Chris Goodwin

And check out those Endurance costs!    And what it costs to get Zero END!  
 
 
 
Y
es.  That Flight-as-Super-running example goes all the way back to page 29 in 1e.
I don't know much about 3e, but I know that 1 and 2e didn't include sophisticated NCM for anything except for Flight and FTL (which we took as kind of  one-off cases, but we used it as the basis for an NCM adder, since we were looking at it right in the book.  Eventually we saw it 4e, so we figured we weren't too far astray.  )  At any rate, in both of those editions, the build is given as a method to model running extremely fast that includes speedster schticks like running up buildings, across the surface tension of water, etc.  It's not emphasized as being so much about the NCM.  
 
 I didn't own 3e until recent years (friends did, so I knew it existed), when I had a chance to pick both the 2-book boxed set (no box) and the single-book perfect-bound version.  Haven't really studied it in depth, though). 
 
 
Hope you're enjoying yourself, N-B!
 

 

There might very well be a reference to that in 1e.  The reason for doing it that way back then was that the noncombat multiple for Flight was calculated differently, such that NC Flight was always ridiculously high.  

Buried in the middle of the pregens is pregen abilities - you can take the Elf template, the Burglar template and the Street Urchin template, for example, and you can buy these pregen combat tricks, skill tricks, spells, what have you.
 
All are useful in setting the standards for the game, and the characters.  To my mind, there would also be nothing wrong with taking the pregen and saying "This one is pretty close, but I want him to have those skill levels with a bow instead of the sword, and trade off 4 less STR for 2 more DEX.  Is that OK?"  Which is a lot less work for the GM than "here is my designed from scratch character that is completely off base with virtually all of your campaign standards and doesn't fit the world anyway because you may not have pixie-housefly crossbreeds".

But, for ordinary weapons, and even to an extent with magical ones... I as GM wouldn't require you to pay points for HA in order to use the blunt end, flat of the blade, etc., for normal damage.  To me that's part of SFX.

If I as GM have designed a magic system that assumes the use of Multipowers, but I've gated it off via additional point expenditures (via required Skills, Talents, Perks, etc.), I'm probably not going to have other characters with suites of special abilities also bought via Multipowers.  
 
(Should we try to make a distinction between Fantasy Hero and Fantasy Champions?  I would say that Fantasy Champions implies higher power levels and more open, player driven power builds, while Fantasy Hero implies lower power levels and world/magic system design by the GM.)  

If I as GM have designed a magic system that assumes the use of Multipowers, but I've gated it off via additional point expenditures (via required Skills, Talents, Perks, etc.), I'm probably not going to have other characters with suites of special abilities also bought via Multipowers.  
 
(Should we try to make a distinction between Fantasy Hero and Fantasy Champions?  I would say that Fantasy Champions implies higher power levels and more open, player driven power builds, while Fantasy Hero implies lower power levels and world/magic system design by the GM.)  

A bit more on topic   While I'm not any of the board admins, I can't imagine there being any harm at all in asking someone to write such a supplement.  
 
A couple of the 4th edition Dark Champions books have some info about supers and the law (Dark Champions, Justice Not Law), and they're available in PDF from the Hero Games store.  I don't have the 5th edition Dark Champions in PDF, but I'm sure that information is in there as well.  I have both the 4th and 5th edition Dark Champions in hardcopy; I can bring them to the next session if you want to borrow them.
 
I've bought a lot of GURPS supplements over the years, partly because they're usually well researched and quite usable with Hero.  There's a GURPS Cops supplement which would probably prove helpful.  I don't believe I have that one or I'd bring it as well.

But... but... why would the police ever do such a terrible thing?  Arrest a hero?  For what?  Whatever she -- I mean, they -- did, there must have been a good reason...

The rule in any campaign is the GM has the final decision on whether or not a character will work in the campaign setting.  If someone came to me and said I want to play an elf (blah blah blah) I would say no because there aren't any elves in my campaign world.  Any counter argument from them about being the one elf in the whole wide world and they were accidentally dropped into the world would end with no you can't play an elf.
 
I have provided my players with a set of parameters for building characters in my campaign (see here).  It covers races, min/max characteristics, OCV/DCV, overall combat abilities, magic, etc.  Over the years we (players and myself) have had to tweak certain aspects because my initial concepts didn't work.

I can actually think of a lots of spellcasting protagonists, even part timers. Lythande, from Thieves World, swordsman-mage; Grey Mouser, thief-fighter-magic-user; Harry Potter, ace pilot and wizard; Luke Skywalker, ace pilot and wizard; Willow, farmer/rogue/wizard.
A lot of this goes back to the Combat Luck controversy. Sometimes, it is inappropriate. But in high action games, when your dodgy characters get hit, they don't usually go down in one hit, and that's what Combat Luck does for you. Different options make sense for different campaigns.
Some campaigns might ban Variable Power Pool. Others might require ALL spells to be Variable Power Pool.
Some campaigns might ban Multipower. Others might require it for the standard set of magic spells.
 

But it doesn't have to be.  Hell, it shouldn't be; that's just more of the issue I have with the Holy Martial Arts.
 
At some point, it was decided to just add "can be Haymakered" to every damned thing under the freakin' sun.  No one batted an eye (Not even me.  My eyes just popped out, rolled around in the cat box for a while, then popped back in, grinding all that deep into the sockets and coordinating muscles resulting in infections, fevers, pains and twitches that persist to this day).
 
At some earlier point, someone decided "hey, why don't we buy a couple of Skill Levels, assign them to OCV, but _only_ if they promise to agree to accept a DCV penalty as well, and wrap all that up with "only while doing this one particular trick."  Then we make them buy bonuses to OCV over and over and over, but each cluster only works with _one_ particular maneuver!  In this way, we can encourage them to buy like a total of +12 to OCV, but they can't use more than three or four of them at once, _ever_!"  Not only did no one bat an eye at that, they formed a deity-accursed CULT around the idea!
 
Someone _just decided_ that there should only be two levels of Reduced Endurance: half and zero.  Complaints only from me, so essentially: no one cared.
 
Someone just decided that it was reasonable and balanced to create a power that let you increase powers _ad infinitum_.   That ended up on every single character sheet representing mainstream published characters.  At one time we just did "well they've been around since 1936, so they've got a substantial Hero Bonus..."  No we just slap Aid on it: it's fast, cheap, and since it can make Superman, it's clearly effective.
 
Someone "just decided" that we can leave a big puddle of unassigned build points on a character sheet and for the _meager_ expense of a +1/4 Advantage, reassign them over and over and over, essentially reinventing the character at will, on a whim, completely on the fly.  People _loved_ it.
 
At one time the guy who _wrote the freakin' game_ demonstrated that Shape Shift was pure SFX, but someone _just decided_ it needed a three-column power all it's own that has yet to be as actually effective in play.  People cheered.
 
Someone _just decided_ to put trip and shove on a piece of paper, and suddenly it's legal to both of those things without having to put on pajamas and circle each other making chicken noises for five minutes first.   "Oh, finally!" gasped the people (who, apparently, had spent the previous thirty-odd years being unable to do either of those things.  Granted, it was probably easier to keep your whites their whitest in a combat situation where no one could lose their balance, though I guess we're going to have to start buying more acrobatics and break fall now that every old lady with a cane can _finally_ hook an ankle with it).
 
Someone decided to just stick some bonus damage onto size powers in the form of Growth Momentum, which means someone just decided that they should just stick the SFX onto the power, leaving you no other option for SFX (which is a symptom of an entirely different problem that's been creeping and growing as get more and more rules, but this is already longer than I had ever intended it to be).  Then it was decided back out, then I discovered it decided back in _and_ out as 6e contains what I assume is an accidentally-forgotten reference to Growth Momentum _again_.
 
Every damned change in this game comes from someone deciding to "just stick this here," and the bulk of the "is this fair" comments on this very board discuss value for something both in terms of cost and utility and what should and should not be bundled in and what should and should not be separate elements.
 
The fact is that the Dogma of Martial Arts rapes this particular canine over and over again by willfully ignoring what the individual components actually are and refusing to accept that there are other-- perhaps more effective; perhaps not, but certainly more in-line with the rest of the rules-- methods of achieving the same things.
 
So here is what I think we can all agree on:
 
Steve Peterson was not an infallible god.
 
Bruce Harlick was not an infallible god.
 
Aaron Allston (RIP) was not an infallible god.
 
Steve Long is not an infallible god.
 
They have infallibility in common.  They have two other things in common:  their names on rules books, and the good sense to include in those rules permission-- insistence, even-- that we ignore bad calls or change the rules and situations.  That does several things:
 
1) it demonstrates an understanding that there might be problems with the rules that these authors did not foresee or that did not come out in their own play testing.
 
2) totally invalidates any notion that the rules as written are an absolute authority or are even the best way to do anything, even within the confines of the game itself.
 
3) makes every single decision GB(i), Dsatow (apologies if I misspelled that; I'm on a phone, and attempting to scroll up will erase the last twenty minutes of screen tapping.     ), Duke, Liaden, Hugh, Doc, Chris, or _anyone_ else will ever consider absolute "Rules as Written" because the compulsion to individually make sensible changes to the rules is _written in the rules_.  There's not even a way to talk around that: it also makes them "rules as published," "rules as conceptualized," "rules as the Great (your favorite author here) intended."
 
 
So there are two ways to think about this:
 
1) either every single edition is completely compatible with all editions before and after and those small differences that do exist are merely optional ways to achieve something, or
 
2) each subsequent edition totally invalidates the edition before that.
 
Now generally we agree that there is more backwards and forward compatibility in each edition of Champions / HERO than any other game ever published.  I accept that a small percentage may instantly change their minds simply to prevent having to accept any of what I just said, and that's fine.   However, the APGs seem to whole-heartedly support via their content the idea that optional rules-- _hundreds of them...   _ are perfectly okay, and via their existence seem to support that idea that you pretty much reach deep up your butt and pull out anything you want that works better than the rules you're looking at and call it an optional rule then run with it.  The author's own recurring comments that he should prepare a _third_ collection of optional rules seems to support that even with the current 1820 pages, the rules are a bit weak and could use some punching up.
 
All that said, option 2 isn't valid.  It isn't valid because each edition of this game- all the way back to 1e, has published more and more additional rules in supplemental materials, and has specifically stated that the rules should be changed as suits your needs, meaning that _all_ rules, and _all_ rules changes made by anyone for any reason, _are_ RAW for every single edition, right up to and including the next one.
 
 

No; that's a gross over-simplification, leading to the inaccurate interpretation that you are not welcome to do whatever you want in HERO.
 
We are at that point where we are stating that because something exists or is already modeled in other systems is _not_, in _any_ way, indicative of what we "must" do in Fantasy HERO.
 
I mean, I thought an emphatic "Screw D&D!" implied that playing it wasn't being suggested as an actual alternative.

Preach!
 
 
 
 
 
 
If I could find a thumbs-up, I'd stick it here.
 

 
 

Traditionally, wizards/mages/whatever have always been rare. If just anybody can learn magic and use it easily, that's certainly a viable campaign environment, but it doesn't fit historical model (where mages, real or imagined, were rare) or mythology or fiction. If that kind of Xanthian "Everybody has magic!" campaign is what you're after, go for it.
 
But most campaigns are going to have relatively few mages. And as Chris said, if you're gating off magic to that extent, giving mages access to Multipowers isn't unreasonable.

I know my world better than any player. My argument is this, players supply a character narrative, his life , events, actions, faults, abilities. No mechanics.
As GM, I build that character and the conversation continues to hone the player choices until the character build is complete and turned over to the player.
 
Defeat my argument if you can.
 
I cannot build a character creation guide complete enough that Players will not find cracks or make reductive or mechanical constructs that I must tear down and create a more adversarial atmosphere, based solely on what they read vrs. what unknown to them, yet, known to me as GM.
 
This is compounded by the use of a published HERO setting, the Turakian Age, where I have added details left undiscovered, compounded again by a middle step Black box approach to magic, from a mechanics POV.
 
Likely someone will make the claim of micro-management or even a claim of egomania on the part of the GM.
 
Which is a smaller set, player expectations and the hammering it would take to bring into compliance, or the tuning back and forth after the GM receives the character narrative with any conversation to explore what is possible?
 
HERO system is a construction set, I get it, can I write enough on all possible Optional rules, from all available HERO sources to shed light on all edge cases? I do not think it can be done. Hence, better to build from narrative of, war orphan, street urchin, pocket dip, gutter Ear, wharf scrounge, Guild member, second pilfer, Quarter rook, whisper-broker, implausible savior, reluctant contact, unlikely pupil, sociable rogue, amiable agent, clandestine disquisitive.
 
 

HERO has no character classes, but campaigns often do--at least to the extent of making access to magic rare and unusual.  In particular, only overt wizards are likely to have access to the full range of powers in the book.  It's really hard to justify putting Force Wall in a rogue's inherent multipower, or Flight in a knight's.  Fantasy campaigns usually have a really limited subset of special effects available--magic, creature powers, maybe gadgets, maybe kung fu, maaaaybe extreme skill.  And it's very hard to give any of these to NPCs in anything other than high fantasy.

And it seems that someone did Voltron a couple of decades ago using Duplication, just looking at it from the other end.
 
 

Oh dear God, don't say that!
 
We just tried that in the "push a group of people down" thread and ended up with what-- three different builds to "legally" throw them to the ground?
 
How the frack is 1800 pages of rules _better_, again?
 
 

In 6th edition, you can pay 1 point to add 1 meter of reach.  I think it's considered 1 meter of Stretching, but I think it just gets treated as an adder.

In 6th edition, you can pay 1 point to add 1 meter of reach.  I think it's considered 1 meter of Stretching, but I think it just gets treated as an adder.

Well it turns out that I got off about seven-ish!   Yay, a day that came out in my favor!    
 
Okay: 
 
The Stretching thing:
 
_Usually_.  I _usually_ do that.  I don't always, because sometimes the numbers don't work out "just so" without enough fudging that the feel for what I or the player am / is working toward kind of falls away.
 
Sometimes I will instead build the slots in a way that kind of "imply" the Stretching, if that makes sense:  things like adding an inch or so of range  as an Advantage on the slot, or even a limitation that it won't work against a character immediately adjacent to the PC.   Bonuses to sweeps that apply only to adjacent characters is another one: it implies the weapon is large enough that, if surrounded, the character can get both ends of the weapon whacking opponents at once (though AOE is sometimes more appropriate, particularly for "supers" type stuff.
 
But yes:  I quite often find myself adding a Stretching slot (full stretch only, etc).  However, I've never considered stacking two slots on top of each other in regard to Stretching-- I tend to build the powers in the slot to indicate the range, etc (that, and with weapons such as spears and pole-arms, I tend to do Ultras, figuring you can't really use it sweep _and_ stab simultaneously), but instead use the stretching with the character's STR to provide a hard "poke" with the blunt end.
 
I'm curious to try it now, though.  
 
 

I'd say the same could apply to a magic item with multiple functions, or a special ability with multiple functions or a "path". 

Sorry:
 
The difference is Heroic or Super. 
 
Want a Super martial art that let's your I'm-a-ninja-hanging-out-with-godlike-beings-but-I-am-still-somehow-a-relavant character in a supers campaign?  You want things that are pretty much powers _defined_ as martial arts: karate chop a tank: 4d6 hka.    Catch bullets?  Appropriate defenses or deflections, etc.  Multipower. That sort of thing. 
 
Heroic level?   Buy a few flexible skill levels.  You're not going to expect to chop through a battle ship or actually catch bullets. 
 
Context decides a lot of things, and I should have considered that when answering. 

Really?  I'm not doubting you at all; we all have different games, after all.  It's been my own experience that FH characters tend to have three times or more many skills than supers.  But again, that's just another sign that we run different games.  My players like to buy skills that define the character's background, his passions, and even what he learns along the way during his adventuring career, so, at least for a good while, I have a built-in points-sink.  It works out pretty well.
 
 
 
 
 
Ditto.
 
 
Absolutely!  We don't use it too terribly much (not big fans of ultra-bloody combat sequences), but I will roll on it for exceptionally-well-rolled attacks (natural 3, maybe a natural 4 against a ton of penalties).  We don't bother with "your arrow plunges straight through his left eye, just misses his cortex, and plunges out through the vision center of his right lobe, and his depth perception is completely ruined as he falls to his death, making his attempt to throw out his hands to keep his face from hitting the ground as he falls comically ill-timed...."
I'll just pull the damage multipliers from the chart and apply them.  It's not an "always" thing, but it does happen for well-done (either on the dice or through apt role playing) bits.
 
 
 
 

I'd say the same could apply to a magic item with multiple functions, or a special ability with multiple functions or a "path".