Chris Goodwin

Breaking down everything into abstractions is a good idea... in the abstract. 
 
But we're people, who don't think about these kinds of things in the abstract.  We're playing a game in which our "playing pieces" are intended to represent people. 
 
We're not playing a physics engine or a biology simulator.  I'm fond of saying "good enough is good enough", and I think that what we've got in 6e is good enough.  The mix of stats and the breakdowns and all. 
 
If we keep breaking everything into pieces parts, you could have a character who can lift 12.5 tons but can't damage a normal person by punching them, but I can't imagine a person (which is, again, what our playing pieces are supposed to be) who can do that. 
 
It's nice to keep some concrete representation.

Well, in another thread I just learned that I was apparently the only GM who saw an inhetent advantageous version of Uncontrolled.
 
Does that count?
 
I have mentioned several times allowing 1/8 level advantages or limitations for "realistically. Yes; it is limited, but not much or not often" limitations and similarly trivial advantages ("extra STUN multiplier only against chronic smokers" being one I will never forget)
 
One,thing I assumed most folks would allow- up until a casual discussion with our own Chris Goodwin, that is-  was advantages with disadvantages on them to limit the advantage.  A favorite use of this amongst most of my players was putting a limited amount of range of on normally unranged powers (such as Drains).  Thus, they would have the advantage Ranged with the limitations "reduced range," recorded as Range(reduced range) X
 
Where X was the range limit.  The disadvantage did not modify the cost of the power construct, but the value of the Advantage.  If an Advantage worth +1/2 took a modifying Disadvantage worth -1/2, then the result was new "custom advantage" with a value equal to 1/2 of the original Advantage value, or in this instance, +1/4.
 
Similarly, Lumitations could take advantages to...  Well, the best way to say it is "reduce the limit on the power" or "limit the limitation."    A limitation worth -1/2 that is modified by an advantage worth +1/2 has a new value of -1/4.  Should any modified Limitation end up with a positive value, refigure ("pedicure?!"  Really, autocorrect?  Really?)  it as a modified advantage; do the oposite for modified aevantages that end up with a negative value.
 
I know (and mostly reject, on behalf my points-paying players) that newer editions state "you don't have to use all of what you pay for" or "use only the amount that is right for your concept, but I find that no player, upon having paid the full cost of Zero Endurance will willingly pay 1/4 END when it is much more advantageous to tweak his concept a bit so that he has full access to what he paid for. "Build what you want" and "get what you pay for" are going to but heads constantly when you are expected to pay for more than what you want but not use all of what you paid for.  (This is one of the two reasons I have never adopted the two-steps-to-Zero-END-cost first presented in 4e).
 
Anyway, out of time; I have to run.
 
 

Iena 
 
There are, as typical in HERO, a lot of ways to implement this kind of stuff.  It is for you to sort it out and write it up. 
 
One example, and I stress that, for limiting the points ploughed into Magic Skill might be to implement a system in the game world where folk are inducted into magical colleges, master to apprentice, overseen by one (or many) magical college.  The induction into the arts means that the apprentice must satisfy in-game requirements as well as spending character points for skill levels.  This would show that the apprentice is delving into the mysteries, one after another.  You might do that in-game with a series of quests that the wizard must undertake (and persuade his fellows to do them when other, more lucrative opportunities abound) or you might do it by putting pre-requisites on levels on the Magic Skill such as needing 14- in Arcane Mythic Writing before you can purchase +1 in Magic.  A series of pre-requisites means that the player needs to spend a lot of points broadening out the magician to increase his game effectiveness (though those broad skills should be drawn out by the GM to make the points spent worthwhile).
 
As for limiting the number of spells, that is really all in how the spells are drawn up.  I will provide one possibility. You can put a prerequisite that a spell must be memorised through evening or morning study to before it can be used.  You can provide the magician with a free END reserve (I personally dont like charging characters for things that limit them) with a set amount of END within it that recharges once per day (but only if the character gets a good night's rest).  The player can then decide which spells he wishes to memorise, up to the limit of the END in the reserve.  The spells should be bought such that they can only be used with END from the reserve, not personal END from the character.
 
You can use this kind of thing to beef up the drama too.  A wizard "might" be able to push END into the reserve by spending BODY, again if you decide to build it that way.  Though I would make this a side effect of BODY drain where the recovery of that BODY is hugely delayed - to ensure it cannot simply be fixed by a judicious healing spell. Everything is possible if you think hard enough about how you want the mechanics to work.
 
Do the thinking, use D&D as the basis and then think of all the things you wished had been included in that system and you can bake them into yours.  When you have the detail, come back and people here will give you at least one, if not more, way to get what you want from your magic system.
 
 
Doc
 
PS: your English is INFINITELY better than my Italian, kudos.

I propose (and have previously posted about) a new Power that I'm calling Extras.  It's basically the Power equivalent to a generic Perk, and I've shamelessly ripped it off from M&M's Feature power. The generic Extra would have a cost of 1-10 points, and would give the character some minor helpful ability that isn't otherwise covered by a regular Power, or that the GM feels that no one needs to bother working out with a Power build.  If it's through a realistic gadget of some kind, it's half the cost, on the theory that it's replaceable but otherwise would be considered an OAF; if you need any more definition than that, you'd use the full cost and apply whatever Advantages and Limitations you want.  
 
The ability to create light could be considered an Extra.  If you can, for instance, cast a Light spell, it might cost 3-10 points depending on amount of light &c, and half of that -- 1-5 points -- for a flashlight.  If you want it to be a Maglite or something similar that you could bash someone over the head with, go back to the 3-10 points, apply OAF, and buy a couple of dice of HA through the same OAF.  
 

First, I see some of the problem here being that Desolid combines multiple effects, being to pass through solid objects and complete immunity to many attacks, at the cost of being unable to attack. Then we tacked on "unless he puts a big advantage on his attacks".  ASW gets around the limitation imposed on the invulnerability.  It seems like losing the limitation on the invulnerability should increase the cost (remove the limitation) on the invulnerability, not increase the cost of the attack. 
 
Consider, say, TurtleGirl.  She can withdraw into her shell for massive defenses, with the Limitation that she can't attack while turtled.  If she had one attack she could use while turtled, would we think she should have a lower limitation on the defenses, or an advantage on the attacks.  Or should she have no limitation on her defenses, and instead have "not while turtled" on all of her attacks?  That seems like the Desolid definition - all attacks are "limited" to not work while desolid, and that +2 advantage really buys off that limitation.
 
 
He did pay extra.  He had to pay for the Penetrating sense. A character with that same Penetrating sense and a mental or indirect attack could also attack from behind the wall. Here again, though, Indirect applies to the attack, supporting ASW applying to the attack. He could also buy Tunnelling and hide within the wall while attacking, either with an Indirect attack, or by exposing only a tiny portion of his body.  The only other example I can think of where the attack costs more is Transdimensional.  Maybe Desolid is a limited form of Extradimensional Movement, or an expanded form of Indirect.  It functions like both. 
 
 
As set out above, the inability to see through the wall hinders both, and there are other ways of circumventing the wall.  A teleporter or a desolid character could both "dive for cover" or move to hide behind the wall.
 
Perhaps the answer is to reduce the price of ASW commensurate with the reduced protection from attacks.  Indirect seems like a reasonable pricing model.
 

Yes;and you are welcome.  That was my own collection that was sacrificed for the initial scans.
 
Favorite article?
 
Swarms.
 
 

This isn't how any other power with AOE works, though.  If you have a 10d6 Blast with AOE, every target in the area takes 10d6.

As you could play with no DisadPlications and only lose 75 points, they are not worth more.  You simply take less, and therefore only the ones core to the character.  That was a deliberate design change from Steve Long.

I always felt that the "disads give you points to build with" feature was an elegant Hero thing like figured characteristics.  Now I can reluctantly see the value of removing figured from the characteristics but I cannot figure out why to restate things so that complications are just... well, pretty much optional now, they don't give you any points.

The only real difference is nomenclature.  Pre-6e, we might say characters had 100 points + up to 75 points in DisadPlications (thanks to @Duke Bushido for that term).  In 6e, the character instead has 75 points of DisadPlications and 175 points.  The character can give up some of those points to reduce the required DisadPlications.  I rarely saw players take less than the maximum in 5e, nor do they tend to buy down complications in 6e.
 
I typically describe two facets of DisadPlications. The  more often issues arise, the greater the points.  The greater the impact when it does arise, the greater the points.  A minor but frequent inconvenience might have the same value as a rare but devastating DisadPlication.

How many Champions characters had less than 2 Hunteds?  Now, characters can take a Hunted if it's really important to the character.  The other intended change is reflected in the nomenclature change from "disadvantages" to "complications".  As I recall, Steve's goal was to move the needle from "these are bad things your GM can hit you over the head with, and you should work to minimize their impact" to "these are a tool for player agency - they should guide the GM to the kind of challenges you want your character to face".  Disadvantages being a purely negative term, Complications being more neutral in tone.
 
 
If it was unclear, all I was musing on was making this more consistent in presentation with "skills as powers" and "characteristics as powers".  Practically, the option is not often taken as players want those 400 points, and 75 points of complications is not bad for fleshing out a Supers character anyway.
 
I'll flip that around.  Your "skrull infiltrator with no complications" has 20 less points to play around with than the Package Infiltrator, who reduced the cost of the package by 20 points.
 
Let's see how many templates I can take to get free extra abilities - if I would have paid for enough of the package to cover the net cost, and I can live with the added complications, maybe I want to bulk up.
 
In earlier editions, before there was a "maximum disadvantages" rule, we saw a lot of characters with well over 150 disadvantage points, held partially in check by the diminishing returns (first two of any category being full points, next two half, two after that only a quarter - as I recall, we relaxed that for unrelated psychological complications).

On page 37 of the 6e v1 pg 37 it states that the Complications of a Template do count against the Total Matching Complications.

All that really changed is nomenclature.  You can still choose to have less than, say, 75 points in complications, at the cost of having less than 400 points for abilities.  Maybe there should just be a power called "Less Complications" - if you spend 75 of your 400 points on that, you don't need any complications.  But then we'd get into questions of frameworks and limitations, which would create a mess (maybe it should be a fixed cost Perk?).
 
I like the 6e decision to reduce complications so they can be more central to the character, and expected to come up a lot.  When every Super on the team has 2 or 3 Hunted to pad out those 150 points, how often do those Hunteds show up?  If on one had any Hunteds, would we have no adversary at this week's game?

I may have mentioned here and there a Star Wars Hero game... I've now been running it for a couple of months.  I've written up a document for it, which contains rules info and session write-ups, here. 

I had a GM once who, after our characters were fully built, gave us an extra 10 free points that had to be spent on "useless" KS's and similar background Skills.  You could tweak the amounts. 
 
It's easier to give than take away, and it's easier to say "You get 175 points plus 10 points worth of free background skills" than it is to say "You get 185 points but you must spend 10 of them on background skills". 

The Skill vs. Skill part sounds like Change Environment.  Negating natural healing could be as simple as a REC Drain.  Power Defense can work against Aid and Healing if the character wants it to... so Power Defense, Usable As Attack, controlled by the grantor, would do just that.

Created two new (and related) talents for Fantasy Here which would work for both 5th Edition and 6th Edition, and I am checking to see what others think of it. The following are the talents:
 
Armor Mastery I
Armor (4 PD/4 ED) (12 Active Points); OIF (-1/2), Must be Aware of Attack (-1/2), Restrainable (-1/2), Only Half as Much as Worn Armor (-1/2), Not verse Critical Hit (-1/4), Not verse AE (-1/4))
3 Points
 
Armor Mastery II
Hardened (+1/4) for up to 36 Active Points of Worn Armor (9 Active Points); OIF (-1/2), Must be Aware of Attack (-1/2), Restrainable (-1/2), Not verse Critical Hit (-1/4), Not verse AE (-1/4)
3 Points
 
This talent is for characters who are masters at wearing armor, shifting in such ways where attacks hit the best defended portions of the armor. Each can only be purchased once of course, and Armor Mastery I must be purchased before Armor Mastery II. Attached is a Prefab file for it. Please let me know what you think.
 
Armor Mastery.hdp

So, again, my question:
 
Phase 3: pay x END to "activate" Telekinesis as a Zero Phase Action.  Like switching on a light.
Phase 3: pay x END to use Telekinesis that phase for whatever action you choose.
Phase 6: pay no END to maintain Telekinesis, the light is still switched offn.
Phase 9: Pay no END to maintain Telekinesis, the light is still switched offn.
Phase 12: Turn onff Telekinesis by not paying any END.  The character cannot use TK this phase unless they switch it back on.
 
Why would this character choose to keep the TK "on" in Phases 6 and 9 when they can avoid the END cost and just switch it back on in Ph 12 when they want to use it again?
 
 Exactly.  The example above now works perfectly - pay double END in each phase of use and no END in phases when it is not used.

Well, again this would be conceptually for certain kinds of power builds, it would be very rarely and specifically used. It might have an Extra Time and an activation roll as well.  As Simon puts it above, its going to be for esoteric builds, not common ones.

Just to clear up on the official rules side, Costs END to Maintain was something that Steve had added to some rather esoteric Constant Power builds. Since those had become canon, the rules in HD had to be adjusted. When I asked if there was any hard/fixed rules around the application of Costs END to Maintain on Constant Powers, the statement was no...just common sense of the player/GM.
 
The impression I have is that Costs END to Maintain on a Constant Power is primarily applicable to something with a continual effect - something where you would normally be paying for the instant application/use of the ability but then relying on the target to break out after.  But Steve didn't want to preclude other builds with it, so no hard rules surrounding its application -- the player and the GM just need to agree on it.

So, how would that work?  Phase 3, I decide I want to use my (say) 40 STR TK that costs 6 END, so I activate it, spending 6 END to toggle it on and 6 END to throw a boulder at my opponent from behind him.  Phase 6, I decide not to use my TK, so I can either spend 6 END to keep it running in the background, or just let it shut down.  In Phase 9, I want to use it again, so 6 END to activate or maintain it, plus 6 END to use it.
 
How does my decision whether to maintain or close my TK in Phase 6 affect what happens in Phase 9?

There was a question asked about buying Telekinesis with the "costs END to use" limitation, whether that was possible or how it would work.  Now my buddy Chris Goodwin (would you believe acquaintance?  Distantly familiar?) answered with this:
 
 
I would argue that you can do so, but it changes how the power works.  To me, if you buy that on a constant power, then it becomes a toggle: you cannot use this power until you start using END every phase to maintain it.  Basically you can't use your TK until you "activate" it and thus, even when they are not using the power actively to do anything, they pay END every phase.

The Limitation "Costs END To Maintain" can't be applied to Telekinesis, as Telekinesis is a Constant Power that already costs END every Phase it is used.
 
Further, Telekinesis 0 STR has a lift capacity of 0.0 in 6th edition, and thus Telekinesis can't be "maintained" at 0 STR, nor bought with 0 STR. 
 
Edit:  On further consideration: there's nothing in the rules prohibiting applying Costs END To Maintain to Telekinesis as a Limitation.  Keep in mind that it's a Zero Phase Action to activate Telekinesis, and also that a Limitation that doesn't limit the Power isn't worth points.  The GM should apply common sense, and should also take into account, for instance, if there are any Limitations such as Extra Time involved in activating the power. 
 
It should also be noted that having points in a Multipower slot isn't the same thing as maintaining the Power(s) in the slot as active.

I don't recall a ton of discussion on ECs, so I think Steve pretty much assessed that one on his own, but they definitely saw a lot of rules questions.

And yet all of those special defenses could be purchased in one or more force fields and be perfectly legal in an EC.  "Special powers can only go in frameworks with GM permission" has resulted in a lot of variance between GMs on what can go into a framework.
 
What I saw evolve over the years as common design was a Swiss Army Multipower to hold a variety of Ultra slot attack powers, and an EC to hold a force field, a movement power and one or more utility powers.
 
Three 50 point powers in an EC would cost 100, rather than 150, points, the equivalent of a -1/2 limitation on all of the powers.  Make it 5 and it costs 150 rather than 250, but that's getting pretty expensive. It would work if you only wanted one attack power, or perhaps if you wanted a Constant attack power (like Darkness) and a Fire & Forget attack power (like Blast). If you wanted a variety of attack choices, Multipower was the go-to.  5 different attacks for 75 points was a lot more cost-effective.
 
Multipower for abilities you only need one at a time; EC for abilities you need all at the same time.
 
When Combined Attacks came out, it seemed like prohibiting these with powers in a framework was a really bad call, as that could have been a reason to put more than one attack in an EC (usable at the same time) rather than a multipower (use one at a time).  By the time that evolved to "if they can all be used at the same time, you can use them all in a combined attack", EC had evolved into "Unified Power".