Hugh Neilson

I recall the Traveller system being pretty lethal, but we never got into Traveller (or any Sci Fi games, really).

I'll share

6e added the option for Suffocation to Change Environment, I believe in APG I. This was an item we had never had in Hero, and one I raised in the SETAC discussions, as it crops up on occasion in the source material. Personally, I'd also allow it as an adder to a Barrier (englobed targets can't breathe) or Entangle (covering the target's face and suffocating them). For your spell, CE seems like the best base power anyway.

Back in high school and early university, we played a lot of three games - Champions, D&D and Call of Cthulhu. One observation that came from those days was that character creation was inversely proportional to lethality. A Champions character was a lot of work to create, but the system made them very tough to kill, rather than KO. D&D was quicker, and character death was also a more significant possibility. Cal of Cthulhu? Characters had to be quick to create as you'd be making a lot of them. As I recall, it was the original Shadows of Yog-Sothoth that opened with the comment that the characters should be fairly experienced - no more than half should be brand-new.

While the Gate modifiers appear in the writeup of Teleport in 6e, the EDM writeup (6e V1 p 222. ) notes that Gate is also suitable for EDM. The same modifiers would be used.

Someone who values the storage space and is not deeply analyzing the benefits and drawbacks from the perspective of a paranoid murderhobo? Why would anyone design a metal contraption powered by flammable substances spewing out noxious fumes so that they can travel at great speeds and potentially end their lives should there be a malfunction, inclement weather or a slight driver error (whether by the person driving this one or someone driving a different one)? Historians and archaeologists believe that this reflected the devout religion of Ah-Toe, a deity of speed who demanded such sacrifices from his faithful.

Perhaps I am misinterpreting the OP's intent, but what I read was that the owner opens the bag and climbs down. The Gate (i.e. the bag) is open, and remains so, in the starting dimension. It cannot be closed from within the extradimensonal space, but anyone who comes across the bag in the home dimension can close it up again (Restrainable) stranding anyone in that extradimensional room until and unless the bag is opened again. I'm not sure the APG powers are in HD - looks like they are not from other posts above.

Nothing in the rules description of Gate suggests that it is permanent once created. The character(s) in that 8' x 8' room have no means of preventing anyone from outside climbing down the ladder, hence Always On. Whether it needs Uncontrolled is a valid question, especially given that it cannot be turned off.

It's ExtraDimensional Movement, not Teleportation. Although Gate is detailed under Teleportation, it's cross referenced in the EDM discussion on 6e V1 p 222. Travel to a single location in a single dimension (20), 0 END (+1/2), AoE (radius - the bag opening with ladder; +1/4), Usable on Others (one recipient at a time +1/4), Constant (+1/2), Uncontrolled (+1/2) [60 AP] Always On (anyone can follow you down into the room or back out; -1/2), OAF (sack; -1); Restrainable (grabbing the sack prevents access either way; -1/2). Real cost 20 points. Season to taste with Extra Time, Gestures, Concentration if desired.

Agree with Tom - it's a zero END EDM gate.

I enjpyed it, although in hindsight,

Sounds like the user would only know the gun won't work after the first use fails, which is not far off seeing the beam strike a target with the defense, to no effect. That doesn't seem like a major deviation from the usual NND rules, If combining Blast and Heal, I would likely make the Blast No Range as well, so that both radiate from the caster, but it depends on the intended capabilities of the spell - Range on the Healing as well would allow a 4 meter radius bubble wherever the caster desires (at least within any rational combat range). I would want the two to hit the same area, either way.

Of course, we also had no rules for "holding an action" and, although spells had a required casting time, weapons did not have a required "target and strike" time, so outside of 1 round+ casting times, targeting the caster while casting was pretty much house rule territory anyway.

I think since 5e, Healing has been similar to Aid and Drain - add up the dice and that is how many CP it Heals ("simplified Healing" rolled like normal damage and healing both STUN and BOD remains an option; 10 points per 1d6). I don't think there was a conscious decision to say "you can't put Does Knockback on Healing" so much as an assumption that one would not want non-attack powers to do knockback. 6e includes a discussion of "does knockback" on attacks with no effect dice (such as Darkness), so I don't believe the intention was to limit possible applications. That discussion suggests 1d6 per 5 AP to add up BOD for Knockback. Seems like one could just as easily use 1 BOD per 5 points (a form of Standard Effect). As discussed above, adding up the BOD healed works fairly well (number on the dice, halved as BOD is "defensive" in 6e). Does that mean that the character automatically knows that the rifle will fail, so no point using an action to fire it? Does the rifle have an indicator that turns red if it won't work due to the target's armor or an ambient energy field? Or does the energy beam simply fail to hit (or even to manifest) when the character takes careful aim and pulls the trigger? The NND will clearly have no effect if it targets someone with the defense, as that is the nature of an NND. Deduct your END suggests that the power can be attempted, and fails - fair enough. If the Knockback fails to affect targets who are not healed, however, then this construct is 100% useless, as it cannot Heal the Undead. Using your model of a campaign ground rule, are you imposing the requirement that Holy spells of Healing cannot generate their Healing magic at all if the target is not wounded?

The OP posited an AoE Healing. As it does not have Range added, it would be a 4 meter radius surrounding the character.

I can only assume that this is because the HD programmer decided to retain the option for anyone who wanted to GM-Option Healing that does Knockback into the game. I recall some past discussions where Steve Long was asked about some Hero Designer issue or another, and his response was often that he did not make Hero Designer and, where it contradicts the rule book, it is "wrong" under RAW. The "we" to which I refer would be the "we" creating the campaign, which requires buy-in from the players (assuming the GM wishes to run the campaign, not write fan-fiction). The ability to breathe water may have a range of values as well, depending on whether the game is set in the Sahara Desert, is a globetrotting adventure, is set entirely on the High Seas and in port towns, or is set in undersea Atlantis. The system still sets a default price assuming a default level of utility. Bottom of Page 2 of the thread, where Sevrick posted: Does an NND fail to go off if the target has the required defenses? Does a Healing spell not manifest if the target is unwounded (or if it rolls too low to Heal further BOD)? Or does it go off, to no effect (or, in this case, still doing Knockback despite the target being unaffected by the Healing)? I would say that the spell still activates, and can still inflict Knockback on targets that are not healed (which, based on the w/u of this spell, includes the Undead and Demons, who cannot be Healed but can be knocked back). If I cast a Fireball straight up into the sky, with no one there to hurt, won't it still explode into a burst of flame? If not, what a magnificent Illusion Detector - "since my Fireball refused to fly forth, there cannot really be a viable target there". If "wrong" means "contradicts the RAW", then it is wrong. I will suggest that including an option which is outside the RAW is not "wrong" - no one is forced to use it, and someone wishing to depart from RAW and allow a "Healing that does Knockback" build is spared the hassle of customizing an advantage to do so. I don't ever recall CON influencing Knockback, @Duke Bushido. Maybe you have a cite? If it's unique to 3e (much like growth and shrinking affecting range modifiers instead of DCV), I may have missed it as we went from 2e to 4e. Increased Knockback is now "Double Knockback" and multiplies the BOD roll before subtracting those d6s to determine Knolckback. Reading Does Knockback under RAW, you would count the BOD like a normal attack. But then, RAW would not allow "Does Knockback" on Healing either. Having decided to depart from RAW and allow Does KB on Healing, it is for the GM to assess exactly how that will work. I like the idea of an average roll meaning 2 BOD for KB per 1d6 of Healing, as Healing costs twice as much as Blast. However, simply using the BOD healed is very close (average 1.75/d6 of Healing) and much more elegant. To me, that is a challenge of any Hero System sourcebook. A lot of assumptions have to be made, including how the magic system works, the campaign norms for DC, Defenses and skill rolls, and so on.

Rogues should also be very common, even before delving into the arcane knowledge suggested above.

By RAW, Does Knockback "enables an Attack Power that normally doesn’t do Knockback to do Knockback" and Healing is an Adjustment Power, not an Attack Power, so by RAW, this combination does not exist. Note that Drain is both an Adjustment and an Attack power - Healing is not. If it were, then by RAW, "The attacker should count the Normal Damage BODY on the effect dice (even if the attack doesn’t do BODY damage), then roll normally to determine the Knockback (if any)." So if the 2d6 Healing roll is a pair of 4s, Healing 4 BOD, the Knockback is 2 - 1 normal BOD for each '4'. I think I would prefer to double that amount, as Does Knockback generally presumes a 1 DC = 5 points ability. The actual BOD healed works pretty well for this purpose. But that deviates from RAW, if we assume we are folowing all RAW except for allowing Does Knockback on a non-Attack power.

Now we have to assess what type of mind these entities have. Paleolithic animals and dinosaurs, no issue that they are animals. Are Pokemon "animals"? Some Pokemon probably are, but there are also plants, rocks and non-human sentient beings. What class of mind is a tree? A rock? Are kaiju animals, or something else entirely? Are evolved animals still animals, or are they now sentient so affected like humans, or even some Alien mind form? And, for all of these settings, are these [animals? aliens? whatever class of mind?] the sole, or even most common, encounter? If I can control Pokemon trainers, do I need to control the Pokemon they command? Yes and no. Do mental powers then allow control of a computer or cell phone by default? I'm not sure any earlier edition was ever specific that mental powers worked on cats and dogs, much less bugs and plankton. What about plants? To assess what mental powers work on, one must first define a "mind". It was, however, generally assumed that all sentient beings, human or alien; biological or electronic (Mechanon) were affected by default, and those who would be harder to target due to their unusual minds took mental defense - they were different, this granted an advantage, so they paid for that advantage. So I can just define that my Mutant character has an alien mind? Are autistic people the same as other "humans" from a mental powers perspective? Sounds like fertile ground for all the players who painstaking defined their Powered Armor and other foci being constructed of sophisticated plastics, ceramics, etc. - we know there must be a Magneto clone out there somewhere. At least Magneto got a limitation on his powers! The first is an option if we want all Divine Healing to have this added benefit, but not if this spell is unique in the setting - and it sounds like it is intended to be. If it only works on Undead and Demons, I submit that it is less effective than if it also worked on animals, plants, monsters and bandits. Therefore, it should cost less. "Works on everyone" is the baseline. As written, I see no reason that casting the spell in an area containing only Undead would cause the spell to fail, so I would answer "YES" to all of your "would it work?" questions. They aren't because the disadplication is only triggered by Holy Magic Healing. Just like a character with magnetic TK would set off a susceptibility to Intense Magnetic Fields when TK that's a glowing green energy construct would not. Once the GM declares that this is how the world works, well and good, and the GM defines exactly how it works (maybe even on the fly). Now, what if a player wants a Healing spell that knocks the Undead back more effectively?

I have seen court cases where paper and ink are age-tested to determine whether the document was really signed of when claimed. Testing the wine itself would require opening the bottle, so that's not where one would logically start. I believe the original comment was aimed at procedures of that nature, not speculative processes derived from having a knowledge of time-travel science.

This is the state of the current game rules (at least in Hero 6e - IIRC, a conscious decision was made to drop CoM in Champions Complete). There needs to be a rule, however. I don't think mental powers that work on humans, animals and Google Home by default would be consistent with the source materials. The rule does not, however, have to be the specific 4 classes of mind set out in 6e. Those classes also leave gaps, such as automaton undead (they lack Ego, but I don't believe that they are Machines). That can just as easily be Mental Defenses, requiring the character who has a special resistance to mental powers to pay for that extra resistance, rather than providing it to them by default. I see a better case for mental powers being effective, by default, on sentient minds. That will cover off player characters and NPCs. Then we are left with other types of minds. Three that come to mind are animals, machines/computers and the aforementioned Undead. I cannot think of a game where mental powers that affect animals would be as useful as mental powers that affect sentient beings (or where Alien or Animal are as useful as Human), yet we price them the same. Should they be priced differently? Should they be completely separate powers so you don't just tack on a 5 point Adder to get two classes of minds (although an Adder is a nice shortcut to avoid a Mutipower of the various Classes of Minds). Should the adder be the same for each Class of Minds? Should it even be an Adder? It seems pretty cheap when one already has 60 AP mental attacks to buy those Adders. In source material, it seems like affecting multiple classes of mind is rare, which suggests this is not an inexpensive tack-on. Every Necromancer would logically tack on "and sentient minds" if it's that cheap. Why limit yourself to computers and electronics? The Machine class is also challenged to deal with sentient AIs, and sentient Undead would create a similar issue. Do those entities get to choose? Do they have both Classes of Mind by default? What about a super-evolved animal, or one which has received sentience by some other means? Somehow, we managed for many editions without Classes of Minds. I suspect Mechanon and Firewing lobbied heavily for this rule to get free immunity to most mental powers.

For someone who has the time and inclination to design a game from scratch, great. Many gamers lack one or both, but might well play a game driven by the Hero engine. Even more might value the transparency to revise or build the occasional construct. Classes of mind aren't really constructed in the system, as they have no point cost (however common or rare, useful or tangential, the ability to affect those specific types of minds may be, compared to other choices).

In the Nerd Tradition of applying logic to fantastical constructs, if jumping forward ages the wine 100 years, won't you also age 100 years (and does the reverse hold true, in which case you would not be able to go back far enough to obtain these items)?

Assuming the ability to accurately time travel, you place it in a safety deposit box and move it every 5 - 10 years.

That's how I would envision a game "Powered by HERO" being structured. Publish the game and put the builds online for those who want to tinker, discuss any nuances or handwaves, etc. But present a game, first and foremost. With a GM familiar with Hero, a player like Lonewolf can make modifications, within the constraints of the game (as set by the GM and players).