griffinman01

Double Post

Your best bet would probably just do a custom martial art as outlined in the UMA sourcebook. They have things like a flying dodge which is a dodge that allows you to do a full move which is pretty close to this. I would do something like:

Flying Block: +0 OCV (0 points), +0 DCV (0 points), Block (basis of maneuver), Abort (free with a block), FMove (3 points) = 3 points.

You can adjust the OCV and DCV to your tastes but this will let you do a full move (ie teleport) and then block as an abort. This should capture the feel of what you want to do without any difficulties.

Wouldn't the Burnout roll from the Boosted Charges count for the side-effect?

Also, you can have side-effects on powers that don't have skill rolls (going off of 5th ed here so it might have changed in 6th). The book states (pg 307 5th rev):

"Characters usually take Side Effects for a

power that has some chance of failure — one with

the Power Limitations Requires A Skill Roll or Acti-

vation Roll. Each time the character’s attempt to

activate or use the power fails, he suffers the Side

Effect."

It says 'usually' not 'must'. You can have it fire off all the time at x2 the limitation. So I think you should add in the side-effect on the gun as normal and specify the burnout roll as the potential trigger.

As for the second part, that's a bit trickier. Not sure what you could do and follow the RAW there.

Re: A power to swap places with someone.

Or jump off a very high ledge and then use it. Imagine standing there and seeing a guy run off a ledge laughing. You get a half second to wonder what the hell he's doing before you feel air rushing past you very fast and a whole lot of ground coming at you like a freight train.

But you would have to make sure you hit or you may go "oops" as you don't trade places and plumet yourself . And if you miss but still had a second option to roll to hit (as they move to the edge of the ledge to see why you threw yourself of the ledge and laugh at you ) you better have no relative velocity modifier on your part of the teleport to stop your downward movement as you appear in his spot but still dropping .

You could buy the "No Relative Velocity" adder to save yourself from the latter situation. As for the former, just make sure you don't miss

Re: A power to swap places with someone.

One of my wizards had the same spell in an old FH game. When fighting people who knew he had the position swapping spell' date=' he would occasionally break out his illusion (images) spell to make himself look like a particular opponent, and that opponent look like him, without changing places.[/quote']

 

Or jump off a very high ledge and then use it. Imagine standing there and seeing a guy run off a ledge laughing. You get a half second to wonder what the hell he's doing before you feel air rushing past you very fast and a whole lot of ground coming at you like a freight train.

Re: Dispel Questions

There are also things like "Dispel Technology"' date=' a common speedster trick where the speedster basically takes apart a Technological based Focus REALLY fast. It would stay broken till someone with the correct skill set took the time to put it back together/repair it (probably at least next session but if a player built it himself I would personally allow him some rolls with fairly steep penalties to put it back together on the spot. )[/quote']

 

Hell, you see that kind of thing in martial arts movies. I keep thinking in Lethal Weapon 4 where Jet Li's character would rip the slide off of a pistol in one motion. Something like that wouldn't take long to fix but it would shut down the pistol for a few phases.

Re: "Must cross intervening space"

Nope. You can have a Teleport that can only go places you could normally reach' date=' yet would not have to cross the space. So you could teleport to the other side of that (unlocked) door or through that window but not 20m straight up into the air.[/quote']

 

This. An example would be someone who can turn to putty or something malleable. You could argue that you could pass through certain porous barriers, under doors, through cracks in walls, etc. That wouldn't have to cross the intervening space since you could pass through a lot of obstacles, but you wouldn't be able to reach up into the air or any place that you couldn't physically get to (like a flying location, or across a wide gap).

Re: Dispel Questions

I must be missing something. Where is it stated that Dispel interacts with Powers from a focus differently? How exactly does Dispel interact with Powers from a focus? This could be a huge benefit I was not considering.

It depends on what the effect of the dispel is. Something like an EMP would short out a device until it can be rebooted (which would most likely shut it down for a turn or two) but if you went with some kind of rapid rusting effect on a sword, it could shut it down for the entire adventure until the target could get a new one. It's up to the GM to determine how long the effect lasts based on the nature of what you're trying to dispel.

Re: Dispel Questions

I guess the effectiveness of dispel really depends on the genre. In a superhero campaign it's pretty weak since, as Killer Shrike mentioned, you'd have to slap a ton of advantages in order to make it affect a broader range of powers. Not only that, unless the abilities have a large activation time, it'll have very little effect.

However, in some campaigns it can be much more useful. I've been designing EMP effects as a dispel in a sci-fi campaign and it looks like it'll be far more useful then since most everything is a focus (all your electronic gadgets, cybernetics, etc) and there are a number of vehicles.

Aside from that, the only way I've seen dispel being useful is having your character dispel a defensive power (force field, armor, etc) before the rest of your team beats the crap out of the target.

Re: Multipower Variable Slots, ever use one?

Fixed and variable both have their uses. I think variable works best on powers that scale (EB, Flight, Force Fields, etc) while fixed works best on powers that just turn off/on (Invisibility, Enhanced Senses, Desolidification) or ones that in concept couldn't scale (Guns, swords, etc). Variable makes it harder to keep up with things since they require some light math when you switch them, but it's no worse than what you'd have to do with a VPP. You spend more for flexibility so what works best depends on the character concept. I did a guy who had half a dozen different blades and each was fixed so that he could have two out per turn so fixed worked best, but the power armor idea is a load more fun if you go variable for things. I loved being able to go from blasting a guy to swapping everything into STR and flight so I could just move-through him to finish him off.

Re: "Must cross intervening space"

...water isn't a solid.

Right, call that one up to being sick at the moment. All the same, the Limitation is in contact with a surface so as long as you have something tangible to put your feet on (ie surface tension) you can use it. Water is an example of it given in the book. I agree with what psyber said though about the added "must be able to reach it with normal running" as a quick and easy way to cover it.

Re: "Must cross intervening space"

In my view, "pass through the intervening space" does not mean "get to normally" -- the description mentions barriers and does not mention support or bridges or such things. I would interpret it to mean that it is just like normal teleport except that there can be no barriers in between.

This. Must cross intervening space means that your body actually passes through the space between locations but you don't have to actually get there via your movement powers. I assume that, if you're able to run so fast that nobody can see you, you would be able to use your momentum to get to places you normally couldn't. Kind of like how you can run across a large gap since your momentum would allow you reach there even if your feet aren't touching the ground (think like the old Looney Tunes gag of running off the cliff and continuing for a few feet but 100x more effective). If there was a wall there, you'd smack into it, but you could do it.

For the whole Flash/Quicksilver thing where you can run on water or up the side of a building, I always used Flight with the "Only when in contact with a surface" (-1/4) limitation. It basically means that you can run over any terrain and in any orientation as long as your feet are touching a solid object.

Re: Invisibility only usable in shadows or darkness

I would say the power does deserve a limitation just because every time the character uses darkness power you would be able to see him or at least where the darkness is. That can be a very tempting target for AOE attacks.

Not only that but using the darkness means you couldn't technically turn invisible that turn. You'd have to use an attack action to put up the darkness field and then you'd lose your opportunity to turn on the invisibility until your next phase.

Re: Rules Question: TWF + Rapid attack, is it this simple?

Thanks for all the replies.

 

Sorry for my late reply. I submitted this thread and there is a delay before posting because I am new, so in that time I got the question answered on reddit and forgotten about this thread.

 

As a few people pointed out, attacking ends a phase, so you can't spam multi-attacks. This was the mistake I had made.

Well, welcome to the game. Feel free to ask anything else and we'll help you out.

Re: Low-point characters, intelligence doesn't benefit knowledges?

To be honest, 50 points is pretty low for a campaign. Even games where you play normal humans, 100-150 points is generally the norm.

As for the KS, at lower levels of intelligence, spending the point on basing it off of INT doesn't make much of a difference, however if you have 20 or so INT, you get +2 to the roll for 1 point. Plus, if you're buying a lot of KS, you could go with a skill enhancer like Scholar which costs 3 points but reduces the cost of each KS by 1 point (in other words, you save points if you buy 3 or more KS).

As for house rules, the game is very open to using them. Everything in the book is pretty balanced but it's also very open to alterations and you'll find that most people have some kind of house rule to help smooth things over, to clarify something, or just save some time calculating. If your GM wants, he can alter the effect of the KS where you can add your INT bonus to the base roll for 1 point (11 +(INT/5)-). Normally that's a huge benefit, but if you're running a low-point game I think it'll be fine.

Re: Multipower Variable Slots, ever use one?

Character concept over mini-maxing points.

 

Iron Man's Strength, EB, and Flight all draw from a common power source. To use any at full power, he has to shut down the other two. He can't fly at full speed carrying a heavy object. He has to land to put everything into his EB.

I made a guy just like this. In order to keep the math part simple I basically calculated roughly how many points it would take to raise each of the powers by an increment. So I'd say that his explosive EB would take 6 points per d6 (not exact, but close enough for the math), AP EB 7.5 points per 1d6, flight 2 points per 1", etc. That way I could easily say that I want to get an 8D6 explosive EB and put the rest into his flight and then the next phase spend the 25 points for his cloaking device, get 15 inches of flight, and dump the rest into strength. Was pretty fun to use and didn't take much effort. Loved the flexibility.

Re: Rules Question: TWF + Rapid attack, is it this simple?

I don't think this is quite right. With the 'Sweep' maneuver, you can make as many attack attempts as you want...but at a cumulative -2 OCV with each attack.

 

pg 397 5th Edition(Revised) says it better than I, but basically:

 

- figure out how many attacks you want to make.

- apply an OCV penalty of -2 to every attack past the first one.

- make a separate attack roll against each target (which can be the same person or a different one, as long as they are in range).

- If you miss at any time, you stop rolling (Your attack ends).

 

With the 'Two-Weapon Fighting' you get an extra +2 to offset the Sweep penalties (as well as less penalties to your own DCV).

 

So, it would be quite possible for a character with TWO and Rapid Attack, to make a half move and attack 4 times (at -4 DCV vs. each target)

 

(You all can correct me if I'm wrong...)

I think what cptpatriot meant is that you couldn't use two INSTANCES of sweep in a turn. So you couldn't use a 1/2 phase sweep for two attacks (no OCV penalty due to TWF) and then use your other half phase to do a second sweep action for two attacks (at no OCV penalty from TWF again) to hit 4 guys at essentially no OCV penalty. You could do a 1/2 phase sweep on 4 targets, but you would suffer the -4 penalty to all targets as you stated.

To eriktheguy - The problem with what you proposed is that, even though attacks only take a half-phase to use, you only get to use one attack action per phase. As soon as you attack your phase ends and you lose any half-phases you might have left over. Meaning if you attack without moving, even though you have a half phase left over, that half-phase is lost as soon as you attack. So, what rapid attack allows you to do is sweep as a half-phase in case you wanted to do a half move to get into a better position, draw a weapon before attacking, use find weakness, or pick yourself up off the ground if you were tripped/thrown/etc. So, rapid attack and two weapon fighting would let you move a few inches to get in the middle of a group of three guys, attack each one once (at a -2 OCV penalty rather than a -4 OCV), and, if you're using 5th ed rules, you only suffer a -2 DCV penalty rather than 1/2 DCV.

Re: Counterstrike (and the lack thereis)

Counterstrike: 1/2 Phase, Cost 4, +2 OCV, +2 DCV, STR +2D6 Strike, Must Follow Block

 

If the character uses a Block, then on his next Phase he can use the Counterstrike. Same as a Martial Strike except the improved chance to hit.

Not only that but, as per the rules for Blocking, you'll get the hit in before the attacker gets his next action. This works well for sweep counters since the OCV bonus is fairly high which lets you attack 2-3 times before you start having to worry about missing.

If you're looking for something that immediately follows the attack, then you can use a damage shield HTH attack which is something that they show in the UMA (pg 131):

Counterstrike: HA +6d6. Damage Shield (+1/2), Continuous (+1), Reduced Endurance (1/2 END +1/4) (82 active points); HTH attack (-1/2), Requires a Successful Attack roll (-1/2), Not When Grabbed (-1/4) Total Cost 36 points

This example would fire off all the time as long as the user gets hit or contacts the target. If you want something to immediately follow a block, a HTH attack that has a trigger that fires on a successful block would work. Something like:

Counterstrike - +4d6 HTH Attack (or higher if you need it), Trigger (when character blocks an attacker's HTH attack, activates as an action that takes no time, resets immediately +1) (40 active points); HTH attack (-1/2) Total cost 27 points

This is something that will let you attack the instant you resolve a block since it takes no time and it will continue to stay in effect since it resets immediately. So the idea is that, as long as you're able to block attacks, you can automatically counter every time you successfully block.

Re: Short Term Time Travel

I think a limited form of Luck could also work if you use the optional method of rerolling dice with it. So if you fail a skill check or miss an attack, you "rewind" a couple of seconds and reroll a second time. Since you're guaranteed a better result using this method, as per the rules on using Luck like this, it even fits thematically since you can assume your prior knowledge of previous events allow you to plan for them so you have a better shot the second time around.

Re: Tracking Bugs

The problem with that build is that, with a VERY literal RAW interpretation, the closest you could narrow your search down to would be 1024" (2048 Meters, or about 1.2 miles) your "signal" covers an area that large and so once you are inside that area you cannot narrow it down any further.

 

By contrast the book example creates a 64 meter radius image. By the time you get in range of that you should be able to see your target and no longer need a tracking signal.

 

When you use AOE you are creating a radio "image" the size of the AOE, once you are inside the area of the image any device would tell you "you are here" even if you are still a mile away from your tracker.

Actually, according to the RAW, " (Pg 189 5th ed rev) An image that's larger than one hex doesn't have to fill the entire space available. It can fill whichever of the hexes within its radius its creator wants it to."

So,from that, couldn't it just be specified as a single hex within the whole area, ie the target's hex?

Re: Tracking Bugs

So, anyone have an answer to the question I posed a few posts back? I'm curious if I'm building the power right or if I'm missing some key rule or issue that makes my build unusable.

Re: Tracking Bugs

I had a question when I was building the power earlier today and I wanted to run it by everyone and see what people say about it.

So, my question deals with the cost of building the power. If you look at how expensive it is to build as dictated by the book (76 active points and 30 real points) I began to wonder why don't you disregard the added perception for a larger range.

My thoughts on the issue were that, images are easier to perceive the closer you are to them and harder to perceive the further away you are. So, with the book's build you have a radius of 32" (64 m) and +4 perception at that point. If you were to try and detect this at, say 128" (256 m) you would make the roll at -4 which would effectively negate the bonus you paid for. However, if you decided to not give a perception bonus to it and instead went with the following build:

Radio group images, usable as attack (+1), 1 Recoverable continuing charge lasting 1 week (+1 1/4), x1024 radius (+2 1/2) (29 active points) Set Effect (dectectable signal) (-1), IAF (-1/2) = real cost 8 points.

It seems to me that you would get a base range of 1024" for far less points which would not only allow you to detect it much further (the book build would have that be at a -4 PER roll rather than +0 as it is here) and even at 32" (64m) you would get a +8 to the roll (since you're going from 1024" to 32") to perceive it (also better than the book build). In addition to this, the real cost is a quarter of what you would have to pay for the book version.

So, I'm wondering if there's something about my build of the power that I'm not getting that would account for why the book example is four times the cost for what appears to be a weaker version of the power. Any advice would help!

Re: EB vs EB

If it were me I'd go with Missile deflection to block the oncoming attack and then have a triggered energy blast that would fire off on a successful missile deflect.

Re: Tracking Bugs

There is a Tracking Bug in Hero System Equipment Guide (HSEG) page 305' date=' which builds the Tracking Bug as:

Images to Radio Group, +4 to PER Rolls, Area Of Effect (64m Radius; +1¼), Usable As Attack (allows character to “stick” the Image to a target; +1¼), 1 Continuing Recoverable Charge lasting 1 Week (stops functioning if it gets wet or experiences severe radio interference; +1) (76 Active Points); IAF (-½), Image Only Perceivable On Special Radio Frequencies (-0), No Range (character must place the bug on the target to be followed; -½), Set Effect (detectable signal; -1).

Total cost: 25 points.

 

The signal is detectale outside of the radius but every step decreases the Perception modifier. i.e. 65-125; +2, 126-250; +0, 251-500; -2, etc.

 

The Player will need a Receiver to perceive the signal, something simple as:

Radio Perception; +4 to PER Roll, Tracking (17 Active Points); Focus IIF (-1/4).

Total Cost: 14 points.

 

To be honest I am unsure about the Tracking aspect. Tracking allow the sense to be used to perceive in this case a radio signal and track it.

 

Alternatively the Tracking Bug could be linked with a GPS (Talent - Bump of Direction) to allow it to transmit coordinates which a computer could use to show the location on a Map.

 

The HSEG has a great selection of Espionage equipment. I would recommmend having a look. Also the Hero System Skills from 5th Edition goes into more details on Bugs and Bugging in Hero System Terms.

Thanks, that works perfectly!

I'm about to start up a sci-fi campaign and one of my PCs was interesting in creating a remote tracking bug. The idea is the kind of thing you see in spy movies where you toss a small tracer onto a car or object and then are able to use an external device to determine the location of the bug. I was having trouble building it because many of the ideas I had wouldn't quite work. I ended up using Clairsentience to design the power but I was wondering if anyone had an easier, and possibly cheaper (having it work over a long distance cost a ton of points), way to build this kind of power.