The Zebediah

Re: Interpreting "Body" There are a goodly number of powers and stats that affect how hard to kill a character. Body, damage divisors, high DVC or attack blocking capability, regeneration, armor... I'm not sure if this is what the original poster was wondering about, but it would be useful to have some ort of general sense of what justifies Body, as opposed to the other options listed above, and how does this interact with things like Drains, Aids, armor-peircing, penetrating, reduced penetration, and the like? There are supposedly cross-genre writeups for pistols, swords, platemail, and kevlar vests (just to keep things in the realm of armors). Do these actually interact with each other in roughly the expected manner when your cross-time adventurers wind up in a fight that involves all of them? How well does an assault rifle tear through a brick wall? Some sense of what these things are abstracting is very helpful for making sure that the writeup choices actually play nicely with each other...

Re: Shapeshifting Hmmm....for that matter, why not make all the sense-affecting powers affect, by default (except for one pre-defined weakness, like Desolid) and limit them if you want something that only stands up to a few senses? Or perhaps simply have them apply to all normal senses as default, with avantages or adders to allow them to apply to unusual senses as well?

Re: Shapeshifting Right now, it's a rather bastardized power...a body alteration divided by sense groups, which makes it act like a sensory power. I think everyone agrees that the current version is sub-optimal, but not how to change it. Now, in a more cut-and-dry world... "turn one's fingers into lockpicks" -- means you don't need tools to pick locks, so it might be a perk ("needs no equipment for skills?"), or some kind of PSLs on the lockpicking roll for dealing with not having the proper tools. Heck, if I can make my fingers into lockpicks, why not sharpen them (changing my normal punch to a KA) or make by body as rigid and resillient as spring steel (vital for a good set of lockpicks) which would logically allow me to jump higher or allow myself to be used as a platform or something. Heck, suction-cup fingers should give me Clinging...why buy it separately? This opens the door for all sorts of shenanigans, and its "Check with Your GM" time. "fooling fingerprint scanners" is an obvious sensory deception thing. The lock uses it's discriminatory sense of touch to check you against its eidetic memory. A "touch" illusion should work just as well, I think (correct me if I'm wrong. I'd believe you) "Fitting through small openings" ... I agree. Desolid for that is one of the silliest builds ever. I'm not even convinced Desolid should be a base power, and I think it's there mostly because its so common in genre, and building it with EDM and limited Clairsentience is something of a pain in the butt. However, there's another perfectly good power for slipping under small cracks in doors: Shrinking. Or, perhaps, some variant on Teleportation (make it constant, and limit it to not pass through solid walls?). Or lots of Contortionist skill, perhaps, though I admit that one's a little odd. Hero doesn't have Ice Powers or Fire Powers...it tells you to think about what kinds of things you want to be able to do with those powers, and build them. Only in a few places (the body-affecting powers being the primary culprits) do they try to give you a special effect, and all its 'logical ramifications.' The wackiness with the odd Desolid builds is a major result of this.

Re: Shapeshifting People do seem to get wrapped up in the name...Shape Shift does make a fine "instant change" power, as well as a fine diguise spell and a number of other things I don't usually think of as Shape Shifting. Like all the sensory powers (and a huge number of other things in Hero), it has a misleading name. I think, in the Big Arguments thread, someone states that the only purposes of changing one's shape were to gain new abilities based on the new shape, and to alter your perception profile. I think that doesn't quite go far enough..."altering your perception profile" inlcudes two obvious things: Not Looking Like Yourself, and Looking Like Something Else. All the other little changes in perception profile are used as SFX for other powers. Plastic Man, for example, is great at Looking Like Something Else. He's terrible at Not Looking Like Himself, though he might have that for the touch group--you'd have to have someone blind run his fingers over the Plastic Man, er, Wall and see if he can tell the difference between that and a normal wall. Alternately, a voice scrambler or a ski mask or the "You Don't Recognise Me" powers that show up in a number of genres and games ("Mr. Nobody" from Aberrant, for example) allow you to Not Look Like Yourself, but don't really make you look like anything else. Mystique, on the other hand, is great at both Not Looking Like Herself and Looking Like Someone Else. She can even imitate what other people look like exactly, having the Imitation adder and all. Now if we had two powers, Signature Erasure and Signature Creation (or a single power that did both, called something like Signature Control) and no power called Shapeshift, this wouldn't be an issue. Changing your shape in order to move through tight spaces would be purchased as Desolidification with limitations or Shrinking or possilby short-range or constant teleportation or something. Becoming a ladder or a hang glider or whatever would require buying the appropriate powers for the form (stretching and some strength, or gliding, I'd assume)...and some type of Signature Control if you can become "just another ladder" instead of "A ladder that looks oddly like Plastic Man." If you want to be a Cool Blue Plasic Ball, figure out what senses that makes you unrecognisable in (mostly the discriminatory senses...can anyone remind me if Touch is discriminatory? I know it's not 360-degrees, which seems odd, whatever...) Ideally, I'd like to see all of that folded into a couple of Sensory Powers: Concealment would be Darkness, apply Self Only and IPE at the +2 level for Invisibility (you can't see me, and you can't tell that you can't see me) and "Shapeshift" getting folded into Images. Modify the deliniation of sense groups so the concept of "fringe" is built into them. Heck, I'd love to see Flash and Mental Illusion as aspects of those two powers, too, but that may be going for more power customization and range of powers that Hero can currently handle. Oh, PS: Suppose there was a power that did what Images did, but without the "PER roll to notice that this image is false" problem. How much of a side-effect would that be? Would it be a -1 limitation, or -1/2? I thinkn a side effect is the most obvious choice, because it's only an issue when a skill roll doesn't go your way.

I went away from the forums for a while, and not only forgot my old password, but I no longer have the email address I linked it too. But some things are interesting enough to make me give up on trying to remember what obscure reference I used and just make a new profile. I've been reading the Shapeshifting threads (kudos to TheRealLemming (is there a false one out there?) and the rest on discussions that are insightful, interesting, and civil at the same time) and had a thought, a different way of looking at the sensory affecting powers that I'd like to share, on the offhand chance that others may find them interesting or enlightening and want to help me explore the idea further. When you perceive someone in the Hero system, you notice three things: Their presence, which includes things like their more-or-less exact location. Darkness and Invisibility prevent one from accurately noting someone’s presence. Their general signature, which allows you to figure out that they’re say, human or a dinosaur or a cat. Shapeshift can change someone’s general signature, and images can create things with general signatures. Their specific signature, which allows to to figure out that they’re Dr. Strange or Godzilla or Cuddles the SuperKitten. Shapeshift with the Imitation adder allows you to change your specific signature, and Images could probably create images with specific signatures, though I suspect that would give a bonus to the PER roll to see through them. Note that if you can’t detect someone’s presence, you can’t see their general or specific signature. And I’m unable to imagine a situation where you can identify someone’s specific signature, but not their general signature--and I consider myself to be fairly imaginative. I consider the signatures thus tiered: Presence (General Signature (Specific Signature) Thus I propose the following two powers (or something like them): Concealment prevents people from detecting presences. It normally costs END, is ranged, fills one hex (+1 enhancement to increase the radius by 1â€) and costs 5 points per level. Each level covers a Sensory Group, and targeting Sensory Groups take 2 levels. In other words, it works just like Darkness in the book. Normally, Concealment has a “fringeâ€--anyone within one hex of the effect can make a PER roll to see through it. Eliminating this effect takes 1 level, and is effectively identical to buying the “touch†sense group. (I actually like a slightly modified version of the sense groups that makes the whole “fringe†thing more intuitive ... ask if you care) By applying the limitation Self Only (-1/2) and IPE (+2 for both the source of the power and the use of the power itself) we get invisibility: you can’t note my presence, and you don’t realize that you can’t. This is identical to the book cost for invisibility: 5*(3/1.5)=10 for nontargetting senses, and 20 for senses that are typically targeting. The second power is Signature Control. It normally costs END, is ranged, fills one hex (+1/4 enhancement to increase the radius by 1â€), has IPE, and costs some number points per level. Each level allows you to create (or, if chosen when bought, remove) general signatures from a single sense group, and typically Discriminatory sense groups cost double (or, if you prefer, Targeting groups, but that seems a little silly to me). Signature Alteration may take the Set Affect limitation, having only a small range of effect (any humanoid signature) for a -1/2 limitation, or only a single signature for a -1 limitation. It has the “fringe†effect like Concealment, above. Being able to control specific signatures is an adder, which should be priced appropriately to mimic the affects of imitation for shapeshift. To make it match Images, apply the Limitation: Side Effect--observers see through the signature created if they succeed in a modified PER roll. Would that be a -1 or -1/2 limitation? I expect all of you have a better feel for this than I, but it looks like a RSR-type situation to me. The limitation would also make the normal roll to detect a “fringe†automatically go in favor of the observer. To make something like Shapeshift, do not apply the side effect limitation, and instead apply the Self Only limitation. Buy appropriate levels to cover Vision, Touch, and Sound and whatever else you care about. I’m not sure whether you should have to purchase it twice (once to eliminate your own signature, once to create another signature for people to see) or if “covers over already present signatures†should be an enhancement or free or what. I’m going to play more with numbers, and I welcome suggestions. Now it becomes very clear whether to purchase “shapeshift†for your character: if you can actually make yourself unrecognizable, then you do. If you just “look different†but still have enough of your own features to be easily identifiable, don’t. It's just the SFX of whatever other powers you have. I don’t think Plastic Man had Signature Control, except possibly to the Touch (or “fringeâ€) group...I can imagine some scene where a blind passerby mistakes him for an actual piece of scenery. It would be amusing enough to be appropriate to the show. He does, however, have some limited desolid or "shrinking" or something for slithering under doors and hiding in people's pouches and the like. Similarly, “Cool Blue Plastic Ball†would be Personal Signature Control for the Visual group and the Chemical group, and the Touch group. You haven’t changed your voice, your mind, and whether people with discriminatory radio senses can actually identify you (and whether they could before) is between you, your god, and your GM. You obviously can’t use Signature Control to slip out of ropes or through small gaps...use limited desolid, or some sort or limited constant teleportation or something if you want those effects. And if you want to turn into a trampoline or a ladder or a hang glider, go buy some other powers for that effect, or try to con your GM into saying it’s a Power Stunt appropriate to your SFX. It’s now also intuitive to purchase things like Anonymity--You can tell I’m here, but you can’t figure out who I am. Things like voice scramblers, or, with IPE, the “Hi, you don’t know me, I’m Mr. Nobody" power seen in many other games and oh-so-useful for dodging the guards who have your description, or the reporters who have been hounding you, without actually giving you the ability to look like a whole other person. On a complete side note: I’d love make “background†an effective sense group, so that Concealment can be bought for it (to make someone untraceable) and Signature Control to give you fleshed out secret identities you can use, effectively replacing the Deep Cover perk. Leet Hacker Girl could use this power on others for as long as she's still sitting in front of her computer plugging holes in records, while SuperSpyMan could have a range of covers, allowing his background to make him appear to be, say, a wealthy industrialist from any country he chooses. Kaiser Sose could use it to pose as anyone (though someone who knows his face sees right through it), and the Master of Disguise can pull out the paperwork to show he is who he claims to be, whoever that happens to be today...