william_nova

Re: Multipower slot reserve limitations Believe it or not, the ways to use Limitations on a Multipower was one of the few things I understood pretty readily on first reading it; don't ask me how, I must have eaten an extra portion of Fruity Oaty Bars that day. I was mostly just double-checking to see if I was interpreting it right, albeit in a real vague way. As for the multipower in question, on the character I'm playing (my first!) I built a series of effect related powers (blast, entangle, teleport, HKA) with identical Increased END amounts on both the reserve and all the slots. I was trying to model the "getting the hang of it" situation as Hugh Neilson & Ice9 both mentioned in another thread; however, seeing as how costly it will be to rework this, it was probably not the best way to go about it, at least for my concept. As I now see it, limiting the reserve and the slots in such a massive way could be a cool way to show on paper just how exhausting a certain power set could be to a hero, like Molly Hayes in Marvel's Runaways book. Also, since the cost is so high to rework it, as a player you're pretty much saying "this is never going to change" unless as a story item all your character's will is focused on overcoming it. I think perhaps from a metagame standpoint a case could be made for showing off how costly/inefficient/whatever certain powers could be vs. others by using this kind of limit. If I've got a 10d6 blast that costs me 15 or 20 END and someone else has a similar 10d6 for the standard 5 END, I've likely got a larger END and/or REC pool if I'm fighting for similar lengths. Again, since this is most likely just viewable from a "looking at the sheet" perspective, this probably falls under just metagame; unless your campaign is running some comparative testing on the 'supes of your world, like the Champions' DoD Superhuman Survey project.

Re: Experience Point Costs & Multipowers Thank you all for your substantive & patient replies, now I gets it! I knew if I kept my head submerged in the bucket long enough the details would have no choice but to sink in via osmosis. ;D

Re: Multipower slot reserve limitations Thanks! Ooo, I got that right! Watch out world, I'm cookin' with gas now!

Let's say I've got a multipower with a Limitation on the reserve. I also put the exact same Limitation on each slot in that multipower. Do I have to remove the limitation on the reserve before I can remove any of the slot limitations? Given that they are all the same limitation in this example, I would think the answer is yes. Is this correct?

Re: Experience Point Costs & Multipowers I'm not worried so much about the spent XP, I'm just trying to grok the way it works. At first I thought I was on the right track, now I'm not so sure. In the beginning I gave an example. A Blast 5d6 (25 Active Points) with Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2) Cost 17 Let's say that specific power is put into a fixed slot in a multipower. That fixed slot divides the cost by 10, so I end up with a cost of 2. What will it cost to remove the limit? 8 points? Or none? Normally I'd have said 8 points. But given how I'm interpreting what you wrote, in this example, it would cost no points to remove the limit, since removing the limit won't actually make the power in the slot cost any more. Is this correct?

Re: Experience Point Costs & Multipowers So the way I need to be thinking about this is: remove the power from the framework, calculate the difference in price, pay off whatever wants to be paid off, thus redefining it, and then put in back in the framework?

Re: Experience Point Costs & Multipowers

Re: Experience Point Costs & Multipowers I'm assuming I'm correct in assuming that I was correct with my costs of buying off things. I see what you mean, now what if that 52 point reserve had, say, Increased Endurance (x2 END; -1/2), Cost 35; would I have to buy that off, spending 17 points before I could buy off Increased Endurance limitations on the slots?

This is one of those "D'oh!" moments, where I'm either right, or way way way off base in my reasoning. I hope it's the former. How is XP spent on buying off limitations or increasing the Active Point cost of a slot in a multipower? I'm assuming you use the point costs as if it were not being used in a multipower? (I know I'd have to increase the reserve if the power's Active Point cost exceeds the reserve pool, but in this case I'm just talking about increases that don't exceed the reserve) For example, if you have a Blast 5d6 (25 Active Points) with Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2) Cost 17 - to buy off the limitation would cost 8 points, to pay the difference, right? This makes sense. Now if I put that into a multipower as a fixed slot it comes out to 2f points, and removing the limitation doesn't push the cost up enough to increase it to 3f points, and you can't give players stuff for free ;D so this was my logic, if you want to call it that. Also, if I've got a HKA 2d6 with Armor Piercing (+1/4) and Penetrating (+1/2) (52 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2) Cost 35 - putting that into a multipower's fixed slot would cost 3f, and if I remove the limitation it increases to 5f, difference of 2 points. That seems like way too low an XP cost to remove a limitation on such a powerful attack. OTOH, out of a fixed slot it's a point difference of 17 points, which seems like way more reasonable a point cost. What's the verdict, herophiles?

I'm so new the paint is still shiny, so here is the idea, figured I'd ask for opinions: A (super heroic) character who looks like a normal person, and is to medical science a normal person, but who has greater resistance than normal people. The resistance is mystical/supernatural/science can't 'splain it, and has two components; a more minor resistance that is always "on" and available, even when unconscious, but which can be "turned up" with a slight effort of conscious will and can protect from different forms of damage, but most effective versus a single type of damage at a time. From a physical standpoint the default resistance would allow small arms and blades to bounce, yet things like high powered rifles would do harm. If the defense is being focused on, then it's something that would bounce high powered rifle bullets, and just about everything else right up to a Howitzer round. In 'supe vs. 'supe combat, I'd like the character to have some slight defense against mental attacks and attacks requiring power defense, but still enough for the character to be considered weak vs those types of attacks. Here is what I and my GM came up with, this being both our first character and game using Hero: Without looking at what I did first, how would you model what I'm describing? (I'm describing rather sparsely, I'll admit, the coffee is still brewing..) I'm very curious to see what other ways this is interpreted/can be done rules-wise. I've been following many of these forum mental exercises, quite fascinated by the creativity of folks here. Consider your mental energy donation as going toward the worthwhile charity of making me a better Hero player. Thanks!

Re: Megascale and Teleport Sighting Oi, that last one was post 10! I'm not officially off the Hero forums short bus! Yeah. More coffee is needed.

Re: Megascale and Teleport Sighting FWIW, there's a great writeup of a "Teleportation Sense" on p.340 of the Champions Powers for 6e book. I don't know what the copy/paste guidelines are, so I won't snip it, but it's a very cool use of MegaScale Clairsentience that might help. Or it might make things worse, depending on yr group. Either way, all this stuff helps me visualize how stuff is envisioned to work from the end of those who write the rules.

Re: The Nightmare of Solomon I've read, um, most of this thread, and I see a lot of "fight fire with fire" solutions. Now, this is just my newbie .02, but bear with me; it sounds like you've got someone who, while not abusing the rules in the letter, is doing so in the spirit of it. The "I Win" button has been mentioned earlier in the thread, so I think it's fair to speculate in this direction. From a game's narrative standpoint, a fight fire with fire sort of solution ends up being effective only until your troublesome PC comes up with a way to hack your hack of his/her hack; it's enforcing a PCs vs. the GM sort of scenario, in which somebody is always trying to "win" something. That antagonism seems to hurt more games than it helps, I've found. For me, I'd simply not allow it to be done over and over, I mean, really, what kind of story would it be if the same tactic were used in a confrontation over and over? A boring one. Yes, there is winning, but where is the cool story in that, if it's just that? As far as mechanics goes, if something simply does not work after it's been done a bunch of times, in a given situation, does it really need to be explained to the player why? Of course not. They do need to trust that you are not trying to "screw" them, if they've got that sort of mentality, but honestly I'd try to wean them off that sort of thinking at every chance you can get. It's more fun for everybody involved. Here's a link that's kinda cool, though it's not the clearest written thing out there, most of the good stuff is under copyright and printed in books, and my forcing print thru the Intertubes skill is surely 8- or worse. Here's the tl;dr version, just the same way the rules in a Hero campaign need to mirror its setting, Superheroic vs Heroic, Pulp vs Cyberpunk; players and GMs need their behavior to mirror the setting as well. Now we all know the only reason to alter those rules in the first place is so the feel of the game can better match its narrative structure and intent; yet that's not worth a hill of beans if players and/or GMs won't alter their behavior to fit a given narrative structure. I think Ragitsu's player has got a minor case of this and probably needs to be sat down and asked why they're doing what they're doing.

Re: System Question: HKAs and adding STR I feel like the guy in the comedy movie who kicked the small pebble down the snowy hill and watches in awe as it turns into a massive snowball. It's all very helpful, watching the discussion, however, and I shall now be going to get more popcorn.

Re: System Question: HKAs and adding STR Thank you so much! That was surely it. as 3 DC + 10 DC is 13 - ..ah-HA! (I hope, for sometimes just when I think I've got something sorted out, I get womped in the back of the head with the math crowbar) For some reason the adding damage bit is the part I am having the most trouble figuring out. The rest is easy peasy, but this particular section is giving me problems. Would anyone care to attempt to take a crack at explaining how the "Damage Classes Of Advantaged Powers" section would work using Killing Damage? Cos in that chart on 6E2 97, 1 DC of Killing Damage is 1 pip, and that just blew my mind completely. Seriously. There's smoke coming out as we speak.

Re: Just saw 6th Edition and got a chance to leaf through it...

Re: I made the GM cry.... I always shiver a little inside when I hear stories like these, I find there's a big difference between creative problem solving and game breaking. No insinuations or accusations whatsoever should be drawn to what I've read here, obviously. I'm speaking from personal experience purely. I've run a few games with the game breakers, and like their cousins, the min/maxers, they live to derail the moving train with their carefully placed explosives on the tracks. I enjoy the creative problem solver, who is running in the spirit of the campaign and the rules. They're a pleasure to create and run scenarios for. As I get older, though, I have less and less tolerance for the game breakers of any stripe. As recently as a few years ago I ran a Unisystem scenario and I had a game breaker in my midst. The dude who plays opposite to whatever is going on at the table, has a totally ridiculous concept, again opposite to the spirit of what's going on, and who demands spotlight time far more than others. By the second hour he split the party, going off to where clearly there was no action to be found. I did everything I could but put a big flashing neon saying "this way to the action!" to no avail. Finally I realized he knew there was nothing out there, and was just hacking for the sake of it. I told him if he didn't get back the group he might as well leave, as I wasn't going to spend any more time watching the entire group look bored while I waited for him to indulge his graffiti session. After the shocked "who, me?" look came the barest hint of a smirk, as if to say, "oh, you spoke up, at last!" and thankfully after that there more party unity, with much mystery solving and blood splatter to be had by all. So weird!

Hi, I'm new to the Hero system, and I was going through the errata for Book 1 when I came across something I can't figure out. This is the text from the book: "Armadillo has powered gauntlets with claws that do HKA 1d6. He also has STR 50. Armadillo may do 1d6 Killing Attack for 1 END by using his HKA. He may do 2d6 Killing Damage for 2 END by using his HKA and 15 STR." [6E1 242] Now the errata for that page says: "The HKA example featuring Armadillo improperly uses the old rules that restrict how much STR can be applied to an HKA. Instead of saying, “He may do 2d6 Killing Damage for 2 END by using his HKA and 15 STR”, the example should say, 'He may do up to 4d6+1 Killing Damage for 6 END by using his HKA and 50 STR, unless the GM chooses to restrict this (see 6E2 100-01)'." Only thing is, when I looked up the table, I can't seem to figure why the damage is 4d6+1, which is 13 DCs. By my reckoning, the HKA is 1d6, and with his 50 STR, that should push the damage up by 10 DCs (+1 DC for every 5 STR), so 10 DCs plus the 1 for the HKA itself should be 11 DCs, which is, according to the table, 3 1/2d6, 4d6-1 Did I get something wrong? I imagine this is quite likely, as the system is detailed and maths is not my strongest suit. Or, not to be a wisenheimer, does the errata have an errata?