eepjr24

Lots of routes to take here, depending on HOW you see the power as working. Stealth Invisibility, Bright Fringe (-1/4) Mental Illusions, Self Only (-1), Only to generate a non-descript illusion of a person they expect to see. Area of Effect. Probably 4d6 would be enough. Shape Shift, Affects Body Only (-1/2), Limited Effect (Normal Sight Only) In the first instance, it is purely skill. You are perceived, but as part of the normal surroundings. Next two are more "power" oriented, with bright fringe being that they see you with features, but not the "real" you. I like Shape Shift the best, but you would probably need to pair it with some KS's to know what types of people would be expected in a place, etc. Fits best with the spy scenario for me. - E

Haymaker already provides for one method of that (High OCV ability ot increase). You could easily set up a similar maneuver for sacrificing damage for OCV. Call it something like: Sweep: For each 5 points of STR sacrificed, player gains +1 OCV versus one target in hand to hand combat. This attack occurs in the segment after it is declared. - E

nods. Augmentations can be pretty generic if you do it right. Runes can be wood, stone, glass, etc and vary by both the rune and the material. Gems can be augments that add base stats or boost SFX by type (rubies help fire powers, hematite wards off blood magic, rose quartz boosts healing). Claws, teeth, bones, skins (handle wraps or the life) can build bane weapons for that creature or imbue with properties of the creature. Lots of possibilities. - E

I think it is a scaling down problem, honestly. Hero scales UP awesome. It scales down to a certain point well and after that, poorly. A nearly useless detect still costs at least 3 points, before you add anything to it. The difference between a zero strength running throw and a one strength running throw is 6 feet. It doesn't even go down below 2 meters! Clairsentience for taste costs the same base as sight. Invisibility cannot be bought for a single sense, it must be bough for at least one group. Some of them are not a big deal. Others get ridiculous in some settings. In the end, with all it's bumps and curves, still the best system by far I have ever found. - E

Ah, a faceting snob. Left out cabochons altogether I see. =P

About anything can, I suspect. I just don't see a pressing flaw that needs fixing, especially not enough to work out new campaign balance and guidelines. - E

I think this is not a huge thing whether it does or does not, unless again it is something that people are aware of. If having consecrated armor provides a DC of damage negation versus certain types of attacks (mind control by a vampire or disease effects of a ghoul bite) it is really moot unless it is known by either the players or some other group who utilizes it. It could even be something like undead having a sense for consecrated items and having one makes you either more or less likely to be picked as the primary target. - E

If there was no other easy way to make things yellow? Yes. But as I covered in the "blue" argument earlier, if a trivial outside method exists to do the same thing it is probably cosmetic as well. I mentioned it in the terms of consecration as well, if you can get an item consecrated on any street corner or buy them in the general store, it's probably cosmetic. But in the end, it's all still GM's call since this type of transform is by it's nature very tied to setting and other campaign factors. - E

For a detect that the target is defined at the time it is activated, what type of advantage would need to be applied? A few examples would be: A potion that you add a strand of someones hair to before you drink it, then you are able to detect the direction where they are for the duration of the detect. A magical compass that you put a drop or two of blood in a compartment and it always points the way to that target, alive or dead. A technological device that you could put a known gemstone into and an unknown gemstone into and it would tell you if they were the same based on specific gravity, density, optical refraction, etc. I was thinking Variable SFX fits closest, although Variable Effect seemed more apt if it could be applied to things other than adjustment powers? - E

From 6e, I would say this falls into one of two categories of Minor transform from the examples in the book. You already mentioned the SFX argument. The other one that seems to apply to me is "create minor combat related effects". If consecration had no effect on damage generally (IE, a world where undead do not exist, are not affected by consecrated items or are so rare as to be moot) it would be cosmetic. Like making the sword blue or adding glowing letters that say "Mzayque" down the blade. But since it does have combat effect, it is minor. - E

Really, it won't be a problem for me in Fantasy Hero, which is the only place I would have a real problem with it. Because I just would not approve that build. I didn't mean to imply that somehow taking the limitation was imparting an invulnerability to dispels. It is just one criteria I use, since in my FH campaigns dispel is generally reserved for powers that are magical or divine or otherwise not mundane. If you want to break a sword, pick up a hammer. - E

Not sure that would be PRE. More like: Mental Illusions: 6d6 Undead only (-1), Only to show images that would disturb their sense of reality (-1/2), Only if currently buried or entombed (-1) Example: Play "Hooked on Classics 2" for undead Mozart.

Just for completeness, anyone reading this should probably check out the answer that Steve gave in the Rules forum on this one. http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/93397-clairsentience-fixed-point-and-range/ - E

The real comparison to me is: Basic Smite Evil: Smite Evil: Deadly Blow: +1d6 (Against Evil Targets) (16 Active Cost); 1 Charge (-2) Real cost: 5 points. Use once per day, period. Modified Smite Evil: Smite Evil: Deadly Blow: +1d6 (Against Evil Targets) (16 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x3 END; -1), Costs Endurance (-1/2) Real Cost: 6 plus Buy-Off Costs END and Increased END Cost (10 Active Points); 1 Charge (-2) Real Cost: 3 Total cost: 9 points. Usable once per day with no Endurance, unlimited at 6 END per cast (subject to LTE, etc). I would be more of a mind to simply ditch charges and apply LTE as a side effect directly. So: Smite Evil: Deadly Blow: +1d6 (Against Evil Targets) (16 Active Cost); Side Effect: Minor, Always occurs, Lose 3 LTE per casting (-1/2) Real cost: 11 points. If the player preferred it could also cost End and/or Increased End to reduce the real cost and possibly make it have an effect on the combat directly. A maxed out high endurance Paladin could have 50 END (and thus 50 LTE) which would allow him to cast this many times a day, assuming that was all he needed to do. But if he has to fight and run and cast this and other effects, he has choices to make. - E

Personally I would not allow Dispel to break anything bought with a "Real Armor" or "Real Weapon" limitation. You could try on magic armors and the like, but there is already a well defined method for breaking things via damage. Or Transform. And many magic items already have various levels of Difficult to Dispel. If for some reason the setting allowed weapon breaking as a common effect I would probably go the route of adding DC to the attack only to damage foci or the like. Lastly, Dispel has to be bought against a power, not an SFX unless you use Expanded Effect (All powers bought through Foci) or the like. - E

THIS^^^ If you look specifically at cost to up the DC by one die via CSL, the minimum currently is 6 RP (2x 3 point CSL). That is a decision made before you roll the dice, so you pay for the flexibility by some percentage increase in your chance of missing. So if you go by that logic (current existing mechanism), the ability to use a CSL for both OCV AND DC should take more CSL if it is not going to cost you any chance of missing at a minimum. The other thing that this whole argument misses is that it assumes your to hit roll is the sum whole of accuracy. Nothing in the game says that explicitly. The damage roll could be just as much a part of accuracy as the to hit roll itself. A high roll on the damage dice could be part accuracy, part pure strength, part modelling target reaction to the hit, part modelling chaos theory (randomness), etc. This is somewhat backed up by various constructs like Combat Luck which are mechanically deducting from the dice roll but special effect is that the attack "missed" or was not as accurate as it could have been. Hero is flexible, so if you want to go this route with a house rule, I encourage you try it out and let the community know how it works out. But for me I would need a lot of convincing that there is something about the to-hit / damage mechanism that needs fixing and is not already covered by alternate rules like hit locations, etc. - E

I didn't jump in on the other thread, but my major problem is that it goes counter to the Hero System concept of "Every offense should have a defense that costs significantly less". For a 5 two point CSL's I have increased the average on almost half my dice significantly. To counter it I will have to buy DCV levels, which cost at least 3 points but generally cost more than that to be effective in defense. Modifying that is going to take some fairly major alterations to the cost of a lot of different things. How does this interact with AOE's? What about the Accurate advantage? - E

Water is about 10 Body per cubic meter. So about 80 body per 2m cubed. So I'd say, no? - E

I just got through reading the 6e section on Clairsentience after a discussion in the Hero Discussion on how to model a power that would let someone know when someone touched their car. Can you tell me if I modeled it correctly? Would this allow you to set a fixed point on your car (assuming you are within the targeting range of 200m) and then sense from wherever you were if someone touched it? I understand that you would not be able to reset it from long distances if someone broke the "connection" via dispel or drain or other methods, but if it was set and then I drove 10 miles away, would it still work? - E

More dice is generally the best bet. Or a drain of the defense linked with more dice. Double knockback can work out well too, depending on circumstances. Personally, if this is supers I usually just end up with an MP of different scenario attacks. Because there are always odd cases like desolidification, perception obscuring, DCV off the charts, etc that need handling if you want to be effective in the great majority of cases. - E

Chris, did you read my construct above with the rules from 6e? 35 AP is not horrible. Probably a bit pricey still in RP. As a GM, I would personally probably put a limitation on it, something like "Only to have plot relevant knowledge of a specific action / object interaction" (-2), which would bring the real cost down to 8 RP. All of this assumes that the player does not just want to pay in game to have an alarm system on the car that could likely tell him the same thing but be more likely to fail versus someone with car theft skills. - E

Yep. The only solid info on exact make up I knew of was in Superman III. I am not old enough to have read the original comics (Well, at least not before the late 70's) and I didn't think they had ever gotten real specific. - E

You are back to the point I made. It depends on the campaign. If Consecrated weapons are available in a general goods store, they would be a cosmetic transform to me. And the Susceptibility would be at the Very Common level. If they are made by a small subset of people who control the rate at which they are created and have a reason to restrict the output (in this case to not cheapen the effect of divinity), then it is Minor. That makes the Susceptibility either Common or if they are extremely rare, Uncommon. Making something a certain shade of blue is both trivial (the "transform" method can be duplicated easily with off the shelf goods) and would merit a Very Common susceptibility as well. Kryptonite (an alloy made up of 15.08% plutonium, 18.06% tantalum, 27.71% xenon, 24.02% promethium, 10.62% dialium, 3.94% mercury, and 0.57% of an unknown substance) would be a major transform from say another metal or thin air or the life. It might be minor if you could gather up all the component parts besides the unknown and use the transform to assemble them, basically. All of this comes back to GM though. There is only so much that you can make a hard and fast rule for. So if you convince your GM (or yourself if you are the GM) that it is cosmetic, then it is so for that world. - E

Yes. Replaces COM and augments it in my mind. Appearance is controlled through it or complications that tell you specifically how groups react to your beauty / horrific scars / bizarre appearance. - E

So we are really back to the cat being built incorrectly at that point. The HKA should have been built with Damage Over Time, Extra Time and other limitations to reflect it's effectiveness. - E