psyber624

Its not the cost compared to what could be done with Transform that is the issue. A 1d6 Transform with all those advantages has the same problems. It is "Advantage Stacking" (6e 1 313) a low cost power that makes it insane. Many combinations of advantages can result in overly powerful abilities and when you stick them onto relatively cheap Base Costs you circumvent the pricing aspect that balances the power of the advantage. Constant + 0 END is a perfect example of this. It creates a "fire and forget" power that could theoretically be left running forever as there is no cost associated with the continued use of the power. Either of those on their own are fine but the two together create a REALLY potent combo that can easily be overbalancing. Then you tack that onto a Megascaled AOE so that it affects a HUGE area, still at a relatively low cost, not to mention the fact that it being a constant AOE means you can "activate" it as many times as you want and go from 1d6 to xd6 worth of Suppress active, all at the same time, and there is no limit to how high x can go as your power doesn't cost any END to use. THEN you tack on persistent so even getting KO'd doesn't alleviate the problem, you still can keep your xd6 worth of Suppress going, each use of which will continue to add up phase after phase. Your build has +7 3/4ths worth of advantages applied to a 10 base point power, and two of the advantages (Constant and 0 END) almost completely negate the relevance of the low base point cost. Edit: To be fair, Advantage Stacking is one of those GM areas. As a GM I would never allow a power like this into my game, even tho it works RAW. However YMMV and what you can do is between your GM and you (or between you and your players if you are the GM). With your latest build I don't see anything that doesn't work RAW, just stating my opinion that it shouldn't be implemented in a game unless its a plot device used by a GM (in which case building it is usually not important, it works how the GM says it works and that's all there is to it).

I see what you mean by your example but first of all you used a very small distance (5m) in your example. And if you are using the default 3 that I suggested you are right, that solves the problem (kinda why I suggested it ) If you DONT use the default but instead try to roll watch what happens. Half move, d3. You can roll the 2 you used (you will cover 5 meters in 3 seg), a 3 (you will get there sooner, but it doesn't really matter) or a 1. Note that with a single d3 they are all equally likely occurrences. However on a roll of a 1 after 3 segments you will fail to reach melee range by your next phase so your held attack action is wasted (your not close enough to attack). The ranged guy, however, never has to worry about any "wasted" attack actions because if he did the same thing and rolled low he would still be able to attack you. If you increase the distance past the very small 5 meters it becomes an even bigger problem as instead of wasting 1 attack action you could potentially waste SEVERAL attack actions if you roll low several times. But again the ranged player still get to hit you just fine every time. If you are even TRYING to get into melee then you will almost be guaranteed to be in range of the ranged guy. Here is the thing. Change for Changes sake is usually a bad thing. If you want to change the rules it should be to improve the game in some way. Your proposed change has a number of issues: 1. It requires more dice rolling which will slow combat down. 2. Segmented movement itself requires more "paperwork" as you have to track every incremental movement which will further slow combat down 3. Movement becomes unpredictable, and to a highly unrealistic level that doesn't really simulate anything in fiction or real life. While someone might get a "burst of speed" you NEVER see someone who can normally run fast suddenly moving like molasses (which is possible with your system) without an external reason. 4. One of the tenants of game design theory is that players will weigh negative experiences higher than positive ones. Your system, as currently implemented, will have more negatives than positives to start with which means that it will likely not be received well, especially by players who have played by the original rules. And what are the positives to this system? What does it improve? With your current pricing scheme you MIGHT roll high which MIGHT help you get somewhere quicker or give you that extra bit of damage for a moveby/movethrough (But note, extra damage will require REALLY good rolls, as you will need to roll 6 points over the average to get an extra die on a move through, 10 points over for an extra die on a move by.) And your just as likely to roll low (loosing dice) as you are to roll high. (although granted the rolling high is better valued) Maybe if you tell me how you think this improves the game for you I would understand better. A default option will help this somewhat. You might also allow players the option to buy un-rolled movement as well (you can price your rolled movement competitively so that it becomes an attractive option). That gives the player the choice as to whether they want to deal with the unpredictability of rolled movement. Another possibility is instead of making all movement dice based you incorporate some form of "Boost" ability, either as an intrinsic ability for all players or as something you can buy (which would need to be priced cheaper than normal movement). With that system you would always have a predictable minimum move, but if you did SOMETHING (maybe pay extra end, or spent extra CP, or burned a HAP or whatever) you get a chance for a "burst of speed" which would add onto your base movement. This would give you a predictable move (eliminating most of the negatives of your system) while occasionally allowing you to go faster (adding in a positive). You could also pull that off by instead of having the OPTION to pick 3 per die (as I suggested earlier) making 3 per die the MINIMUM roll. So if you had 4d6 move and rolled 2 2 4 and 1, which would normally give you a 9 meter move, you instead get a 12 meter move. Again negating the possibility of those REALLY bad rolls (which is my main complaint with your system) would change my opinion considerably. (not sure I would favor it above the RAW system, but I definitely wouldn't be as opposed to it.)

The problem with half moves in segmented movement is that in NORMAL movement I use half moves so that I can reach my target then attack with the second half of my phase. I did forget that you stated you would just figure everyone would have "held" actions for all of their actions and that would probably take care of it (if i am doing a half move I just hold my other half action till my move gets me where i needed to be). If your average SPD is 4 in your campaign then you get a phase every 3 segments. If you take the 10m example I was using you can see the problem better. SPD 4 has phases on 3, 6, 9, 12. With Normal (non rolled) movement I always reliably know how far I can move. Even in segemented movement. So if someone is 10m away and I have 10m of running I know that on phase 3 I can run 10m and then be able to attack them on phase 6. With the dice based system I should average 3.5m per segement per die. So 3 segments should give me enough to get 10m (barely). If i roll high it doesnt help me. A 5, for instance, will put me there on segment 4 but I still cant do anything till segment 6 so it didn't help me, but if I roll low (1-3 in this instance) I won't make it the 10m before segment 6, so now I can't attack on segment 6 either and have to take another action to make the 10m. If i roll a 1 I will only move 3m by segment 6 and will still have 7m to go, and could wind up missing ANOTHER phase if I rolled a 1 or a 2 for movement on segment 6. So I could loose 2 phases due to rolling low, but in this situation rolling high never helps me. That is the type of scenario I am worrying about. Yes that is just a 1d6 example, but with higher speeds higher distances can be involved (in fact I picked 10m as with spd 4 that is what the AVERAGE roll should let me move in 3 segments) The reason i was saying it hoses melee is because of this as well. If I am ranged and you are melee in that scenario, with non-rolled movement I know if you move 10m on phase 3 I know you will be able to hit me on phase 6. With dice based movement, in that same scenario you will likely be able to hit me on phase 6, but you might not be able to hit me till phase 9, and if you roll REALLY badly it will be phase 12 before you can hit me. Of course, since I am ranged I can hit you EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE PHASES. This new dice based movement system seems to favor me! (The ranged Player). The only downside is that if I am trying to run away I might roll low, but I get the full upside to that as I might roll high as well. I get benefit to equal and balance the downside, but the melee guy gets no benefit from the high roll (in this scenario) and a serious problem if he rolls low. Edit: Instead of just attacking your system, how about I offer a solution. Borrow a page from the rulebook and apply the Standard Effect Rule as an option for your dice based movement system. Maybe make it an adder if you really want to. Basically you have the OPTION of either rolling the dice or moving 3m per die of movement you have. 3m is less than the average roll so there would still be plenty of incentive to roll for movement, but if you only wanted to move a smaller amount you can guarantee that without worrying about rolling a 1 or a 2 and getting bogged down crawling. This becomes an even better option with large numbers of dice as the more dice you have the more likely you are to be able to "make it" where you want to go with just 3m per die rather than taking a risk. You can always roll if you want that extra boost, but you risk not making it. Just a thought.

On your build: Phaser probably shouldn't cost Player END, either build it with charges, an END Reserve of its own, or buy powers to 0 END. Stun only is a -0 limitation (the benefits offset the drawbacks) Extra time would be a limitation on the Multipower itself that would not affect the price of the slots as it only affects changing the slots in the multipower. As you have it built it would take you one turn to fire the phaser every time! However the OAF limitation DOES get applied to the cost of the slots so that will help a bit there. Continuous Beam would be a RKA, no need for a Does Body Damage advantage (that is for AVAD/AVLD/NND type powers that normally CANT do Body Damage). You cannot apply that advantage to Blast to make it roll like Body Damage, you have to use RKA. I wouldn't make it Damage over time (no real need) although Constant would work (you only roll to hit once, after that it does its damage every phase as long as you have it on). Its that advantage that is killing your active points there (its +2 1/4) and that would represent that even after you fired the beam it continued to do damage to the target. 4d6 RKA Penetrating will do 14 Body Damage. Thats strong enough to cut through most materials with ease. The penetrating advantage, on the other hand, ensures that it will cut through ANYTHING without the "impenetrable" advantage, doing (on average) 4 Body per phase. That may not sound like much but realize that most "objects" have high DEF but not really high body (in an area per area basis). a 1m thick metal Door would only have 17 Body and would therefore go down in around 5 phases (depending on SPD that is likely under 30 seconds). That's pretty powerful! Most doors are MUCH thinner than that (with correspondingly less Body) and thanks to your penetrating advantage it doesn't matter how tough the material is they are made of (unless of course it was built "impenetrable"). You don't pay points for the "slots" (you list +3 (slots), there is no charge for that). You are also probably using Fixed Slots which means the price of the slot is RC/10 per slot. Here is a redesigned Phaser for you: Phaser Multipower: 120 point Reserve, 64 Charges for entire Multipower (+1/2), Extra Time (to change slots, Full Phase -1/2), All slots OAF (-1) Real Cost: 48 CP (f) 1. Stun Mode: Blast 8d6, Stun Only (-0), OAF (-1) Active Points: 40, Real Points: 20, Final Cost: 2 CP (f) 2. Killing Mode: RKA 4d6, OAF (-1) Active Points: 60, Real Points 30, Final Cost: 3 CP (f) 3. Cutting Beam: RKA 4d6, Penetrating (+1/2), Constant (+1/2), Beam (-1/4), OAF (-1) Active Points: 120, Real Points: 53 Final Cost: 5 CP Total Cost: 48+2+3+5 = 58 CP Note: I would probably add an "Overload Explosion" mode that does an RKA AOE as that was often used in the show. Build it something like RKA 4d6, AOE (32m, Explosion +1/2), (Trigger: After set number of segments have passed +1/4) OAF (-1), Extra Time (to set Trigger, Full Phase -1/2) Active Points: 105, Real Points: 42, Final Cost: 4 CP This allows you to set the phaser to overload after some amount of time has passed. Note that it would take 2 phases to set this up (one phase to switch to overload mode, one phase to set time on trigger) then after how ever many segments you set it to (declared when you activate the power) the phaser explodes. This does of course destroy the phaser, but you can always get another one from the ship's armory. As far as how effective the killing mode is a 4d6 RKA does on average 14 Body with the chance to do up to 24. That wont quite kill a normal human in one shot normally although it will put them almost dead. You can make it deadlier if you want to, all you have to do is add dice to it. (simulating fiction is a points be damned experience. The system isn't balanced to make simulating the fiction cheap. It is balanced to make the game fair and playable (who wants to play a game where you die if you get hit once?))

For Melee: The issue is with the "Melee vs Ranged" pairing. Normally a fast melee player can depend on getting to a slower ranged player, but with the randomness of movement you are introducing that isn't always the case and you will have situations where a poor roll by the melee player will enable the ranged player to shoot him more often. Granted the melee player MIGHT roll higher but when you consider the "over roll" situation it frequently becomes the case that low rolls will hurt, but high rolls wont help, so this benefits the ranged player. Probably only slightly unless SPD's are high tho (upon further consideration) Similar situation to the math with KA vs Normal damage vs defenses. I believe my issue with teleport was that I wasn't aware that you were not using the "Segmented Movement" rules with it. Granted Segmented movement doesn't really work with teleport but you are also divorcing other movement types from SPD altogether, but not divorcing Teleport. That means that teleport pricing is nearly impossible to balance which is why i thought the pricing was so off. As it stands the 10 pts per d6 is probably closer for low SPD games but way to high for high SPD games. If everyone has slow SPD (say 2) then 10 points of teleport allows you to move 20m per turn. At your original pricing of 1d6 per 10 points thats 12d6 (average 36 points) of movement for 10 points. However at SPD 4 the teleporter is moving 40m, but the flier is still moving 36m, and at spd 8 the teleporter moves 80m a turn, while the flier is STILL only moving 36m, even if he also has SPD 8. So I guess you should base your pricing of teleport vs other movement powers on what you expect your Average SPD to be. I do understand the benefit of the "move it all now" vs the segment by segment approach, but segmented movement basically eliminates the concept of half moves (or at least it never explains how they would work) and you never mentioned how half moves would work in your system (if at all). Allowing someone to move the "LOWEST" amount they can roll without rolling is entirely pointless. It doesn't affect anything at all. That was a weak point anyway as I was just stating that it wasn't likely to be a popular system. As far as velocity goes that brings up another concern. How will you handle deceleration? If movement is random then is deceleration random as well? that could cause some MAJOR problems. You never mentioned you were also using velocity based DCV in your post, normally velocity has no effect on DCV. If you are using Velocity based DCV then the dice really dont matter all that much (although the odds will favor bad results over good). At low dice the variance isnt enough to move you up the chart much. At high dice variances become more and more statistically rare, although the statistical odds will still favor lower DCV's than higher ones (due to the exponential growth between DCV levels). And the primary role of movement is "To get from point A to point B". I never said high rolls will NEVER be useful. I said that high rolls wont always help, while low rolls will always hurt. In this primary roll of "Getting from A to B" the purpose of Velocity is "How long will it take me". Thanks to some rather complicated math that I wont go into right now the statistically average "Length of time to get from A to B" suffers with a variable velocity due to the diminishing returns nature of division and the peak nature of the question (1.1 segments rounds to 2 segments as there are no fractional segments so anything over a 1 has to become a 2) when compared to a constant velocity. Plain English: Rolling Dice to get from here to there is more often bad than it is good. For example. I want to move 7m. I have 2d6 movement. On average i will need 1 segment to complete this move. Rolling higher than 7 offers me no benefit, however I could roll as low as a 2 and take 4 segments to complete this move. Now say I want to move 10m. Rolling 7 will take me 2 Segments to complete it. There is a small chance that I can complete it in 1 Segment, but a larger chance that it will take me more than 2 segments (4 takes me 3 segments, 3 takes me 4 segments, 2 takes me 5). The odds of me completing it in 1 segment are the same as the odds of it taking longer (rolling a 10 or better is just as likely as rolling a 4 or worse) but I have a chance to do MUCH worse, while I cannot ever do better than 1 segment.

Okay, my comments: Invisible Power Effects: By default IPE concealse the Activity (the fact that your player is using a power), Source (the fact that the player is the one causing the power to work), Path (the direction the power takes, in this case the Area it affects), Target (the fact that someone inside the area is the target), Special Effect (the fact that this is a mental power), and Intensity (the fact that this is a 1d6 Suppress) although many of those things may not really apply in your case. However it does NOT make the EFFECT of the power invisible. The "target" will know that his mental power is being weakened. If you do not want the target to know that his mental powers are being weakened you have to apply an additional Advantage which is probably what the +1 1/2 build was doing. Note that rationalizing this and actually role playing it can be quite a headache. You would basically be saying that the targets powers are getting weaker but he doesn't realize it. That is fine for something like Mental Blast or Mind Control where he might think the opponent just had too much MD, but other applications (and especially ongoing applications) its hard to explain how he could fail to notice that his powers werent working right. Take Flight with a Psychokinesis SFX. Your power would drain it, but how would you explain that the target is unaware that his flight isn't working? On your refinement. 1. Suppress is already a constant power, you don't need to apply the Constant advantage to it and doing so doesn't accomplish anything. 2. Your limitation will prevent that power from EVER working as each use of Suppress will fail to do anything. More of a wording argument, I get that, but when trying to arbitrate how powers interact wording becomes very important. 3. As built currently you will have to take an action every time you "turn on" a level of suppress. Since there is no reason you should ever have to "turn off" any of your Suppress levels (as they require no END) any GM worth mentioning would have issues with this power. (the player could say "I am going to spend the next 3 days activating another instance of this power on every phase I get so that I have several hundred d6 of Suppress going until I decide to stop) The effect I believe your going for is that you want this "Suppression" field active all the time, and the longer you spend in the field the more the Suppress will affect you. That would be simulated by the "Cumulative" advantage. For +1/2 you can add up to the maximum you could "roll" on your die, for every +1/4th you can double that amount . So if you wanted to be able to suppress up to say 60 AP you would need 4 doublings so the final cost of Cumulative would be +1 1/2. At that point your Suppress would add 1d6 of "suppression" every phase a target spent inside the AOE until he reached the maximum suppression (96 points unless you defined it as 60 (or the GM limited you to that or something)). Note that adding Cumulative to a Suppress is against RAW but it is the best fit for what you are describing. I am confused about the "Psionic Dead Zone" you are talking about. If that's what you want this whole thing becomes MUCH easier as you just buy enough dice to do the Suppress all at once. 20d6 should probably do it. Apply SER and now you have 60 AP of Suppress Mental Powers going on all the time, anyone who enters the area will instantly loose access to any Mental Powers they have. Yeah, that makes this power ridiculously expensive, but for what its doing IT SHOULD BE! Honestly as it stands this appears to be a textbook example of "Over Advantaged Cheap Power" Cheese but YMMV and all, to each their own. Also confused about your "proportional" limitation. Your area is a 1kilometer area. So it only takes full effect when someone is within 400m of you? is that really any limitation at all? VERY few encounters will happen where you are concerned about someone more than 400m away from you so that is one of those "limitations that isn't really limiting" and not worth any points. To note: 400m is out of range of any power with less than 40 active points, targeting across 400m is a -12 OCV penalty.

The rationale behind multipower is essentially "I have a bunch of powers that I can't use at full strength all at once". The reserve controls the "power level" of the list of powers, no power can have more active points in than points in the reserve and you cannot have more points active at any one time than there are points in the reserve. That's all it really does from a mechanics standpoint. From a balance standpoint it also ensures that you are paying the full amount for the amount of power you are using at any given time. In your example your player has "allocated" his reserve to his 8d6 shot. Changing how the reserve is "allocated" is a Zero Phase Action (meaning he can do it anytime during his phase without "spending" any part of his phase doing so but cannot do it outside of his phase or after his phase has ended (such as after an attack)). You can also only change the allocation once per phase, so you cant slot say a movement power, take a half move, then switch all the reserve to a defense power. Also note that "Ultra" or "Fixed" slots always take up their full amount of reserve points, so if you have a 40 point Multipower with an 8d6 Blast bought as a fixed slot, it will always use the 40 points, even if you only fire a 4d6 blast this turn. "Multi Slots" on the other hand only take as much reserve as you intend to use. So if you had both an 8d6 blast and a 20PD/20ED force field both as multi slots in the MPP then you could use either at full power, or have a 4d6 blast and a 10/10 Force field, or any other combination adding up to 40 active points. About your weapon. Remember that HERO system reasons from GAME EFFECTS, not from SPECIAL EFFECTS. The fact that your Blast is a gun is meaningless "to the system". If you do nothing but buy a Blast then your "gun" requires END to use as you didn't add any GAME EFFECTS that allow it to bypass the rules on END use for powers. That's perfectly legal. If you want to better simulate the SFX of a "gun" with your power you would apply the appropriate advantages or limitations to the Blast to better represent how your "gun" should work in the system. 0 END, Charges, END reserve, all of these are different ways of powering your gun. If you apply any of them then the gun doesn't use your player's END but just because you call your Blast a "gun" doesn't automatically give it any of them. Its how YOU choose to build it that's important. Guns generally are bought with Charges (if you are talking about real world simulations of guns) that represent your "bullets". If you want to have more bullets you could either choose more Charges when you build the power, or buy your charges as "clips" of charges that you carry around. Don't forget that charges automatically fill up at the end of the day/adventure in most cases. In a Superheroic setting everyone pays for their powers in points and the Fire Blaster guy has to spend END to use his power, why should you get your Power END free without paying for it? He can recover END normally with his REC, and your charges recover once a day. As a GM you could theoretically allow him to "pick up" used ammo or such but that way lies madness (and likely upset players who have to spend END/obscure charges/whatever). In a heroic setting things are different as players usually pay money, not CP, for their equipment. In that case you could allow a player to use any ammo he might come across, or allow him to go to the store to get more, or whatever. In that setting EVERYONE is using real world equipment (for the most part) so you aren't giving Gun Guy any extra benefits he didn't pay for. And that balance is one of the central tenants of the HERO system.

forgot about that aspect of the power, thanks.

I stand corrected. Velocity has more to do than caliber. And rifles are able to handle heavier loads resulting in higher muzzle velocities so that IN GENERAL rifles will do more damage than handguns. My bad.

YMMV of course but this would seem to really hose many archetypes. Teleport becomes the default move for just about everyone as you can rely on it to work properly. Note that with your current pricing scale it is also WAY cheaper, 10 pts of teleport is 10m, 10 pts of flight is 1d6 so normally 3.5 and max is still only 6. If you change the cost to 5 pts per d6 you now still have Flight/Run costing 10 pts for average of 7m vs teleport getting 10m at the same price. And flight/run will only "beat" teleport 8% of the time so definitely not a good price. Melee pretty much HAVE to go teleport as being able to move to engage is critical to them being effective in combat, having a roll determine if they can even get INTO range hurts them, while the ranged archetype is far less worried about the difference in ranges (yes, it will add penalties to their shots but above a -2 the difference in range penalties quickly becomes far more than the likely difference in two rolls of the dice. For equally mobile characters you would have to "loose" your dice roll by more than 8 to even get an additional -2 in most cases which will RARELY happen). Teleport on the other hand becomes deadly with any range inaccuracies (which I believe may be why you left it set in price). If you keep that then you need to make the Average roll for the d6 move crowd BETTER than the price per point for teleport. Teleport will be attractive for its intrinsic properties (move through objects and the like) and for its reliable movement. The d6 types will be attractive for better average moves with the possibility of greatly exceeding them at times. The other issue with this concept is that it rarely offers a benefit. Many times a player will want to move "less" than the average dice roll, in which case high rolls wont help. Low rolls will become the bane of this system, with high rolls only occasionally being of benefit. Expect to see veteran players highly dislike this system as it doesn't offer them any benefit over the standard system and instead tends to punish them.

OP- something noone seems to have pointed out clearly yet is that the way you built it it will only suppress 1d6 PERIOD!. It doesn't add up or acculumlate with any of the advantages you have listed. Also, technically Suppress is a constant power (once you add the Costs Endurance to Maintain Limitation to Drain). Since you have set it to 0 END the Costs Endurance limitation is -0 (and some GM's may not allow it) but you don't have to buy constant as well. However all that does is mean that the suppression is on all the time, it doesn't keep suppressing more and more power from segment/phase to segment/phase or anything like that. Damage over Time will work for that, again assuming your GM allows you to use it with this power. Cumulative will work to get you to the max you could roll on the die (and you can increase the max with further advantages). You could also just buy a Constant Drain instead of a Suppress but then the targets will regain 5 points per "application" at the end of every turn so it would probably fail to do much at the level you currently have it at.

The main difference between pistols and rifles is accuracy at range. Damage is due more to caliber than anything else. A .45 Pistol will do FAR more damage than a .22 Rifle, but accuracy drops off at different rates between the two. You could therefore give pistols the "Limited Range" limitation to reflect this. (Note that when you mention rifles I assume you are speaking more along the lines of hunting rifles rather than assault rifles. Two totally different kettles of fish.)

Especially for new players or GM's it really a good idea to keep everyone's SPD relatively close to each other, and honestly in the show he is rarely shown to be able to do anything other than "skill" based concepts (working on a computer, repairing something, etc) at a speed higher than anyone else on the show. He never seems to be able to fire a phaser more often, or get more licks in during a fight or anything like that. It seems Overall Skill Levels or something like that, possibly with a limitation "Only to offset penalties for performing skill quickly" would be more appropriate than a higher SPD.

PalindromedaryA: Actually, I was already at -5 STUN, so while still standing I am "out on my feet" and unaware of my impending doom. The STUN damage of 5 is therefore doubled to 10. This has nothing to do with the attack being a Killing Attack: any attack that does STUN will double the STUN damage if the target is already under zero STUN. I still subtract my PD of 2 from that, and take 8 STUN. This brings my STUN total to -13, so my legs give way. I am now unconscious and dying. Good thing I'm expendable. DOH! missed that part, darnit!!!! And when did you discover my secret identity of psycho624? Now I have to spend XP to buy off that limitation when I was planning on saving that for a new Palindromedary Skinning Knife 3000!

I would probably call the Utility Belt an OIF and leave it at that. Villains FREQUENTLY take it away from him actually, but only after they have already subdued him.

Shhh, now that Lucius is sleeping I can take a whack at this. You see I am the Great White Palindromedary Hunter and Lucius' buddies there are my favorite game to hunt (not to mention some damn fine eatin too!) So, I am going to take out my Trusty Smythe and Peterson Palindromedary Plugger 2000, a nice rifle that does a 2d6 Killing Attack at Range. I take a careful shot at Palindromedary B since he is still fully concious. Now Palindromedary B has the same stats as Palindromedary A did, so since I hit (I am an expert shot after all) I roll my damage. 2d6 KA gives me a 3 and a 6 for a total of 9 Body Damage done. I then roll a d3 for StunX and get a 2 so I do 9 Body and 18 Stun to that critter. Now, Palindromedary B has no Resistant Physical Defense (rPD) so all of my Body Damage gets through. He has 5 Body so my shot takes him to -4 Body. He is dying, bleeding out and will loose an additional point of Body during Post-Segment 12 of every turn. As his base BODY is 5 if he looses one more point of BODY he will be at -5 and will be DEAD so he has until the end of this turn to get some medical attention. He also takes 18 Stun, - 2 for his PD so he takes 16 Stun going to -6 Stun. So he is also Knocked Out (KO'd) and will be unconscious until he gains back at least 6 Stun (which with REC 2 will take a while, assuming he lives that long.) One down, one to go. The other Palindromedary is still stunned so no need to waste a bullet on it. I take out my Trusty Palidromedary Plucker, a 1d6 KA dagger I always carry around, and head on over to put the poor beast out of my misery. He is just standing there dazed there so hitting him isn't hard. Now, one thing to note, I have been hunting Palindromedaries for years now so I have a STR of 15. My dagger is a melee weapon, built with a Hand to Hand Killing Attack so I get to add my Strength. 15 STR adds 1d6 to killing attacks so my Dagger also does 2d6 Killing Damage when I hit with it. I roll the dice and get a 2 and a 3 for 5 Body, and this time only get a 1 on my d3 StunX die. So I do 5 Body and 5 Stun. Again there is no rPD so I do the full 5 points to the Stunned beast and put him at 0 Body. If I leave him alone he will slowly bleed out and die unless someone comes along to help him. The 5 Stun i did is reduced by his PD to only 3 Stun (the fact that he was Stunned has no effect on his PD normally) so he is now at 1 Stun. Oddly enough while he is still bleeding to death he is fully conscious (if rather dazed till he can recover from being Stunned) and will likely start screaming out for help. Time for me to skedaddle before reinforcements show up!

Meh, math is scary to some people, even arithmetic (which is ALL hero entails, any middle-school child is supposed to have the necessary skillset to handle it so it always makes me laugh when people complain about it). And they even provide a modestly priced program you can buy that will do all the math for you. Of course I am biased. One of the things I always hated in RPG's was random character generation so the points based approach has always appealed to me. I get that a GOOD gm can make the game fun with Captain Underpants in the Team of SUPER DUPER guys but GOOD gms of that caliber are hard to come by. I have been in far too many games where a bad roll of the die in character creation spelled doom and gloom for an entire campaign due to my character being sidelined as too ineffective in combat. And I'm not a power gamer either (usually anyway).

It varies widely from character to character and power to power. I do love the flavor of them so its really rare to see a character without several of them and may characters I create have been somewhat bloated with them admittedly to reduce point costs so I can get in all the abilities I want them to have. I do tend to prefer Rules-Centric Limitations to GM Centric ones tho.. I like to have control over how much that limitation is going to cost me.

One request. If you post a build of a character for us to critique please give us some details of the kind of game it will be played in. Marvel's Vision and ST:TNG are both Androids and neither would work well in the others world so we need some idea of the world the character will live in inorder to give the best advise possible. Important details such as point totals, whether there are AP caps present, theme/genre, and expected number of players are very helpful.

As with most things of this nature you have to look at how it will affect your games in YOUR universe. If you have or plan to have a villain with powers like Reflection, Mind Control, Mimic VPP's, etc then being immune to each others powers is definitely an advantage (for most of the same reasons that Personal Immunity is an advantage in the first place). Also if either player takes an AOE advantage on one of their powers then without question that Immunity is an advantage for both them and their sibling. If neither of these is true then honestly it will likely almost never come up so while it might be the case it can easily fall under the "What not to spend points on" rule and you can just make a note about it on their character sheets and leave it at that. And unless you intend for the two to willingly actually get into fights with each other then there is really no limitation to be had. Now how to simulate this is up to you. The best two suggestions I can come up with are: 1. Handwave Personal Immunity to be Sibling Immunity. This is the easiest way to do it. If using AP caps I wouldn't use this as part of the Cap calculation. 2. Purchase extra defenses to the other power with the -2 Limitation "Only to defend against siblings Power". This is the RAW way to do it and you purchase them high enough so that with your innate defenses you cannot be affected by the power in question. Of course this way is probably going to be MUCH more expensive to the players involved and if you add things like Drains and Aids into the mix things can get wonky (unless you apply the absolute effect rule to these defenses even if Drained/vs Aided power). I would personally only use this option if I planned to have plenty of "Price of Power" or "Reflection of Power" themed adventures in my campaign. If that is the case being immune to the effects of those themes might be worth the cost in points. Edit: One thing to note which may be difficult to get across to your players. The value of the two could actually VARY between the two players. For instance you stated you have one Mentalist Brother and one Sonic Brother. MANY Sonic archetypes include an AOE ability and having his brother be immune is a huge advantage as he never has to worry where he is screaming if his brother is around. On the other hand a Mentalist rarely has AOE's, is unlikely to have his powers "reflected", and generally has enough EGO/MD that he will likely never be subject to Mind Control so the fact that his brother is immune to his power really doesn't represent much of an advantage, and depending on the Mental powers might even be a -0 limitation as he cant, for instance, communicate telepathically with his brother, or read his brothers mind if he is unconscious or any of the other myriad beneficial uses of mental powers we have seen depicted in media over the years. Of course convincing your players that the same ability is an advantage for one of them but a limitation for the other could be a tough battle so I would personally probably just ignore this aspect and go with whichever side of the coin seemed most likely to affect my campaign, but I thought I would mention it.

As has already been suggested, some Resistant Defenses for the durable physical form, and many forms of Life Support. On the other hand, such a robot may NOT need all the Life Support options you can think of....maybe it should have Does Not Sleep, but maybe it still needs some "downtime" to process and organize memories. But someone like Data is likely Immune to most disease and poison, for example. (He might still take damage from something caustic, or fall prey to a "compuer virus" or the like.) Basically, you "reason from effect." Start by describing the abilities shown on the series, then figure out what Skills, Talents, and Powers, with what Advantages and Limitations, will simulate that in the game environment. Don't fall into the trap of thinking "Robot - must need Automaton Powers" or similar rigid thinking. Data could be knocked out and probably could be stunned! Lucius Alexander How about that palindromedary? Another possibility of "robot" like construction is that normal medical care wont work on them. This would be a Physical Limitation "Healed by Mechanics/Engineering instead of Paramedics/Medicine". Its value of course depends on your campaign (likely not much in most campaigns unless you intend for player characters to need medical attention frequently) or you could just list it as a notation worth nothing (and costing nothing) as its essentially a tradeoff. If you want his "robot" body to be vulnerable to things normal people aren't (such as EMP) then that would be a Susceptibility. Don't forget that Lucius's points can be expanded upon to other areas as well. Does Not Eat for instance could be balanced by "Requires regular infusions of electricity" or "Requires regular Maintenance". This might be simply a notation on a character sheet when one ability replaces another and they are relatively the same "scale" (like the paramedics to mechanics switch above). This wouldn't normally cost the character any points or grant him any. He works differently than a normal person but in the long run it will rarely grant him a benefit/cause him any problems, or if it does the two sides of the coin will balance out. (I apply the same reasoning to other things like Blind people having a "Mystic Sight" that allows them to see or paralyzed people who use hoverchairs to get around. There are advantages and disadvantages to that but on the whole its basically a wash so just a notation on the sheet is all that it needs.)

To be fair, confusing is a relative term. I have a gift with mathematics and have done some tutoring in the past (professionally) and was frequently shocked at the myriad of ways different people could become confused about something that to me seemed glaringly obvious. This is not in any way to be read as an attack or belittlement of those people, different people have different skillsets that they bring to any challenge and so different things may throw them (I am at a total loss in any normal social situation for instance). Theros if you are still confused by something in the rules please don't be afraid to bring it up again. Maybe we need to restate it a different way. Maybe we need to take another approach to explaining how it works. One of the things I learned when tutoring is sometimes changing the way you say something even slightly may be all that is needed for a light bulb to go off in someones head. On your part just remember that this is HERO, not DnD or Paladium or any other rules set you may be familiar with. If you try to learn this system by drawing comparisons to how it does things compared to how your other systems do you are asking for trouble. From the ground up HERO is a different system, especially than DnD. While they are both Role Playing Games trying to compare the two is like looking at apples and oranges. Sure they are both fruit, but the similarities pretty much end there. Judge and learn HERO on its own merits, not by trying to relate it to a different system it never intended to emulate.

A few general tips for players new to the system. 1. Its mentioned in most of the books but it bears repeating. One of the KEY differences between HERO System (which is what Champions uses) and other RPG's is that you reason from GAME EFFECT and not special effect. What this means is that when you want to build a power for your character you decide what effect you want that power to have IN THE GAME. Don't worry to much about why it works like that or how it works like that, those are special effects questions. What you want to know is what EXACTLY happens when you use the power. For instance, if you want a power that does damage to a target at range you are looking at either Blast or Ranged Killing Attack. Whether that is a lightning bolt, a bullet from a gun, a blast of fire, or Cosmic Energy of DOOM! is irrelevant, all of those things, in game terms, do damage to a target at range and so they are all built the same way, you then use things like advantages and limitations to tailor the power to better represent how that power should work in your mind. For instance if you think Bolts of Fire should hit multiple people you would apply an Area Of Effect advantage to your power. If Lighting Bolts always hurt someone no matter how tough they are you might look at Penetrating Advantage. However if Cosmic Energy of DOOM can only be used at night, well that's a limitation right there my friend! This is kind of backwards compared to many game systems where you would go looking for a Lighting Bolt spell or Fireball Spell or a AK-47. In HERO those all do about the same thing, in game terms, so they are treated as the same ability just with different "Special Effects." 2. When designing characters make sure they are well rounded. Especially for newbies building things like "Glass Cannons" and such are a really bad idea. You need at least one way to affect an opponent , some way to defend yourself (PD/ED, DCV, Desolid, etc and probably a combination of these elements), some way to get from here to there (Running, Flight, Vehicle, Swinging, etc) and then I highly recommend something to "set yourself apart" be it Invisibility, enhanced senses, etc. You also shouldn't neglect the non-combat aspects of your character such as skills, contacts, perks, talents and whatnot (although there are mixed feelings on the boards about this). 3. Start small. For the meantime ignore powers with STOP or CAUTION signs, don't apply too many advantages or limitations to your powers, etc. HERO plays a bit different than other game systems so start from the basics and add in layers as you get more comfortable. 4. HERO can seem like a lot of math at first as you have to juggle the Character Point concept but the vast majority of the math gets left behind once you have your character created and start to actually play (with a few exceptions). At that point its mostly just rolling dice and counting the totals (although there are differences) 5. ASK FOR HELP! You have already started with this post but don't stop there! We have a great community here of people who love the system and are always willing and eager to help others enjoy it so if you have questions or run into problems don't hesitate to come here for answers. We love it! Now you may wind up sparking a heated debate as opinions vary but trust us, the debaters here (yes, I am one of them ) LOVE IT when someone comes in with a good question for us to argue over, its one of the reasons we visit these boards . There tends to be 2 camps of thought about the system and most discussions wind up with two heavily supported sides duking it out. It may be intimidating at first but just follow along, we generally don't let ourselves get drug into flame wars and there are some great discussions about the rules and rule interactions that can come out in these debates and they are a great way of learning some of the intricacies of the system (even if everyone that disagrees with me should just learn that I am always right and accept it ) Finally, welcome to the system and too the forums! Its great to have you here and I hope you will become an active member. We always need new faces to sacrifice to the Dice Gods!!!!!

Another important difference is what Defense stop the BODY Damage dealt by either. Killing Attacks need less Dice for comparable effect, both because they they produce more BODY/dice and because fewer defenses apply. The usual comparsion between the two is the example of two 12 DC attacks: 12D6 Normal Damage: 0-24 BODY, 12 BODY average. Resistant and Non-Resistant ("Normal") Defenses work 12-72 STUN, 42 STUN average. Resistant and Normal Defense work 4d6 Killing Damage: 4-24 BODY, 14 BODY average. Only Resistant defenses work 4-72 STUN, 28 STUN average. Resistant and Normal defenses work While the maximum values for both attacks are identical, the averages varry strongly. KA's BODY is also more worth by there being fewer resistant defenses then normal Defenses around. Wheter these 12 DC come from the raw power of the attack (a 12 DC Blast, 4D6 RKA), a power that allwos STR to be added (9D6 HTH-Attack, 3D6 KA plus 3 DC from STR), Maneuvers (a 8 DC Blast or 3.5d6 RKA Haymakered) or a combination of those is irrelevant. Regarding conversion between Normal and Killing Damage: With the optional rules it is possible to make a Killing Damage Attack into a Normal Damage Attack using the "Club Weapon" Maneuver (6E2 84; Examples include "Striking with Flat side of blade"). This has nothing to do with Clubs or how they are build. It is not possible to make Normal Damage into Killing Damage*. However if you can let STR add to the Damage of something that is already a Killing Attack. *Martial Arts killing Attack is the exception, but it is rarely used for anything but your raw STR/unarmed combat anyway. Note that to prevent STR characters from buying cheesy 1 point HKA's that allow them to use their STR as a Killing Attack if they wish you can either enforce the damage doubling rules (you can't more than double the DC's in an attack through strength/maneuvers/etc) or you can just handwave that distinction away and allow them to do so.

Of course don't forget the difference in cost. 1 Die of DN is 5 points. Thats enough to buy 5 points of PD or ED which will have basically the same effect on 5 out of 6 rolls and that's with one Die's worth, and with multiple dice the odds of DN doing better on a Point per Point basis drop even lower. Then there is the fact that DN is FAR worse against killing attacks than rPD/rED. It takes 15 points of DN to stop 1 die of Killing Damage, but only 9 points of rPD/rED to do the same (vs ANY roll of the dice) for the Body at least. Add in 6 pts of PD/ED (to bring the costs level) and it also prevents all but the highest of Stun Rolls (5-6 on the Body die then 3 on the Stun X die are required to get STUN past that level of Defenses, so only 1 in 9 rolls will result in it not stopping all of it). This basically shows that DN is slightly better than at stopping Stun Damage (for high rolls of Stun) but blatantly worse at stopping Body Damage (regardless of the roll).