eepjr24

tracking stuff

In my last FH game, we did it all on 3x5 cards. They had little boxes you checked off when something was used. It works best if the GM does the cards and hands them out as needed. You can also do nit-picky stuff between games, gives the players something else to emai the GM about.

- Ernie

Side Effect?

To the hyper drive, add the following side effect:

SE: Acquires 18- Activation Roll after 18 uses. Activation roll goes down 1 for each use after activation roll is acquired.

(Minor, -1/4)

I based the minor on both my feeling and the fact that it is only significantly impacted if regular maintenance is not done. Or, looked at another way, it is only ablative half the time. Obviously, there are many ways to skin a cat, and SE is one of my favorite lims for odd effects.

- Ernie

Resource

For terms and simple look ups:

http://www.hyperdictionary.com/medical

I use this one alot (I'm a DBA/programmer at a large hospital).

In general, you might also look at gradual effect or extra time for some effects, these can be really scary when the person affected has no idea how long it will go on for.

Simply put, you can do damage many many ways with biochemical powers. If you look at almost any chronic illness you will get clues how to do this. For example, if you mess with salt transfer between cell walls, yuo can effectively shut the system down by filling the lungs and digestive tract with mucus that is sticky and copulent (cystic fibrosis). Insulin levels were mentioned earlier (diabetes). Increasing angiotensin production in the kidneys could bring the onset of heart attack (narrows blood vessels).

Examples are easy, just peruse the web.

- Ernie

Originally posted by Bartman

10- Extreme breakdowns for disease and poison in life support. I would have liked to see both these cap at about 5pts each. But they are great for rounding out characters. I would have liked to see something more gradual as well. As it is you jump straight from no immunity to total immunity. What about characters who are resistant but not immune?

Forgot to mention that I house rule that too. If possible, I 1/2 the character points for the LS and use that to cost out a "resistance to x". The exact effect is a bit nebulous, but I usually give rolls to shrug off effects or allow them to be mitigated for a period of time.

- Ernie

I agree with Caris, except on the following:

5. I waffle on CE. I can see easy potential for abuse with positiove mods that only affect certain groups. Those IMO should be bought as aids or skills with UAA.

7. I think there should be a way to avoid the cap (an advantage? Adder?) but I saw too much overuse/abuse of healing in the old system. I am not entirely happy with the solution, and will probably house rule an advantage or adder to handle it.

8. In some campaigns/genre LS is too expensive for the disease/poison. In those, I will house rul it cheaper. I think in most places it is appropriate (and I have 2-3 characters who have paid for it).

9. I concur, and this is the way I have always played it. My Desolids usually take a set of things that affect them that can be deduced or discovered through a couple sessions or some research.

- Ernie

Thump Thump...

I would go with a multipower. 2 ultra slots, one with just the detect bought ranged, and one with NRay, but no range. I believe it has been stated that a no range power can detect things in your hex and the hex adjacent, so that should accomplish the 6 feet you are after. If that is not sufficient, then make the second slot NRay, ranged and slap "Reduced by range" on it. No book in front of me, but I also seem to remember a limitation somewhere for increased range penalties, but I could be remembering from a previous edition.

- Ernie

Robots...

Sounds like a gadget pool with Robots as the foci. Or, if the robots could not be targeted seperately, perhaps they are just SFX of a VPP with extra time to start. Or the foci of a multipower with all the powers bought variable SFX, robot of opportunity. heh. Anyway, tons of ways to do this, if you describe and give more info about the limits of the power we can help you more.

- Ernie

From the FAQ:

Question: Could a character buy Penalty Skill Levels to counteract the standard OCV penalty imposed by a Combat Maneuver, such as the -3 OCV for a Grab By?

Answer: No. If a character wants to buy PSLs with the attack, he has to define some form of negative OCV modifier they counteract such as the Range Modifier or Hit Location modifiers. He cannot apply them to, for example, the -3 OCV with Grab By, the -v/5 penalty for Move Through, or the -2 per subsequent attack for Rapid Fire/Sweep. If he wants to counteract the OCV penalty associated with a Combat Maneuver, buy 2-point Combat Skill Levels.

All the examples listed are combat maneuvers. I had always thought of autofire as a combat maneuver, but after checking FREd, it is not listed. Can a character use PSL's to offset the -2 per additional hit for autofire?

If not, would an appropriate way to buy the effect be:

+1 with Ranged Combat, Only for offsetting Autofire Penalties (-1) AP: 5, RP: 2

IPE

Invisible body could not be seen, but it could still be lost. If I have 6d6 of Ego Attack, IPE and someone has an AE 12d6 Supress Ego Attacks (standard effect) that covers my area, I still lose the Ego attack. Just because something is invisible does not make it intangible.

Personally, for this effect I would go with the resurrection from death in a focus. Duplicates can get complex, and summon exact copies can get pretty abusive.

- E

That is correct.

- E

Well, this doesn't help you much now, but I carefully review all character sheets to try to make sure little problems like this don't exist. Even doing that you get things that slip through, though.

Personally, I would have a talk with the player about changing the attack. If they are unwilling to do so, I would explain to them that certain villains would be taking off the kid gloves, and then have one or two show up with a similar construct to their power. And if that does not work, let them kill a supervillain and face the consequences (with authorities, conflicts of Psych Lims, conflicts with team mates and all the other issues).

The best way to explain to the players is this: Killing attacks are made to kill. If you don't want to kill, don't buy killing attacks.

- E

I would typically either represent this as an AE Line or an AE Cone (for a wider area). Your way sounds like it would work, just gets odd for me because it seems like people in between should get hit as well.

- E

Requests

Don't know how specific you want, here are some things I would like to see:

1967 AC Shelby Cobra, with 427 Cobrajet

Something like the Mach5 from Speedracer.

A couple basic construction vehicles (front end loader, crane, wrecking ball, asphalt roller, whatever)

Emergency Vehicles (Police car, ambulance, fire truck, rescue helocopter)

"Set path" vehicles (trolley, gondola, elevator?, monorail, etc)

That should do it. Alot of other stuff mentioned is good too.

- Ernie

John515 said:

1 STUN = Fully Recovered & at full strength

Any ideas on how to handle this? I have a player who was complaining about a villian who, after waking up, plugged her in the back with an energy blast. I explained that the villian had taken an extra recovery and "played possum" in order to get a good shot at her (held action, braced, etc), but my player complained that there's no way he should be "at full strength" after getting knocked out and then coming back up to +1 STUN. I await your ruling or suggestions.....

I conside this to be normal super villain tactics, if you allow them to have recoveries at all. One possible problems is that 0 Stun = 0 End, so unless the attack cost 1 End or less, said SV just went unconcious again. And just let players know that the same applies to them, they are not limited after being unconsious, so the playing field is equal.

In actuality, it is better for the players in my campaigns. This is because in many battles, the bad guys don't get recoveries once they are unconcious. The reason for that is to prevent the 'heroes' from taking another shot or two at the villains to make sure that they stay down. If they get back up in my games, it is usually dramatic license or to signify an especially tough or high rec/regen opponent.

- Ernie

Lim?

I have done something a bit similar before. The SFX was that it was fairly easy to take this character down, but he always got lucky and didn't die. I bought it as something like this:

10pd 10ed armor, Only versus attacks that would take him below 0 body (-1), Only to keep body at 0 (-1/4), Does not provide Stun protection (-1/4).

Basically, if he had 10 body and he took a shot that after his regular defenses would do 12 body, the armor kicks in and limits it to 10 body. The SFX was the organism that parasitically existed in his body went into overdrive to prevent the hosts death. There were other lims like costs end only when used (-0), extra end cost (bought at half value I think?), and I think it had something like 3 charges. Overall a pretty neat power, although if I remember right it seldom came into play.

- Ernie

Originally posted by prestidigitator

You can see my solution to this under the "Creating Hero d20" thread, which by now is a page or two down the list. In short, I consider it a "Saving Throw" which prevents the damage entirely. In order to make it half damage when the roll is successful, only apply the Limitation to half the dice of the attack.

I could easily see this working as well. I went and read your post, but it was short on details of the system you use specifically. Do you have a link you can post or a more detailed description of the lim values, etc?

- Ernie

Save rolls

Seems like a reasonable value for the lims.

- Ernie

Originally posted by TheFool1972

The robot body is a combat suit of power armor in humanoid form, about 8 feet tall and over a ton in weight.

 

He has to be out of the chassie for regular maintence and repair, and tends to get forcfully ejected if his body takes too much damage, due to the safety systems built into the body.

 

Side note: Wait... You don't get as much because you have a robot body? What about a character that can move normally and interact with the world with a power suit? Why even take the brain-in-the-box concept? Sorry, the suit should count as a tool in this case. He has no built in powers to the box to overcome his disability. Otherwise, you have to start penalizing characters who buy armor because they don't have it naturally...

 

The Fool

"I'll take point, use me as cover."

Adressing your points:

Robot is 8 feet tall and weighs over a ton. Okay, so that keeps him out of most buildings with more than one floor, and probably off of any grounds that he doesn't want to pay for. Unless you buy flight or other offseeting powers.

Brain gets ejected. Okay, you didn't specify that one in the original. How much DEF does the robot body have? How does that compare to the campaign average damage? How much does the suit have to take to force ejection?

You need to really think about how much this actually stops the character from doing things he wants/needs to do. Otherwise you are just trying to squeeze points from a concept. I would probably go with something like this:

PhysLim: Brain can be removed from power suit (Inf, Fully) 15

Social: Brain in a box, limited social interactions due to large bulky body and non-human appearance. 10? 15?

Maybe that should be a DF instead?

Essentially, the times I see this limiting you is in damage to structures when in robot body, maintenance times (could be bought as dependence if frequent), or when forcibly ejected. You didn't give us enough info to judge the last item yet, and may have powers that offset the first item. The Phys Lim, DF (or Social) and Dependence could get you 50 points or close to it, but in my campaign you would definetly have some explaining to make sure I understood how it limited you.

- Ernie

DCV only to offset sweep

I would go with -1/2. My reasoning:

-1/2 = Character will be limited about a third of the time. I just cannot see why a character with this power would NOT sweep in a given phase. So essentially, he would always have the bonus, unless he was out of HTH combat. Give that swordfighting is his schtick, I doubt that he will need DCV and be out of HTH combat more than 1/3 of the time. If the character had methods to ensure that he could get into HTH combat VERY quickly (teleport spell, 10" running, 5" leaping, etc) I might even go down to a -1/4.

The only way I would go with the -1 is if the character was well below campaign max for CSL's and/or OCV-DCV and wanted to count these as his CSL's, making this his "trick". I will waive alot to give one unique thing to a character if they are willing to make other sacrifices to make up for it.

- Ernie

Real Cost

Real Cost = (Active Cost / (1 + Limitation Cost)

So if the power from above had an activation cost:

Tough Rubbery Body:

Armor, 6 PD 6 ED (18 Active Points)

Hardened (+1/4)

Activation 14- (-1/2)

Total Active Cost: 22 (18 * 1.25)

Real Cost: 15 (22 / (1 + .5))

Does that help?

- Ernie

Example Power

Tough Rubbery Body:

Armor, 6 PD 6 ED (18 Active Points)

Hardened (+1/4)

Total Active Cost: 22 (18 * 1.25)

Real Cost: 22

The above example has no limitations, so the active and real costs are the same. As to how I chose how much armor, it is very subjective and depends on the character. When thinking about this character, I wanted him to take some damage from large caliber guns, but be able to shrug off the average pistol shot. So, I looked at pistols, see the are around 1.5d6 Killing, which is an average of 5.5 Body so I bought 6PD armor.

I am not sure I answered your question, but I am willing to try again if you tell me more about what you want.

- Ernie

Originally posted by lemming

Well, you would be a fool to fight a land war in Asia.

And only slightly less well known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!

- Ernie

Complimentary

Pending asking the GM about it, I went the skill route. Ended up with an AK, a PS, and a KS. If that doesn't do it, not sure what will. heh. Plus they fit very well into concept.

- Ernie

Hold

I will see if the GM will allow that. If he does, I am willing to spend the money, that is why I bought the perk. =) Don't want to be abusive about that, though, would rather pay points if I can find a way, money is only a few points for what can be alot of effect.

Anyone else?

- Ernie

I have a spacer character that sometimes deals in things he would rather not have found on his ship. I would like to make his concealment rolls more effective, and was looking for something a bit more inventive than just buying up his Concealment roll. I will do that if it seems to be the concensus, though.

What I want is for him to be able to take time (an hour or more) to be able to hide things on his ship VERY well. I would guess that on average, hiding a crate or so of cargo might be a 1-5 minute action. That gives him 2 moves down the chart if he takes an hour, or a +2. I would like another +3 or so, which I can get for 6 points if I buy the skill up.

I considered images, and I may buy a holograph projector to try this if I can. I also will look into some kind of scanner befuddler (Change Environment, -per vs scanners?) or the like. Anyone else have suggestions for things I could buy or do to help this out?

- Ernie