SteveZilla

Re: The Use of a Focus for Teleportation...? Oh, please. I was not referring to the mobility of a person or airplane seat, I was referring to the part: "can control where __________ will be when he needs it." So if I designate a Fixed Location of mine as Seat 13A on Delta Airlines airplane N473VR (flight numbers change, an airplane’s N-number is constant), I can have that airplane be in my apartment hallway when I need it? A character's Teleport Locations are not at his beck and call.

Re: The Use of a Focus for Teleportation...? A coin is not a physical location. "A particular airplane seat" is part of a location -- the vehicle. A living creature is allowed to be "a physical location" only because, of all the examples, it has will of it's own. As Steve L. explained: That's a dodge. Say for the sake of discussion it is "always the coin and can never be changed". That matters as much as spit in the wind because the character can move the coin around with impunity. A coin is not a physical location. I reiterate: A coin is not a physical location.

Re: The Use of a Focus for Teleportation...? The book says no such thing.

Re: The Use of a Focus for Teleportation...? A person is self-willed. Most coins are not. To me, they all point out that a coin cannot define a Fixed Location. The key words I have highlighted. They all show that the character exercises control over the coin, but only influence over Mr. F. L. Man. Whether or not someone else can move either is inmaterial, as it can theoretically happen to both, thus cancelling out. And that is just a possible benefit of having a sentient being as the Location. After all, they don't have to be aware that they are a Location to be used as such. Side Note: Which makes me wonder if a GM would allow a Teleporter to take his DNPCs as Fixed (or Floating -- they could be either) Locations. DNPC gets in trouble? ::Bampf:: Help is immediately there to stop it. Where in the book does it say that, please? So I can, with a simple choice of F/X, negate the limitation of Fixed Locations being outside my character's control? That can't be right. F/X doesn't negate mechanics. Ask yourself this: Can the character himself, at any time, exercise complete control and change where the "coin" is? If the answer is anything but "no", it cannot be a Fixed Location. The act of holding and placing the coin means that he has complete control at least part of the time, and thus the answer is not "no".

Re: The probability and predictability of dice.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues In real life? Sure. I have to agree with you there. I guess it depends upon how realistic vs how cinematic people want their game to be. And even sideways! Though usually facing and heading are one in the same. As a small kid, while playing tag I ran into the back of a car and cut my forehead deep enough to need three stitches. Even since then I keep my facing the same as my heading.

Re: The probability and predictability of dice. Without a language that your PC and I have in common (I don't know Java or Javascript), It'll have to be static HTML pages. Which the program could be easily modified to generate. We really don't need to calculate the curve out each time -- once is good enough. Then you could just do a "File->Save As" and there you go! Or I could zip all 30 pages and email them to you. I'm pretty much in the same boat so far, and came to a similar conclusion.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues I thought someone posted to this thread that in Hero you can move through other's hexes. I never recall that happening in the games I've played, but that doesn't mean that the rule doesn't exist -- just that I may be unaware of it. And usually it's that threat that holds 'em back. It just seems to me that I've seen similar situations in TV and movies where the Heroes are outnumbered, yet still manage to hold the enemies at bay. Thus my comment about it being "in genre". Though I think in TV/movies it's far more common for the opponents to directly attack the hero instead of just trying to get by past him. Unfortunately, I can't recall any specific examples/scenes for you. I fully admit that while I've played lots of Champions, I've played almost no Fantasy Hero. But it does seem to me that the two are quite different. In Champions, ranged attacks have a much bigger role, the combatants are much more mobile, and often aren't limited to two dimensions. Side note/question: Someone said earlier on this thread that Hero doesn't have facing. Yet I seem to recall combat modifiers for attacking from behind. And if there isn't facing, how can there be a Turn mode? It's always been my understanding that hero does use facing. Or maybe I misunderstood them. It's not inconceivable.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues You could design various "class" packages, and include an AoO (a triggered attack) in only some of them, and also to varying amouts. I think it stands to reason that not all professions will be equally good at "holding the line".

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues With AoO, it makes it less likely that a superior number of attackers will get one of their members through/around the defenders. Without it, even Held Actions used to either attack, or to interpose, can't stop a numerical superiority from getting one past. For ex: Character A and B want to get past C and attack D (who isn't "in the fight"). Characters A, B, and C are all within H-t-H range of each other. C holds his action to atack whoever tries to go past him. B tries to move past, and C attacks him. B aborts to Block. A now knows that since C has attacked, he can move past with impunity. -------------------------------------------- It doesn't take 2:1 to achieve this. All it takes is one more attcker than defender. A, B, and C want to attack F, who is behind D & E. D & E have held actions. B moves past D (on the other side from E), and D attacks to stop B, who Blocks. C does the same to E. A is now free to move past them to attack F. ------------------------------------------- If the heroes are going to be outnumberd in many of their fights (as Heroes often are IMO), the lack of AoO's "stopping ability" could be very problematic. So, despite preferring (Fantasy) Hero to D&D, I think the AoO is a good element of the Sword & Sorcery Genre. If you think that even a slight numerical superiority *should* be able to "get one past", then don't allow the AoO. But if you want your heroes to survive, and your players to not become disgruntled, I would suggest allowing/providing other means of "leveling the playing field" (like hirelings & henchmen!).

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues I don't think it's all that big of a difference. 5' = 1.543m In a game that uses metric units, 2 meters is a good, round "breakpoint". English units of feet do offer a finer "granularity", but IMO it's not needed. If that is too much a difference, then the GM could easily wave his magic wand and state "The Game Scale is Now 1.543 Meters per Hex", and be done with it. How the game plays would be virtually unchanged on the combat level. Characters can still move the same number of hexes, powers still have the same range in hexes, to hit penalties for range still acrue at the same rate of hexes of distance, and AoE powers still affect the same number of hexes.

Re: The Use of a Focus for Teleportation...? The difference is that the character can exercise control over the object, but can only request something of Mr. My-Fixed-Location. A Fixed Location can never be changed -- true -- but it's always a location. Even if defined by some "object" like another person, a car, a phone booth, it's still the location where that "object" which is outside the character's direct control, is located. As soon as you allow the character any amount of contol over where the Fixed Location is, it is no longer a Fixed Location. Saying "It's a coin" doesn't modify that. F/X doesn't provide direct benefits. Neither do Limitations, unless that factor (the benefit) is far outweighed by the factors that serve to limit. The only benefit provided by making a Floating Location a Focus is that it removes the Full Turn to change the location that the Focus defines. The Floation Location is not irrevocably tied to that Focus. Regardless of the F/X, the character can still spend the Full Turn to change where the location goes to. In the case of a Focus, it just "de-powers" or "goes offline" when the character pops a spare out of inventory and spends the Full Turn to attune it correctly (thus changing where the Floating Location is located).

Re: The probability and predictability of dice. Do you know HTML, PHP, and MySQL? It's written in HTML/PHP and uses a MySQL database. The database holds the number of combinations for each result and also the total combinations for each set of dice. I wasn't sure how long it would take the program to generate all the results, which is why I split the process in two (generation and display). The first program created and filled the 182 column, 30 row table, and the second one (which I linked here, is what reads that data and generates the output. Also, I wasn't sure how many hits this page might generate, and didn't want to bog down the server. I could easily combine the two, or I could just modify them to use a flatfile (*.txt) instead of a database. But I don't know how I could change it from PHP to some other language for someone's PC. Although, PHP is available free. One just has to download, configure, compile, and install it on their PC. If you need me to change it from MySQL to flatfile, let me know so I can change it before I post it here. The two took me about a day-and-a-half to write, so that change won't take very long. An addition I've been contemplating is to use different colors of bars to show the different Standard Deviations. Is that something people would want/need?

Re: The probability and predictability of dice. That makes sense. The bigger the die pool, the lower those numbers will be. That's significatly different than the systems I used to write the code. Both were WinXP with I.E.6. I've modified the code to limit the low end to a width of one, and to also round the widths to the nearest integer. That should clear up any weirdness. I'm fond of algorithms, and especially so of coding. I prefer to let the computer do my counting for me, however.

Re: What fundamental thing would you change about the Hero system? Hear, hear!

Re: The probability and predictability of dice. The width for the first two results on 12d6 is expressed as a scientific notation number (2.8333860343576E-006, and 3.4000632412291E-005, respectively), while the others are just small decimals (0.00022100411067989, for ex.). Perhaps your browser translates exponenets and small decimals differently than I.E.6? I could easly include a comparison so that if the width <0, width=1. That would likely fix it. A few questions: Are you only seeing this on the 12d6 graph? Are you seeing an identical patter on the opposite end of the graph? What browser are you using to access the page (and version, please)? Did you try refreshing the page? That's exactly what I did. I came to that realization on my own -- no help from a person or book. I find it interesting that the two different methods can take so vastly different times to compute.

Re: The probability and predictability of dice.

Re: The probability and predictability of dice. I'm still trying to digest what everybody has said, and I've been doing some coding to try to help the process. I came up with a web-based program (in PHP) that will show the distribution of probabilities (the chance of each result possible) for any group from dice from 1d6 to 30d6. One of the neat things is that I didn't have to run though every combination with nested for loops. That way would have taken forever for 30 nested loops! I did have to write my own subroutines for addition, subtraction, and division of integers. Some as large as 24 digits! Not only was that beyond the scope of an integer in PHP (32 bits), but also beyond the scope of a LARGEINT in MySQL (64 bits)! To store such a large number in binary form, I'd need a 78 bit unsigned number. Here's the link. The scale used for the graph remains constant regardless of how many dice are chosen (max on the scale corresponds to a 16.6667% chance). That way, it's possible to make direct visual comparisons. However, for large numbers of dice the "legs" have so small a chance that they all resolve to a 1 pixel long bar. This is unavoidable without making the scale so large that the graph would be (IMO) useless. This is why I also included the number data.

Re: The probability and predictability of dice. I meant to say (I thought I implied) that I was referring to just the number of rolls. I know that it's theoretically possible for an astronomical roll to occur early on. You beginner luck!

Re: The Use of a Focus for Teleportation...? If you've got a Fixed Location set to a distinctive coin, and you place that coin in the location you want to later teleport to, you not only have to worry about somebody moving the coin without your knowledge, you have to go back and get your coin if you want to put it in a new location. But because the character *can* simply pick it up and place it somewhere else, that is a much greater degree of control than an unlimited Fixed Location has, which is set for life. That's why it is a Floating Location (with a Lim) -- the Location can be determined by the character, and later re-determined to a different location. That it can be interfeired with is a function of the Focus Limitation. Or, Look at it this way: 1pt: Fixed Location (set for life and can never be changed or directly controled by the character). 5pts: Floating Location (Can be changed by spending a full Turn to reset to where the character is studying -- generally his current location, barring extra senses}. The changeability is why a Float cost five times that of a Fixed. The Full Turn Delay is for Game Balance. If at any time the Location can be changed by the character himself, then the base power is a Floating Location. If it can also be moved without his consent or Knowledge (possibly to his detriment), that would indicate a Limitation to me. IMO that limiting factor more than offsets the benefit that it no longer takes a full Phase to change the location.

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Re: The Use of a Focus for Teleportation...? Well, I would disagre with you on the Focus Lim (It can be pick-pocketed or destroyed) and the Fixed Location point (it blurs the distinction between Fixed and Floating), but it's your game. As the GM, you have the power to change what you don't like.

Re: The Use of a Focus for Teleportation...? Earth's Diameter is listed as 12,756.3 Km. Almost every GM I've played with has rounded it down to an even 10,000 Km for playability. So, it would take 10" Megascaled to 1" = 1,000 Km (or 1" Megascaled to 1" = 10,000 Km). I'd modify the above to be like this: 55 On The Road Again: Multipower (55 Point Reserve) 5u) Around the Corner: Teleportation 5", No Relative Velocity, x2 Increased Mass, x128 Noncombat (55 Active Points) 4u) Long Haul: Teleportation 1", No Relative Velocity, x2 Increased Mass, Megascale (1" = 10,000 km; +1¼), Can Be Scaled Down 1" = 1km (+¼) (42 Active Points) 20 Homing Device: Teleportation: Floating Location (5 Locations) (25 Active Points); IIF (-1/4) 84 total. The main difference in price comes from the Floating Locations. However, this version also lets one travel the entire globe (presuming the GM using a diameter of 10,000 Km). If they keep the Earth at it's actual Diameter, just increase the Megascale to 1"=100,000, which raises the Active Points of the Long Haul to 47 Active Points, and a slot cost of 5 pts (just one more ). Interestingly, as a side effect of buying a large range of Teleportation to travel to the other side of the Earth, one can *also* use that same range to go up into space. Reaching the International Space Station is no problem as long as it's not close to directly opposite you through the Earth.

Re: The Use of a Focus for Teleportation...? These types of locations are Floating Locations, not Fixed.

Re: I am hot!