Yamo

Just got my copy of CKC (which is much meatier and better done than even I had expected), and I had a question. Captain Chronos has an NND Entangle attack, but I'm not at all sure how the NND Advantage would interact with the Entangle Power rules-wise. Does it make it so that the Entangle can only be broken via the exact specified defense(s)? Also, it's implied that sticking NND on an Entangle is some kind of a rules violation, but I can't seem to locate the passage in FREd that states this. Is it not there, or am I just missing it? Thanks.

As a guy with some obvious Italian ancestry, I'd love to play a character like Superguido with various bad taste abilities. Just think about it: Mafia hitman Summons! Pasta-based Entangles! Out-of-control chest hair built as Extra Limbs! Man, it would be a riot. I have a sick sense of humor and no real sacred cows, however. Uh, maybe I'm the wrong guy to ask about this... Anyway, it's only a game. If it amuses you and your players, do it. Who cares if someone in the populace at large might not like it? It's all about your fun, and fun is completely subjective.

Inspired by the latest "how to do time stopping" thread... Ladies and gentlemen, my next Champions character! ...Okay, not really, but I wanted to see the fun I could have with 350 points or less. "Time Dude" Characteristics: STR: 10 DEX: 40 CON: 10 BODY: 10 INT: 10 EGO: 10 PRE: 10 COM: 10 PD: 17 ED: 17 SPD: 12 REC: 4 END: 20 STUN: 20 Running: 6"/12" Swimming: 2"/4" Leaping: 2"/4" Total Characteristics Cost: 190 Powers: Time Freeze: Extra-Dimensional Movement (to outside the timestream, where the user is the only thing not frozen in time), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (60 Active Points), Total Cost: 60 Points Irresistible Assaults: RKA 1d6, Variable Advantage (various NND Advantages only, +2), Does BODY (+1), Variable Special Effects (+1/2 ), Affects Desolidified (+1/2), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (82 Active Points), Total Cost: 82 Points Toughness: Damage Resistance (17 PD/17 ED) (17 Active Points), Total Cost: 17 Points Total Powers Cost: 159 Total Character Cost: 349 Notes: Dispite the long-running controversy, the 5th Editition rulebook does seem to indicate that time travel EDM is the "legal" way to build time stopping. Who am I to argue? The 1d6 RKA might seem limited, but Time Dude can always make it into an appropriate NDD attack that Does BODY and kill his opponent slowly but surely. After all, time isn't a factor. Time Dude's one weakness would be that another SPD 12 character with DEX 40 or more (yeah, right...) could theoretically go first in combat and kill him with a single powerful attack before he can active his Time Freeze. The easiest way around this is simply to activate the Power long before entering into any combat situation. Well, what do you think? Most abusive ever?

Time Freeze: Extra-Dimensional Movement (back through time to the start of the user's action this Phase), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (60 Active Points), Total Cost: 60 Points plus Attacks of Opportunity: RKA 3d6, Variable Advantage (+2), Variable Special Effects (+1/2), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), (180 Active Points), Linked (-0), Total Cost: 180 Points Once you activate the Power and restart your actions this Phase, you can move around (make a Half-Move and then re-activate the Time Freeze Power), launch an attack (by using the attack Linked to the Time Freeze Power), or do just about anything else and still remain outside the time stream. Thus, the user gets to act indefinitely and nobody else gets to act at all. Simple, elegant, and completely abusive.

I think I've discovered the proper combination of Powers. I figure a BODY Drain with NND, 0 END, Persistant, and Uncontrolled is just what the doctor ordered. How's that sound? Alas, it might take time... Maybe add Autofire, too?

Here's the Power I want: Target gets hit with Power. Target succeeds with a CON Roll, no effect. CON Roll fails, target instantly drops dead regardless of its Characteristics, Powers, defenses, etc. Can it be done? How about in under 100 AP? Really, I love HERO, but the seeming inability to just make things DIE (or turn to stone or whatever) without it mattering if they're Doctor Destroyer or Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman is slightly irksome to me. Other games can do "save or die" abilities just fine. Can HERO?

I hadn't had much exposure to pre-5th Edition HERO prior to thsi last week, where I ran across an excellent-condition copy of Champions 4th at a used bookstore for only $6.00. I picked it up, of course, and by the time I was done reading it, I was amazed! More specifically, I was amazed at how dreadfully written and organized the whole book was when compared to HERO 5th. The contrast is striking. The Powers had fewer useful applications (no "Only To Protect Against X" Desolidification, for example), and their more fuzzy interactions were tricky to adjucate at best. The lack of sample Powers makes the whole package vastly less user-friendly. Not to mention in some of the character writeups, with origin story gems like this one for Starburst: "Then came the fateful day when Pulsar showed up, acting out some scheme to impress the latest media vixen. Naturally, there was an accident, and Adams was caught in the middle and acquired superpowers." Uh, yeah. Naturally. Anyway, kudos to Steve Long and company for elevating the HERO System from something that would have turned me off straightaway to to something that hooked me from page one. Good job elevating FREd so far above its predecessors!

Basically: Summon Bees: Summon 110-point Swarm of Bees (HERO System Bestiary, pg. 183), Slavishly Devoted (+1) (44 Active Points), Total Cost: 44 points

For the last time: Combat Luck, Combat Luck, Combat Luck!

Combat Luck?

If your players' enemies are smart, they're going to employ armor piercing weapons and lots of called shots at unarmored areas when facing foes in heavy plate. Think about it. And what about attacks that armor won't protect against? Strongdar the Bold's trusty platemail is going to provide no protection against mind control, mental attacks, NND poison gas attacks, and such. Hell, it might well make a bolt of lighting hurt more!

Here's my problem: How do I balance magic-using and non-magic-using characters in a HERO fantasy game? Making the magic-users buy all their spells with the standard Power rules doesn't seem to be the answer. Even if they purchase just a few moderately useful ones, it seems to require so many points that the fighting characters in the group can buy multiple 5 or 8-point CSLs for each spell the magic-users do. This quickly leads to competent wizards and absolutely GODLIKE swordswingers; an undesirable situation. The main solution I can see to this is utilizing Power Frameworks, with a sizable Variable Point Pool or all spells purchased as part of a magic Multipower. This tends to have the opposite effect, however. The VPP method is a fairly cheap and largly one-time purchase and makes mages unbelievably flexible, even if they can only change during "downtime." The Multipower method has them purchasing powerful new spells for perhaps too little, 3-5 Real Points at most. Here we have mages as gods and everybody else as peons. Any help?

Just use a custom Limitation. There's no need to reinvent the wheel over this one.

Yes, but that's still not how the D&D feat works. Rather, it allows the wizard to cast any spell he knows silently on a case-by-case basis, with the tradeoff being that he has to expend more of his available spellcasting energy than normal to accomplish it.

Than you have done well, and you shall be rewarded. With me measly $24.95 or so, at least.

Yes, I can. Do you understand the concept of a "toolkit system?" Not every rule is appropriate for every genre or individual campaign. That's rather the whole point.

Because in D&D, you can retreoctively apply the feat to any and all spells you already know. Buying off Incantations for every single spell a mage knows in HERO would require a huge amount of Experience Points and not really mirror how the D&D feat works (i.e. it doesn't automatically silence every spell you cast). Now that I think about it, though, maybe you should actually have the Invisibility version cost END, since the D&D version makes the spell harder to cast. Maybe even increased END.

Kudos for cutting right to that chase, Monolith! IMHO, it really takes the wind right out of this whole "problem." Not all of us Herophiles play superheroes. It's a brave new fully-generic world out there.

Buy 0 END Invisibility to Hearing Group with the Limitations "Voice Only (-1/2") and "Only During Spellcasting (-1/2)."

As a GM, I would rule that the character's small/light Physical Limitation (he does have one, right?) is more than enough justification to deny him the ability to use a massive sword. That's what Disadvantages are for.

This guy's already been shot down pretty good. A few more bullets in the corpse can't hurt if anyone has time to spare for it, though.

Like a smelly man in a bright costume surrendering to the nearest supervillian?

If I buy Autofire for my STR, what benefits do I reap for it? Can I now Autofire all Martial Manevers? All basic manuvers that use STR (Strike, Grab, etc)? Can I Autofire attempts to break out of a Grab or Entangle? What? Thanks.

Um, why not just buy all the hand Powers as Restrainable? Or am I missing something here?

It's a PC, yes, just not a particularly heroic one. I much prefer a good antihero.