prestidigitator

Weapons To be able to use a weapon you pick up/buy with proficiency, you must have the appropriate Attack Power: Hand Killing Attack, Ranged Killing Attack, Hand Attack, or Blast (if you wish to be able to use multiple varieties, you may buy them in a Multipower--so long as you aren't planning to simultaneously dual wield weapons of each type, like a sword and a club). The Attack Power is bought with Reduced Endurance: 0 End (+1/2), Variable Special Effects at the +1/4 level (unless you wish to narrow your proficiency to one tight group on the Weapon Familiarity table), and Obvious Inaccessible Focus (-1/2) to represent the usual object-of-opportunity concept. You must have as many dice as the weapon's base damage does. If the weapon has some kind of Advantage (e.g. Range Based on Strength for weapons that can be thrown, or Armor Piercing for some weapons such as picks), you must have either the suitable amount of Variable Advantages on the Attack Power as well, or you must buy the applicable Advantage as a Naked Advantage (and apply Modifiers in a similar fashion to buying weapon-type Attack Powers) on the number of DCs the weapon provides. You will also apply a Limitation called Subject to Real Weapon (-3/4), which is (in spirit) sort of like Variable Limitations, only less under your own control. It represents the fact that you are subject to any and all Limitations on whatever weapon you pick up and wield. This includes things like Real Weapon, Strength Minimum, Required Hands, any OCV penalties the weapon is normally subject to, etc. If you pick up a weapon you are not proficient with (your Attack Power is of the wrong kind, not large enough, limited as described below, or lacking the appropriate Advantages), you suffer not only -3 OCV to use that weapon, but (similar to how Skills work) you may not apply any Combat Skill Levels (or Penalty Skill Levels!) to the use of the weapon. This means you cannot increase your OCV or damage when attacking with the weapon, and only CSLs that are not restricted by weapon or offensive maneuver type (e.g. CSLs with Dodge, all HTH Combat, Overall CSLs, or Overall Skill Levels) may be applied to your DCV while wielding the weapon. If you wish to further limit the range of weapons with which you are familiar (beyond type of Attack Power, number of dice, and applicable Advantages), you may take a Limitation on your Attack Power. This represents things like the restriction of the variable SFX on your power and the difficulty of finding weapons "of opportunity". The possible levels are as follows: Very Broad Group (-1/4): For example, Common Melee (or Missile) Weapons plus up to 3 individual WFs. Broad Group (-1/2): For example, Common Melee (or Missile) Weapons or up to 5 individual WFs. Narrow Group (-3/4): For example, up to 3 individual WFs. Extremely Narrow Group (-1/2 plus no Variable Special Effects): For example, a single WF (though not necessarily a single weapon since you can have WFs like "Axes, Maces, Hammers, Picks").

I'm considering this primarily with fantasy in mind, but it could apply to other genres too. I was thinking about the problem of balancing fighting ability with magic in heroic games. Most times I see this handled by giving a large reduction in the cost of magical ability to match the fact that equipment such as weapons and armor are not paid for with character points. But what if we approached it from the other end: make the ability to use equipment more expensive than, say, the 1-2 point Weapon Familiarities we are used to. In fact, make fighter-types pay for the full abilities of their weapons, but in a general and free-form enough manner to partially keep the feel of an equipment-based heroic game intact. I'm going to follow up with some posts to show what I mean for various aspects of equipment from weapons to armor to shields. I really think it could be made to work, but I may need some feedback and help to tweak things and get it right.

Re: How do Hero System players/GM view DnD?

Re: Enhanced Senses query: when do you need to buy Discriminatory? Hmm. What if we did something like make Discriminatory +3 Per, "Only for purposes of distinguishing quality and details." Analyze could be +6 with the same limitation. Or something like that. I mean, if someone made their roll by a margin of 8, you'd probably be giving them a heck of a lot more detail than you would for a simple success, wouldn't you? I've even built spells like this before. I believe I converted the first level AD&D spell "Identify" as a bonus to magical Perception (which could also then be Complimentary to an Spellcraft/Analyze Magic skill). I suppose I could have built it as Discriminatory or Analyze instead, but this way seemed more scalable to me, so I didn't even really consider the other. That might even remove the question of how it operates for different Senses or Sense Groups. We already know what kind of details each Sense (Group) can provide. Now it's a matter of how many and how fine of those details to provide in a given circumstance. It's just a matter of scale, which margin of success can easily correlate to.

Re: How do Hero System players/GM view DnD? Skills and Powers, and Combat and Tactics, actually gave me a pretty bad taste, and made it really difficult for me to look at 3rd edition D&D with any kind of interest. While the (vaguely Hero-like) concepts were neat, I found that the execution was terrible, and really started the corner-case ability-chaining munchkinism that D&D was evolving into. And the introduction of game-changing "Attacks of Opportunity"...shudder (yes, I understand some form of attack of opportunity might have been present before Combat and Tactics/3E, but that's the point at which it started to become THE major tactical consideration of all combat, and you had to start thinking 6 times about each planned bit of movement or attack lest you enter or leave or cross or look at someone's threatening squares or whatever, and try to remember which enemies had already used their AoOs and which have extra ones and what maneuvers might give someone an AoO against you and...). Once I finally did look at 3rd edition with the slightest bit of interest, I found that the "feat chains" and crap left an even worse taste (the way skills evolved was a great--albeit partial--step in the right direction though).

Re: Ballad of Ardor Oh. Hmm. If you're willing to take a few actions to get the full effect, you could get away with fewer dice and built up to Maximum Effect with a couple rolls rather than using Standard Effect. That would mean 3.5 dice for the Expanded Effect version (maybe that's what Sean was getting at) and 7 dice for the split version.

Re: AE Accurate War! Ugh ... what is it good for? (Absolutely nothing?) Oh. Hmm. Now that we're discussing it, though, it might need some level of Indirect or something on it to, or one could argue that the Earth shields most of the AoE volume from the origin point. That's probably going to have to be a call made by each GM, but you'd be safer to include it.

Re: Ballad of Ardor Remember that effects on DCV are halved for Adjustment Powers, so you need 20 points of effect to add +2 DCV (or you'll need to drop that to +1 DCV). That means 7 dice of Standard Effect rather than 4, and 105 Active Points for Sean's build above. Alternately, you can split the points instead of using Expanded Effect. You'd need 10 for OCV, 20 for DCV, and 10 for Speed, for a total of 40 points of effect, or 14 dice of Standard Effect (13 if the GM is feeling nice and gives you an extra +1 point on 13 dice of Standard Effect that drop the average from 3.5 to 3, instead of requiring the whole extra die). That comes to 78-84 points. AoE/Selective will bring that up to--ouch!--a whopping 117-126 Active Points. Okay. Nevermind. Boy, Adjustment Powers still need some thinking out and, "adjusting." Heh. Maybe go with UBO instead.

Re: More Blockages Also, Damage Shield isn't the only way to do a, "Get hurt even if you Block," or difficult/impossible to Dodge. An AoE attack (Accurate or not) can't generally be Blocked, and can be very difficult to avoid (and impossible to Dodge). That might be a very good way to represent the speedster's attack you mention, in fact. Maybe Grond too, though it seems like a Damage Shield might be more appropriate there.

Re: AE Accurate War! Ugh ... what is it good for? (Absolutely nothing?)

Re: Visualising Block Because you should use things for what they were designed to do (there's even a meta-rule about that discussed somewhere, I believe). Staring down an opponent is a Presence Attack. The system should allow you to do just about anything you want to do, but forcing a square peg into a round hole isn't the way it was intended to do it for you. I never said that at all. Let's keep our arguing civil and respectful without twisting each other's words, eh? I said they fulfill different functions, not that they don't interact well. A maneuver is like a constructed 'p'ower, not a building block 'P'ower.

Re: AE Accurate War! Ugh ... what is it good for? (Absolutely nothing?) Yeah, the Dodge rules for Accurate AoE never made much sense to me. I guess Dodging make the attack roll vs. DCV 6 instead of DCV 3, but since the attack roll is to place the area, I've never liked that much. I just straight up don't allow Dodge in that circumstance. If you want to avoid an Accurate AoE, or any AoE for that matter, use Dive for Cover. The Accurate part is to make things easier for the attacker; it doesn't matter one way or the other for the intended target. YMMV.

Re: More Blockages Hmm. What about making it dependent upon the amount by which the Block succeeds? Say, 2DCs, plus 1DC for each 2 points by which your Block succeeds. Then if you Block a sword with your bare arm, you're going to be in pain unless you succeed by quite a bit (indicating that perhaps you blocked the arm of the attacker rather than the blade). This way Block might still be somewhat effective in superheroic games, where -2 DCs may not be all that big a difference ("30 Stun instead of 37? Should I bother?"). I realize this makes it more difficult to cost it out because it is open-ended, but it might balance a little better. Also, related to my first post, you could simply build a bonus with Block into weapons, and shields get it already (though the bonus for a shield could possibly use some beefing up)....

Re: How do Hero System players/GM view DnD? D&D provides a lot of great source material. It's too bad some of the great creative minds providing it don't also go for Hero, or can't divorce the, "Special Effects from the mechanics," enough to provide material that isn't so game system dependent. I play with a group that mostly runs 2nd Edition AD&D that is modified so heavily as to be almost unrecognizable. The funny thing is, a ton of the modifications make it look more like Hero (e.g. armor that absorbs some damage, though it still decreases AC; End-Reserve-like mana for casting spells...). The guy who did most of the customization doesn't really know much about Hero, and I'm itching to get him hooked.... I'm at the point myself where I will play D&D if that's what my roleplaying group does, but I will never, ever GM it again.

Re: Critical and Altered Maths Just realized, another very simple possibility is to use the Deadly Blow Talent in 6E and make critical hits the circumstance for the extra damage. How limited the circumstances are depends on how you do criticals. A critical on a natural roll of 3 (or 18 if you use roll-high) would strike me as being, "very limited." Hitting by a margin of 5 or more (or "by half") might qualify for only, "limited," or even, "broad."

Re: OCV/DCV Am I doing the math right?

Re: Visualising Block Definitely. If we're not going to rule out any SFX for anything, I suppose we could call Dodge a free form of Desolidification that requires a roll, too, and just allow the character to dissolve weapons with his mind. Why not make Block the ability to stare down your opponent so that he doesn't have the balls to attack? What other crazy nonsense should we allow basic maneuvers designed to reflect actual fighting ability to do, that are actually the province of other things in the system? Ironically this question doesn't come up if the GM asks for either basic descriptive actions (player: "I'm avoiding his attack," GM: "Oh, okay, you're Dodging. What is your DCV with the +3 Dodge bonus added?") or "mechanical" actions (player: "I Dodge;" GM: "Oh. Okay. And he misses. You sidestep the attack neatly right at the last instant"). Keep things moving like that at the gaming table without questioning things like whether we should actually be rolling for a Block instead of simply increasing our DCV and the system naturally does what it should without us having to get into this kind of square-into-triangle second guessing business. I'd also say that there's a slight difference between Maneuvers and building powers. Maneuvers are game system elements, whereas Powers are used to create new game system elements. Powers and Power Modifiers are there to (ideally) allow you to build anything; Maneuvers are units of action, not construction, and are designed to (ideally) cover all the different things you can do in combat. They have their SFX mostly built-in, just like most constructed powers (lower-case "p") do (those without Variable Special Effects).

Re: Is our approach to ' Combat Levels' fundamentally flawed Small note: CSLs can be made Persistent for DCV, but not directly. You buy Defense Maneuver IV instead of applying an Advantage. That means it actually winds up being effectively 0 points per CSL, since the cost doesn't go up with the number of levels. Also additional damage can't just be 1d6 Blast. If you have a 1d6 Blast and a 10d6 Blast, they don't add together to give a 11d6 Blast. You'd have to do the extra DCs with some kind of Aid with Variable Effects (only more than Variable Effects because a 10-point CSL isn't limited to a category of SFX) and something to account for Advantages that don't affect DCs (don't affect how damage is taken). That last is kind of the opposite (in effect; it won't necessarily be a Limitation and might even be an Advantage itself in this case) of the Advantage that allows Aid to add Adders/Advantages, I suppose.

Re: Vehicles with Vehicles?

Re: Trick Shooting for my Archer I'd allow a Disarm with TK, even without the Fine Manipulation. Generally for a disarm you're just smacking your opponent's weapon with a hard, sharp blow in a way they aren't expecting. I see no reason you'd need Fine Manipulation to do it. If you were disarming someone with your sword, would you say you'd qualify as having Fine Manipulation with the blade? No way. (There's also Grabbing someone's Focus, which is a slightly different maneuver) Run that past the GM, of course, as he has the final say. Worst case, drop the TK and built it using limited Stretching instead, possibly with extra limited Strength linked in. That build shouldn't be very questionable, although you might be very range-limited.

Re: Visualising Block

Re: Soon to be New Player Indeed. If you want to go whole-hog with the D&D 3E analogy, you can also use CHAR/5 as your Characteristic/Skill modifier. So to make your Characteristic or Skill roll you just roll 3d6 and add CHAR/5 (for example, Dex/5) to beat a target number (a default target number of 12 gives the same chance of success as the usual Hero roll-under method). (Oh, and for Background Skills not based on Characteristic Rolls you'll want to make it a straight +2 base for buying the Skill.)

Re: New to 6E. Wow! Amazing system Well, don't have to. It's just an added bonus. Some of me/us are bitter because the Hero System does appeal to us a heck of a lot more than certain other systems that we were stuck playing for many, many years because we either didn't know about Hero or couldn't persuade others to try it because of preconceived notions. That tends to build resentment toward systems that you already feel are constrained and clunky. So we/I like to bitch about it. Don't take it too personally.

Re: Vehicles with Vehicles? Alternately, add the movement and extra Size (for carrying capacity and UBO-like effect) of the platform into the first (robot) vehicle, but give it a Focus.

Re: Teleport and Clairsentience Well written, Chris. Wish I had some rep to give you, but alas you've been too deserving of late.