Chris Goodwin

JackFlash, which core rulebooks do you have? That will help us in providing page references and such. Toward the back of pretty much all of the core rulebooks is a chapter called "The Environment" with a section called "Breaking Things". In 5th Edition Revised it's page 447; in 5th Edition (original) it's on page 392 if I remember correctly. That will give you rough ideas for how much DEF and BODY to give items based on their composition and weight. Roughly speaking, 2x mass is +1 BODY.

A question I was getting at earlier, but never really articulated -- my fault -- was: does the Cover maneuver cause someone to freeze and go to 0 DCV, does it presuppose they're already freezing and 0 DCV, or does it even care whether or not they're at 0 DCV? The version in Danger International seemed to assume that if you successfully used the maneuver, the target would drop to 0 DCV. Which may or may not be relevant to what it does now, except that we're assuming that, at some point, the target does drop to 0 DCV. But... if you're attempting to Cover someone who is at full DCV and attempting to avoid being hit, then you're not, strictly speaking, attempting to Cover them. You're attempting to attack them. It seems to me that the essential components of Cover are: the ability to roll the Attack Roll before actually using the attack, the target's inability to resist or avoid the attack except for in a particular set of circumstances, and the target already being at 0 DCV. The target's inability to resist or avoid the attack seems to be baked into the maneuver... but we see plenty of fiction where the attacker does in fact either miss their Covered target, or their target is able to do something to either escape or turn the tables on the attacker. (How many times does the covered target, within HTH range, stomp the attacker's foot, elbow them in the gut, or otherwise throw them off?) The target being at 0 DCV... the Cover maneuver always has, and in my opinion should, assume that the attacker yells "Freeze!" or something similar. The appropriate thing to do here would be to roll a Presence Attack to see if the target in fact freezes, but that doesn't seem to be specified in any version of Covered, from first to now, with the exception of the one in Danger International. (All of the other historical versions are more or less the same from first edition to now.) The other question that seems to be asked is: what if someone uses a Power to attempt to interfere? The maneuver doesn't specify; we can always fall back on the trio of common sense, dramatic sense, and special effects. The maneuver never existed in any version of Champions prior to 4th, so I would guess that it's not necessarily a superheroic level thing to happen. Does it happen often in superhero games? I know it's reasonably common for a villain to say "Freeze, or Lois Lane gets it!" and to hold her covered, but that's between NPCs, so is it something we really need a mechanic to cover? Characters who can bounce bullets aren't likely to be fazed when a thug or a cop points a gun at them and says "Freeze!" (The scene from The Incredibles where Bob and Lucius are facing down either security guards or cops, and they tell Lucius to "Freeze!", is a good one to note.) The additional questions I have are as follows. Why does resolution happen at the time the maneuver is declared, rather than at the time it is resolved? Does the attacker know that the Attack Roll is successful (from their in-universe standpoint, whether they hit or not)? A further question is that, often, in non-superheroic genres, a 17 or 18 rolled on an Attack Roll with a weapon that has the Real Weapon Limitation means that some kind of mishap occurs: the gun jams, or something similar. Does the attacker know that that will happen when he pulls the trigger? I would suggest that the attacker doesn't know either whether the attack will hit or not, or whether the mishap will occur, when he pulls the trigger, and that -- therefore -- the Attack Roll should not be rolled when the attack is declared, but rather when it is launched, triggered, or otherwise used. And, to me, an Attack Roll that you roll at the time the attack is resolved is an ordinary attack, rather than an attempt at the Cover maneuver. Rolling the Attack Roll before the attack is triggered seems to me, from a meta standpoint, to give the player or GM information they logically shouldn't have and shouldn't be able to base their further actions on. All of the questions I asked above tend to lead me to a conclusion: the Cover maneuver either shouldn't exist or shouldn't do what it claims to do. I'm far from certain myself what it's intended to do, nor whether what it claims to do is in fact what it's intended to do, nor am I certain that anyone else in the discussion is any more certain than I am. My feeling is that the Cover Maneuver, in order to work as written, must either follow a Presence Attack to cause the target to freeze and drop to 0 DCV, or must be used against a target who is already at 0 DCV. Also, that the attacker won't know whether his attack will hit (nor any additional effects, such as the gun jamming, etc.) until and unless he actually "pulls the trigger", whether that's an actual trigger for a gun, or however the attack is loosed, therefore the Attack Roll shouldn't be rolled until then. And, given that fiction is full of plenty of cases where the attack is somehow interrupted, avoided, Dodged or Blocked, etc., we shouldn't privilege Cover over any other attack maneuver. If the answers to these questions were obvious, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.

Were the map put/get tools something you coded, or something that was available? One, very slight, request. Is it possible to add the glow effect to the truck's headlights? I noticed it, and it's not a huge deal, but it's one of those "cannot unsee" things. If it's not possible, then no worries, but I thought I'd ask.

It doesn't look like anyone has so far. Probably a Multipower with various normal and Megascale Teleport powers, potentially including (spoiler) from the later novels, plus a goodly number of memorized locations. Probably also a Power Skill: Teleport Tricks.

... Maybe? There might be a whole bunch of features that I would never use because I don't follow professional gamers on Twitch or whatever. I just use it for chat.

It's a chat system. It's like IRC, or America Online or its predecessors, Compuserv, etc.

Just to complicate the discussion further, how many GMs allow the "throat slitting" rule? Meaning, if you have someone completely helpless, you do get to automatically inflict your damage. I'd guess that most do. Which is really what we're talking about, isn't it? (remembering "Aw, man. I shot Marvin in the face." In the same tone as if it were "Aw, man. I dropped my ice cream cone.")

It's not "it always hits" though. You roll to hit when you first point the attack at them, and then if it hits you get to "save" the damage until such time as you decide to inflict it. The current verbiage doesn't say anything about whether the target is resisting, and in fact in the example in 6e2 the target is at full DCV. Which to me doesn't make sense; to have someone Covered, they need to not be moving, resisting, or otherwise at full DCV. Or at least willing to freeze, which is where the PRE+10 Presence Attack comes in. If someone is at full DCV, and they're ignoring your order to "Freeze!", and you're trying an attack roll against them, you're not properly attempting the Cover maneuver against them. You're attempting an ordinary attack against them.

We do see it all the time in source material where someone has the hard-boiled hero Covered. But because they're the protagonist, the other guy never just pulls the trigger on them. There's pretty much always a distraction, allowing the protagonist the opportunity to wrestle the gun away from the attacker. If you haven't noticed by now, I like to look back at the origins of a mechanic, trying to gauge the intent behind it. Looking back, Covered as a maneuver didn't exist in first-gen Champions, but it did exist in the first-gen standalone games. To me, that implies that it, here and now, it's not a generally superheroic mechanic, but ought to be considered a toggle-able option along the lines of Knockdown vs. Knockback, Impairing/Disabling Wounds, Bleeding, and so on. I would probably not use it in anything but what I consider "low heroic" games; thus making moot most of the questions along the lines of, what if the target activates a power? The first-gen standalone games' version is similar enough to the modern version, with the exception of the version in Danger International. (Trivia: the Covered maneuver doesn't appear at all in Justice Inc. or Espionage!) The Danger International version states that you don't pre-roll the attack; it instead states that if you surprise the target by shouting "Freeze!" and they're in combat, they're at half DCV for one action; if they're out of combat already you have them at DCV 0. This is odd and different enough that I probably would have used the other games' versions of it in DI, but see below... The current version works well enough that you could probably use it just fine against NPCs, especially mook level ones. Against PCs or PC-level, named villains, I find the idea of pre-rolling the attack to be somewhat odd. Does the attacker get to know the results of the pre-rolled attack? If that roll comes up a 17 or 18, do they know that their firearm will jam or otherwise fail? Does a miss on the pre-roll mean the target is not covered, or does it mean that the target is covered but their attack roll will miss? I would say that to successfully Cover someone, you have to get them to half or 0 DCV in some way, or otherwise gain an advantage over them: a Presence Attack at a minimum of PRE+10 (shout "Freeze!" at them, roll high enough on your PRE Attack and they will), have them Grabbed, knock them Prone, Stun them, catch them Surprised and out of combat. I'd probably rule that if combat is still going on, they're at half DCV, and you have a high potential for distraction. Note: you don't pre-roll the attack roll! If it all goes the way you expect, and you have your target at 0 DCV, then all of their Hit Location penalties are halved. Pointing your gun at their head or knife at their throat (Head, normally -8 to hit), you have them at a total DCV of 4, and a delayed Phase. Still not quite a pre-rolled hit, but should it be? (This ends up being pretty similar to the version that appeared in Danger International, with the exception that in mine here you have to actually get them to half or 0 DCV rather than having the maneuver do it for you.) Trying to get out of being Covered then comes down to simply using the rest of the HERO System combat mechanics. The Covered character can be considered to have a delayed Phase, as would the character holding them. At that point you're checking DEX vs. DEX, with whatever other situational modifiers might apply.

Which might be why this was originally a Danger International thing and not a Champions thing. None of that ever had to come up when it was just guns...

Not only that, but where it's impossible for him to miss or fail to shoot, and he knows it? But, what if his gun were to jam, or he had less ammo than he thought, or something else went wrong for him? We're starting to get beyond the deterministic nature of Hero combat. I've got some ideas, but they'll need putting down on paper (or a Google Doc), and I'm a bit swamped at the moment.

This right here. Common sense, dramatic sense, special effects. In most source material, combat generally stops when someone has someone else covered. If one person yells "Freeze!" and the other person doesn't freeze... we pretty much leave that up to the existing rules to adjudicate. (Presence Attack to see if he actually freezes. If he does, he's at 0 DCV. If not, combat continues.) Without reference to Cover, what other mechanics do we have to handle this kind of situation? Delayed Phases Presence Attacks DEX vs. DEX Fast Draw ...?

Sure, but as we're seeing in this thread, that kind of breaks down when the potential exceptions and possible ways to break the Cover are factored in. Maybe having someone covered (small-c) just means they're at 0 DCV and you're pointing your attack at them with a delayed Phase. What do you normally do in this situation when both characters try to do something?

There is, baked into the maneuver in fact. A distraction (defined loosely as a PRE attack that exceeds the covering character's PRE; note the covered character is at -3d6 to PRE attacks due to being covered; probably not limited to PRE attacks though) means the characters roll DEX vs. DEX. If the covered character wins, the cover is broken. It sounds like a DEX vs. DEX roll to activate a defensive power would be a possibility. There's also room for the GM to decide, including some suggested additional options to make it easier to break. The way I would run it is: neither the attacker nor the target know if the attack hits; in fact, I would likely not preroll the attack roll (which Cover calls for) just for that reason. I'd almost treat it like a duel where one character already has their gun drawn, and the other might be at a disadvantage of some kind (their back to the attacker, or hands behind their head, or on the ground) and otherwise treat it however duels are handled. Western Hero, maybe? I'd probably also not use Cover in a superhero-level game; I probably would use it for lower powered games where Powers are less common.

1e through 3e had "Usable On Others", which was worded in such a way as it was effectively "Usable By Others". The Champions III supplement implied a "Usable Against Others", and I think there was probably an Adventurer's Club article that expanded it as well, probably including "Usable As Attack". Quite possibly. There were a number of powers that appeared in first-gen Champions that were obvious references to specific comic book supers; Clinging, Desolidification, Entangle, Force Field, Force Wall, Growth, Missile Deflection, Shrinking, Swinging, most of the Enhanced Senses (X-Ray Vision, Radar, Active and Passive Sonar, to name a few). We might have had some of those; I'm not sure why a version of Entangle was never included in FH 1e, for instance. FH 1e's equivalents to Force Field and Force Wall were called Shield and Ward. It's possible that the monster-only abilities would have been somewhat expanded to include easier ways of doing claws and trollish regeneration. I do really think we needed the superhero game first, though, as after I started playing in 1985 I'd heard from a lot of folks who had either played fantasy games using Champions, or brought their favorite D&D characters into their superhero worlds via dimensional portals. What we ended up with in FH 1e was a pretty particular subset of fantasy, that doesn't -- quite -- do straight up D&D riffs out of the box, but maybe does do other kinds of fantasy better than D&D does. The Magic Items and Spell Book supplements did give some additional spell effects (including versions of Entangle, and Desolid, which were somewhat oddly left out given a number of fantasy sources for them), basic guidelines for using Champions powers to replicate some of other missing abilities, as well as some interesting ideas for handling the ones that still weren't included (i.e. Clinging).