Vurbal

Re: How do I build a . . . ?

Re: The interaction skills I suspect there are 2 major reasons why interaction skill questions don't come up very often. Either people don't use them (ie they use pure roleplaying to resolve those situations) or they don't assume any official mechanic would be helpful in resolving issues they might have with those skills. Probably the latter for most people. Every character I make has interaction skills. In fact the one I'm playing now has 30 points in them. Generally we don't make a lot of rolls for them, relying on the level they're bought at vs. the subject's inherent interest in doing what I want them to. When there's a question of whether my roll should be enough to get the desired affect (or when someone is actively trying to resist my influence) we start rolling dice.

Re: Ego Attack: What am I missing? Depending on the exact power it might even be variable within the same campaign. For example if the power doesn't do any significant amount of damage but is instead just useful for breaking concentration of mentalists or mages it might be an advantage because they're likely to have lower CV than ECV. OTOH it could be a power that's used to do damage to brick or blaster type characters who would likely have higher CV than ECV so it could be a limitation. On the third hand it could be a power used for a crowd control type power used primarily on groups of normals or agents and be a -0 limitation because they'll likely have pretty much equivalent ECV and CV. Realistically the same character could have powers with each of these variants, making it a +1/2 advantage on one, a -1/4 limitation on another, and a -0 limitation on a third. Obviously these specific numbers aren't meaningful since the point is that it depends on the assumed target. What this really points out is the problems inherent in placing a fixed value on modifiers where the net result depends on a range of external targets and what assumptions you can (or can't) make about those targets.

Re: Sudden impulses - the interaction between system and emotion If you can clarify what you're looking for per Ghost Angel's questions a couple of posts back I think we can help you get where you want to go.

Re: Not that you're going to see this, but... Troll.

Re: Ego Attack: What am I missing? I agree 100%. In fact within the last few days Steve had this to say:

Re: Ego Attack: What am I missing? Steve would also never say such a thing. He'll tell you whether it's legal within the framework of the official rules, but he'll also be the first to tell you to ignore those rules if it makes your game more fun.

Re: Sudden impulses - the interaction between system and emotion Wrong. The psych lim affecting decisions is the only thing that makes it a disad. Nothing wrong with that at all. It's also not the only way that a psych lim works. People don't make decisions that way. As many people have stated the real process you go through to make a determination of how to act is far more complicated than anything you can write up with Hero disads. You'd need Hybrid for that My point isn't that you're only using math. My point is that you're using math that's intended to derive a figure that isn't included in the original equation. Basically this seems to be your problem. At least based on your own descriptions you're trying to quantify role playing. As Ghost Angel pointed out that's the definition of roll playing. Good luck with it though. I hope you figure out something that works the way you and your players want.

Re: Ego Attack: What am I missing? Actually he didn't say it was against the rules. What he said was that there are no official rules that cover this. That just means you need to come up with your own.

Re: Sudden impulses - the interaction between system and emotion Actually you did, or more accurately you implied it: In order for you to extrapolate a mathematical interaction between multiple disads there needs to be a mathematical relationship between them. In reality there isn't. The closest thing to that would be when a disad is likely to come into play at the same time as another that contradicts it. If one of them is likely to cancel the other a significant amount of times it might be worth fewer points, but that's due to its own frequency, not the fact that another disad is a factor in the frequency. No, what I'm saying is that the disad's point value is based on it's frequency, not whether that frequency is partially a result of another disad. That only works if your characters are programmed like machines. If that's how your world works fine. And what I'm saying is that you're trying to extrapolate something from the disad points that wasn't put in to begin with. It's like trying to figure out the speed of light from 2+2=4. No matter what formula you use the information just isn't there. If you want to have a mathematical interaction between disads you should start by altering the math that goes into them.

Re: Sudden impulses - the interaction between system and emotion Once again, please cite the page where you can find rules for which disad will be in effect if 2 or more come into conflict with each other. The level of control that psych lims have in your description is what I would classify as mental illness. If that's what you want in your game, good for you and have fun, but you're not describing Hero rules.

Re: Sudden impulses - the interaction between system and emotion So why use disads at all?

Re: Sudden impulses - the interaction between system and emotion Assuming you're saying that this specific character sees goblin children as equivalent to human (or at least that the player acknowledges that the disad applies) then ghost-angel's analysis is exactly correct. The purpose of disads is to represent the character, not the other way around. Real people have many values that are in conflict with each other. Those conflicts are resolved by applying whatever reasoning seems appropriate to the situation based on an overall worldview, not based on a mathematical weighting of different beliefs. Characters should be roleplayed the same way. Occasionally that will mean ignoring one disad in favor of another that is more applicable in a given situation. If that's something that occurs often enough it may be appropriate to lower the value of certain disads. More likely it's just good roleplaying.

Re: Sudden impulses - the interaction between system and emotion To give a real world example of this, lots of people love babies and hate spiders. That doesn't mean they'd have to weigh these 2 things to decide whether to kill a baby spider. There's no conflict between the two because they don't see a baby - just a spider. The disadvantages a character has are just specific things you've quantified to get points. Any good character is more than the sum of his points.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Shoot Your Shot - The J Geils Band

Re: Gps The rural water utility I work for uses GPS readings to map the location of every water meter so we can read them. We've determined that sometimes we can have 2 different GPS units at the same meter and get 2 different readings. I don't recall how far off they were when it happened but it's enough that we still have to keep additional notes about meter locations so we know we can find them again later.

Re: Campaign Ground Rules Sheet Since there's a Campaign Ground Rules Sheet in the Resource Kit I'm guessing you weren't the only one who found it useful.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Your Love Belongs Under A Rock - The Dirtbombs

Re: Thrown non-killing weapon Given the right SFX I would allow it. I can see using TK as extra propulsion for some ranged attacks.

Re: Thrown non-killing weapon

Re: Thrown non-killing weapon Just about everyone I've ever played with has also used that rule for all HA attacks. It doesn't make any sense to me not to.

Re: Thrown non-killing weapon I don't see where it says that at all. The description in 5ER doesn't mention anything about damage and since the example in the sidebar of the advantage is a throwing knife I think it would if that were the case.

Re: Thrown non-killing weapon Yes. 5ER also lists it as a variation on the Ranged advantage with a reference to the limitation.

Re: Fiddling with ECs You could argue that this is a fair trade for allowing lower cost powers to go into the same EC as higher cost ones, although I don't know that I buy that myself. So maybe the question we should be asking here is whether there's any legitimate balance reason to require a slot to use the entire base cost. If there is then it makes sense that there should be some kind of penalty for using the highest AP of a group of slots with varied AP for the base. Otherwise it makes more sense to simply allow the lower AP powers and not worry about it. Edit: Actually the more I think about it the less sense it makes to me to use the method I posted above. I don't see anything magically balancing about getting a discount for fewer high AP powers vs. a mixture of 1 or 2 high AP powers with several low AP powers. IME most powers become exponentially more useful with a linear increase in AP.

Re: Introducing Scott Free Press! Yes, definitely get V3.