Grailknight

For the first option, I need more data as to what the powers and reserve are. For the second, make powers 1-3 variable slots that have a set reduction when power 4 is turned on.

Voted for 7 but would've voted for 3 also.

I think a +1/4 advantage for +1 per die is in one of the APG's

Okay, this part is so jarring, I need to address it on its own. So you forbid the player from playing the PC he conceived and wanted because you feel he can't have fun with it? How is that allowing any build he imagines? Do you know he won't be happy with being the sidekick? Obviously you've never encountered that class of gamer who chooses weaker concepts just to prove they are viable.

Yes, it is unbalanced but doubling fixes all the abuses while still allowing sub-optimal build concepts. The other fair option is to sever STR from HTH damage mechanics but this is a step you've said is too radical for you. There, I agree, it would require rewriting most of the system. Agreed, I fall in this camp, B is superior to A but, without positing other powers, neither is a credible combatant without their claws.(unlike C) Those Aids and Drains may be rare but they do exist and create scenarios where A can outshine B. For me, that's proof of concept and if the player wants a valid but slightly weaker concept why should we require min-maxing. No, the dissonance from my point of view is that HTH attacks are directly affected by STR. This should be true across all genres. Heroic games impose the STR minimum to reflect that no one is paying points for the actual weapon. Otherwise, everyone would swing a greatsword in each hand since 10 STR is more than adequate to pick one up. Powers paid for with points avoid this but should still be subject to doubling. The HKA utility is the limited by points spent on HKA. I'd be fine with this as a limitation but it doesn't affect your issue with the adding damage rules. It legalizes C and gives a cost break to HKA to the higher STR characters. Player A is much sadder. Again, I'd be fine with this with the stipulation that doubling still applies. Just like HKA you should pay more for STR for greater STR utility. Yes, this makes A even more inferior but he's inferior by choice. If the player enjoys that build he shouldn't be forced to min-max. Because he is using a ranged attack which operates under a different mechanic. Taking a Limitation on a power subjects you to the bad effect of that Limitation. It never gets to add any benefits that a mechanic it now superficially mimics gets. That requires an Advantage. And adding STR is still a mechanic that only applies to HTH(both STR and HA) and HKA. We use this particular mechanic so often that we forget that Range, Flash, Entangle, Mental and Adjustment powers also have more or less unique mechanics that don't apply to each other. We also under use Martial Arts as the universal adder to all Attack Powers.( The non-Attack powers will have to muddle on with just Pushing and Haymaker)

I feel the cognitive dissonance is the main concern here. It was also the strongest argument for retaining figured characteristics which addresses all your points save the last, the one we're debating. Except that's not why the two are different. In d20, the dagger and longsword are both 1-h HTH weapons. They can be used with 2-weapon combat or with a shield and the 2 options are considered a balanced trade-off of DPS vs AC. The 2-h greatsword doesn't get either of those options and got the +50% STR to compensate.Play balance is the over-riding factor here. In Hero, 2-weapon, 1-h+shield and 2-h are more balanced because attacks per round are limited. Further balance is added to real weapons as STR minimums. Extra STR above the STR minimum applies equally to all weapons until we reach double the weapon's DCs so any character of a given STR gets equal utility from any weapon. And here's where we differ. It is a problem because the character with the 5 pt HKA and high STR didn't pay the points for the utility with the HKA. Let's go back to our examples, fixing the problem with doubling A- Has 15 STR and 3d6 HKA claws. He's built on the concept of big claws. He doesn't have the STR of the others but retains more damage in the event that STR is drained or suppressed. Because he spent more on his claws he gets more HKA if STR is aided or boosted B- Has 30 STR and 2d6 HKA claws. He built toward optimum balance from the beginning but is dependent on his claws against most opponents. Aiding or boosting STR has no effect on his claws but drain and suppress hurt. C- Has 55 STR and 1pip HKA claws. He's the case that doubling was made for. The HKA is clearly an afterthought because you would never consider it as a main attack but does add flavor on occasion. He uses STR and is vulnerable to drain/suppress and helped by aid/boost. All the characters are viable but A has less universal utility while C has one less DC. But each character does have utility with HKA based on points spent on HKA and STR utility lines up with the points spent on STR. If you use the 6E rules, C is clearly superior to the extreme that A and B are relegated to concepts. I am satisfied with the fix that doubling gives. We may have to agree to disagree at this point.

I've never insisted that Mental Powers be one shots against credible opponents with normal EGO. Note that this would be more equitable than what we have now and it would also be in genre. Heroes get controlled into attacking their allies all the time. You're the one who keeps asserting this point. I do feel they should have the equal capacity to one shot normals which they expressly can't mechanically. In my 40+ years of comics and movies, I can't recall one instance where a pure Mentalist failed to control a normal target. Nor can I recall any instance in game where a non- Mentalist had to blast or punch a normal more than once unless he wanted to ensure death. On the actual HKA/HA point, you insist that powers should be evaluated on a get what you pay for basis but can only make your point by using a synergy of two powers. Guy with normal STR does pay less than Guy with superhuman STR. He then pays more to have a larger HKA. If both are drained to 0 STR or boosted to 45 STR, normal STR guy has the larger HKA as it should be because he paid more for the HKA power. Why do you insist that the synergies between two powers be perfectly balanced in all cases?

Agreed on the first point. Mostly agreed on the second point. The issue with advantages is prorating the non-advantaged power to the advantaged power. The third point is where I'm confused somewhat. Muscle powered HTH weapons(both HA and HKA) function in conjunction with STR in the real world and in every other game system I've seen. You can unlink them but I can't see a logical reason for it and I disagree that it needed for play balance(for which logic need not necessarily apply). In the first case, the mechanic is unchanged throughout the editions(except where it concerns doubling). In the second, which makes KA a meta-power. You have to,decide if the meta-power is default range or hth(and redo the rules advantages made to simulate the non-default) and reprice all equipment based weapons with balance for campaigns where both exist. Lastly, if we're using purchasing powers separately as the standard, then the synergy between two powers shouldn't come up. Doubling affects HKA/HA based on how many points you put in HKA/HA. The character that purchases should be able to double it for more indepedent of the the power/skill used to double it, the character that purchased less doubles for less.

I agree in part but I'm continuing because: I don't take it personally when someone disagrees with me in a civil manner. I'd stop if my stress level was being raised. I'm learning something. I'd never thought about how many attack mechanics Hero has and how they could confuse newcomers before. We might come up with something that improves the game for someone.

WTG on cherry-picking the points you reply to, and on moving the target of the argument in your reply. You didn't address any of the instances where a Mental concept is less viable that others. Instead you used the one example where the Mental concept was effective, posited a heavily disadvantaged Mental Power and changed the required effect level. So, Mental Powers (and their "limited potential effectiveness") are only useful when the more direct options are not viable? Sounds like a concept that is not getting equal value for the points. How would we solve that? Oh, I see, give them a cost break and let them effect unimportant targets, then use effective powers to combat the real threats. Doesn't quite seem competitive with a Blaster, Lightsaber or Chewbacca's STR. How do you reconcile your 2nd paragraph here with the 1st? For me it's simple, the concept of "Guy with normal STR and claws" is not as good all-around as the concept of "Guy with superhuman STR with claws" unless claws have as much all-around utility as STR. Normal STR guy paid more for his HKA so he gets to equality for HKA usage but he doesn't hit as hard with just STR. That's what he paid for. 55 STR guy shouldn't get equal usage for his HKA as the other two. He didn't pay for it. He does get the benefits of more STR. To get a better ruleset. We both agree that the 6th rule change is a problem, the difference is to me what we had in 2nd-5th was workable while to you it's just a change to a rule that needs discarding in toto for another method.

I have experience with Christougher's option and I much prefer it for three reasons. It puts all Poisons on equal footing by using a mechanic that isn't necessarily all or nothing. It puts all PC's/NPC's on nearly equal footing while allowing them to shine within their specialty. The deadly poison, high Body guy has the best chance of surviving, truth drug, the EGO guy, fear toxin, high PRE man will win through. It gives multiple methods of stopping it. If you're using DoT then you define an antidote. Lacking the antidote you can Aid/Healing to counter the effect or Power Defense UoO to mitigate it. Letting CON play a part in resisting is possible. One house rule we used was to make Power Defense a figured based off average CON+BODY/10. In 6th, I'd probably use CON/5 alone, since it's kinda orphaned without figured characteristics.

No, I listed Martial Arts. Haymaker and Pushing as universal methods of Adding Damage. Haymaker and Pushing provide a one time increase to the DC's of a power with a hefty penalty incurred. In a sense, they do avoid doubling, but do so by changing the actual value of the power involved beforehand. Doubling is still there but the cap is raised.Thus you can do 8d6 with a 10 STR(Pushed to 20)+Haymaker. Martial Arts is still subject to doubling unless you use the exploit. As to HKA being an orphaned mechanic, thats an illusion you get from 30+ years of using the system. STR/HA, Blast, HKA and RKA are the subset of Attack Powers that we use to model real world things. They are so commonly used and advantaged in-game, that we forget that these are the only four powers that are resolved against PD/ED using OCV/DCV. There are just as many Mental Powers that use an entirely different mechanic and other Powers that use other variations/combinations for resolution. This is one reason newbies find Hero complicated, that us veterans tend to gloss over. Will respond to Part Deux later, sinus infection is making sleep and therefore thinking difficult.

You need to set the expectations in and out of game. Out of game, talk to your players and get a clear consensus on the genre. You don't want one side thinking DC:TAS while the other is thinking DC:HoV. ( trust me, you dont ) In game, if you want them to Pull their Punches, there needs to be some non set-up villains they can beat while doing so. If you establish that every scenario won't be a battle against their mirror images repackaged then they'll likely go easier on band of rowdy juvenile supers or the gang of B-List villains who team up for a job. Have the police take down one of those escaped genetic experiments and then get trashed by another, just to inject some uncertainty. If the PC's are amenable have some comedic villains.( be very careful here, CLOWN and Foxbat are not for every group ) You'll get more lighthearted players if everything isn't a near death, end of the world situation.

OK, gonna seperate these first two points because I feel they address a different issue. There are plenty of situations where the interaction of Powers with Normals is vital to the PC's and NPC's. In those situations, Mental Powers ( without the benefit of surprise ), aren't truly equal for cost vs effect. Just games I've played or GM'D include. Villain/Renegade Hero Campaigns; The Blasters and Bricks are good to go against the authorities. They can put down one(or more) targets per phase with little trouble. The Mentalist can't count on his powers to do so reliably. He can use Cumulative, but then it costs him two attacks per one compared to the others and is still vulnerable to a roll in the 6 or 7< range. Fantasy: How much does that Jedi Mind Trick cost? Undercover/Secret/Espionage Heroes: The guard/agent problem again, the damage types knock them unconscious and guards can't break equally priced Entangles on their own, The Mentalist has to hope a one minute distraction is good enough. Post-Apocalyptic/Rebellion Worlds: Normals vs Monsters/Supers- The Blaster/Brick/Slasher requires no strategy in his confrontation with the PC's. The Controller/Corrupter needs an devious plot or some controlled agents. ( Not a violation of genre but an example of unequal utility for the points) And that's my main point, in genre Mentalist's can easily take over Normals, even in the middle of a firefight or natural catastrophe. They are feared for the behind the scenes control they exert. In actual game play, Normals are not significantly more controllable than Supers and any control lasting more than a day is very difficult to achieve. Okay, I understand your point here, but it never comes up for me. The only way I see it becoming an issue is if one character is forced into one build and another is not. Otherwise this is an instance of writing a character to a certain concept that is willfully done by the player, not coerced by the GM in some attempt to restrict one concept over another. If the player wants something that is not optimized, I'll allow it so long as his character is viable for the campaign. The 15 STR character has a concept chosen by the player. The points saved on STR will be used to buy other things, like say a Multipower with 3 attack slots ,one of which being the HKA. And again all concepts are not equal at equal points. Take three Bricks. Even after 30+ ears of rules revisions, Stupendous Man with his 60 Str is just better off points wise than Big Boy with Growth or Obstacle with Density Increase, yet all three are valid concepts that players freely choose to play and build. Until we can come up with a perfect ruleset, I'm willing to settle with what we got, especially in the case of things in the player's control. Make it better and I'll be near the head of the line to switch.

You can abort to any Defensive Power.

The second guy is tough but there can be handled. Use Flash, AVAD vs Flash, Darkness, Tunneling, or auto-fire as mentioned above. Since his bubble is Mobile, Bricks can grab and throw him vs 3 DCV. Other Mentalists can attack him and he loses his attack when he has to reset his Barrier. He is far more vulnerable to agents than most supers if very tough vs one or two opponents.

What they said. I should have elaborated more but was falling in and out of sleep.

Heh, you're the one who cried about equal utility for equal points. I accept that not all concepts on equal points give equal utility. How often do your PC's want to Jedi Mind Trick some guards? How big a threat is that Mentalist villain when mechanically he can barely convince a guard to let him past? And this is assuming 60 point active powers, in a 50 AP or 40 AP games the brick or blaster can still one shot normals just fine, the mentalist can barely get a date. They don't get an inferior build, they get what they chose to purchase. The costs are the same for everyone in every legal build. I didn't give any exceptions to doubling. Please point out where I wrote something that makes you think I did. Sure you can add those two. It makes sense that if you can add STR to HKA or HA the reverse would also be true. But in this case you wouldn't do a 14 DC HKA, you'd do a 70 STR punch. See, largest AP power is base. Also, could you please stop using the 1e exploit to defend your position. It was called an exploit for good reason, was out of the game for 20+ years, doesn't apply in non-super games and even the new rules which reinstate it posit using doubling as an optional rule. I think you are the person wedded to an orphaned mechanic here. The game system already has mechanics for increasing your attacks. You can Push, you can Haymaker and you can buy a Martial Art to use with range or HTH. None of those involve buying more of the attack. Of course if you want to increase the actual power, you have to buy more. Builds that have in large part remained basically unchanged since 3rd/FH1. And which use a mechanic that has been unchanged until a 1st exploit was reinstated in 6th. I missed the part where you decried these as unbalanced and unfair. I stated my rules in three sentences and made one clarification above that pretty much covers a vague instance. I'm still waiting to see your new rules for weapons and adding to powers. I'm open to better ideas but I need to see details so I can grok the ramifications. That's because HKA and RKA are two separate powers.And there are Metarules involved here. One that makes the more expensive build the vaild one, to keep things like your munchkin example in check and another more pertinent one that says Don't use another power to simulate a power that already exists. They're both on 6e2 page 296. Or if you insist, KA is a Metapower that must choose either ranged or HTH at purchase and can add the other as an Advantage. As I stated earlier, I believe HA and Blast are the non-killing options of this Metaset choosing ranged or HTH at purchase also. Yes, STR minimum came along with FH1. Notice how it kept and if anything gave more teeth to the doubling rule. The idea for HA was born from those normal damage weapons. They also used doubling and STR minimum. HA's were also subject to doubling in 4th but went to some strange places in 5th and 6th. No one was concerned because the rules worked. I guarantee you HA in 4th was cause for concern with its 3 point/die cost.

An AP attack of any kind will halve any non-hardened defense.

Even with the exceptions, I probably leave Superman at Very Common, Strong. He showed great mental anguish after Pocket Universe(nervous breakdown) and remorse over Zod. Plus, in the comics he didn't kill Manchester Black even after being subjected to Lois' death.(an illusion he truly believed was real)

The powerset isn't campaign appropriate just because a vehicle can buy it cheaper. Figure out how much the equivalent level of PD/ED would cost a character and hold him to that total plus 1. Or be nice and and restrict him to 12 PD/ED. He'll still bounce campaign average attacks but will take some damage which his auto repair will fix.

But the NPC doesn't have to be a Super to get that effect. Any Incompetent Normal with a 13 EGO has that 50 percent defense. A punch from 60 STR will leave said Normal dying,the Mind Control may not cost them an action. I think my proposed solution was fairly simple also. Reinstate doubling and apply it to HA also with the stipulation that the largest Active Point component is the base power. Martial Arts, Pushing and Haymaker are the unified mechanics for adding damage to anything Your way simplifies HKA for Supers but doesn't give a method for adding damage. It also requires the rewrite of every HTH weapon in the system not purchased as a power since they use the doubling rule and the additional STR minimums. They even use that system for those normal damage weapons bought as HA. Curious that. No, you don't get STR adds to damage by putting No Range on a power. You get a point savings from applying a Disadvantage. The Str Minimum rules imply that STR adds to HKA(and HA) and the cost was changed in 2nd to fix an exploit that was overpowered. 6th got it wrong by changing it back.

Again, I must ask, which 20 point CVK we're talking about? Is it the Very Common, Strong or the Common, Total? IMO, they are very different.

I need a MultiLike button.

That's the way I see it also, but I concede that it is not in RAW.