Steve

WOTC began imploding on her watch, after her boasting that she would turn D&D into a billion dollar brand. They had a plan based on getting out of book publishing and moving to the VTT. The debacle with the OGL was the first major step of the implosion, and it just went downhill from there with failure after failure.

I vote for Howler and Oculus as an odd couple of supervillains working together on a bank robbery. Their origins could even work together.

I’m wondering if this is something that could be a subset of Unluck. That would explain why Spider-Man gets sick, but other superheroes don’t seem to get the flu.

As tempting as many of the choices are, Kaiju Hero and Pulp Hero get my vote. Victorian Space and Isekai Hero get an honorable mention from me.

Having a cape is a cool style, but it also offers a vulnerability to getting it grabbed.

How might that work in combat?

Perhaps long hair might also offer some kind of vulnerability like this?

Any character that does not have the proper Life Support ability to resist colds or the flu can get sick.

The only instances I can remember of this happening in the comics involved Spider-Man, who seems to get sick almost every winter, especially when he was a teen.

So, your character has caught a bad cold, the flu, or maybe even COVID.
 

How does that affect their abilities? Do they hide out until they recover or keep struggling to keep the city safe despite their illness?

I’m honestly not looking to rebuild the whole damage and defense system, but the issues raised in this thread have been very interesting. I just want to tune damage and defenses into a setup I can present to my players without overloading them with math.

I get that damage is on a curve, but I’m trying to break it down into simpler chunks for build guidelines: damage classes, PD/ED, Damage Negation, STUN and BODY.

So a typical character is doing 12d6, has a 14 PD and ED and six Damage Negation dice (STUN only). If they want their character to take eight hits before falling over, then they need around 50 STUN and probably a recovery in the 8-12 range. Tougher characters would do more damage or maybe have a bit higher defenses or both.

Since Damage Negation is the outlier at -1/4 for Nonresistant, moving it up to -1/2 would seem to bring it in line. Spending five points per two dice would make it more tempting for martial artists and two-fisted adventurers, I suppose.

That said, I’d be okay with repricing the resistant effect at 1/4 due to the change in the damage multiplier die roll for killing attacks, as was mentioned earlier in the thread. This would require a lot of repricing in defense abilities so probably better to leave alone. That must have been looked at by the group involved in making 6th Edition though.

So, if I have an 18 CON, 14 PD and 6 dice of Damage Negation (STUN Only), a 12d6 attack would do 7 STUN and no BODY on average, but could cause 10 BODY and 22 STUN on maximum damage. A rare event I know. Changing that to 4 dice of DN increases the average damage taken up to 14 STUN and no BODY, so still workable.

By adding Damage Negation to reduce the STUN taken, CON can be lowered to more reasonable levels. A 16-18 CON would seem okay.

However, Hit Locations complicates this.

Maybe extra Damage Negation that is limited to certain hit locations? A tough chin as opposed to a glass jaw.

So as far as I can see, the only defense powers that can be limited to "STUN Only" are Damage Negation and Damage Reduction, which I didn't know before.

I thought PD and ED could be limited that way as well, since it seemed to make sense.

I would be inclined to change the "resistant" advantage to +1/4, which would bring it in line with the -1/4 limitation shown for being nonresistant in Damage Negation.

The use of Damage Negation would need to be limited by other allowable defenses to make them playable. In a 12d6 damage campaign, having a cap of 14/15 PD/ED and up to six dice of limited Damage Negation still allows some modest risk of BODY damage. Something like PD/ED capped at 125% of damage dice and Damage Negation capped at 50% of damage dice.

As Damage Negation also effectively limits Knockback effects, would Damage Negation that doesn't affect Knockback be worth something like -1/4?

It looks like I made a misstatement on my comment earlier. If a character has any resistant defenses, then the added PD/ED versus STUN only doesn’t need to be made resistant. It would apply as-is if there were other resistant defenses. So 6 active points of STUN only PD/ED would be four points, plus two points for 6 active points of Power Defense versus STUN Drains only (if I did my math right). A total of six points.

Or I could buy a die of Damage Negation, limited to STUN only for three points.

Using Damage Negation is a simpler, cleaner build, and it has added benefits beyond just resisting regular or killing attacks. It would take a little math at the table to apply it to advantaged attacks, but that isn’t a deal killer.

As I mentioned earlier, the dice can be rolled with a different color to see if any ones or sixes show up. It’s possible to pick up a fair amount of BODY on a good roll.

While i could see just buying extra PD/ED that only affects STUN, seven active points of PD (Resistant, STUN only) is five real points, so is a very poor buy compared to Damage Negation dice as the latter also affects Killing Attacks and Drains versus STUN. It’s also a simpler build than buying PD/ED, applying advantages and limitations, then also buying Power Defense.

Everything I’ve suggested doing with it is RAW, so it is really just a matter of finding the right base level of defenses to go with it.

In a 12DC campaign, buying 14 PD/ED and then adding six dice of DN gives a decent amount of damage soaking and a chance of stunning if CON is kept under control.

That's kind of my idea.

Anything that could be expressed in a physical form would be built as a normal character, with mental characteristics bought down to zero. Then a package of skills and abilities that could reflect the character's learned things would be layered into it.

Sleeves would have different abilities: normal humans, gene-enhanced, bioroids, etc.

I'm not expecting a lot of body switching going on among PCs (unless someone gets their sleeve killed), but it would be important to have the ability if they decide to resleeve for a cover ID or something.

Damage Negation versus Stun Only is also interesting when damage dice rolled against the target are done with different colors, if everyone at the table is okay with doing it that way.

So the dice that are only contributing BODY damage to the overall roll may roll very high on average amongst themselves. But since they are having their STUN negated, they could roll all fives or sixes and would still not count for STUN. They could still be contributing the bulk of BODY damage in such a case though.

In reading the RPG for Altered Carbon, it seems there is a measure of damage to the mind that resleeving causes. If you only resleeve in cloned bodies of your original one, the existential horror doesn’t seem to cone into play.

However, taking different bodies seems to take a toll on sanity. The wealthy, able to acquire bodies as needed or desired, seem to all shift into being sociopaths over time. Shifting from old to young, male to female and back, being different races, dealing with each body’s needs, all of that takes a toll on the mind.

I’m thinking this would be a form of EGO-based Transform that could be healed with therapy and medication.

Characters can use it to transfer between different bodies and death would be mostly an inconvenience, so long as their cortical stack wasn’t destroyed.

12 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Hmm... what do you envision it doing in-game that would take it out of the realm of a plot device?

The cortical stack from the Altered Carbon books and TV show is a fascinating (and in many ways horrifying) technology for cyberpunk and transhumanism settings.

For those unfamiliar with the term, it is a device that records and stores a human's consciousness, memories, skills and personality. It allows a human to transfer their consciousness to another body, either nearby or far away, and achieve virtual immortality.

My question is, how do you build it in Hero System terms?

My current thinking is to base its cost on Eidetic Memory, since that was the closest existing ability I could think of and the point cost is manageable even for normal humans.

I'm uncertain what advantages and limitations might apply.

I confess I was a big proponent of using Damage Reduction in character builds until I started really examining Damage Negation, especially since it could be pretty cheap if limited to STUN Only and also Non-Resistant in some cases.

Since the damage is removed from affecting the character, it also reduces hit location adjustments. Damage Reduction gets into some interesting math when hit locations are involved.

Damage Negation really shines in lower damage settings. A Heroic character like Rocky Balboa just seems to have Damage Negation, being able to take hit after hit to the face.

I’ve also played with building it using limited locations per the armor construction rules to get even more interesting flavors out of it. I was building a boxer character and learned that having a tough chin was actually a thing, so a limited location Damage Negation ability seemed reasonable.

Yes, I was prepared for an epic duel, but things did not go quite as anyone planned.

I have lightsabers as an Ancient tech device, so very, very rare in Charted Space and seen as exotic relics rather than something you would fight with. Since no one is a “Jedi” and such combat training doesn’t exist, even among the Zhodani, characters are one bad roll away from losing limbs.

Judas Cain had the ability, thanks to his psionic training, to deflect the sniper shot, but doing that dropped his Block bonus just enough to fail his roll against Captain Nemos, who attacked in the same phase. The loss of one clone stunned the other one based on how I have them written up, so two phases was all it took to end a fight I thought would go one or two Turns.

6 hours ago, Jkeown said:

I like what I'm seeing here. Thinking about running the new Fifth Frontier War adventure. Might use this method of character creation. After Meta-Earth and Caleon's latest arc, I could use some "normal characters." 

 

I'm a stickler for 6th Edition, tho. Might take some re-working from Mongoose Traveller 2E to HERO 5E to HERO 6E...

It really wasn’t too much trouble to build the characters in 6th. The conversion information in Traveller Hero made it pretty easy. Skills didn’t really change much from 5th to 6th and character complications were not much trouble either.

I’m running a higher point campaign, but that is partially due to Imperium Marines costing quite a bit of points for their skills, and all of them stayed in to retirement age.

Navy types convert more cheaply, I noticed.

I always liked the idea that Narosia used, to make a Contact roll the way to wield divine powers. If you make “magic” a type of Contact, it gives it a different feel.

The Change Environment ability seems to fit the bill. Just need to tack on appropriate limitations and advantages. For example, you could have a big bad that has a massive adjustment going on as a megascaled one, but it is dependent on the fear level going on.

After seeing Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, I keep having him voice Foxbat in my head now.

I still feel like a lot of the ‘risk’ and flavor in wielding supernatural forces can be found in some kind of Side Effect limitation. 
 

A sorcerer casts a summoning spell and botches the casting roll. Perhaps having them rush the casting time and not having all the right spell components was a bad idea? It still works but the anticipated summoned creature is antagonistic and strong-willed instead of friendly and amenable to requests. Oops.

The wizard draws down lightning and electricity arcs in the area around them before they throw it (a bit like how the Kazei Five sourcebook described telekinetic effects). The caster isn’t harmed, but some minor effects could be felt by their friends standing all around them.

Side Effect can add a lot of flavor to magic when done right. You could also tailor the side effects to the school of magic cast. Witchcraft would have different side effects than hermetic wizardry.

Well, with skill rolls, attack rolls and damage rolls involved, I would submit that a spell is very limited in its repeatability.

Other than Ars Magica and the various versions of the Storyteller system, the Amber system was the only other one that seemed mysterious to me.

Just rolling dice makes it inconsistent.
 

Some form of triggered side effect might make things interesting.

Example: Cast a fire spell defined as doing a certain number of damage classes, but side effect triggers if you rolled too low on the damage. The side effect is that the difference between the average of the damage classes and what you rolled affects the caster. Like a kind of rebound effect if you don’t project enough energy away (rolled too low on your damage dice).

Something like this would make a wizard less eager to hurl a fireball, as they could burn themselves up if they minimum out on their damage roll.

I’m sure creative minds can come up with other creative side effects for different spell effects.