Drolyt

There is no advantage you can buy to make a blast do killing damage, you should buy a ranged killing attack instead. A power, such as a fireball, can usually be built as either a blast or a ranged killing attack, the difference is how you envision the power, is it meant to stun, or to kill? The type of campaign also matters, in superhero campaigns most attacks are bought as blasts even if they seem like they should be very deadly because that fits the genre conventions. Conversely, most weapon examples are built with killing attacks because weapons are meant to be deadly (the primary purpose of a gun or sword is not to knock you unconcious).

I read a really old thread about the Storm of Steel talent from Fantasy Hero which asked whether the damage limit applied to only the base damage of the weapon or the weapon damage plus all the extra damage from sources like strength and martial maneuvers. The consensus in that thread was that you applied the advantage to the base attack then used the adding damage rules, but that isn't how I undersood naked advantages to work. I thought you add to buy the advantage high enough to cover all the damage you wanted to do with the attack. Is that right?

Yes, but I think you are confused about the types of damage. Let me try to explain. There are two types of damage, body and stun, which are similar to but not identical to D&D's lethal and nonlethal/subdual damage. The bid difference is that while in D&D you usually deal one or the other, in HERO you usually have a chance of doing both. Now there are two types of basic attacks, normal and killing. With a normal attack you roll the dice, add them up to find the stun you deal. Then count each dice where you get 2-5, that is 1 body, each dice that rolls a 6 is 2 body. Then you subtract the target's defenses. For example, if you rolled 4d6, rolling 1, 6, 3, and 4, you would deal 14 stun and 4 body. If the target had 6 normal defense and 3 resistant defense, they would take 5 stun and no body (nromal attacks rarely deal body damage). Remember that both normal and resistant defense apply to normal attacks, with normal defense basically representing how tough and resistant you are to damage and resistant defense representing actual armor of some sort, whether that be plate armor, a force field, superhuman skin, or something else. Time for a new paragraph. With a killing attack you roll the dice and add them up to find the body damage, then roll 1/2d6 and multiply the result by the body damage to find the stun damage. Then you subtract the target's defenses, but remember, the stun damage done by a killing attack is reduced by both normal and resistant defenses, but the killing damage is reduced only by resistant defenses. For example, consider a 4d6 killing attack where again you roll 1,6, 3, and 4, and you also roll a 2 on the 1/2d6. That would be 14 body and 28 stun. If the target had the same defenses, 6 normal and 3 resistant, they would take 19 stun and 11 body, and would likely be bleeding to death. As you can see, a killing attack that does the same number of dice as a normal attack is far more powerful. Thus we need a comparison, damage classes. The DC of a normal attack is how many dice it does, while the DC of a killing attack is 3 times how many dice it does. Given a normal attack and a killing attack of the same DC (say, 12d6 normal attack and 4d6 killing attack), the two attacks are roughly equal in effectiveness but the normal attack does more stun while the killing attack does more body. There are ways to change how the damage is counted through different power advantages and limitations, and different powers, leading to a few more types of attacks. For example, a mental attack only does stun damage (you add up the dice to find out how much stun you do), but the only defense that applies is mental defense. The DC of a mental attack is 2 times the number of dice. These attacks are really good at knocking people out if they don't have mental defense. Alright, I have to go, tell me if that helped at all.

What do you mean too hard to control? I'll admit that it can be complicated to explain and requires a bit of math at character creation, but in play it goes quite smoothly. Honestly, I think the biggest problem isn't the rules themselves but the presentation. I mean, I'm not even sure what "other damage types" you are talking about. Basically every effect either adds the dice or counts the body, but I don't blame you for finding it confusing. Edit: Actually, a long time ago I asked a similar question on here about combining stun and body. I eventually realized the error of my ways, but if I wanted to be critical I would say that most of the responses were somewhat condescending and didn't actually help me any, which I don't think is great for HERO's reputation. If you could explain a little bit more what you don't like about how HERO handles damage I could maybe try to explain the logic behind it, because I've found that once you grok it a lot of things that seem strange or unintuitive are actually good game design.

If I understand correctly you can use grab based maneuvers multiple times to grab more limbs, for example using martial grab twice to grab both arms and both legs. Also if I understand correctly the grabbed character would then only need one phase to try to escape from all the grabs. But what happens if you use multiple grabs that don't have the same strength? For example, a judoka uses the joint lock manuever multiple times to grab all 4 of the opponents limbs then uses shime (choke hold) in an effort to end the fight. But joint lock gets +10 strength and any extra damage classes to hold on while shime doesn't. How does this work?

Re: Removing Body (or Stun) What's confusing me, is that looking at page 35 of the character creation book, the recommended rDef totals for superheroic games, compared to the recommended damage classes for superheroic games of the same power level, mean that even killing attacks aren't likely to deal any BODY, even if you roll relatively high. Am I doing something wrong?

Re: Removing Body (or Stun) I mostly agree with all of this. D&D has always had the problem that how stats map to the game reality isn't always obvious. I'm still not clear on what either D&D HP or AC or DR actually represent and I've been playing that game for years. I meant hit points in the general sense of "you have so many, and when you lose them all something bad happens", not trying to suggest a particular game reality. As for my intention, I simply was hoping to roll Body and Stun up into one stat representing "how much punishment you can take before getting knocked out/dying".

Re: Removing Body (or Stun) 1) Not yet. 2) Hence my question. On Determining Death and Injury, I was thinking death would be dramatic only, with the PCs generally not dying from battle. As for Transforms, I'd probably create an "effective body" that is a fraction of Stun.

It seems to me that having two "hit point" stats to keep track of is too much trouble. For a high powered animesque or superheroic game, or even a heroic one not trying to be too gritty, couldn't you just make all attacks normal attacks and ignore body damage? Edit: I guess what I'm saying here, is would the game fall apart, and what other changes would be necessary to make it work?

Re: Ability Guidelines for Cosmically Powerful Characters (6e) Doesn't the book leave it up to the GM to determine what advantages are DC increasing? Personally I wouldn't make No End DC increasing, if I did I would also have to make large Recovery values and Endurance Reserves DC increasing.

Re: Ability Guidelines for Cosmically Powerful Characters (6e) I might be wrong, but my quick calculations show that while Damage Negation is effectively the same as rDef (the main difference is that Damage Negation completely blocks low DC but high roll attacks, while rDef does the same for high DC but low roll attacks) Damage Reduction seems much weaker point for point. It's only better if you are taking a lot of damage compared to how many points you spent in defense. It does seem useful for prolonging boss fights, but I don't see putting it on a character. Edit: Now that I think about it, maybe Damage Reduction is better against attacks that deal stun?

Re: Ability Guidelines for Cosmically Powerful Characters (6e) Didn't realize people were still replying to this. Thanks for the info. It seems to me that for active points you should only count those things that actually make the ability more effective in general. For example, multiple levels of armor piercing is quite situational, as is extremely large areas (which have little benefit beyond the initial +1/4 area advantage). One thing that I find strange about Hero, coming from D&D, is that the bell curve rolling method makes each bonus to CV huge. You can't really have characters that are "good at hitting" or "good at dodging" because it quickly becomes "always hits" or "always dodges". And heck, CV is cheap. I don't get that. Also, I'll check out Herocentral.net.

Re: Ultimate Martial Artist and 6th Edition

Can you use the old book for Sixth Edition?

Is there a way to use summon, with the amicable advantage, without the limitation that you only get ego/x tasks before they vanish? Also, is there a way for a Summon to impart anything it has learned while it was summoned to the summoner upon being dismissed? For context, I'm trying to create the Shadow Clone Jutsu, an ability from the Naruto manga that allows you to make clones of yourself out of Chakra (essentially Chi). These clones are entirely real, have all of your abilities (although they cannot create additional duplicates on their own), and cannot be distinguished by any of the other characters, but they disappear after one well placed hit (which I interpret as any hit that does even one point of damage, either Body or Stun, and the clones probably have no or very little PD or ED). The only drawback is that your Chakra is divided evenly among each clone (I interpret as simply being a high Endurance cost). Duplicate doesn't work, because you can't just make new ones when the old ones die. There is a side thing recommending summon with Amicable and maybe Specific Individual, but then they only last for ego/x tasks. Shadow Clones last seemingly forever (there must be reason everybody doesn't run around with Shadow Clones 24/7, but the manga doesn't really explain; maybe they continue to use Endurance?) until they are hit. Finally, when your Shadow Clone is defeated or dismissed the person who made it acquires all the knowledge they acquired in the meantime. Thank you for your time.