screamingtongue

Re: Emotional Binding Actually, I've decided on a telepathic Mind Control, only to control emotions, with no range. And any other powers (drains, aids, etc.) just take a -1 limited power: target must be mind controlled. I feel like this captures the effect of what I was going for pretty well.

I'm building a team of superheroes, mostly just for fun, based on a story I've written. For the most part, these characters are fairly straightforward. But one of them has a rather interesting ability, the ability to bond her emotions to someone else's, so she can control what they feel. I figure this can have a variety of combat effects such as amplifying pain (draining/damaging STUN), making somebody afraid (draining PRE, EGO, or both), or having the reverse effects (boosting STUN, PRE, EGO, etc.). Where I find things get tricky is in capturing the exact way her power is supposed to work. As I said, she binds her emotions to those of others, meaning there is a kind of enduring effect. She has to touch a person to start with, but contact does not need to be maintained. For example, if she was battling a thug and she wanted to make him afraid to begin with, she would have to physically touch him to start the process. But if she breaks contact with him, she could still make him afraid again without touching him, or amplify any pain he might be feeling, again, without touching him. This seems like a job for Mind Link, but that's meant for willing participants, and is supposed to allow for two-way communication and sharing of thoughts (rather than doing anything coercive). So I'm kind of stuck. I need a power (or potentially another mechanic) to represent her binding her emotions to other people by touching them, which would in turn allow her to use her real powers (altering the emotional state of her victims).

Re: Quick Question about Linked and Trigger I checked, and on 6E1 138, it states that a power that is bought incrementally must be adjusted by enough to adjust it an entire point up or down, so this drain wouldn't take effect until the character's speed reaches -10 AP. Also, I could potentially add a limitation that would make it so that the staff can only drain one point, total, from SPD. So no matter how low the enemy's points get, it always counts for -1 SPD at most, and any lower than -10 AP just counts for recovery purposes. It provides me with an additional limitation to reduce the cost of the staff, and keeps the staff from being overpowered.

Re: Quick Question about Linked and Trigger Am I misremembering the rules for drain? I thought that you would have to reduce it by a full 10 points before a character would lose 1 point of SPD, I didn't realize that draining a single point would be enough.

Re: Quick Question about Linked and Trigger It just seems like with so many ways for the attack to be neutralized or rendered less effective, the -1/4 limitation offered by "Only Affects When Attacking with Staff (-1/4)" does not account for very much, and without those other limitations, the cost gets too high. I suppose I could increase the value of the above limitation. Would a -1 or -1 1/2 limitation for that limited power be too high? Considering that a drain could normally be used any time, with its own target, does forcing it to coincide only with regular attacks made with the staff count as only working half the time or less than half the time? Because, again, I just feel that the cost is too high for a mere 2d6 drain if I drop those other limitations from the build (it would come out at 29 RP, so high that the character wouldn't be able to afford this enchantment at all).

Re: Quick Question about Linked and Trigger I wrote up the 5d6 part wrong, I know that. It should be a (25) not a (20). And 25 * 1.5 = 37.5, so shouldn't the AP be 37? And yeah, somehow I missed the easier way to write up reach, and that it was supposed to be 1 point per 1m (because if you actually do the math with all the power modifiers, it doesn't work out that way). And I feel like the STR Minimum and Two Handed limitations are iffy, but I think I'd accept them since, if the drain can't be used without the staff striking a blow, then the STR minimum and two handed limitations still technically apply (ie. the drain also gets penalized if STR drops below 10 or if the character only has one hand free, in that it cannot be used).

Re: Quick Question about Linked and Trigger So here is the full build for all three powers the staff has (including its reach). Does this look good? Taproot (37 AP/11 RP; 1 END from use of STR): 5d6 Hand to Hand Attack (20), Reduced END (0; +1/2), STR Minimum 10 (-1/2), Real Weapon (-1/4), OAF (-1), Two-Handed (-1/2) Taproot Reach (3 AP/1 RP): Stretching 2m (2), Reduced END (0; +1/2), OAF (-1), Always Direct (-1/4), No Noncombat Stretching (-1/4), Only To Cause Damage (-1/2) Taproot Enchantment (50 AP/13 RP): 2d6 Drain SPD (20), Reduced END (0; +1/2), Area of Effect (Damage Shield; +1/4), Constant (+1/2), Persistent (+1/4), Only Affects When Attacking with Staff (-1/4), OAF (-1), STR Minimum 10 (-1/2), Two-Handed (-1/2), No Range (-1/2)

Re: Quick Question about Linked and Trigger She can't use the enchantment without the staff, and the staff has to hit the enemy as part of an attack in order to trigger the enchantment. So, basically, whenever the character makes an attack (any attack, including martial maneuvers) with the staff where the staff hits an enemy, the enemy should also be on the receiving end of a drain. It seems like all the limitations that the staff's main HtH attack has (except maybe its "real weapon" limitation) should apply, but I'm not sure about this, since with the enchantment's use being limited to its use with the staff, that seems to be already covered by the damage shield and the limitation where the effect only triggers when the staff hits somebody. On the other hand, the -1/4 for that limitation doesn't seem to quite capture how limited this drain is, and since the drain would technically be subject to all of the listed limitations (considering that the enchantment cannot be used effectively at less than 10 STR, cannot be used at all if the focus is taken away, and must be used with two hands), it seems that in order to make it worth buying the enchantment, these limitations would have to apply. When the staff cannot be used effectively (or at all) neither can the enchantment. Hence my confusion. After writing it out like this, my gut says to apply the limitations (all but real weapon), because only with those limitations would the cost of the enchantment be worth the points.

Re: Quick Question about Linked and Trigger Christopher, I'm with you so far. I like your build that allows for combining both attacks with martial maneuvers, I just have one other question (for now, at least). Would the enchantment take the same limitations as the staff? In particular, would it be subject to Focus, STR Minimum, Real Weapon, and Two-Handed, like the staff is?

Re: Quick Question about Linked and Trigger Regarding the same staff, if I consider the staff itself Very Difficult to Replace, do I apply the added -1/2 limitation to the focus limitation for all of the staff's powers (its base attack, its reach, and its drain) or just the enchantment power, the drain? Since it's technically not difficult to find a staff or weapon that could do 5d6 hand-to-hand damage, it kind of seems like the staff's base attack shouldn't take the added limitation, and nor should the reach for the staff. But at the same time, these are all part of this particular staff, which is hard to replace.

Re: Quick Question about Linked and Trigger The staff was bought as equipment, using resource points from the APG. It's pretty much the second model you outlined. Every time the character connects an attack with the staff, the staff also drain's the target's SPD. It does not cost END to use, and it triggers with every attack. In the initial build, I simulated this by jointly linking both powers, but (the drain took a -1/4 linked limitation, and the base attack took a -0 linked limitation). But I'm getting I should build it either with the Trigger advantage, or with the Damage Shield advantage, but keep the Linked limitation at the same cost? Which advantage is more appropriate? The model I saw in the Bestiary had Trigger costing a full +1, which would seriously boost the cost (and I'd like to try to keep it in the same range, but I might have to drop its effectiveness to do that anyway). So, trigger or damage shield?

I'm trying to run a 6th Edition modern fantasy game, and for one of my players, I'm building them a staff with a built-in drain SPD enchantment that triggers on any enemy that gets hit with the staff. I thought of doing it with the "linked" limitation for both the staff's main hand-to-hand attack and for the drain, and I thought this would be the right way to go about it, but then I was just browsing my 6th Edition Bestiary, and I saw that the Blood Demon has something similar, where its drain attack also brings about its aid, and this is done using both a "Trigger" and a "Linked." Do I need to worry about giving this staff the "Trigger" advantage as well as the "Linked" limitation, or is the way I already built it, with the "Linked" limitation, sufficient? I feel like the rules for Linked kind of imply that Linked alone is good enough, but then I was thrown off by the way that demon's power was built.

Re: Buying Equipment with Money Unfortunately I don't have any of the genre books, so their recommendations aren't of much help to me. I was surprised to find the economic guide in the bestiary, and thought maybe there were formal rules for equipment pricing. I think I'll stick with my original pricing scheme, then, and adapt bestiary recommendations to them.

I'm curious about how money works with powers and equipment in heroic campaigns. None of the manuals I have go into much detail on this, and I had worked out my own system (where money is arbitrarily worth 100 x 1 character point, so a piece of gear with a 25 point real cost would cost 2,500 points of money). But I received the Hero System Bestiary as an early Christmas gift, and it has some specifics about money near the end of chapter one, where animal parts are worth the AP of the powers they support, multiplied by modifiers for how rare they are, how much demand there is, and how high a quality they are. Does/should equipment follow the same rules? For example, this set of pistols: Kinetic Pistol (20 AP/11 RP): 1d6 + 1 RKA vs PD (20), 4 Clips of 6 Charges (-1/4), STR Min 7 (-1/4), One Handed (-0), Real Weapon (-1/4) Double Pistols (+5 CP) Assuming that pistols are common enough in this world to meet demand, and that these pistols are of average quality, and they are not in any other way distinctive, would they be worth 25 dollars (or whatever monetary unit the game uses), as an identical power that stems from a part of an animal would? Or are there separate instructions for buying equipment with money in a guide somewhere?

Re: Planting Mines and Bombs So what I'm getting is that I need to focus more on explosives that deal high damage than a wide area. The NPCs will plant these on key support pillars rather than planting them on, say, the entire perimeter of the bottom of the building. So should I adjust the rules for explosive Area of Effect to scale it down, concentrating the blast? Also, should this be a killing attack or a blast? I'm thinking probably a blast with armor piercing, but even then, based on the beam stats given in this thread, it'd have to be at least a 25d6 just to reach the lower limit and destroy a 10 PD, 20 BODY beam, and even this wouldn't be a sure thing if more 1s were rolled than 6s. The problem is that the active points for this attack will become so inflated that the NPCs will almost always fail while planting it. The construct above gives it a bare minimum of (25d6 * 5 = 125, * [1 + 1/4 + 1/4] = 187) 187 Active Points, which, at the standard penalties for a power which requires a skill roll, imposes a -18 modifier on the roll, rendering it impossible without absurdly increasing the skill for the character. It could be half that for a lesser limitation, but that would still be a -9 modifier, which would make it nearly impossible to ever plant one of these bombs without blowing yourself up. This construct only includes a minimal cost for Area of Effect, as well as the armor piercing advantage. It completely ignores other advantages like Trigger, and potentially charges, which would rocket the AP cost even higher, making it even more difficult to set the charges. I guess I could potentially buy the skill as a focus as well, buy the skill roll up to a really high positive modifier, and limit it to use only with these bombs, to represent that the bombs have been designed to be easier to use, or that the characters have a detailed instruction guide with them. I don't see how to build this bomb and make it usable by anyone other than someone who's got something like a 30- skill roll.

Re: Planting Mines and Bombs For the purpose of explosives which destroy buildings, how do I know how much damage they need to do, and how large an area they need to cover? Do I need to do enough damage to take out all the outer walls of the ground floor (or at least enough to collapse the building), or should I figure a standard BODY and PD/ED for buildings and base the explosive devices on that?

All right, I'm working on some NPCs for a campaign I hope to get going soon. These NPCs are bombers. They throw grenades, plant mines, and yes, even bomb (or attempt to bomb) buildings with high-tech explosives. I'm not sure I need to, but I want to try to work out the mechanics of the mines and bombs so I can record exactly what they do, and how much they're worth in character points. The general idea of the mines is that they will be a somewhat low-powered explosive blast or killing attack, depending on the kind of mine used. The NPC needs to take a bit of time to set them, probably as a full phase action. These are meant as traps for the PCs, and not as a means of destroying buildings. They can be detonated remotely or by proximity. I'm not sure how to build this. Obviously I need foci, probably obvious and inaccessible. Also charges to represent the number of mines carried. Assuming that the guerrilla force these NPCs belong to would be well-stocked, I probably don't need to make it so the charges "never recover," any more than I would need to do that for bullets. A multiple trigger advantage, one based on proximity/motion and one based on a radio signal would cover the two ways the mines can go off. Obviously, the explosive area of effect advantage is needed to disperse the damage. A demolitions skill roll would also represent the difficulty of planting such a mine. Would that cover it completely? Would that grant my NPCs the ability to plant these mines, and use the concealment skill to hide them as traps for PCs? Would this still count as an attack with an attack roll, or does placing the trigger make that obsolete? More difficult is the issue of bombs meant for the destruction of buildings. A more powerful blast would be necessary, either with a standard AoE or another explosive one. These bombs would be bulky foci, and have only one charge. I want them to run on a timer set for a decent amount of time, probably 20 minutes. I think I can do this with the Extra Time limitation. Can I use the limitation twice, the second time to indicate that the bomb takes a long time to set? I'm thinking one minute or five minutes. As with the mines, I need to know whether or not planting something like this would require an attack roll. Also, should I take concentration and gestures limitations to indicate that for the time the character is planting the bomb, their hands and minds are busy focusing on only that task? Clearly, a demolitions roll is also necessary for this power. I think that's all my questions. With the complexity of the bomb, though, I'm thinking that maybe it would be best to just skip it, since this isn't a piece of equipment that the PCs are going to be using (probably), just trying to diffuse or prevent somebody from setting. I do want to work out the mines, though, as they seem like something that it would just be good to be able to make and know exactly how they work. Sorry for the long post, and thanks in advance for all the help.

Re: Mental Powers or Limited Defense? Most technology has manual controls as well as the intuitive element, meaning that not being connected means that you must rely entirely on the manual controls. The machine cannot read your intentions and help you with what you're trying to do. So any technology based skill rolls would receive a negative modifier for a character who is not connected, and would probably take more time as well. I think the "affect as connected mind class" complication route is a good one, and these guys buy it off/trade it for the more damaging physical complication of not being able to connect, since network technology is so pervasive in this setting. So I think what the racial build will be, basically, is this: (All my racial templates in this setting are built from 15 points of abilities, and 10-15 points of complications) Severed Receive: Buy off the "Affect as Connected Mind Class" complication (5 points) Other racial bonuses (10 points) Severed's Complications: (15 point physical complication representing the difficulty of using technology and not being able to use net magic) This gives the race the same cost as other races, and represents both the upside and the downside of not being affected by net-magic. They spend points on being unaffected, which I like, and as long as I make their physical complication limiting enough to be a 15 point complication, they still land in the same range as races who have 10 points of complications plus the 5-point complication. So they end up with the same number of character points put into them and the same level of limitations as other races. I think it works.

Re: Mental Powers or Limited Defense? These are both good points. Being disconnected would be a major hindrance, as the characters would have a much more difficult time using simple, everyday technology (though it wouldn't be impossible), because this technology is built to read a person's intentions as it interprets their actual verbal/physical interface commands. These characters would have to rely exclusively on input through interfaces, which would slow them down and make technology more difficult to use. So this would be an important physical complication which would definitely balance out the immunity they receive. Truth serums and lie detectors (which do not rely on mental energy) would definitely still work on these people, which I guess would mean that they would have to work on the disconnected class of minds as well as the connected. I think the way I'll have do this is to have the normal classes of minds (human, animal, machine, possibly alien to represent extra-dimensional beings/characters) and then a second order classification (connected or disconnected). So a typical character would be human and connected, characters of the race we're discussing would be human and disconnected, and other game elements would be whatever suits them (animal connected, machine disconnected, etc.). The connected/disconnected classification would only matter with network magic, which cannot be built to affect minds of the disconnected class. For all other mental powers, such as the truth serum or lie detector example, whether a mind is connected or disconnected is of absolutely no consequence. Does this seem reasonable?

Re: Mental Powers or Limited Defense? Where are the rules for mental classes? Are they in the core rulebooks or the APGs? I'm working with 6e, by the way, not 5e, so if it's a 5e thing I don't have it. It also probably wouldn't really apply in my world, because machines and minds all now work with the same energy. Minds can affect and be affected by machines, machines can affect each other, and minds can affect each other. The one exception is these severed people, whose minds have been purged of this kind of energy, cutting them off. They can't use this network but they can't be affected by it either (except in cases where it affects the world rather than the mind; ex. they wouldn't be vulnerable to a mental images attack that was performed with net-magic, but a regular images power they would still be able to see). I guess my only problem now is whether or not giving one specific playable race complete immunity to an entire class of what's essentially supposed to be magic is taking it too far, and potentially unbalancing the game.

Re: Mental Powers or Limited Defense? Also, I would like to correct the title of this thread to "Mental Defense or Limited Powers." Somehow I got it backwards.

Okay, I'm posting a lot of questions lately, and that's because I'm hardcore trying to get a campaign setting ready to go. This is another one about my races, but it requires just a touch of background regarding the setting. The world is a science fiction world in which a certain energy is emanated by all minds, amplified by certain machines, and allows minds to connect to each other as well as everyday technology. I want to make a race/breed whose minds have been purged of this energy, and thus never connect to this energy network. They cannot be affected by network-based powers used by others, and they cannot use them themselves. What I'm not sure of is how to represent this in game terms. Most of the powers I want this immunity to apply to would be mental powers (people attempting to hack into each other's minds), but I don't know if a mental defense is the right way to go, because it wouldn't represent total immunity, which this race would need. The other option would to just have all net-based mental abilities take the limitation "will not work on _______s," which seems viable. It just doesn't factor into the building of the breed at all, which seems counter-intuitive (since it seems to be a property of the breed that they can't be affected), and leaves me at a loss as to what kind of abilities to give this breed. At this point I'm leaning towards either taking the second option or scrapping the breed altogether and coming up with a different idea to replace it.

Re: Is Always On Necessary for this Inherent Power? What about Inherent for Enhanced Senses? If I want to give a character (or a racial template, as is actually the case) Telescopic sight, should I make that inherent? I'm thinking probably not, but if normal senses are inherent and cannot be drained, then it seems that a slight upgrade to them might be the same way/it should be made that way.

Re: Is Always On Necessary for this Inherent Power? Wow...thanks for all the helpful responses. It's been a really interesting discussion. I think I'll go with a build similar to the one posted by Sean Waters. The arguments against inherent in this case are pretty persuasive, and that particular build makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks a lot, guys!

Re: Negative Powers? Thanks for the input. I think rather than make this a race, I'll a) not mechanize it into game terms, and just work it into a campaign as an NPC or sect of NPCs or a god or something that will at times show up to find people of destiny (such as the PCs), and "assist" them by moving them backward/forward to key events. For circumstances like this, I don't think I need to create the power, even though it's something that acts on the PCs, because it would be so integral to the party, and I imagine they would generally be willing to go along with it. So, long story short, sorry to have wasted your time with this question.