The Hyborian

Re: How do you track END? I knew a group that tried the grease pencil route. It was just a mess, seemed more trouble than it was worth. I always have just used a spare sheet of paper to keep notes on for table top gaming. As long as your players can do basic arithmatic quickly (and I have gamed with a few folks who fell outside that category) there was no issue. My prefered method is to make a column for endurance, one for stun, and one for body for each combat, plus a box for charges where one can make tally marks. It's not pretty but is fast and effective. You can get quite a few combats on each sheet of paper. Only long term changes go on the character sheet; its a reference, not a game play tool.

Re: "Ya better talk Oculon, or you'll get the spike!" (A Super law question) The whole point was that you can have super law work however you want in your campaign. I made up some fake case law as an illustration. The Arizona test could work differntly in your campaign, and for that matter could be called the Us. vs. Protectorate of New Zeland. The point was that it can work how you want, and a bit of "case law" gives some wonderful background flavor. And if you change your mind on something later then you can always have the ACLU win a supreme court case overturning Arizona, maybe on the equal protection clause. A dash of knowledge and a generous helping of BS can turn this into a fun thing for the campaign. There is a precedent for lawyers with superpowered secret identities.

Re: Question: Multiform Limitation Didnt think about burnout/jammed. Thats an interesting idea. I would probably go with burnout, and possibly at a slightly reduced limitation value if its back after an hour of being burnedout. Burnedout/jammed powers should be useless for the "rest of the adventure", whatever the heck that means. But again, it would be easier with the specific details of when and why the character gets stuck in a single form.

Re: Question: Multiform Limitation Its hard to say exactly what limitation to give this without some more details of what happens to your character. Rather than trying to fudge another limitation to fit I would use the Limited Power limitation. As to what value, its sounds like this falls under the Conditional Power part of Limitied power, i.e. power does not work under certain circumstances. For a -1 these circumstances should be "very common" and you should be unable to use the power about "half the time", according to the rules. To get any limitaiton at all you should not be able to use the power about 1/4 of the time, which is worth -1/4 according to the Limited Power description. If its any more rare than that, its not enough of a limitation to save points, and falls under special effect. T.H.

Re: "Ya better talk Oculon, or you'll get the spike!" (A Super law question) Quite true, but the Arizona test is that the defendant understands the consequences of the verdict at trial, ie. that they could be imprisoned or executed if found guilty. The point of Arizona is that you cant plead diminished capacity because of cultural differences. In fact, the idea that I had in mind when I wrote that one up was that in the hellish neitherworld dimension that Lord Chaos came from his activites in demolishing several square blocks downtown was a "normal" activity. He's a big stinkin' demon. But Arizona establishes a doctirine that visitors to earth can be held to our standards, provided they meet the other aspects of the test. But I understand what you are saying. The point that I see lawyers jumping on is the "volitional" clause. Is an android volitional? How about a summoned creature under the control of another? But I am sure more case law would evolve as these issues came before the court. Thats the way the system works, at least in theory. I have also been wondering what happens to the things that dont meet the Arizona test. If you capture a raging demonic killing machine, but it can't undertand or communicate with humans, what do you do with it? Turn it over to animal control? Call the SPCA? There would have to be some government organization to deal with such creatures when they arise. Does a defendant who does not meet the Arizona test still have any civil rights? You could go on and on with this. Its kind of fun. If anyone out there can get their hands on an old 4th edition Dark Champions, there was a whole chapter of this stuff, plus some usefull information on law for the vigilante hero campaigns. T.H.

Re: Ring Ring go away....

Re: "Ya better talk Oculon, or you'll get the spike!" (A Super law question)

Re: Request for plot ideas for an Anarchist villain team. When I first read the title of the post my dyslexia was kicking in hard and I thought it said Antichrist villian team. I had this great idea about Pat Robertson's head exploding on national television, but I guess it wont work here. Deep Sigh. T.H.

Re: "Ya better talk Oculon, or you'll get the spike!" (A Super law question) In the tradition of of 4th edtion Dark Champions, make up some case law. A vast amount of procedural law comes from court decision, not any legislature. It can work however you want. I would say that the Government in a world with superhumans would devise special ways to doing them in, and find legal justifications for doing so. Case law would probably evolve along with the process to set the guidelines. Some examples: U.S. vs. Mark "Rasputin" Tomalov. The defendant, a metahuman with immense abilites to regenerate physical damage, was sentenced to death for several murders. His appeal to the Supreme Court was based on the "Cruel and Unusual Punishment" clause, saying that any method of execution that would actually kill him would be long and agonizing before he died. Mr. Tomalov had previously in his criminal career survived falling into an active lava flow, being fed through a comerical meat grinder, taking over 100 gunshot wounds at one time, and being thrown into a vat of strong acid restrained in a strait jacket. (Mr. Tomalov had many enemies.) The court agreed, staying the execution until the state could demonstrate a method of execution that would be reasonably quick and humane. After 6 years on death row Mr. Tomalov was executed by disintergration using a device built by the famous science hero Captain Texas. The device is now stored at a federal corrections facility in Houston, should it be needed again. Us. vs the entity know as "Ghost Dancer." Ghost Dancer, a non-human energy entity (See Arizona Vs. Lord Chaos for trials of non-human entities) was conviced of murder and sentenced to death. His court appointed legal team appealed, sighting the fact that Ghost Dancer claimed to be in fact already dead, and in any case would be unaffected by any conventional means of execution. The Supreme Court rejected the appeal, sighting the Tomalov decision, saying that non-standard means of execution could be applied to superhuman and non-human defendants, provided they were no more cruel than absolutly necessary to destroy the being in question. The state ultimatly employed a known metahuman spiritualist known as "Sun Eagle", who was able to permanently disperse the energy that composed the "Ghost Dancer" entity via a traditonal Kiowa ritual. And so forth. Have fun with it. In a Champions campaign superhuman law can work however you want it to.

Re: Got the Metal in the Meat I guess others have already said as much in this thread, but If it was going to run this I would do the following: Pre-design all available cyberware. (But be open to player requests and suggestions.) Make characters pay points for it at character creation. There has to be some limitation of what kind of cyber they are packing. Other games tradtionally have done with by setting a dollar cost per item and limiting starting funds. It doesn't cost that much for Hero characters to be filthy rich. If you blow 15 points on wealth you end up with 150 (or 1500) pts in cybergear in your body. This would be unbalancing. Further modification during play would require both cash/resources and points. The points keep things balanced, and the cash/resources keep things making sene "in game". Your street urchin should not show up with ripper claws just because he saved up some xp. He needs the money to buy them off the black market, or needs to sign on with some kind of corporation/military/crime boss, etc. that can set him up. I would have non-implanted gear be purchased with cash, not point. This kind of equipment tends to come and go in these types of games. Things like dermal armor and superhuman speed have a lasting impact on the abilities of the character, one that can not be quickly or easily matched by another. Its much easier to pick up some guns and a armored jacket than to have your eyes replaced with an artifical camera system that includes poison dart projectors. Just my .02

Re: Character growth potential and speed questions Welcome to the community. I hope you like Hero. Another thing to consider in awarding experience is the type and level of campaign you are playing. Three xp to a 50 pont heroic is a huge deal, its a new skill at resonable competence, or a meaningful increase in a stat. For a 500 point super its not quite so exciting. If it takes three play session for Captian Firepower just to get one more d6 of energy blast he might not feel like he is improving much. The same amount of experience for a lower powered heroic campaign could mean that the charcter has learned to fly jet aircraft at a professional level of skill, which would probably seem like a huge deal to them. Just be sure to fit xp awards to your campaign style. And as Gojira mentioned, players who load up on skill levels can advance their combat values rather quickly. Hero can be almost to open ened at times. Its usually a good idea to set firm guidelines for combat values, max damage and defense, and similar things, and raise these slowly over time. If your martial artist buys 10 skill levels with his first 30 xp his hand to hand combat abilites can get a little out of wack with other characters in the campaign. T.H.

Re: Linked or Multiple Power Attack? In general, I would say that Linked vs MPA is determined by how you can use the powers. If one or more of the powers can ony be used with the other, then you are looking at Linked. If they are both independant, then its a MPA. HA is a bit of a special case, however. HA, by definition, is used to raise you strength damage in a HTH attack. The rules for HA specifically state that it cant be used by itself. It MUST be used with a combat maneuver of some kind, so I would not think that linked would give you any points, its sort of already built in to the power. Also, the rules for HA also say that if you define your HA as energy, (with GM permission) then your strength damage is also energy damage for that attack. So, If you want to do both damage types in one attack, then I would buy an Energy Blast, No range. If you could use it buy itself with using a Str based combat maneuver its not Linked, its a MPA. If it can only be used when you are already making a Str attack then you could get a limitation out of it. However, If you could use it with any Str based combat maneuver, I think it might be a custome limitation, rather than linked. I would probably give you (-1/4) for it, if you could use it any time you did strength damage. T.H.

Re: Powers requiring prereq's... I would not allow any limitation for this, because you would define the requirement as a power or skill that you already had, I assume. This does not limit you in any way. You might look at "Requires a Skill Roll" as a limitation. You would have to buy the skill, and make your roll for the power to work. Its a good way to represent power "tricks", like a martial artist who can focus his Chi to perform "superhuman" feats. But simply saying that the power requires great training and focus is more of a special effect/origin than a limitation. T.H.

Re: Ring Ring go away....

Re: Ring Ring go away....

Re: Ring Ring go away.... I can see where you are going here. Its much like having a magic staff with multiple MP slots in it. The only thing that I would add is that if you went this route then the entire set of rings could be taken away (out of cambat if they are OIF) in the same time that it took to take one ring away. Essentially, if the character was out of combat and not resisting, then all the rings could be removed from him in one turn. Provided its not that hard to pull them off, I could see this. On the other hand, If each has to be taken away one at a time, one turn per ring, then the reserve would not get the limitation points.

Re: Classes of Minds I think it something of a balance issue. Unless machine minds are common in the campaign setting and machine mind controlers are as common as human mind controlers, the charcter is getting some significant defenses for free. The only way I would allow this if (1) the character had a group hunted or recuring type of enemy that was machine based instead of human based. Perhaps the alien race he is scouting for has some long standing enemy that is trying to foil his mission on earth. (2)the GM went with the option that standard metalists can still affect him, with the standard penalties of -3ECV and -10 effects. That way he still gets some advantage for being a non-human, but is not flat immune to most mental powers. Otherwise, I think it is unbalancing. As supporting example, suppose I want to play a charcter that is a mutant chimp. My character has normal human Int, can speak, use technology, etc, but I want to claim that he is an anmial and thus is in the animal mind class. If I get immunity to most mental powers based on my character origin, without paying any points for it, I am signigicantly more powerful than the next player who happens to be playing a mutant human. Now, in a campaign where there are lots of mutant animals and lots of people who use animal mind mental powers, this would probably balance out, but in the standard champions campaign I have a significant defense advantage for free.

Re: Ring Ring go away.... The individual slots would be OIF (-1/2), no doubt. If you put the OIF on the reserve as well, there has to be something that can be taken away from the character that disables the whole MP. Perhaps a mystical doo-hickey in his belt that is the "battery" for the whole thing, or something similar. To qualify for the disadvantage you have to be able to take a focus from the character that would remove the reserve points, and thus make the whole thing ineffective. The classic example is the "Utility belt". The reserve is a OIF belt. If the character looses the belt all the powers are gone until he gets it back. The individual slots can be an OIF, or some other focus limitation (perhaps some are accessable, perhaps some are inobvious, whatever.). If you lose the slot focus just the slot is gone, if you loose the reserve focus you are out of business. So, unless you want to go the "battery" route, or devise something similar, the reserve is probably not OIF. It might be Only In Hero ID, if the character has a secret ID that he does not wear his rings in, and has to take a few phases to pull them out of his pockets/utlitiy belt/velvet underwear/wherever he keeps them and put them on. If he wears them all the time then he probably gets no disadvantage points, as he always has access to the MP reserve to fuel his rings. Just my $.03. (rising costs, sorry.) T.H.

Its amazing what happens when you read the rules. Ok, after all that handwringing there is actually a specific point on this in the rules. It says if you two Powers that involve adding strength to the damage, the character may add full strength to both powers. It specifically gives the example of a HA and a HKA in the same MPA. Its pg 235 in 5th edition. Amazing what happens when I read the rules instead of blathering on. T.H. (This one is actually worth $.03 this time. Have to cover overhead.)

Re: Down with active points I think a two fisted swordsman (in a superheroic campaign) could buy a large HKA with reduced penetration, a focus (pair of swords) and define the Fx as attacking the target with a sword in each hand. You dodge the MPA issues that way. Strength by definition is a characteristic, not a power. Everyone has strength. I would only invoke the "use it once rule" if the character bought it as a power with disadvantages (a combat suit, some kind of "Hulk Out" power, etc.). That would make it a capital P power, and fall under the "one use" rule. Still, there would be very few situations where you can add strength more than once if you dont allow mulitple HA/HKAs in a single attack. The only potential "abuse" I could see would be something like a spiked club. You buy it a a linked HA and HKA, and use a MPA to smack the opponent. The attacker would in theory get his strength dammage added to the HA, and also be able to increase his HKA dammage. Or would he? Just thinking out loud. The strength would cost endurance to use in both cases. Can you pay the endurance cost twice and use the strength twice, or can you only spend the endurance once? I hate it when I think of counters to my own arguement. This is making my head hurt. I would say down with rules lawyers if I wasn't one myself. Maybe I will bounce this one off of Steve in the rules forum. T. H. possilby talking out of his a$$.

Re: Down with active points I think that it would be reasonable under the rules to declare such an attack illlegal. Its says on pg 234 5th edition that "A character can not use the same Power to attack more than once per Phase with a multi-Power attack. . .a character should by autofire or use the Combat Maneuvers Sweep or Rapid Fire." To me that means that you can only throw one HA per phase, but you could throw your drain at the same time. OK, someone is going to start a arguement about what "Power" means in the above statement. But, before someone says, "but Im attacking with five seperate powers, whats the problem?" check out page nine and the definition of Power. "When capitalized (Power), this term signifies an unusual or superhuman ability which a character can have. Powers are purchased with character points. . .When not capitralized (power) theis term signifes any superhuman ability a character may possess. Typically, players create these abilites with Powers." So, if it had been "powers" you could throw all 5 HAs a a multi-Power attack, but because it reads "Powers" you can not. Can only use the Power HA once in a multi-Power attack, no matter how many "powers" you purchase with the HA "Power". So, I think that by cannon the knuckle sandwich abuse is against the rules. Even more than normally so, just my $.02

Re: Down with active points That is a fine solution, as long as you are playing in a superheroic campaign (and Daredevil certain qualifies as a superhero). On the other hand, I would argue that baton/billy club would do for than 1d6 in heroic. By heroic rules you could never get that to more than 2d6, which is equal to a punch from a untrained normal. I wouldn't tell a skilled Arnis practioner that their one handed staff hit no harder than joe gamer throwing a bare handed punch. In skilled hands even a short staff can be devistating. Ever seen a cop go to town on someone with a nightstick? Ow ow ow ow ow. I would personally allow 3d6 for it, if we are going to set quarterstaff at 4d6. Once again, just my $.02

Re: Why can't Teleport do the Move attacks? Another way to simulate this would be a energy blast with indirect. Leap in the air, start a spin kick, "teleport" just for the moment of impact, and snap teleport back. The only issue I coud see with this approach is that the attack should set off dammage shields, which it strictly wouldn't do with an energy blast. But damage shields might be rare enough that this would not be worth any disadvantage points. Also, I see the issue that you end up where you start this way. If you want to make teleport "move bys", that is, teleport from x to z and hit target at point y in the process, you need another option. But if you have enough teleport range, I suppose you could half move from x to z and then throw your ranged attack, be it selective or indirect or what have you. Im not sure about the autofire option. I dont think you could by that for a momement power. Autofire is normally purchased on attack powers or powers which can be used offensively (pg 162 5th edtion). I think you are looking at a custom adder or advantage if you want to let people make multipe short hops with teleport. Even with this I would not allow a velocity bonus to damage. Just my $.02

Re: HERO System question One way to handle magic item issues is to make some of the badguy's gear into powers bought with focus, instead of an independant item. Evil wizard made it, only worked for said evil wizard, and if evil wizard is now in the great beyond its just a funny looking stick instead of the wand of Uberness. Lets the vilians have cool stuff without the PC's turning into a armory when they win. There are some plot devices you can resort to as well. One common, altough perhaps overused one, is the impending disaster when the villian finally buys it. You can have a vast storeroom of treasure, but when the badguy dies the roof starts to come down/the lava starts to pour in/the ancient tomb starts to reseal itself for another 1000 years, etc. Characters can grab the closest item and run like mad if they want to survive. Another way to hadle this is to come up with stories that don't end in a full tactical assualt on the villian. Its kind of D&D mentality, and thus rpg tradition, that you leave nothing but death and carnage in your wake, but epic villians are epic for a reason. You might sneak into the fortress not to pound the blackheart mano-a-mano to the bitter end, but rather to steal a particular object, rescue a person, get some information, destory the widget of destiny, etc, and then get out before certain unavoidable death arives in the form of the archvillain.

Re: Help with racial abilities A gamer that has not been scared by the D&D magic system? Its like meeting the last virgin at woodstock. I almost hate to this to you, but here I go, because Im not sure how you would do this with Hero. A wizard: A wizard has a book of spells that he knows. Each day he studies his spellbook and prepares a set number of spells. This prepared spell list must specify both which spells he can cast that day and how many times each spell can be cast. (i.e. Sleep x2, Magic Missle x1, etc.) The number of spells he can chose depends on how experienced he is. (in d20 terms his character level). The more experienced , the more spells he gets, and the higher level spells he gets. (for example, a level 5 Wizard will get 3 first, 2 second, and 1 third level spells each day, with a possible bonus to those numbers based on stats.) The wizard must wait until he reaches level 7 to cast 4th level spells, etc. Sorcerers: No spellbook. They "know" a small number of spell, and this number increases as they increase in charcter level. They also have a spells per day cap based on charcter level, but instead preparing spells ahead of time they can cast any spell on their list of a given level as they have "slots" available. So if a Sorcerer of a given level can cast 5 1st level spells per day they can chose any 5 they know, and chose "on the fly" as they go through their day. They get slighty more spells per day than a wizard, but advance to the higher level spells slightly slower. Also, the main rub is that they have a more limited spell list. Wizards can potentially know dozens, perhaps hundreds of spells, as many as they can find/buy/steal/research. Sorcerers have a more intrinsic magic, its a talent rather than a science. They only know a few spells of each level, but can chose within those freely as they need, up to their casting limits for the day. So, does anyone know how to simulate this, or has it already been writen up somewhere? (Hint Hint link) T. H.