dstarfire

Re: question about optional rule use If you limit CSL's, expect to see every blaster-type character have a near-max dex. Which is fine, if you like homogeneity.

Re: Appearance Shifting For Items

Re: Sweep, Multiple Power Attacks and Autofire From my experience as a player, I'd say count manuever bonuses towards your caps. Manuevers are just very cheap (albeit somewhat limited) bundles of cv and dc bonuses. In my opinion the vastly reduced cost balances out their limited utility.

Re: Appearance Shifting For Items y'all are making this WAY too complex. At it's simplest, what he wants to do is change what the focus for a power looks like. The appearance of a focus is a function of the power's sfx .... So, a simple variable sfx advantage at the +1/4 level should do what you want. You could probably get away with limiting the advantage only to the fociis' appearance. Probably end up being cheaper than the other ideas. Also, since this functionality is built into the focus, you don't have to mess around with any UBO to be able to lend it to a friend.

Re: suggestions for "does not work in..." That's actually a very good idea. Especially since I've been toying with some powers that are based on the Time = Space = Thought principle. And I think I'll take Pinecone's idea just for the fun of it. "Sorry guys, I'm out of commission at the moment. My best friend just got a new cat, and he's sharpening his claws on the dimensional fabric."

couple of how-to questions: First of all ... In hero, how do you handle the "I'm going to keep trying until I get it right" situations? "That other system" has two ways to do this, hero doesn't have even 1. The 'can't make another attempt until chances have improved somehow' rule even prevents any sort of casual system. Secondly ... How do you make a damage shield effective for knockback? Even with the f'ed up damage shield rules, it's still possible to do damage by adding in one of the def-bypassing advantages. However, adding in a single double knockback increases the AP so much you can't get enough body (even with the doubling) to bypass even the standard knockback roll that everybody gets (KB = body - xd6). I'm thinking of your classic martial artist that keeps kicking/throwing/tripping all attackers (aside from the one he's beating on at that moment) away.

Re: building a mental "voice" The primary difficulty with telepathy and mental illusions are the ecv and Effects rolls. if the target has a high ecv or ego, or I roll poorly it wouldn't work, and the target has no idea what I was trying to tell them. While most powers should have something that can block them, in this case the defense is "I decide to ignore the person talking in my head, and continue on as before". Would not choosing to ignore the message possibly count as voluntarily allowing the "attack" to succeed?

I'm building my first mentalist, and need help building one of his signature powers: a sort of mind voice, as the title says. In simplest terms, this ability lets him "speak", gesture and interact in the usual fashion (including facial expressions, body language, etc.) with others directly through their mind. Specifics of the power: Is not affected by sensory ability (blindness, deafness, flash) or environmental conditions (background noise, darkness, etc.) Is invisible to non-participants (except maybe for some body-language cues from other participants) , and each conversation is self-contained. Uses the brains normal communications centers, so it's easily ignored (just slightly more so than "normal" communications), totally voluntary, and doesn't interfere with the "target"'s other perceptions/interactions. Works with most any person the character can see, and any number of people within range. Effective enough for casual use, as it would be the characters primary means of communication (Optional) is bidirectional so the "target" could respond in the same manner (probably the target needing a skill roll to conceal what they're doing). Every single Power I've looked at (Images, telepathy, mental illusions) has some innate feature that precludes these.

If a mental illusions effects roll is insufficient to effect the target do they know what it is that the attacker was trying to make them see/hear/etc.? I'm trying to build a power that will allow a mentalist to interact with another character (speak, hand gestures, etc.) directly through that character's mind, regardless of environment (darkness, noisy area, etc.) or sensory ability (deaf/blind, etc.).

Re: Rules to ignore, or replace A magically intelligent forcewall that can extend tendrils to block projectiles trying to bypass it. A vehicle that is completely encased in armor. Or maybe a structure is built beyond the usual 3 dimensions. Just because YOU can't think of an example where a power/advantage combo makes sense doesn't mean somebody out there won't.

I need help coming up with a -1/4 "does not work..." type limitation. The special effect I'm working with is dimensional manipulation, specifically ones based on an understanding of the physical (beyond the usual 3) and non-physical dimensions. Our campaign setting is modern day superhero earth (our local area, actually). The reasoning behind the "does not work in ...." lim/s is the instability such conditions cause to the dimensional fabric. The OOC reason is that I'm building a set of variable lims, where his powers don't work as well (activation roll), or are more tiring in certain conditions.

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

Are Megascaled Area of Effect powers blocked by obstructions within an affected hex? for example, would a large building create a shadow of safety on the side away from the attacks center? What about an Accurate AoE (1 hex)?

Are defense powers (specifically forcefield) for vehicles and bases subject to the same cost tripling (or value thirding, however you want to think of it) as the characteristics pd and ed? It's not stated explicitly either way. However, the automaton power "takes no stun" does mention defense powers explicitly, and they're built pretty much the same way.

Re: Frameworks modifying frameworks All this talk about MPA's... I seem to recall that you couldn't combine powers from two different frameworks for an MPA. Secondly, if you combine the missile deflection in the attack powers framework, the char couldn't abort to it after they've taken an attack in a previous phase, as changing slots in a multipower is a zero phase action, not a free one.

Re: Teleport UAA Question If ya don't like the mass/target distinction, than talk your Gm into not using it. If you follow every single rule in hero, you're in for a very boring game. Hero only works if you ignore the parts and rules you don't like. I remember the core rulebook for one system having a disclaimer that "every rule in this book is optional".

Re: Diceless Hero hmm, diceless hero ... reminds me of non-alcoholic beer: there's no point. One of the central tenets of Hero is that everything is open-ended: the more you spend on a power/skill/etc. the stronger/more reliable it is. Without the dice, that whole concept goes down the drain. If you wanna go diceless, stick with a system that keeps the mechanics/numbers a bit more obscured.

Re: Peramonal communication Discriminatory and/or analyze are NOT neccesary for advanced communication. Analyze for sight would tell you just what type of ink was used to form the letters written on a sheet of paper, and what that paper was made from. I'm not too sure what full discriminatory would do for you, but it'd be something fairly similar. Back to the original concept here, you might want to add in some extra abilities to reflect their ability to manipulate their scent for deceptive purposes (much as humans make realistic-looking decoys). Also, the nature of scent means that each statement must be erased/cancelled out before another message can be placed in the same medium (even if that medium is the air). The 'Runelords' series by David Farland talks about this in it's later parts.

Re: Pondering CSLs Blocking indirect... Sounds like one of those "depends on the sfx" things. A boomerang-style indirect would certainly be blockable. However, an indirect themed as 'instantly appearing at the target' (i.e. Dimensional Rift in USPD') probably could not be blocked. I'd say indirect is somewhat like AoE in this respect. According to the rules, it's not subject to missile deflection (and hence block) unless you specifically take that limitation, or the sfx of the attack make it blockable (i.e. mortars).

Re: New Disadvantage: Past. Actually, this sounds more like a wierd form of Unluck than anything to me. Based on a roll one of many things could happen: an old enemy/rival shows up (Hunted), you visit a club/bank/etc. only to discover you're persona-non-grata there because of some past incident (Social), you get sucked into a sidequest about an unresolved debt (Psych), or many others. This is one of those many cases in Hero where no single power/modifier/disadvantage really fits the bill. If you tried to use a single, or even a set of, disadvantages, you'd end up with a significantly higher appearance rate than you desire (more rolls = greater likelihood of appearance), and the importance/inconvenience (and hence the pt value) of any given appearance is likely to vary from the others. Unluck is a simple "bad things happen", "really bad things happen", "you and all your friends get totally screwed", depending on the roll. There's nothing that explicitly defines what the bad thing is, or even why it's bad. That's all part of the sfx.

Re: Game Play Concept: No Limitations Just to play devils advocate... On the other hand, most of the more common limitations don't come into play that often. How many times a session does your focus get stolen, or your character get attacked while in non-heroic ID? How many sessions have you spent where your character was in conditions where his powers didn't work? Limitations make certain character concepts cheaper, and thus, more powerful/versatile. A powered-armor character is going to have a LOT more abilities than an elemental enery projector, and most players would keep that powered-armor character in their armor all the time, except when they're sleeping, or doing civilian-id stuff.

Re: What does "Overall" not cover? That's because activation rolls are often used to simulate skill rolls (rsr's suck). Many of the super-skills in Dark Champions use this approach. At 10 pts to add +1 to a single skill/attack/char roll each phase, it ought to be d*mn versatile.

Re: TK & Martial Arts? I recently played a telekinetic and was considering martial manuevers, but discoverd a couple of major drawbacks: 1. Even though TK lets you manipulate objects at ranged, it's still limited to range manuvers by default. 2. If you want to use melee manuevers at range with TK, you have to buy the ranged advantage for those manuevers, according to the rules in the UMA, which gets expensive REALLY fast. 3. TK's have to pay extra even for optional manuevers, including the ever-popular sweep/rapid fire. In the end, my GM vetoed it, but I also abused the heck out of the indirect aspects of TK, beating on opponents four floors up.

Re: Frameworks Simplified Frameworks are neccesary for power-based characters to compete evenly with stat-based characters. Without frameworks, a martial artist or brick would be far more powerful and effective than an energy projector, and most all the other archetypes

For both questions, assume the manuever is reasonable given the sfx. 1. Since teleport normally doesn't cross intervening space, could a character use a tracking sense to follow a teleporter from the teleports starting point to its endpoint? 2. Is there any reason a character couldn't make an accurate AoE megascale? "A mild earthquake shook downtown millenium city today. Thankfully there was only 1 casualty and minimal property damage. Harold hastadi was ..."