Hugh Neilson

Re: Pain Backlash Doesn't a mental damage shield only apply when the character is attacked mentally?

Re: Pain Backlash Since it automatically hits, I'd probably start with the Damage Aura mechanics, preferably by the Trigger article in DH #11. Since it's "any damage", you probably need a suite of Triggered ego attacks, one each for mental (with range), physical and energy attacks. Now, some need range and some don't. This could get pretty kludgy, and probably more expensive than it's worth. What about a simple Ego Attack, with Trigger and "1 hex area - accurate", maybe some built-in levels to OCV to ensure it will hit? Limit the damage to damage through the character's defenses, and handwave LOS in favour of the Trigger, and it seems like you'll get a reasonable cost. Add kimnitations to taste (Visible, if you want a visible effect, for example).

Re: Memory Stealing Power The sliding scale desired isn't supported by anything as written (unless you go the sliding activation rolls approach). I hadn't thought about the added penalty to RSR if the character is attempting to use something else based off of the same skill roll, however. The sliding activation roll would probably be a better construct anyway, as you don't need to figure out what kind of bonus/penalty to apply on the sliding scale activiation of the RSR approach. The portion that acts 14- gets a -1/2 limitation, and the portion that acts 8- gets a -2 limitation.

Re: Mastermind, Jean Grey, Dark Phoenix, and Fred. Transform. Definitely transform. I do prefer the Transform option, but a cumulative Mind COntrol with the "partial effect" advantagte designed for Transform would also work. In either case, the attach could have a significant time delay limitation, reflecting the fact that the character can only "attack" so often. Maybe he can only make one attempt per day, add whatever damage he gets at that time, but can't add any more (whether Transform BOD or effect points for Mind Control) until his time interval has passed. Thus, early on, he can only make small changes, that would require a low EGO roll. Later, as his effect points build, he can make more extreme orders. You'd need to modify te Mind Control with 0 END to maintain the effect without deteriorating breakout rolls, some form of Continuous so it stays in place over time, etc., and some advantage allowing new instructions without starting from scratch (unless he has to pick the ultimate instruction at the outset, from which you set uo the gradual chain of sub-commands to get there) but this could be a decent model.

Re: Need Help With Teleport Power Or just handwave the +1 on the basis that no advantage is actually achieved. [but I'm biased against that advantage because I think it runs from way too costly to way too cheap depending on who you actually want to summon.]

Re: Memory Stealing Power On the basios that Major could make the target a total amnesiac, believe he's Napolean or turn into a frog, I'm inclined to say Minor. Someone noted above it is a powerful effect. Yes, but far less powerful than the examples I note above. Just a thought, but what about making some of the Transform on RSR -1/20 points, some on RSR -1/10 points and some on RSR -1/5 points? This would simulate a more powerful effect if the skill roll is made by more. You could then assign numbers of dice to points in between the three rolls required to make the effect more granular. eg. a 10d6 (100 point) power was suggested. I'll assume a 18- skill roll for illustration. Make 3d6 RSR -1/20 points, so that's a 17- roll. The next 4d6 are -1/10 points so 13-. The final 3d6 are -1/5 points, so 7- to get them all. So use this: Roll of: d6 5- 10 6 9 7 8 8 7 9 6 10 5.5 11 5 12 4 13 3.5 14 3 15 2.5 16 2 17 1 Maybe give the whole thing an extra -1/4 since the gradual progression is slower than RSR would normally provide (or re-jig the numbers to have the actual skill roll be in the middle of the dice it grants) and voila. May be easier to just give extra dice lower and lower activation rolls and ignore RSR entirely.

Re: The great armour race... I may use some of these myself - the swashbuckling campaign could be a fun one.

Re: The great armour race... So let’s put this in game terms. Make it cost more. Hard to do retroactively. Enforce encumbrance, and exacerbate it with weather conditions. Hero has rules for overheating. Make it easier to overheat while wearing armor. That’s part of the “real armor†limitation, if anyone asks. Oh, and enforce hilly country increasing the END cost to move long-term, and also increasing the end for encumbrance. Make them play out some waterway crossings in their armor. After a while, just enforce reductions in cross-country movement due to the waterways. “You can either get there before the day the bandits threatened to kill the princess, OR you can drag that armor along. What’s it gonna be?†Social issues. Have them get arrested. Maybe armor-wearers take a penalty on interaction skills – after all, they’re just common thugs, not REAL warriors. Wearing all that metal leaves a smell, so leaving your armor back at the inn (exposed to thieves – it’s expensive, remember?) doesn’t remove the whole penalty. Implement the above and see how big it stays in your campaign… .

Re: Character balancing option Neither have I, and I do look at similar issues to yours. As well, I'll look at versatility (characters with only one attack may be able to have better OCV/DC combinations than those with lots of choices) and the tradeoff (more powerful offensively, less powerful defensively, or vice versa). No formulas, though - I just eyeball them. To me, if you end up with a ton of clones, you nmeed to look at the game itself. Does your game favour any type of character? For example, if you tend to use low OCV characters who do tons of damage, and rarely have a character who can target a hex or a mind, DEX/DCV becomes much mnore valuable. Are you giving them too many points? If they can max out on stats, defenses and offense, I would suggest either the limits need to be raised (for NPC's and PC's) or that the points available need to be curtailed. It should not be possible to be at campaign max in virtually everything. If it is, of course you get clones - the points have nowhere else to go.

Re: The great armour race... Youy've got a combination problem here. The players aren't playing to genre (your genre specifically, not fantasy in general) when they heap on armor. That's covered extensively above. But the other problem is that, to me, the genre lacks verissimilitude. Why don't most people wear armor? The players obviously aren't feeling disadvantaged by their armor, and from your frustrations, they aren't being disadvantaged by their armor. Seems to me the rest of the culture is foolish. Caling them "wims" is fine, but if a platoon of armored knights could conquer the world, how long will people consider them "wimps"? Hey, they might think four guys in a sherman tank are wimps too, until their castle is knocked down by it. If you want them to pull off the armor, and believe the characters who wear no armor have any smarts, you need some campaign specific rules that discourage armor. This could be disadvantages like "It's very hot, so you spend an extra x END per phase to wear these types of armor,. and LTE rules will be in place. Further, in the day, armor automatically raises your encumbrance one category, and full suits of armor raise it a second category." Maybe you make some fairly special talents available only to people who lack armor. It could be campaign reality like "Forging is not a familiar process, so NO metal armor exists", or scarcity such that yuou can get metal armor, but it'sa hugely expensive. It could be legal. "Only the King's Guard may wear armor. It is a capital offense for anyone not in direct service to the King, and on duty, to wear armor heavier than leather". You also need to restrict armor substitutes like Combat Luck and magic spells. Some possibilities include eliminating Combat Luck, or restructiung ut to three points and requiring "Not if any other resistant defenses are available"/ Maybe you further restruct the special effects to require them to be in active combat, so it's not luck but skillful parries. If you want it pretty much gone, make it "Require a luck roll" from the skill roll disadvantages. Magic simply has to be restricted. Maybe a spell that provides more than 4 resistant defenses is rules impossible. NO ONE can do it. And I would definitely prohibit spells which grant resistant defenses to anyone but the caster. hmmm...what if healing spells only work on wounds that had no protection from any form of resistant defenses? "The Gods dislike cowardice" backs up your "armor is for wimps" dogma. Simply put, if you want your milieu to be one where resistant defenses are seldom seen, you need to provide in-game reasons why people would not use them. Otherwise, the players see an advantage they want, and they're not going to turn it down because you want them to. The characters need an in-game reason to scorn armor.

Re: Special effect or something else? Power Question. I wouldn't be inclined to charge more than +1/4. There is an advantage in that the opponent may well keep hitting when he ought to change tactics, but unlike regular IPE, it won';t be too long before the attacker realizes it's just not working, whatever it looks like.

Re: Special effect or something else? Power Question.

Re: The great armour race... It seems no one has mentioned the Great Equalizer. I know that you will be reluctant to do this given the tone of your campaign, but... Hey guys, if ALL the POC's have max DEX, and ALL the PC's have max defenses, I guess that any NPC who's close to equal must have all of those things too, and anyone who's considerably more powerful than you probably has a 26 DEX and, say, 24 DEF 10 resistant. A comment made early on was that this is a pretty high point campaign. That extra 100 points (over 75+75) has to go somewhere, so shuldn't you expect the averages (damage classes, defenses, dexterities, CV's, etc.) would rise? What did you have in mind for them to spend tjose extra points on? Mayube if they met some 250 point NPC's built like you would expect the PC's to look, this would be an eye opener for them. Oh, and the ultimate solution? 8 rPD, 8rED = 24 AP. 8d6 Suppress, All Defenses, Area Effect. That's some spell. Must have been researched especially for these marauding heavy armor wearing mercenaries. Now the unarmored, high DEX opposition has no penalties and no DEF, and your characters have encumbrance penalties and no DEF. Oh well!

Re: My Faithful Steed

Re: My Faithful Steed Follower sounds most appropriate to me. What about getting around the Clairsentience by giving the horse a limited Mind Link, only to know when its master needs it? It then uses its "Teleport - only to conveniently be where its master needs it"? I'd use a multipower for the Tport -one with scaleable megascale and one not, with enough NCM multiples to get to a km distance. The "Help with teleport power" thread has a similar construct (near the present end) which might make a start for that. THAt teleport was working out at 75 points, but it had a lot of Extra Mass adders. I'd bet the horse could purchase it for under 50 (probably at 0 END), which will only increase its cost to your character by about 10 points.

Re: Need Help With Teleport Power Hmmm...as a Multipower, you could have this as one slot (133 point MP base), and a second slot with 5" TP, 1 fixed slot, x32 mass (36 points base), 128x NCM (+30 points for 6 extra doublings; the first is automatic) which totals 640" = 1.28 km; 66 points. That gets rid of your "walk a km" problem. Now, that costs 133 base, + 13 for slot 1 and 7 for slot 2, all divided by 2 for fixed locations = [66 + 6 + 3 =] 75 points. But you may want to consider wherther you want to pay 13 END to exercise slot #1. 0 END wouldn't add that much to the cost (and the increased mass coming down would help a lot). NB: It's still WRONG building it this way, but the exercise is interesting.

Re: Hero Character Portfolio -- What Do *You* Want To See? Unlike many posters, I don't use Hero Designer. However, I am comfortable with my own "homegrown" character sheets. In my group, I think we have a split of players who would kep using HD and players who would keep using their custom sheets, so I suspect we wouldn't be much of a market for this product.

Re: Need Help With Teleport Power

Re: Multiple Secret IDs I don't see why a character couldn't havbe more than one secret ID. Moon Knight had three. The issue would come down to whether that makes the social limitation worse (either of Firestorm's ID's can get their lives screwed up) or better (MK can just retire one identity). I'd be inclined to go with OIHID (he has to do something to change) on most powers, and leave it at that. So he's two people outside his Super form? It doesn't seem a big enough advantage to merit any extra costs, especialy if you're paying for all the skills in any case. Now, if you're going Classic Firestorm, where Ronnie could trigger the change at will and Stein was along for the ride, I'd say that ends it. If the two have to be in physical proximity, I'd say further limits are in order, especially if one of the Secret ID's, like Stein was, is unaware of the heroic ID. How else could you do it? You've mentioned the Duplication approach. That could work for, say, Infinity Man and the Forever People. What about a Summon that requires more than one person with the power, linked to EDM that moves the summoners to a "limbo" state so they're out of the way until the "Summonnee" goes home? A lot depends, to me at least, on how useful the other personas are. Ronnie and Stein weren't likely to succeed in combat where Firestorm failed and, as you say, their unique skills were always available in the gestalt. You could play it as "Ronnie is the character; Stein is a special effect", and even make Stein a contact, or a follower, of the Ronnie character. Lots of possibilities, but probably no one right answer. USPD II? PS: regardless of the build, I would hold Firestorm to the 350 point campaign max, and he would get xp normally. xp for the other forms would be limited to what's needed to keep Firestorm at his present point total, unless the subsidiary characters were duplicates.

Re: Need Help With Teleport Power Where do you get "right" from? There are NO prohibitions in the book. The furthest Steve ever goes, in my experience, is to say "Under the rules as written, no", leaving the "you may want to vary the rules to enable a reasonable effect to be achieved".

Re: Need Help With Teleport Power Like Hawksmoor, I'm a big fan of trying to apply the rules as written. Sarcasm is just one more service we provide. And I can tell you that, with the SFX you described, the answers I gave you are exactly whatI would give any player in my game - you don't need a 61 point power to get a 1 point benefit.

Re: Role Playing Challenge I've rearranged your post to suit my answer. My comments are generic to the characters, not the situation, and aimed at "what can you do in a social/diplomatic session" Renowned hero? Social skills or not, people will likely listen to what he has to say. He'd probably be good at stirring up the common man - don't underestimate how difficult they can make things for the aristocracy. As well, if his word carries a lot of weight with the populace, he has some leverage on its leaders. Your last phrase says it all. Information gathering. Information is definitely one of those "If you don;t get it, it gets you" situations. Combine with John disseminating info to the locals, and anything up to open revolt can be incited. Pretty limited options here. Stand around and look intimidating? Any chance he can work the demi-human populace?

Re: Too many stats in Hero Just a clarification Caris. Can you abort to assign skill levels, or is it a prerequisite that you must abort to assign skill levels in a defensive fashion? I believe the latter is correct, but I don't have the books with me. Assuming my recollection is correct, you could abort to put OSL's to DCV, or to Block and put levels in OCV, but not (say) to put them in Deduction.

Re: Need Help With Teleport Power Yep, as the fully consistent and well-received posts to this thread clearly indicate, statting out the object would be WAY tougher and farmore controversial than statting the ability to teleport it as a power. Hey, YMMV, but when I post looking for ideas on how to contruct something, I'm generally hoping to get somne creative ideas on how to construct it - preferably options I have failed to consider.

Re: Too many stats in Hero What Reed Richards example? If it's from me, it was done a long time ago, don't recall it, sorry. My hypothetical Supers guy was Richard Reed. Polaris1 may think I'm dyslexic.