Zanthis

Re: Healer Nerf I'd almost feel the current Healing is ok if it just faded (the cap, not the points healed) like regular adjustment powers. So if I Healed someone for 10 BODY, then no Healing less than or equal to 10 BODY would help them (just like it works now) and Healing over 10 BODY will heal 10 less BODY and push the cap up (again, same as now). However, let it fade away at a base of say 5 points per hour. Then you could let people buy their fade rate down with an advantage. Of course, it would only apply to your healing. So if someone healed a friend for 20 BODY with a 5pt/hour fade rate, you'd need to wait 4 hours for it to go away completely. Whereas your 5pt/minute fade rate would have been the better choice since you would only have prevented healing on him for 4 minutes. This would imply of course a Fades Instantly advantage.

Re: trying to design a power.. I agree with Vorsh and Hugh. The -2 for only past/future selves is a limitation on duplication for an ability that duplicate doesn't have. Using duplicate creates a "copy" of yourself. The SFX you are using is this copy happens to come from a past or future time. I can so no disadvantage to that at all. It isn't any different in my mind than having an EB that does Fire damage. That said, I'd also recommend using the Summon mechanic to handle your character.

I checked both the FAQ and FRED, but I just can't find the answer so here goes: A Speed 6 character has a Force Field that costs 3 END/phase, and they abort to a Block on Segment 3. This results in them losing their action on Phase 4. Do they pay END for the FF on Segment 3? Segement 4 even though they don't have an Action then? Or do they not pay END at all? Thanks in advance.

Re: Armor Piercing and Martial Arts You also have the option of going with Find Weakness .

Re: Sectional Armor Values (Excel) I'd recommend sticking with the Activation values in the book, just so everyone in the game is on the same page. Keep in mind when using sectional armor, that while this spreadsheet gives you the statistically correct the player is still getting protection. So even though just protecting the head (3-5) gives something close to a -10 limitation, you may want to cap it at a lower level (say -2 or -3) simply because of placed shots. Otherwise, for a scant 3 points you could protect your head with 11rPD/11rED! Even though the head isn't hit that often naturally, placed shots against the head could be fairly common and this huge a limitation encourages abuse.

Re: Multi-Power and recovery I never considered it one. It just seems if I must actively use an action to maintain my Constant powers, their exists the possiblity that I could screw up maintaining such a power. Say I "forget" to spend the Takes No Time action of keeping a Force Field up and it drops suddenly. And that just seems weird to me. Wondering if the FAQ specifies.

Re: Multi-Power and recovery

Re: Sectional Armor Values (Excel) That's because the limitations for Activation rolls in FRED aren't entirely correct from a statistical standpoint. Let's look at 8- which is a -2 limitation according to FRED. That means 30 Real Points of PD equals 90 PD with an Activation roll of 8 or less. Compare to someone without any activation roll, they'll have 30 PD. So we now have: 90 PD only on an 8 or less 30 PD all the time That means the 90 PD is three times as effective as the 30 PD. To balance out, the 8 or less activation roll should only succeed one in three times. So out of 99 hits, the 90 PD will block 33 of them (90 * 33 = 2970) and the 30 PD will block all 99 (30 * 99 = 2970). So what are the odds of rolling less than or equal to 8? 25.93%! That's right, 8- really should be a -3 limitation given the numbers. And that's why a few activation rolls don't match up right. Either stick to the book's values when using activation rolls or you can use the closer values frlom this table.

Re: Stun Only Repulsion ray: Blast of force, but not focused enough to break bones. I'd probably even give it a cone AE. That could reasonably do STUN only and still cause knockback. In fact, it would work nicely because you could actually still do BODY damage as a result of the KB. So while it would be a nearly non-lethal weapon, you could still do BODY with it once in a while.

Re: Absorbsion, usable by others... Don't forget, IIRC you'll need at least 1 point initially in that power (BODY that's UBO) in order to supply the Absorption to it.

Re: Bashing people with chairs, lightpoles, automobiles... Sorry, replace momentum with kinetic energy. Wasn't trying to go for overmuch detail, hence I left out the chapter on angular velocity . Doesn't change the physics though, higher kinetic energy = more damage. If you don't believe me, then you have nothing to fear from those satellite dropped tungsten rods since they have no warheads. Sure, they pull something like 45,000g going down, but don't worry, it's just kinetic energy .

Since someone mentioned it in the Find Weakness thread and that thread has grown quite huge, I'll post this file here. It is an Excel spreadsheet (two versions, one in 2003 and one in 5.0/95) for use with Section Armor. If you have a power that covers certain hit locations, this table will help you determine what activation roll it is equivalent to as well as what limitation value best suits the power. This limitation value may be different than those shown in FRED 334 since rather than finding the best activation roll (which requires some fudging) and then the best limitation value for that activation roll (which also requires fudging) it goes straight to a limitation value, resulting in only one "rounding" error. The files also contain general odds of rolling given numbers on 3d6 and odds of hitting specific locations. If you have any questions, feel free to post 'em.

Re: Strange Question 2: Recovery in a Multi-Power The +30 Recovery just in time for Post Segment-12 is probably not the way to go. It a) begs for someone to abuse it even more, and sets a dangerous precident in your campaign. That said, Healing isn't necessarily ideal either, since restoring characteristics to max has a cap of how often it can be done within an adventure. A cap that cannot be increased mind you! Another option is give her an END reserve that powers nothing. Then give her a Transfer only from her END reserve to her normal Endurance. You can have the Transfer itself powered by either normal endurance or the reserve. Just don't forget adjustment powers on END reserves move 2 END/point, not 10 END/point.

Re: Speed Rebate I'd like to stay away from CSLs since it is her first RPG ever and its already pretty confusing for her. I'll save teaching her about how to arrange her CSLs for later (although she does have 2 right now, I just always have her put them in OCV for now).

Re: Do you allow Find Weakness in games using Hit Locations? The armor isn't perfect in coverage. It is "holey" for lack of a better word. I could easily see a character with Chain Mail (Armor:8rPD/8rED,Locations 3,4,6-17) putting Plates over this that are (Armor:6rPD/6rED,Activation 14-,Locations 7-16). Now, the plates aren't perfect in their coverage, but they do cover most of the body. Just in some places, probably joints, their are gaps that an attack will sometimes slip through. GM'ing attacks against this armor would drive you nuts though . Edit: I agree with Dust Raven. I wouldn't allow LoW to be Linked to a defense with Activation, nor would I allow it the sectional limitation: a limitation that isn't limiting is worth no points. This doesn't mean you couldn't put the LoW on the same OIF as the Armor power though.

Re: Bashing people with chairs, lightpoles, automobiles... I'd say stay away from using bullets as comparisons. They haven't even figured out the optimal bullets for stopping a person in real life because the effects of bullets striking people is extremely complex (hydrostatic shock, tumbling, fragmentation, pass through, etc). The confusion even resulted in a few bad (and dangerous) gun and load out choices by certain agencies and police departments. Anyways, sorry if this has been said (its late and I skipped around in the thread a bit): As to physics of bashing people over the head, the base formula in RL is F=mv^2 (that's Force = mass times velocity squared). That being said, the faster you can swing it, the more damage you should be able to deliver. However, the heavier it is, the tougher it is to swing fast. On top of that, longer objects allow you to generate a lot more angular momentum (meaning the tip of a long club can be moving much faster than a shorter one). Since the momentum is being squared, this can become very significant. Additionally, should the object you are swinging take damage (lose BODY as a result of the swing) that amount should really be subtracted from the damage dealt to the target since the object is absorbing some of the energy of the impact, rather than imparting all that energy to the target. For a real life example, one of my old martial arts instructors was asked to participate in a study of which club was better for the police: the straight billy club or the night stick (kinda T shapped). The thought was, since you could spin the night stick and generate higher angular momentum you'd be able to deliever more damage. After many different tests and techniques the results where wholely unspectacular: the come out pretty much even. So how you want to turn that into Heros rules is an interesting question, one I will have to let sink into my brain over the course of a few days. I would definately be interested if whoever said they were going to compile the results of this thread is still planning on it.

Re: Do you allow Find Weakness in games using Hit Locations? Your very colorful post's analysis is right on Hyper-Man. I don't think the LoW is too complicated by itself. DRMan would want his LoW to defend his Normal defenses, while ARMan is a bit out of luck and would either need to go for Resistant defenses for his LoW or split up his LoW points and defended Normal and Resistant defenses both (each about half as well). This is actually the reason I think Steve did it this way. It makes both targets (Normal and Resistant) attractive to people using Find Weakness. As to your second post Hyper-Man, I think without knowing how the body armor is built powerwise a little better, I can't answer it. But I'll try . We can ignore the face shield straight off. Next, the armor. It's body armor, and that could include a helmet. If you do an internet search on body armor you'll see plenty of modern "body armors" with helmets. Now, if the +3 DEF is Linked to the body armor, then the activation roll must be made before it can be applied, even if locations 10 or 11 are hit. If the +3 DEF isn't Linked but just part of the same OIF then it'll apply regardless of the activation roll on the 8 DEF, provided locations 10 or 11 are hit. As to Hit Locations and Activation rolls meant to simulate "coverage", I'd say they can work together. Consider a woman wearing a chain mail bikini. Sure, it covers the chest, but not 100%, and so it might warrent an activation roll in additional to the sectional coverage. Covering a body location and covering it such that every attack to that location is blocked are too different things. It's just most people don't need that much detail in their games .

Re: Do you allow Find Weakness in games using Hit Locations? Steve's answer to my most recent FWeakness question was "Answered in the FAQ" and after rereading the FAQ carefully (search for "counterpart" and see point #1) I determined he is quite correct. The FAQ does answer this question, and despite the fact that I must have read it at least five separate times I kept missing it. When it comes to what Find Weakness can target you have: Normal: PD and ED (the characterists), whether or not they've got Damage Resistance making some or all of it Resistant Defense Resistant: Armor, Force Field and maybe Force Wall Special: Power, Mental or Flash Defense (Only ONE targetted at a time) Seems slighty odd to work it this way, but it does keep people from always going after Resistant defenses with Find Weakness because the character could reasonably have very high Normal defenses too. It did make me wonder if you can Find Weakness on an Entangle holding you to make it easier to escape. The power itself doesn't say you can't target objects, but the FAQ does mention you can't use it to lower the DEF of the ground you're tunneling through. Further, Force Wall is another weird one. Not sure whether it should be Find Weaknessed separately from a character's personal defenses. I'm inclined to say yes since it acts more like an object created by a character than a personal affecting power. And lastly, why is weird spelled so weird. I keep typing it wrong and not noticing, or typing it right and thinking I did it wrong.

Another quick question on Find Weakness (sorry!) with regards to the power Damage Resistance. There has been much confusion over whether it is a special case or not. I successfully use Find Weakness against a target with 8 PD (characteristic) and 3 Active Points of Damage Resistance. No other defenses. With the Damage Resistance, his defenses (before Find Weakness) are 2PD/6rPD? If #1 is yes, after Find Weakness vs resistant defenses, his defenses become 2PD/3rPD? If #1 is yes, after Find Weakness vs normal defenses, his defenses become 1PD/6rPD? Again, thanks in advance!

Re: Do you allow Find Weakness in games using Hit Locations? I noticed a lot of people saying outright or implying (at least to me) that Armor and such grant both Normal and Resistant defense. This is completely untrue in 5th as far as I can tell. I reread Armor carefully and it provides only Resistant defense. It gives zero Normal defense. Now, Resistant defense applies against Normal Damage, but that is quite different from Armor providing both Normal and Resistant defenses. If it did, 10 points of armor would give 10PD/10rPD and therefor block 20 points of Normal Damage! I'll be posting a question about Find Weakness and Damage Resistance (the power) to get a clarification, since my understanding is Resistant Defense is Resistant Defense when using Find Weakness, whether it comes from Armor, Force Field, or through Damage Resistance bought to convert characteristic Normal Defenses into Resistant Defenses. Guess we'll see .

Re: Your Favorite "Analyze"? Analyze Analyze When targeted by an Analyze skill, you are able to determine what kind of analyze you are being subjected to. Makes Roll...By Information Gained 0 (Exactly)... Determine what Analyze skill is being used. 1 or 2.......... Determine if the Analyze was successful. 3 or 4.......... Determine what level the Analyze succeeded at. Half or Better Determine skill level of target's Analyze, exactly what information was learned and character may be immune to bonus gained through use of target's Analyze skill. And I'm only being half-way silly. I could actually see a use for this

Re: Speed Rebate Neat, a FAQ reference. That thing is huge btw. And I thought the FRED was big, but I think the FAQ might actually be bigger. And the new revised book will be bigger still!!! Somehow, I'm looking forward to that. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing Thanks for the help guys. She's really been having fun with her character. Her only major issue is Endurance management (PC has a FF at 3 END/phase + SPD 6 = lots of END) and uses MPA with two swords (I know, I know, why does everyone pick two swords) so at 6 END a pop for attacks and 3/Phase, she goes through it pretty quick. We'll find a happy balance though. Thanks again.

Just wondering if anyone would consider this reasonable: I have a new player (her first RPG ever). She created an interesting character (via description, I actually wrote up the powers). She's just gotten to play her and has decided she wants to hit more often and be hit less often. The suggests to me I recommend she improve her DEX which is currently only 14. However, her Speed is already 6 and I really don't want it to get to 7. I'm thinking, since she "spent" 36 points boosting Speed up to 6, I let her get a 1 point rebate on the price of DEX, effecitively letting her pull the points she put into Speed out. This seems at least reasonable to me until she his 20 DEX since this is her first character and her concept for it is still pretty wobbly. Of course the ideal solution would have been to have created her with a 17 or 20 DEX, but hindsight and all.

Re: Do you allow Find Weakness in games using Hit Locations? I agree, no apologies necessary. If I had to apologies for every time I misread or misunderstood a HEROs rule, I'd never get a chance to play!

Re: Do you allow Find Weakness in games using Hit Locations? For those interested, you can find some basic Q&A on Find Weakness with examples answered by Steve himself here. It doesn't go into Activation rolls or sectional defenses because I didn't want to get into the hard stuff if it turned out I was misunderstanding the easy stuff .