Pteryx

Is it normal to encounter relentless MySQL errors from that site? I was hoping to browse it for more ideas, but have been finding it unusable, and it hasn't cleared up in hours.

Every character recovers their REC's worth of BODY each month by default, with no intervention necessary to make it happen. However, for some character types, notably robots, this may not necessarily make sense. I'm not sure what level of Physical Complication a lack of natural BODY healing should be, though (or, alternately, what level of Limitation on one's REC that would be, if the GM doesn't think it should count towards one's Complication total). Any suggestions? -- Pteryx

I've been pondering using an AoE TK for a power myself. In my own case, the idea is a field in which a character can simply hold items (not people) in place, either in terms of absolute position or position relative to an object a character is physically manipulating. Thus, if the character slid a shelf out of place with his ordinary STR, s/he could either have the items on the shelf hang where they were or follow the shelf as though "stuck" to it thanks to this field, yet couldn't just will the items to fly around. -- Pteryx

There is a difference between "most people can't interact with the object" and "nobody can interact with the object", though. Using EDM for the latter makes sense, but using it for the former seems very awkward to me. I think I will go with the Change Environment approach, since I have seen an optional rule that allows it to impose Complications. Thanks for bringing that one up.

Does the rule saying that Senses (as opposed to mere Detects) don't take an action to use trump the rule of powers used at Megascale generally requiring a Full Phase Action (as seen under the Megarange, Megaarea, and Megamovement headings of the Megascale description)? -- Pteryx

While I can see your point about cost with EDM (which doesn't really do what I'm aiming for, since the item's still there *to* pick up) and CE, Mental Transforms cost more than MC, plus I don't really need an effect that lasts beyond people's departure from the item's vicinity. Of the three Powers you listed, CE makes the most sense as a potential alternative to MC for this purpose.

I understand that. What I was hoping to clarify was how non-Mind Control approaches could help, and thus why you brought them up at all. What were you trying to propose as possible advantages to using Extra-Dimensional Movement, Change Environment, or Mental Transform instead?

I was talking about your venturing into non-Mind Control approaches, though. The first build isn't really "alternate" so much as trying to make the initial proposal work.

None of your alternate approaches strike me as having an obvious way to not affect the person who's supposed to take the object, though, which is the only reason not to use Mind Control I can see...

Inspired by a certain recurring story coincidence in a favorite crime drama. Note that this only keeps the conversation going; actually making someone discuss what you want them to is up to you and your Interaction Skills. Actually, You Are Talking: Mind Control 5d6 (25 base points); Invisible Power Effects (inobvious power fully invisible, including to target, +1), Reduced Endurance (0 END, +1/2), Telepathic (+1/4), Trigger (triggered when someone insists they're not talking; activating trigger takes no time, trigger resets automatically, character does not control activation of personal Trigger, +3/4) (87 Active Points); Does Not Grant Mental Awareness (-1/4), No Conscious Control (nature of conversation's continuation is not predictable, -1), Only To Stop People From Ending Conversations (-1/2) (32 real points) A much cheaper, but GM-controlled and thus probably less reliable and more side-effect-prone, version would have full -2 No Conscious Control instead of Trigger (69 AP, 18 real points). In a game where detection of Mental Powers wouldn't happen, reduce the Invisible Power Effects to +1/2 for invisibility to the target only; the other half is only there because there's technically no in-world power to detect. The version costed above is more the I-don't-trust-my-GM version. -- Pteryx

Even gods wanting or needing worshipers isn't something one can necessarily take for granted in just any fantasy setting, though. What if all they really need is for their domain to stay healthy, and they either see worshipers as a means to that end or don't see the point and would rather be left alone? What if people only even know about a god through divinations and their power isn't so much "granted" as exploited? Even if a god does want or need worshipers, it doesn't have to be because they eat faith like the usual trope runs. Maybe the mortal realm is made of tissue paper from a god's perspective; their trying to act directly runs a very real risk of breaking reality, so it's safer to use mortals. In at least one setting I know, the problem is that Fate forces them to act out archetypal patterns, so they need people with more free will.

I'm not sure here whether you're defining the difference as one of capability or of actions taken. It's possible to have a god with a body who never actually visits the mortal plane, but who could be visited by sufficiently powerful PCs. There's also the question of how "real" or important bodies are. Can you truly kill a god if you beat them up in the proper way, are all bodies mere disposable avatars, are there both avatars and a "real" body, or are there neither? Heck, could a physical god have three equally "real" bodies that you have to all destroy in a short period to kill the god, lest they regrow from its spirit like a gecko's tail? The "right" answer to any of this is really going to depend on the campaign, but I will say two things. First, I personally don't care for the idea for a physical god who comes across as just a really big mortal. Whether embodied or disembodied, I feel a god should have some global influence trivially available (unless we're talking the little gods of specific rivers or the like, in which case that influence should just be over their whole "territory"). Second, it probably goes without saying that fully disembodied gods are strictly GM territory; a PC defined as a god needs a body to inconvenience with at least some of their capabilities being available only "in person". -- Pteryx

Say you wanted to make the ability to temporarily put a Persistent, Area of Effect Mind Control on an object that dissuades anyone from picking up that object except one person specified when the power is set, whom it beckons instead. Would that need linked Mind Controls, or would a single Mind Control be able to broadcast an intent that complex? General build approaches are welcome as well, though I do have some idea of where to begin. -- Pteryx

If you buy levels of the Reduced Negation Adder for a Power and the Proportional Advantage for it, does the Adder increase proportionately in the defined circumstances too or stay at the same level? For example, would a Mind Control 4d6 vs. the Machine class of minds with Reduced Negation (2) and Proportional (x2 effect on email servers) have Reduced Negation 2 or 4 when targeting an email server? -- Pteryx

Hm, the point you make about the god needing to voluntarily allow the Mind Link in Lucius's build is a good one... and actually not what I'm shooting for. I don't really want him to have a choice in "hearing", just in what he does (or, more often, doesn't do) from there. One of the big themes I've been shooting for is that being a god isn't all it's cracked up to be. As for your proposal concerning how to establish LOS for Telepathy, I'm not sure if that works or not. While IRL the maximum range of sight is a function of the earth getting in the way, ruleswise seeing that far seems like the kind of thing one is supposed to use Megascale Senses (which, as I've mentioned, don't actually work as a passive thing by RAW), Clairvoyance (which can't establish LOS), or Mind Scan for, and the rules tend to warn people away from using one mechanic to simulate another, so I'm not sure how many GMs would be on board for that. (And technically, no, he can't see everything, just all of certain things. ) EDIT: Come to think of it... the god's inability to refuse the Mind Link could count as a Side Effect, which suddenly makes the whole Caller ID as Side Effect thing look less cheesy. After all, by this logic, both sides suffer a Side Effect, just different ones.

Seems like that would only really have the desired effect if Casual PRE were in play, but if it were, that would work very elegantly. -- Pteryx

There seem to be a lot of ways to approach this one, so I'd love to hear opinions: how would you build making it so that a particular class of being can't raise a hand against a specific character? Tigers won't attack the Tiger Princess of the Plains, for example. If it's a sapient class (say, fishermen), this wouldn't rule out indirect means of attack, potentially leading to someone affected manipulating others into attacking the character for them or attacking a DNPC instead. -- Pteryx

If Damage Reduction were limited to only apply after a certain amount of damage gets through your defenses -- the first 12 BODY is ignored but anything in excess of that is reduced by 75%, for example -- how much of a Limitation would that be?

How would the Telepathy be targeted in that case, though? The Mind Link is what's establishing LOS with that optional extra piece. (And really, if I had another way to have the god get the "Caller ID" info without resorting to Side Effect cheese, I'd do it. Maybe treating the Side Effect as an Advantage?)

Between this thread, the one Lucius bumped, and various others around, I've noticed basically three approaches to the idea of statting gods: 1) Gods are GM plot devices, don't you dare stat them up; 2) Gods are disembodied presences with worldwide influence, best statted as AI Computers with thousands of points; 3) Gods are just high-level superheroes with points in the high hundreds or low thousands, and suitable as PCs when done this way. People in camp #1 are obviously not the market for Mythic HERO. #2 has its uses, but still relegates gods to GM plot devices ultimately, just with listed boundaries. #3... well, I tend to find that approach dissatisfying. You end up with a Zeus who can throw lightning bolts, but not take control of the lightning strikes in a thunderstorm halfway across the world, and to me, the latter is pretty important. The line between superheroes and gods is one I'd prefer to have drawn even if gods happen to have avatars or even "real" (if nigh-impossible-to-kill) bodies, and to me the ability to manipulate one's domain the world over is a key aspect of the "god" side of the line. As for my own dog in this fight, let me tell you about my character... What I'm getting at with my rambling behind the spoiler cut is two things. One, approaches #2 and #3 are something of a false dichotomy; it's possible to make a satisfying compromise between the two. Two, you don't have to stick to a pure #3 approach to keep a god playable; spin things right and even a full-fledged small-g god can face conflict. Both of these are things I'd love to see reflected in a book about gods in gaming, both in advice and in the approach to stats. -- Pteryx

OK, this is the take on things I've put together based on that nice last build of Lucius's: Hear Prayer: Mind Link (to grantor's mind), no LOS needed, any distance, any dimension (25 base points); Invisible Power Effects (inobvious power fully invisible, +1/2), Usable By Nearby (any number of recipients within "10m" (1,000,000 km), recipient fully controls power, grantor can only grant power to others; +1 1/4) (69 Active/real Points). PLUS Naked Advantages and Disadvantages on UBN Advantage of Hear Prayer: Affects Desolidified (+1/2), Inherent (+1/4), Megascale (1m = 100,000 km, +2 1/4), Transdimensional (reaches into related group of dimensions, +3/4), Invisible Power Effects (everything about grant of power is fully invisible to both target and other characters, +1 1/2) (194 Active Points); Always On (-1/2) (129 real points). Most of the Advantages and Disadvantages are on the UBN itself because they affect the granting of the ability to pray, not said ability itself. The Invisible Power Effects bit is an attempt to make it so that while anyone can pray to the god, no one automatically knows this -- nor do they know that it's working unless the god chooses to respond directly. Whether they know it or not, though, he hears. Even trying to pray, and accepting that it worked, can often be a leap of faith. The Affects Desolidified and costing of IPE on the Naked Advantage is because while Mental Powers themselves don't need those things, I'm not counting on the same holding true for the granting of Mental Powers. (If it does, though, that'd save +1 in Advantage cost!) The Megascale is that big because I'm building this god to operate at lunar orbital distances, simply as a matter of taste. No Conscious Control is left out because the power is too predictable for that to apply in any way. It's Inherent because no, you can't just Dispel/Suppress/Drain the fact that people can pray to a god. I would put that part on the main power and not the power grant, except that it's the power grant that's Always On, not the Mind Link itself, and something has to be Always On before it can be Inherent. And here's a secondary power: With Prayers Come Knowledge Of Their Sources: Telepathy 9d6+21 (80 base points); Armor Piercing (+1/4), Autofire (5 facts, +1 1/2); Invisible Power Effects (everything about power is fully invisible to both target and other characters, +1 1/2), Reduced Endurance (0 END, +1/2), Trigger (when a Hear Prayer Mind Link is established; one defined condition, activating the Trigger takes no time, character does not control activation of personal Trigger, trigger resets automatically immediately after it activates; +3/4) (440 Active Points); Receive Only (-1/2), Surface Thoughts Only (-1/4), First Five Questions Are Predetermined (name, occupation, emotional state, race/species, age; -1/4), Time Limit (Extra Phase, -3) (88 real points) This makes it so that the god instantly knows basic information about those who pray to him (barring things like amnesia or a Mental Shape Shift getting in the way, though a more powerful god might not have the Surface Thoughts Only limitation), then can learn five more basic things of his choice in the next Phase. I tried to make it high enough to guarantee that most normal people would succumb while also giving a decent chance of the same happening to more powerful beings. (Alas, just because someone's praying to you doesn't necessarily mean they don't expect it to be anonymous, so the "1d6 is enough due to lowered defenses" rationale doesn't necessarily apply.) I could have tried to turn this into a Side Effect on Hear Prayer instead, which would be more reliable still, but it seems cheesy for something beneficial to the god to result in a discount on Hear Prayer! -- Pteryx

By my understanding, by default, Mind Links are "conference calls", and it's even possible for two such "conference calls" to overlap and interact. How would one modify Mind Link to make it so that it's a series of separate two-way communications with one person instead, preventing other people in the Link from directly interacting or possibly even noticing each other?

That's a good question. It would be convenient -- and appropriate to the usage case I'm shooting for here -- if that were the case...

What interests me most about this book is the kind of stuff that would be covered in the first chapter. I'll be honest, what led me to looking at HERO again is that there are really only so many systems that lend themselves to statting up gods. Heck, the real reason behind my starting the thread here ( http://www.herogames.com/forums/forum/hero-games/hero-system-discussion/3598796-mind-link-initiated-in-reverse ) is to help figure out how one would model people praying to a god. "Portfolio sense" is another big one; it's clearly Clairsentience with lots of perception points at its core, but how does one turn that both reflexive and global? The usage time limitations on Megascaled things seem to get in the way of making both that and passive Megasenses. A "follower sense" would be appropriate too. Even ways to handle worship call for some game stat treatment -- it could be simply an alternate "food" in the way that underwater breathing is the default for aquatic beings, it could be a Dependency that affects Base Characteristics or powers or REC, it could be unnecessary and just be a really expensive Organization Contact, or it could even be an annoyance that qualifies as a Social Complication paired with a Distinctive Feature that Causes Extreme Reactions, making it hard to act directly in the world. Aside from worship, I suggest health of one's domain as a possible important variable; oil spills might make the god of the ocean get sick. -- Pteryx