Foxx!

Re: invisible, desolid follower

By all of the appropriate Powers with a -0 Limitation "Not Versus [Character]"

I'd like to use that, but I really think it's an Advantage in this case.

Tricky. In a lower-powered campaign' date=' if I were worried about balance, I'd ask you to buy Clairsentience and whatever other powers you wanted the "Pixie" to use, and then define them as "my invisible pixie". An invisible desolid follower is a very powerful trick. In a higher powered campaign, I'd just ask you to vuy a mind link with the pixie, with the SFX being that you could see and hear it.[/quote']

It's a low power fantasy campaign, but there are going to be people who can detect and attack the pixie, so I'll use Mind Link.

 

Cheers!

Re: invisible, desolid follower

What exactly do you want the follower to be able to do?

 

If he can only give you advice, you could just buy a bunch of skills and skill levels with the SFX "My invisible pixie friend". Or you could buy him as an AI with a mind link if your GM allowed it.

Mainly the Follower is a spy and lookout for the character, but I want to use her as a full character.

Cheers!

Heroes!

I want to make a character who has a Follower. The Follower is a pixie who is Invisible to all senses and Desolid to everyone, but only the character can see and hear her. I’m wondering how to design this. Here are some ideas.

1: The character buys Mind Link with the pixie with a Limition ‘works as normal sight and hearing'. Seeing and hearing the pixie is just SFX of the power.

2: Character buys Detect: Pixie Follower with Discriminatory and define it as sight and hearing based sense.

What do you think?

Cheers!

Re: Hunted: Watched

The Watchers could compile information on the character which in turn could be stolen by a group with hostile intentions or some less than scrupulous member of the orgainization may decide to sell blackmail information for fun and profit.

I agree. Watchers may be spies. They can sell or be blackmailed by villains for information about powers, disadvantages, and current activities. "I just saw the hero team hurry off in your direction. Get ready. By the way, no one is at the base now." Or imagine having a neighbour who secretly searches your rubbish.

Cheers!

Re: I am a living medical lab

Everyone, thank you for the comments. We'll use Detect and a skill.

Thank you Edsel for a write up.

Cheers!

Heroes!

I want to make a character who can get the same information you get from medical equipment: X-rays, sonograms, ECGs, blood tests etc. He doesn’t have special vision and so on; he’s just very good at using normal senses to detect things about your health and condition. I have a few ideas.

1: buy +10 levels to SS: Medical Science. I’ve seen lock picking tools bought as skill levels to Lock Picking skill. Thus, buy medical equipment as skill levels but don’t make it a focus.

2: buy Detect ‘health condition’ with Analyse and Discriminatory.

3: buy a separate skill SS: Health Diagnosis which does only this ability.

What do you think?

Cheers!

Re: Goofy Disadvantage / Power Ideas

back in HS we had a number of prank characters for the occasional light hearted change of pace. The mastermind villian, Doctor Nasty, had a sidekick named Zodo the Barfing Frog. Zodo was highly annoying, incredibly abrasive in character, and had a rather nasty projectile vomit attack. none of which was the really goofy, annoying thing about him. That honor goes to the most unique Disad I think I've ever seen someone dream up. Zodo had a Physical Disad "Takes Knockback from Knockback Damage" and the Vunerablilty "x2 Knockback from all attacks". In effect, what this usually wound up meaning is sooner or later someone would get fed up with this annoying frog and whallop him. Whereupon the frog would go flying (He also took a lot of extra KB due to shrinking), hit something, and ricochet, accelerating as he went. His KB velocity quickly got obscene, and one of a couple of things would end up happening. He'd go sailing off for the horizon, he'd level everything in the general vicinity of the battlefeild, or he'd start KOing players, agents and possibly villians at random, depending on who happened to be in his flight path.

 

Nothing worse than being taken out of a fight by an unconcious frog slamming into you at several times the speed of sound.

Thank you for a great idea.

Cheers!

Re: Force Wall that reflects attacks

Gary! and Shadowpup!

Clever. Thank you.

Cheers!

Re: It's My Dice

Dust Raven!

That is so good!

How do I find the others you did?

By the way, last week the GM forgot his dice, so I insisted that he borrow from me. All through the game he was crying, "What!?"

Cheers!

Re: Force Wall that reflects attacks

hmmm' date=' maybe linked to an RKA damage shield with the limitation "Only to amount deflected" (-1/2), and "Only on attacks that are stopped" (-1/4), Probably standard effect rule.[/quote']

Roy The Ruthles!

 

After thinking a while, I realised that I need Damage Shield if I want the wall to reflect HTH attacks too. MDR only works against ranged attacks. Thank you.

 

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. To maintain a Force Wall, all you do is spend END. Let me ask you this: does the character spend END to maintain the wall? If the answer is no, then you're probably looking for Entangle rather than Force Wall.

 

…

 

For the Force Wall (or Entangle) build it as normal. For the Missile Deflection/Reflection, build it Ranged, Indirect, Uncontrolled, and Linked to Force Wall (or Entangle). Possibly Persistent and 0 END, but check with your GM before applying these two with Uncontrolled to one Power (if you're the GM then you don't need my permission or anyone else's).

Chirs Goodwin!

 

Yes, Entangle might be better for this. Thanks for mentioning it, and thanks for the list of Power Modifiers.

 

I agree that MDR is applied before rolling damage. I plan to use a Power Limition on MDR “only when attack is weaker than Wall’s DEF’â€

 

Cheers!

Re: Force Wall that reflects attacks

Why not just Missile Reflection' date=' Usable At Range, Linked to Force Wall?[/quote']

Chris Goodwin!

 

That sounds perfect, but I’m a bit unsure of how to compose and use the power.

 

I want to be able to leave the wall unattended, so the powers need Persistent or Uncontrolled. Which? I think the Wall uses Persistent because it's a defence power but MDR uses Uncontrolled because it has an attack roll. Is that right?

 

The character doesn’t consciously use MDR. It works automatically. Does the MDR still use the character’s CV for Reflecting attacks even when not there?

 

The wall should be able to reflect any number of attacks in a single segment. If the MDR fails, but the attack doesn’t break the wall, is it fair to say that the SFX is that the attack still Deflects but doesn’t hit anyone?

 

Cheers!

Heroes!

How do you make a Force Wall that reflects attacks which don’t break it?

Cheers!

Steve Long!

Can you Haymaker a Squeeze attack or Throw attack against a target you Grabbed?

Cheers!

Re: STUN/BODY reach 0

Heroes!

Thank you all for clarifying that. I like the drama of staying on while you are minus BODY.

Cheers!

Heroes!

I thought that when your STUN reaches 0 or less, END goes to 0, and when your BODY reaches 0 or less, STUN and END go to 0. I noticed that the rules do not confirm this. Am I doing something wrong?

Cheers!

Re: disguising subconscious

Thank you everyone. It seems most people suggest using Mental Defence to keep the invasion down to surface level and then use another power to make surface thoughts look like deep thoughts.

Cheers!

Heroes!

With mental sense Shape Shift, you can make surface thoughts look like something else. How do you make deeper and subconscious thoughts look like something else?

Cheers!

Re: Difference between Ultraviolet Perception and Nightvision?

The difference is subtle.

 

Nightvision: Need not be thought of as it's own sense, but just a modifier that eliminates the penalties for darkness with normal vision. It can allow for color vision in any lighting condition, including total darkness. Some GMs may choose to limit the color vision by the amount of actual visible light available however (total darkness would be black and white, while twilight would still be relatively full color).

 

Ultraviolet Perception: Is a specific sense. When attached to the Sight Group, it allows one to see into the UV part of the spectrum (normally invisible to normal humans). Other than being able to see in the dark (with available UV light), you can see a number of marvelous things that are only visible in UV. Flowers and many insects have different pattern in UV, some clothing looks different (like under a blacklight, which is really just intense UV light) and in a superhero/high tech world, there are invisible things that can only be seen in UV, alarms using UV beams of light for sensors, covert communications using beams of UV light, etc. Also, if you are affected by a Sense Affecting Power that only affects your Normal Sight, you still have your UV Sight.

Thank you. Very clear and easy to understand.

Cheers!

Re: Teamwork

I too think there needs to be something for these situations.

How about Mind Link with a ‘Teamwork’ Skill Roll and Limited Power ‘limited communication’? But I think INT roll is more appropriate than DEX roll.

Cheers!

Re: Castle Resource Page

Von D-Man!

The caslte plans are interesting and very useful. Thank you.

Cheers!

Re: Stat Inflation

Personally, I dont worry about it. Whats the point of enticing people to play a game system that lets you model your character as you please within point limits and campaign appropriatness, only to turn around and say "no, you cant have a 20 STR (or whatever) -- Billy already has that"?

 

I encourage players not to step on each other's shticks too much, but there are so many ways to build things in the HERO System that two characters having similar stats does not necessarily mean they are similar characters by any means.

I agree.

I don't use CHAR limits and everything is ok. Players usually spend points on Skills, Talents, etc. The only CHAR rule I use is that naturally a CHAR can be raised only 1 value each session, unless you have a special condition: a wish, etc.

Cheers!

Re: stress

If you want something more simple I would say an EGO roll when you deem they should be stressed. Failure = -1 to all rolls.

I like that idea too. Thank you.

Cheers!

Re: stress

Hmm... sounds rather like the old "Shock and Stress" rules from Horror HERO. Exposure to massively shocking events, or prolonged exposure to stressful situations, could result in penalties to Skill and Combat Rolls, greater susceptibility to Presence Attacks, and even short- or long-term Psychological Limitations. That system is probably more detailed and involved than you would like, though.

 

Your idea of running this like Long-Term END loss has merit, and reminds me of some of the elements of the Stress mechanic above. My preliminary thought is to combine some elements of each of these. The following are just very preliminary suggestions:

 

When a character is in a stressful situation that lasts a long time, assign a level of "Presence Attack" dice that you think is appropriate for that stress. This will be the effect on the character of being in that situation. The Presence Attack would be rolled each day, hour or whatever time interval you prefer, as well as whenever an event occurs which increases the overall stress of the environment, temporarily or permanently.

 

If the effect of this environmental PA exceeds the EGO or PRE of a character, that character will suffer a -1 penalty to all the Rolls that you would want to be affected. The penalty could be increased for each step up the Presence Attack chart, e.g. -2 for a +10 effect, -3 for +20, etc. Recovering these penalties would require rest away from any stressful situation, comparable to recovering from LTE expenditure. Recovery could be based on the victim's EGO score, translating as X points in penalties recovered every Y time interval.

 

Well, that's the best I could come up with at the moment.

It sounds perfect! I’ve never seen Horror Hero so I didn’t know about Shock and Stress. Thank you for writing that.

Why do you keep bothering me with all these stressful ad hoc rules questions?! I can't take anymore!

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

 

 

Honestly, I don't make rulings on stress too often. As a condition for NPCs, it either means they do nothing (worthwhile) or they succeed or fail at my whim rather than a skill roll. For a PC, I generally leave it up to the player if they want any modifiers. Usually we'll write off a failed roll due to stress sometimes and a successful roll under stress as lucky, even though there were no penalties involved.

 

If I ever had to make a ruling, for extended stressful situations or whatever, I'd probably rule that all actions are considered hasty unless extra time was spent performing them. Basically, however long any particular task would normally take, I'd step it up the time chart one step. They can either perform it at the normal time with the standard -3 penalty, or they can take the longer time without a penalty, or even longer and actually get a bonus (but they could be taking a riduculous amount of time then, such as 5 minutes for a 1 Turn action).

You make a good point. Some people do better when stressed. Slowing down and taking extra time is also a good idea. I like that effect.

Thank you to the people who suggest reasons for not using it. I agree it shouldn’t be used often. It should fit the situation or character, and I want it to make the game more dramatic, not more irritating.

Cheers!

Heroes!

What do you think about making a stress parameter? As your stress becomes too high, you suffer penalties to all rolls: attacks, skills, PER, and so on. Maybe it can make play more interesting, but I want it to be simple. Does anyone have any ideas?

I'm thinking of something like Long Term Endurance rules. The group has been in a cave for 5 days. On the same day, the character had a severe encounter with a Psychological Limitation. A character made a big mistake or failed a roll that was very important. A DNPC or Rival is involved. You want to hurry up with the mission because you have other plans.

Cheers!

Re: Premonition?

I just had a wacked out thought....

 

Contact: GM 8- (Extremely Useful, Good Relationship)

 

Actually, the more I think of it, if this is just a plot device kind of thing I'd just write it off as part of the character's concept. If this was the only power the character had however, I might write up the above just to justify it happening to the character (and giving a game mechanic that can be intereacted with).

Dust Raven!

Excellent idea! I want to give reputation, but I'm still waiting to give reputation for the Turning To Stone thread.

Cheers!