Chris Goodwin

1st through 3rd edition -- didn't have Change Environment. Light Illusions (from the Champions II supplement) and Images (the Fantasy Hero version of Light Illusions) explicitly could create light. 4th edition -- Change Environment could explicitly create light. Images (the successor Power to Light Illusions) doesn't mention light. 5th & 6th edition -- Change Environment is explicitly prohibited from creating light. Images explicitly can create light. I don't believe in the inherent superiority of any one edition over any other, and even if I did, the "correct" mechanic for creating light would not be one of my criteria for deciding. Images works, even though it's expensive. Change Environment works, if your edition and/or GM allows it. Free as part of another light-based power is fine. A custom power is fine, if your GM allows it. Agree to disagree?

It's available at the DMs Guild in PDF at least.

A number of folks have made free utilities (the Homebrewery being one) that anyone can freely use to create near-perfect replicas of the D&D 5th edition layout and formatting, for use with the DM's Guild and self-publishing efforts in general. This might not be trivial, but it is certainly doable.

See also Parkinson's law of triviality ("bikeshedding").

Doing a bit of comparison... Change Environment: -1 to PER costs 2 points for one Sense or 3 points for one Sense Group Enhanced Perception: +1 to a character's PER costs 1 point for +1 to one Sense, 2 points for +1 to one Sense Group, or 3 points for +1 to all Sense Groups Nightvision: 5 points, for +4 against natural darkness penalties. Images: +/-1 to viewers' PER costs 3 points regardless of what Senses/Sense Groups, which are bought separately (10/Targeting Group, 5/Nontargeting Group, 5/Targeting Sense, 3/Nontargeting Sense) CE is single target; Images is a base 1 cubic meter. It's assumed that both of these will be bought with Area of Effect if needed. I'm ignoring the Darkness Power as I don't think it's relevant. For Images, my assumption is that if it's used for light, it acts as a spotlight effect in whatever its area is (thanks to Phil for that, btw). If the AoE you've bought it to is bigger than the area you're in, it will illuminate the entire area (i.e. room lights). Which is good, and all, except that as @dsatow and others have pointed out, it's expensive for what it does. I'm not certain that it's worth the points for something that we're pretty sure is free (points-wise) as a "standard" item (battery powered flashlight, burning firebrand torch, lantern or lamp of whatever tech level, etc.). I'm inclined to just go with my original instinct: a custom Power. Maybe 1-5 points for the ability to create light on demand as a Power (spell, etc.), which can be built through a Focus if desired, but a light source of some kind (torch, flashlight, etc.) is usually free, points-wise. And if you already have light-based Powers, using them like a flashlight is as free as a character with flame powers using them to light a candle. (Analogously, a character with sonic powers can act as a "sonar flashlight" for Sonar, infrared likewise with IR light, and so on.)

In all seriousness, what about Active vs. Passive Senses (6e1 p. 210)? Active Sonar is the one we see most often, but why not Active Normal Sight? (Or, to answer my rhetorical question above, Active UV Vision?) (For starters, that would leave a lot up to the GM.)

Unless there were, I don't know, some kind of power that could generate UV light... Any idea what we might use for that?

See the Simulated Sense Group rule, 6e1 p. 207.

I disagree that this is how we must represent lack of natural light. Lack of natural light existed as a condition long before Change Environment existed to give us the means to build a Power to replicate it, or before Dispel or Suppress existed to give us a means to dispel Powers. I'm perfectly fine with a Change Environment creating low-light conditions via a Sight PER penalty, and having those low-light conditions be mitigated via whatever means we're using to represent light. I don't think that means that Dispel or Suppress Darkness is necessarily it. It would be approximately as effective as my previous, "1d6 Blast (light), AoE, Constant, Does No BODY, Does No Stun, etc." We don't need a Power construct to replicate everything. As does light: Images. That we're having this discussion, trying to figure out what else to use besides Images, doesn't change the fact that Images is a nice clear mechanism, and in fact is specified in the rules. The capital-D Darkness here indicates the Darkness Power. And I can think of a number of SFX for the Darkness Power that wouldn't be Dispelled by light. Smoke cloud, for instance. Cloud of crystalline shards. Field of bright light. Darkness vs. Hearing, Radio, Taste/Smell. And, again, going back to the first post in the thread, we don't seem to be talking about dispelling the Darkness Power.

True enough, but I'm willing to chalk that up to... Even shading the eyes might be enough to allow someone in in a lighted area to see outside of it.

My presumption is that we're talking about anything except the Darkness Power. I'm not entirely certain it's relevant to the discussion, and as you mention perception is disallowed through it entirely. Given this, I'd be pretty iffy on using Suppress Darkness (the Power) as a means for creating light, because one SFX for Darkness could in fact be a very brightly lit area! I'm not at all sold on the idea of Suppressing natural darkness. Flip it around to: Suppress lack of natural light. By the same token, I wouldn't allow Suppress lack of air supply to allow breathing in a vacuum, Suppress lack of natural gravity to put up a gravity field in space, Suppress lack of something to stand on to prevent falling, Suppress the nonexistence of a dragon here instead of Summoning a dragon... This could certainly be a GM-specific way to do it, and if you want to do it in your games, I'm not going to tell you no, but I'd red-pencil that in my games for sure.

Back at a computer now and can respond a little more effectively... I'm generally in agreement with Phil here. I thought it might be useful to imagine or examine some lighting scenarios: A lone actor on a dark stage, illuminated by spotlights from above A single candle in a room at night A football field during a night game, illuminated by stadium lights In the first, the lights are placed such that they illuminate the subject, to at least +4 worth of cancellation of penalties. In the second, we might have +2 worth, in the immediate vicinity of the candle. In the third, we might have +3 to +4 worth of illumination to cancel out the penalties, with AoE for the entire field. In all of these cases, we have a varying amount of light, with either no ceiling/room surfaces to reflect the light, or placement and/or intensity such that illumination is limited to the subject. Compare all of the above to the typical room in the typical apartment or house. You flip a switch, the room is lit; you can more or less see everything in the room, and the walls, ceiling, floor, and other objects in the room are all lit. Anyone in the room has no difficulty seeing, reading, identifying others, and so on. Whatever method is used to provide light, I suggest that it generally "acts like light". Tautological, maybe, but we've got Powers that are building blocks, and we're trying to build something that "acts like light". To that end, I suggest the following: Single target, assuming human sized, no AoE -- illuminates the target only. More or less the first case, above. Area of Effect, but not big enough to fill the area: illuminates everything inside the area. Anyone outside the area can see in, anyone inside the area can't see out. (Assume whatever the illumination bonus is acts as an additional penalty to see anything outside of the area; thus, +4 worth of illumination in a small area at night means anyone inside has -8 to see outside of it.) Area of Effect, equal to or larger than the area (assuming a room): illuminates the entire room and everything inside of it. Common sense, dramatic sense, GM permission, etc., might allow the bending or stretching of some of this. For instance, an illumination power built as +4 worth, in a 2m radius, would illuminate everything in that radius at +4; if that is instead aimed "out into the night" it may reduce the effective illumination by an amount equal to standard Range Modifier, while increasing the area illuminated. So it would be +4 at 0-8 meters (2m radius), +2 at 9-16 meters (4m radius), +0 at 17-32 meters (8m radius), -2 at 33-64 meters (16m radius -- the limit), -4 at 65-128 meters, etc. Basically, anything out past 64 meters is not lit at all. If a character has, for instance, Light Powers, meaning some connected suite of powers that makes them light-based, I wouldn't require them to use a separate power to light something up. I'm not sure I'd even require a Power Skill roll to power stunt one up. For a character with a dedicated "create light" ability, as the rules currently stand I might just have them use Images, only for light. For something like the D&D light spell, which allows you to illuminate an object, I'd either use the Images with Differing Modifiers, or just go with a simple Major Transform: object to object that emits light.

How about... 1d6 Blast (light), Stun Only, Does No Stun, Constant, AoE, etc. (My terse replies like this one are from my phone.)

The general Limited Power covers a lot. I see no reason you couldn't look at the Time Limit Limitation from 6th and import it into 4th via Limited Power.

CE, provides Sight PER penalties to targets sensitive to bright light.

During the run-up to 6th edition discussions, the whole "What do *you* want to see?" set of threads, an idea I had and suggested (not taken, but oh well) was Light Levels. The same way we have Temperature Levels and wind speeds, you define what is essentially a comfortable base light level. At that level you're at standard sight PER, more than a level above or below is a penalty due to either it being too bright or too dark, and then you could manipulate that with Change Environment as you could with the other leveled environmental effects.

I've been playing Champions in 6th edition, and at the table in play it's just as FUN as I remember Champions ever being. If you didn't know which edition the GM was running you probably wouldn't know the difference among the second-gen games; you could tell between that and the first-gen editions if you were paying attention. I think I've said the above more than once even in this thread. Presentation has changed, for sure. Rules have changed along the way; the 5th-6th changes are about as radical as the 3rd-4th changes.

That's really amazing!

I don't think Dispel against natural darkness is a thing, because there isn't anything there to dispel. Natural darkness is a lack of light, not anything applied.

The point is, after all, to play the game. Quoted for agreement.

Yes, they're all out in PDF now. I think very nearly the entire 1st-4th edition library is.

My own personal bias... 3E, DI, and FH 1st ed... a fair number of the games I played in while using them, we started without having characters in hand, and an hour later we were getting into the first adventure. By contrast... if I have 6e1, 6e2, Fantasy Hero for 6th edition... or even Fantasy Hero Complete... and let's say Turakian Age... I still have to figure it out for myself. The title of this thread is, "What happened to HERO?" Point A, point B, draw your own conclusions.

I've been playing Champions in 6th and it's been growing on me. If I had to pick a second favorite, it would probably be 6th.

I don't see that as a problem. They were different games that shared a "house system", not genre books. In Fantasy Hero for 6th edition, the GM can essentially set point costs for magic however they want. Pay full price for spells individually, pay 1/3 the real cost, buy them in a Multipower... a fighter type might pay full price for a Power that a caster would pay 1/3 for as a spell, for instance.

It looks like Costs END To Maintain does more or less exactly what I wanted, with the possible exception that when you stop spending END it falls completely rather than reverting to whatever its original fade conditions were. Applying it to an area effect Flash seems like it would exactly match Darkness, with the exception that enough Flash Defense would stop it completely regardless of how long it's maintained for.