psyber624

Re: Irreducible attacks Damage Reduction isnt necessarily RESTRICTED to NPC's (any more than any power is really) but the general mechanical function of damage reduction is that it is the only one of the defense constructs that allows a player to take SOME damage from most attacks while still reducing over all damage. Increasing PD/ED defense can easily render some attacks completely incapable of damage. As can Damage Negation (which is really just reverse PD/ED in a sense). Damage Reduction, on the other hand, works by percentages, so that ANY attack that can beat the PD will still be able to do damage, but the amount of damage is greatly reduced. The best construct for this is for Main, or Very Powerful NPC's who you want to go up against a team of players all on their own. That is they will be subject to many more "attacks" in a turn than they can dish out. Without this power you would have to take really high amounts of stun and body, or boost other defenses to the point that many PC's attacks would be totally worthless if you want your Master Villain to stand a chance against a group of foes with any chance of downing him. Basically 50% damage reduction, for instance, means that it requires 2 heros to do the same damage to him in a round as a normal NPC, 75% needs 4 heros to do the same. This being said there is no reason that an Irreducible advantage couldn't have been included in 6e. except for one thing that comes to mind... how would you "price" such an advantage? You would probably need an increasing advantage modifier to allow it to penetrate different levels of DR, but thats simply not cost effective. Even at +1/4 to eliminate 25% of DR, your loosing 20% effectiveness in the power (due to the cost of the Irreducible), to allow it to do 25% more damage to people who have DR....... see the issue there? you gain VERY little against the DR'd guy, but loose 4x that much against everyone else.... I guess what that means is that you need a custom adder, not a custom advantage.... (similar to how it works with DN), I guess with that in mind you could apply a cost structure similar to DN, meaning that you would pay around 1/2 the cost of the DR you want to be able to ignore... but again, are you getting a good value for your points? would you be better off spending those points on more damage? Especially since those points spent on more damage would affect ALL foes, not just the DR guy. (Note that for this I am assuming that you include the cost of Irreducible in the active point calculations for Max Attacks in your campaign, if not its less of a pricing issue, and more of an issue that your likely to have EVERYONE buying Irreducible on their attacks since it will be a cheap "addon" for damage attacks, which basically defeats the purpose of even buying DR) Of course the final consideration here is that unlike all the other similar modifiers, there is no "War of Escalation" here. You cant buy DR to counteract Irreducible, so your letting Irreducible completely negate DR... not sure how that affects balance if at all, but I thought I would bring it up. Sorry if this post is a bit rambly, i was actually trying out my game designer hat and putting all my thoughts out as I had them....

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities Deleting post (cant find the delete button right now, too tired, sorry)

Re: Character Creation Cheat Sheet Thanks man, ive sent the PM, dont know if he will get it or not but its worth a shot.

Re: Resistant mental defense? Well, not just NND itself, but AVAD's set to Resistant Mental Defense as well. Granted not very common so not sure i would buy it personally, but that's the only real use for it

Re: Character Creation Cheat Sheet K, thats what i was afraid of, anyone know how i can contact Jason? (Im new here and dont know all the who's whos yet)

I am working on developing a Character Creation Cheat Sheet that basically has the costs of all the different characteristics, skills, powers, talents, advantages, limitations, etc to make it easier to build a character. This cheat sheet has almost NO rules, mostly just costs. Right now building a power especially can be a frustrating flip through multiple sections, sometimes multiple books, and having all of this info on a small collection of sheets of paper will make my life a lot easier when building characters. ***********************NOTE************************* Please note that this is created by me, by hand, so most likely includes a few errors. If you catch one please let me know and I will fix it in the next update. Thank you~ Edit: Finally figured out how to attach files, so here it is! in Doc format! if you would like other formats let me know and i will add them here Edit: Updated to Ver 1.01, included a copyright line as requested by DoJ Edit: Ver 2.0 is ready to go! Now with Champions Complete Page numbers as well as 6e! Also added notations for Caution, Stop, and "GM Option". Edit: Hrm, seems the new additions caused the file to go over an upload limit of some kind, so I had to break it into two parts. First part has through powers, 2nd has the rest, will try and get a zip application that will let me create a zip and see if i can upload it like that.

Re: Focus others can activate Actually ben FREQUENTLY turns off the omnitrix outside of the first season, but not worth arguing over.... (although i did just argue it there didnt I? bleh, ) And it would be an advantage if others can use it FOR him (if he is unconscious, restrained, or otherwise unable to access it himself). Ill give you that it might not come up often enough, but if thats the case there is nothing wrong with a +0 Trigger advantage if your GM is willing. Another possibility is to take Restrainable, but lower the value of the limitation by saying that others could activate it for him.... not 100% sure thats a valid use of restrainable tho.

Re: Irreducible attacks There are plenty of ways to get around damage reduction of one form or another, either by sfx (damage reduction only applies to a particular effect, etc) or more dice of damage (only applies to damage reduction) or any other adder designed to "add" damage, or just some "custom advantage" Can't be reduced by Damage Reduction (+1/2) But by and large Damage Reduction is an NPC power, so getting a GM to allow you to bypass their reduction is going to be tricky

Re: Hero-D&D system merge? yes, i agree that "breakaway attacks" are a valid concept, if you stop fighting and try to run away having a character get a SINGLE attack against a SINGLE opponent that he was already fully engaged with makes a certain amount of sense, if you stop defending its a lot faster and easier to hit you after all, its the "Zone of Control" rules that let players get ridiculous numbers of attacks that I have issues with. and if your not in the process of fighting someone at the moment, holding your action to attack anyone who comes near you is perfectly fine, IMO. its some of the other nonsense that really has me scratching my head. Yes there comes a point where you have to divert from logical, realistic concepts to game concepts, but I dont really see it as fair or balanced that any movement at all by one player suddenly allows another player free atacks... (adding to my earlier comments, not directed at gojira, who basically said the same thing lol) (and to note, I wasn't refering to the origins, i was refering to the logic or game function that it was intending to emulate. Most rules (not all by any means) are the result of the writers trying to simulate something about how they think combat works in a logical or stylistic sense. I never understood what would be the logical or game balance or stylistic impetus for creating a rule anything similar to the AoO discussed earlier.)

Re: Hero-D&D system merge? I never understood where AoO concept came from. Basically your saying, if im fighting a certain opponent, i can attack x times per time segment (round, turn, phase, second, whatever). But if people move past me, i can SUDDENLY attack faster, because they are moving past me, in fact, i can (in may such systems) attack a near infinite number of times as people continue to move by me before i can attack the guy i am ACTUALLY fighting again..... it just seems really odd and counter intuitive to me. I get wanting to have something like the Tank class of character, but every MMO (as an example, you can use other systems as well) builds in a taunt system for that. If your playing hero and you REALLY want a Tank, i would just build it using PRE attacks (or if your really REALLY serious about being the guy attacked, a Limited Mind Control power). You can also buy some form of always on, AOE attack power so that you are surrounded by flames or the like, and anyone moving through there has to take damage if your just wanting to play a wall.... but getting free attacks, faster than you can normally attack, just because someone moves past you seems really weird to me and always has. Now, I have played several games and game systems where this is the case, and while playing those systems i would use those abilities just like everyone else of course. After all, its just a game , but I never thought they made any kind of sense. And Istaran, not calling you out, but basically what I'm understanding you to say, is that you don't want a GM to make NPC's make decisions poorly, so you should get bonus attack powers for free because you chose a defensive build? If you CHOOSE to play an overly defensive character, why should that suddenly force people to attack you instead? Your basically wanting to get extra attack powers so that if they choose to act sensibly they will suffer for it, thus making it less sensible to do so. Yes, it does make highly defensive builds somewhat less powerful than normal, but then you CHOOSE to be less powerful to be really defensive. If you want your character to be able to defend other players there are many many ways to do that in HERO, Barriers, defenses bought useable by others, the Mind Control thing i mentioned earlier, or even your mention of buying powers with the trigger effect stating the trigger is when people move by you. And yeah, in HERO you should have to pay for these extra attack powers. They dont get tacked on to defensive powers for free. And my last point, if your building a glass cannon, you get alot of power for that, but with the understanding that you are fragile, honestly youd better have SOME way to keep yourself out of reach of melee types (which is the only type that will have to worry about AoO's anyway) or your not going to be shooting for long.....

Re: Help with introductory adventure k, bookmarking this thread.... what a simple yet elegant way to start a campaign esampson! I love the fact that in 6 paragraphs you boiled down the essence of what would be a 30-50 page adventure supplement that a new GM would have to pay $5-$25 dollars for!

Re: Create a Hero Theme Team! Moldy Skull, aka Dana Fox, was one of the top special effects artists in the world, when an alien landed in the middle of the production department during the taping of the latest film she was working for. The alien, furious about the way ALL aliens Dana created were hideous, deformed, and ugly beings shot her with a beam that permanently changed her face to look like a decaying, rotting Skull. Of course, Dana didnt believe it was a real alien, for you see, aliens DO NOT EXIST!. Neither does Magic, or superhero's, or the like. Anyone who believes so is clearly delusional or suffering from the effects of some form of drug. Show her ANY evidence that any of the above do exist, and she will quickly begin to describe, in great detail, how this was all done with special effects and trickery. No attempt to persuade her will ever manage to convince her otherwise. She joined the Teen Skeptics after being fired from her SFX career as the producers were now afraid of the wrath of the alien. Her goal is to finally convince the world that these things just DONT exist, and to find some sort of solvent to dissolve whatever glue it is that is holding this stupid skull mask to her skin.

Re: Everyman VPPs What I like about the power skill option is it lets the player decide how "good" he is with his power. New character that barely knows how to use it? Fam 8- (so no power tricks are EVERY likely to occur). Really skilled with it? Buy up your base roll (-6 will never succeed on an 11-, has a decent chance on an 18-, and becomes practically a given on 22-) So if you want to be able to constantly come up with clever tricks, buy your Power Skill really high. Otherwise dont and hope for the best (or use HAP's to make that "never gonna happen" roll suddenly work). I also gotta say I REALLY like Hugh's suggestion of 1 xp per subsequent use, which goes towards buying the power, ie if you keep doing it over and over again your basically trying to get the power for free, but spending xp on it means your actually trying to LEARN how to use your power like that.

Re: Focus others can activate I think its more along the line of powers that have some sort of activation requirement for them. Anything from Striking the Omnitrix, to Swallowing a Power Pill, to flipping a switch on the power armor. Anyone can do the "activation" to turn it on (or in some cases off) for the hero/villain. In game terms I have to agree with the others that this really sounds like a trigger, of course for something like the Omnitrix, it would be two triggers (one to turn on, one to turn off, and note that several times a villain has hit the omitrix to "turn off" Ben's transformation.) id buy it at the base (+1/4) level and simply define it as anyone can trigger

Re: The "parasite" or "symbiote" alien race I agree with Gojira, except possibly adding some form of Resurrection Only healing with the limitation "Only if Host Dies" to simulate the ability to switch bodies. Of course that only works with symbiote species. Parasite species I personally would build with Mind Control and Ego Drain, and either as a GM (Or with GM's permission if I was an NPC) state that once Ego reached negative base EGO (similar to dying by negative body) They are considered "brain dead" and can no longer make breakout rolls. If this was for a PC it would of course be designed to take quite a while to reach that level, and there would be side effects for leaving a host (to prevent host hopping). just my 2 cents

Re: Side effect: aging And dont be afraid to be wrong, i always post suggestions if i can think of them, I may often be wrong, but trust me, if I am, SOMEONE will point it out, and then I can learn as well as the original poster!

Re: Does Aid go to Active points or Real? Note that while aid doesnt affect the negative body for Death, it DOES affect negative body, for instance if you have base 15 body, and your at -10 body, a 12 pt aid would put you at -4 body (Body is considered a defense power so aid is only 1/2 as effective). This is why i believe my construct would work. The rule Christopher stated is that even tho, in this example, the character would have a max BODY of 21 (15 + the 6 points from the Aid), he would still "die" at -15, NOT -21 Body. Correct me if I'm wrong Christopher (since in that case i need to know as well )

Re: Everyman VPPs See 6e2 287, basically its a metagame element common in other RPG's, but from what ive been hearing it may be new to Hero with 6e. As an optional rule, you get a certain amount of HAP's that you can then use in a variety of ways to allow your characters to succeed when dice say they fail, at the most basic level, also used to have other random occurances turn up in the characters favor. Personally I always liked the concept, but i know several that truly hate it. As far as the "Everyman VPP's" go there the Skill: Power, when used in games with a flexible GM, should allow you to do basically the same thing as your everyman VPP within reason. It is defined as being mainly for using power tricks, as long as they make sense. (it is also used for powers that require a roll to work). I guess it falls under the heading of "you shouldnt have to point out EVERYTHING". And if its something you want to be able to do all the time anyway, you should have to pay points for it just like anyone else. Of course to each their own, if you like Everyman VPP's, nothing stopping you from using them when you GM Edit: I will say this tho, Comics and RPG's ARE a different breed. Your right, writers in comic books can just have their characters do whatever they want, whenever they want, since they are in total control. Realize that the writers control EVERY ASPECT of the story and so they can ensure that the powers are only there for dramatic effect, and are not used to trivialize every encounter imaginable. In an RPG however, players are not in total control. GM's arent really in TOTAL control either. You are working together to create a story, and giving a player the ability to do pretty much anything they can think of whenever they want throws things such as game balance out the window. There is a place for that kind of thing, of course. Its called Storytelling RPGs (or diceless) and some people prefer it.

Re: Character Analysis Requested: Character Name: Double-Time Yeah, building him as a Speedster would be the way to go.... if i knew what a Speedster looked like At the present I only have the Two 6ed books, and the free supplement they came with... While i intend to get more books in the future one of my biggest problems so far getting back into this is that I have all of 4 official character designs to use as references (although I'm beginning to get a feel for several posters here who may know what they are doing so some of their posted characters will likely be used as yardsticks till I can get more)

My 6ed Hardback books finally came into today! YAY! Now i just need a forklift to move them around LOL! I swear the PDF's really dont prepare you for the size of these things, they are MASSIVE! I even got a cool Champions Silver Age Sentinels When Worlds Collide Reality Storm Supplement as a free gift! Yes, sorry to say it guys but I am officially Re-sold on the HERO System so yall are just going to have to put up with me from now on! You have my sympathies!

Re: Gods with Off Switches vs. Loaded Guns. DC vs. Marvel in Character Design. Wow, i have plenty of restraint in my super hero games! I call them entangles

Re: Solution to Multipowers within VPPs. Cool, i always love hearing some of the history behind some of this stuff. And just for reference sake I always felt that a VPP had to have everything in it defined ahead of time, no "on the fly" argon bullets or anything like that. Of course I also loved that it gave a player the ability to, after failing to beat the guy this time, go home and "make" one for his VPP. (Every even half witted superhero out there learns how to adapt combat resources to exploit villains weaknesses, and vice versa..) It also let me be slightly less worried about how powerful my villains were, because even if they beat the heros this time, i knew NEXT time the good guys would be ready.....

Re: Side effect: aging Cool! hope it works out for you

Re: Side effect: aging Well, first of all you would need to decide how "slowly". Honestly if its not going to take effect any time soon he can just say it is doing it and not worry about how to put it on a character sheet. (My concept character "Double Time" has this as a 0 point complication, for instance, as its just informational, not really relevant to the game). If it is something much more immediate it would have to be done as a transform (drains heal back over time, and if its aging him it shouldnt do that) but your player needs to understand that if its bought like this every time he uses the power it would get a point of transform, so it wont take many uses for him to be "an old man". The other option is to follow the standard HERO guideline, what does it DO? making you old is a special effect, in game terms what exactly is the EFFECT of his aging, are his stats going down? (CON/BODY/STUN/DEX/RUN for instance?) Are his powers getting weaker? is he loosing his hearing/sight? (-'s to PER rolls) etc. Once you know what effect you want his "aging" to have on him you can go from there. Probably the easiest option from a RAW (Rules as Written) standpoint would be to build a "Old Man" character sheet for his character, this would be at the point where he would be "forced to retire" from heroing. Then he takes the side effect as a transform that is turning his character into the Old Man. As the GM use the partial transformation rules, so as he accumulates BODY of transform his stats look more and more like the Old Man Sheet. Personally, however, if i were to be GMing for this character this is the sort of situation where I would leave the Rule Book behind. I would discuss with my player how he wanted this handled, and simply apply the effects as we go (maybe having him loose a point of one stat or the other every game session). This would put an expiration date on the character, but there is nothing wrong with that if thats what you and the player want to happen. Edit: just had another thought on how you could do this: Complication: Physical Limitation: Use of powers is aging character, Greatly Impairing, (+10) Frequency: 8- (+5), 11- (+10), 14- (+15), No Roll (+20) After every game session you make an Aging roll, with modifiers for how often he used his powers this session. If he rolls under the target number, his character gets one point of Aging assigned by you from a pool of the following: -1 STR, -1 CON, -1 BODY, -1 DEX, -2 STUN, - 5 END, -1 to PER Rolls with (Hearing or Sight) You can of course add more if you want (the more stats you can draw points from, the longer the character will be viable, the fewer stats, the sooner he will become too frail to continue.)

Re: Solution to Multipowers within VPPs. I think the issue i had was i missed your "Only in a lab" modifier (or didnt understand it, which is more likely). Ive always thought of Gadget Pools as the good old batman utility belt, and one of the biggest reasons to have one was so that you could grab whatever you needed right then (from a pregenerated list of approved gadgets) Nothing wrong with the Only in a lab thing, to me it just defeats alot of the purpose of a VPP in the first place (But thats just my view, i see where your going with it.) Personally, (and this is JUST my opinion and in no way should be taken as a judgement about how others would choose to run a campaign) I would not have a problem with "copying" a Multipower with a VPP from a mimic pool, largely because in this case the VPP "Owner" has no control over the Multipower design, they are just copying/mimicing someone elses effect. And i can definitely see your ammo concept as being acceptable. My concern is Multipowers designed to get around the pool cost limitations, shrug, i have dealt with powergamers in the past and they tend to get on my nerves which has made me very leery of alot of things in a game like HERO. I LOVE the flexibility, but the last time I GM'd it (like 20 years ago or something like that), i had to rule with an iron fist to stop the insanity that one of my players kept trying to bring in.