay sense (though they certainly are in the mathematical sense).

Re: Defense Maneuver IV

The rules on senses' date=' detecting, not detecting, and the combat modifiers resulting are all pretty well covered.[/quote']

Hero nowhere states what "from behind" means mechanically. It assumes you "know" what that means, which frequently leads to the error of applying "common sense" to game mechanics.

 

My logic says "from behind" means "suffering an attack coming from a direction not covered by the arc of perception of at least one of your functioning targeting senses". Ergo, a character with a 360-degree sense cannot be attacked "from behind" even if they're surrounded. Been in plenty of games, though, where dry mechanical reasoning didn't fly. Everybody "knows" being mobbed is deadly, after all. Using Narf's logic above, the human body's lack of radial symmetry also supersedes game mechanics.

Re: Defense Maneuver IV

What benefit would you give a character with a 360-degree sense in these situations? An attack from behind in that case surely cannot be considered "surprising" or "from behind", even if the sense isn't targeting. Personally, I don't think merely running around somebody should generate any sort of bonus, otherwise stupidly cheesy tactics become commonplace.

By RAW 360-degree senses seem to have no effect on multiple attackers. Quite odd, I think.

We've never bothered with trying to get or prevent multiple attacker bonuses, mostly because if you were fighting 4 or 5 supervillains by yourself the rest of the team was out of commission, making surrender or flight the better course of action regardless of DCV penalties.

Perfect except for the triple cost, that is. Is there any circumstance where you would require a Climbing roll, notwithstanding the fact that the character had Clinging?

6E1 217 notes that, for purposes of Adjustment Powers, an Entangle's BODY costs 2 points per point. Is said paragraph:

1) A redundant reminder that BODY is a defensive characteristic and so requires double effect to Adjust.

2) A note that Entangle BODY is super-duper BODY and thus in fact requires four points of effect to Adjust, in comparison with BODY possessed by a character or Barrier, which only requires two points of effect to Adjust.

6E1 216 states that a character automatically hits the Entangle restraining him. Does this imply that if the restrained character attacks the Entangle with an Autofire attack he hits with all of his shots?

Re: Enhanced Senses query: when do you need to buy Discriminatory?

I have no idea what fully discriminatory sight could give you that partially discriminatory sight doesn't whilst still steering clear of being analysing sight.

I would argue it this way. Normal sight lets you say "X is bigger than Y", but you don't know exact measurements. Fully discriminatory sight gives you exact dimensions. Analyze gets you albedo, absorption, emissivity, etc.

I make a similar argument for hearing. Normal hearing lets you distinguish relative pitch. Discriminatory hearing gives absolute pitch and allows you to distinguish a fake Stradivarius from a real one. Analytic hearing makes you a walking spectrum analyzer: distinguish harmonic overtones from the base note, distinguish reflected and direct sounds from the same source, do fancy range and distance measurements based on sound, etc.

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction?

Mental Damage Reduction will cripple all EGO+X powers. Suddenly an EGO +30 effect means EGOx2 + 60 (if you have 50% DR). The way around that is either removing it from your game, or using mental powers with +0 and +10 effects in creative ways.

That's great, as long as you don't care about taking plenty of stun from Mental Blast. If you do the math I believe you will find that a combination of high EGO and Mental Defense to be much better. That is, both cheaper and more effective. The high Ego gives you a high Ego roll against EGO+X powers, and the Mental Defense takes care of stun. This wasn't the case before 6E, when EGO cost you 2/point.

Damage Negation is best for dealing with really oddly advantaged attacks. At least that's what I've found. That's been my only experience and I wish I could comment more.

How so? Since DN is the only defense that gets less effective the more advantages an attack has, I don't see why you would want it as a defense against advantaged attacks. You wouldn't want Mental or Power DN either, at 10/DC it's absurdly overpriced.

Don't forget the other design-breaking feature of DN: Reduced Negation at 2 points/DC. Compare with Piercing, a defense-reducing power a lot of people (irrationally in my opinion) think is too good, which costs ~10 points/DC. DN is not only weak, it's absurdly cheap to ignore.

Re: Find Weakness and Lack of Weakness for 6th Edition.

I substitute Piercing. 6E Advanced Player's Guide. It ignores Hardened but doesn't scale its effect to the value of the target's defense like Armor Piercing does. As a general purpose attack power regular dice are much better than Piercing (half the cost), but if doing BODY is more important to you than doing STUN Piercing is an acceptable substitute.

Re: What 5th Ed Books to buy on sale?

I ordered Ultimate Base, Ultimate Mystic, Book of the Machine, and Valdorian Age. I think the latter 3 are unlikely to be redone for 6E. I was a little miffed by the shipping charges though.