Paragon

It doesn't need to be that bad, however, even with the shopping list. Use base costs of 5 and 3 for the first sense (targetting/nontargetting) and 3/2 for the secondaries, and the prices look much more reasonable. The adders are a little more problematic, perhaps. Nor I. It's the single power I've seen more people look at and go "what the hell" than any other.

Why should it? Killing attacks are optimized to do Body, not Stun. In fact, it's not even true with even dice sets; the stun from the x3 stun multiple is exactly the same on a 4d6 KA and a 12d6 EB for example.

I don't have a huge problem with the construction of it, but I tend to think it's grossly overpriced. What in the end is usually a super disguise power a lot of the time shouldn't be as pricey as it often comes out.

Re: Re: Power Defense Question I don't see why within the rules it can't (both AP on power based attacks and hardened on Power Defense. ) In routine campaigns, I doubt it's worth it, but I've seen the occasionally AP Transform or the like.

Break-dancing APC?

And I thoroughly disagree; on the whole, a vehicle itself is far more useful than a Force Wall, and it's defense is an intrinsic property of that benefit. And it doesn't take a 20 Defense to be a problem; in fact, if you just use the resistant defense values suggested in the rulesbook, it will protect a character inside it long after any other defense would have failed them. Now you _can_ patch the problem at that end by limiting the maximum far lower than on a character, but that's still only addressing half the issue. The bottom line is almost every excuse made for vehicles can be made for automatons; it's simply not consistent to do it two different ways here, and while not a critical system flaw, it is a system flaw.

I'm sorry, but I can't agree; any character who is built around a vehicle as an operating prodedure will use it frequently, not just the power suit vehicles. Mecha drivers, your Jetboy equivelents and more. It's not an extremely common trope, but it's not as rare as you're putting on here. And in most of those cases I don't see why the players should be purchasing the vehicle in the first place; it's a convenience for the GM, not a functional ability ot the PC. It's the cases where they do purchase them where I expect them to be problematic, and those are just the cases where I expect the costs to be relevant in the first place.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Changes from 4th to 5th Edition The fact you already pay one-fifth the cost of buying the defense normally makes me remarkably unsympathetic to this claim; if it really rarely is involved in the game, why is the player being charged at all? If it's occuring often enough you should charge him, then I think it should be charged appropriate to what the defense often means...which is that no damage gets to the character at all.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Changes from 4th to 5th Edition Trippling the cost, same as for automatons. I see nothing punishing about that; for a routine vehicle the difference will be trivial; it's only armored vehicles which will show a noticeable increase. And in this case I think that the game balance issue really _is_ that simple.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Changes from 4th to 5th Edition I'm afraid I can't agree; costs should be commensurate with value, or what's the point in having a cost system? While a different cap for vehicles than characters produces the effect, it's an overt sign that the costs are off when otherwise the process would be overly attractive. And vehicles and vehicle-like constructs are a bit too common for me to find this something I can feel blaise about.

Re: Re: Changes from 4th to 5th Edition

Thanks. Those worked. And gave me considerably more food for thought on this subject, though I'm going to let this thread taper off before I make a decision.

I get "not found on this server" errors on both of these.

Re: Speeding up combat suggestions? I'm not using 5th yet (I've been off doing other games for the last couple years) but one conclusion I came to over the years of running Hero was that it wasn't the actual combat resolution that took so much time; it was distraction and indecision. Distraction: Fact is when you've got any decent number of people playing, there are going to be distractions; people will be looking things up in the book, working on a new character on the side, going to the restroom, making a snack...whatever. You can try to be draconic about controlling it, but usually all that really serves to do is tick people off. Indecision: One of Hero's strengths is it has a very rich combat system; there's a lot of actual, meaningful decision you can make in a fight. In Champions there's often even more, as doing things like managing a multipower or otherwise chosing from a repetoire of attacks for the situation can take some thought. Some people can do this in a snap second; some can't. Again, pressuring people rarely has overall benign effects. There is one solutiond to both these problems, and it's already in the rules: Holding an Action. Currently, Holding is a little too rigid to solve this; you have to specify situations and so on. But if you let people Hold to a later time and declare when convenient, there's often no need to pause and wait for them to make up their mind, come back from the restroom, get up to speed on what happened while they were distracted, or whatever; you can just give them a short response time, and if they can't come up with it, say "Okay, you're Holding, let me know when you decide what you want to do." 95% of the time this is harmless; the player decides a moment later and acts, and you move on, or decides to interrupt a bad guy, you make the contest of Dex rolls , resolve events and move on. And it cuts out astounding amounts of time wastage.

I'm interested in what people who've used both of the two Hero 5th capable character creators (Metacreator with one of the 5th Templates and Hero Designer) think of the two of them. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the two?