Ganesh

Re: A subtlety of duplication You might try Multiform, with one form using Always On duplication to "be" several characters. It's a little double-dippy, but seems to be the closest Hero comes directly to this concept. Alternately, (but more strangely), you might "summon" several "slavishly loyal" alter egos with "lockout" against all your other powers except a linked EDM (or desolid and invisibility, I suppose), and buy Mind Link (extradimentional) for everyone. feedback damage may be appropriate for this concept.

Re: How many different ways to mitigate damage? <boredom caution: metagaming be here> DocSamson: sounds like, conceptually, you're taking about a character with turn-by-turn "ablative DCV." That's a neat concept, especially as it makes him weaker to lots of people piling on attacks, and I think defenses that are weak to a commonly-available but esoteric attack strategy are neat. On a more metal level, I tend to think of defenses/damage mitigation as falling into six broad catagories, only one of which hasn't been mentioned so far: First, Be Tough. This is where more Stun, PD, ED, and DR come in. This is notable for having a pretty steady effect; increasing the damage being thrown at you results in you going down predictably faster. The "offensive" version of this is doing thing to reduce your enemy's damage output. In hero, this tends to be divided into things that prevent constant amounts of damage per attack (PD, ED, etc.) and those that straight-up increase your capacity for damage (DR, more stun, con, and bod, etc.). Second, Make Fewer Attacks Land. This is often accomplished through DCV, block, missile deflection, and the like. Offensively, you can reduce the opponent's OCV or try to stun them so they lose attacks. Defenses of this type are probabalistic: if this is your soul defense, then you're at the mercy of the dice. You might go on forever, or the opponent might get lucky and you're out in the first punch. Third, Be Untargetable. Desolid, Invisible/Images/Shapeshift, various Mind Control powers, and putting things between you and the attacker (like a forcewall or a vehicle) are good examples in hero. These generally are negated by opponents with the specific workaround, i.e. "affects desolid," extra targeting senses, resistance to mind control, or "indirect" attacks. Sometimes they can be defeated by cleverness -- there's always a loophole in Desolid, for example, and poorly-worded Mind Control can leave some attack options open while eliminating others. Some of these powers also can be used UAO for "spot" defenses -- that guy you just desolided won't be able to target anyone until it wears off. Fourth, although it's sort of similar to the above, is to Be Far Away. If your attacks have better distance and your speed is better, you can outmaneuver him. It's defeated by enemies having ranged attacks and more movement than you do. Things that slow down your opponent, root him to the spot, or reduce his range also fall in this category, as do things that launch him across the battlefield. Fifth, Healing. Regeneration slants long combats towards to regenerator (so it's best to make combat fast if you're fighting one), and there's a reason that FPS and tactical games come with the advice to shoot the healer first. Sixth, and probably conceptually the weirdest, is to do something to limit the maximum damage you can take from a single attack. The "easiest" way to do this in Hero is probably with lots of Duplication or Followers -- if a hundred instances of Multiple Man are fighting the Hulk, it doesn't matter that Hulk can one-shot KO any one of them -- it'll take him a hundred attacks. Going for multiple hit effects is the way to go against this. Other instances of this sort of weirdness include triggered healing set up to leave you doing the Chubawumba (I get knocked down but I get up again, I get up again, I get up again...) or, I don't know, an instant absolute defense that does damage to you every time you use it? Some games have this as a feature of tanks: some kind of Last Stand or Stand Tough power, useful near the end, that will keep you alive through one onslaught, even if it leaves you with only one hitpoint. That's not counting the notion that a good offense is the best defense, since "end the fight faster" isn't exactly damage mitigation in the same sense. So, to summarize: Be Tough; predicable solid defenses, only beat by More Damage or the occasional "armor piercing" effect. Don't Get Hit, which is a random hit prevention. This can go well or poorly depending on the dice. Be Untargetable, which has many specific subtechniques. Each is defeated with a specific tactic, or through outclevering your opponent. Be Far Away, or the Maneuvering defense. Loses to being outmaneuvered. Healing, which is defeatable mostly by trying to prevent the circumstances that allow healing (by kacking/dispelling/suppressing the healer, or not giving the regenerator the time he needs). and Damage Caps, where you prevent your opponent from being able to do more than a certain amount of damage per attack or per round, and is sort of the opposite of Be Tough.

Re: Gadget Pool: odds & ends Could you make it so the control cost of the pool "costs END" which is pulled from an END reserve that he refills by stashing gadget-y stuff? That was he's only burning through the reserve whenever he makes a new gadget, which seems appropriate.

This hit me today. It seems so simple and elegant that it must be wrong. I'd imagine the special effect might be, say, a wave of sudden nausia that causes the target to pause. Dispel Constitution, 20d6 (60 ap), -1/4 reduced penetration. 1 dc Energy Blast, penetrating, standard effect (should do 1 stun, period), linked to the above attack. Given that constitution is 2 points per, you basically roll 10d6. If the total exceeds the target's CON + Power Defense, their Con is dispelled (reduced to zero) and they take 1 stun damage (more stun than their con) and become Stunned. This averages hitting someone with a CON of 35, more if you haymaker, and will always take care of a standard NPC. The only lasting effect, once their turn of recovering from being Stunned is over, is 1 stun damage...which is about as harmless as you can get. Note: if you consider CON to be a "defensive power" and thus be difficult to dispel by default, you might be left rolling 5d6, which only averages 17.5...hits many heroes and but misses most bricks. Haymaker would push it up to about 21. You could stun someone with a CON of 30, but it's unlikely. This seems far to good to be true. What am I missing?

Re: Level of success I ran in a system for a while that involved wanting to roll below certain numbers, but so long as both were a success, the high roll won the tie. Less subtraction, same statistical result, and if the concept of "margin of success" wasn't already blindingly intuitive to you, worked just as well. One of my players described it as a "The Price is Right" system -- you want to be as close as you can, without going over. Probably not surprising, but I like sean's system -- it uses the distinctive Hero "counting body" system to good effect. It might be more intuitive when used with a "roll over" skill system rather than a "roll under" skill system. That might also involve a POV change: are high rolls misses, or hits? Depends on what the system says... The ultimate extension, however, would result in difficulties as static numbers that you're trying to beat on a variable pool of dice that goes up with skill level, probably translating +1 skill to +1 on the roll, +2 skill to +1/2d6, +3 to +d6...and then skill rolls and damage rolls would look just the same, which is a great or terrible thing depending on who you ask.

Re: Skill Trees (A New Framework?) Another concept that involves a little more work going on in the background could be to borrow from Exalted, and their "Essence" attribute. You have your "skill tree" powers. They are part of an elemental control. You then make as a condition of the EC that it's value, in points, is equal to the number of "skill tree" powers, maybe times something, maybe plus something. Wait, do ECs need to be half the size of the smallest power, no greater? Because that would fubar this idea. You might still, for some types of "skill tree" effects, be able to use multipower slots, and the reserve is the thing that goes up in proportion to the slots, so you can buy more powerful "skills" only once you have a fair number of "skills" to begin with. So if the reserve starts at 10 points, and you put the cost of the slots into the MP as well, you have a nice, moderately-tiered growth. Finally, you might be able to do something with lockout, where in order to buy the (pre-built) high-powered Flame Strike, you need to have at least 40 points of flame powers to be locked out when you use it. I'm just throwing things at the wall here, to see what sticks...

Re: Line of Sight, Alright? I can stiiiiiiiill smell yoooooooou! ::maintains darkness field:: OK, I'm a little punchy. But the notion of smell being used as the "LoS" sense makes things a little strange. For example, you can generally (if your nose is good enough) smell someone well after they've left the room. Tracking is based on this.

Re: Everything's a Power Probably more of a "summon." Most people buy the power when it comes up, and pay off the points with DNPC. Although some choose Hunteds instead...

Re: Everything's a Power You've mentioned maneuvers, which have struck me as the hardest thing to rectify in an "everything's a power" system. They do look like some weird kind of multipower or something, and I haven't any good idea of rectifying them. My own efforts divided everything into Powers and Skills; powers had incremental and comparative effects, while "skills" included things with simple on/off toggles: movement modes, sense groups, things you can deflect. Sensory Manipulation (my catch-all sense-affecting power) kind of straddled the two.

Re: Buying their souls + lots of PRE (or a Mind Control), only v. those who have sold their souls to me? It's a more "corporation" style version of what selling one's soul looks like, but could be accurate...and gives an immediate advantage, with ways of (and a reason for) escaping the contract before death. Possibly combines with a Demonic Status perk. Those who do give up their souls may also aquire a distinctive feature, only to those who see souls, of being branded by the one who has purchased their soul. That's on the CP level, and would be a minor radiation accident -- actually, getting a "demonic mark" commensorate with the CP of perks, skills, or powers gained by such a demonic bargain might be neat.

Re: SFX for Darkness with IPE? In my mind, Darkness, Images, Shapeshift, and Invisibility are all basically aspects of the same power. (flash would be too, but the mechanics are so different that lumping it in is exceedingly tricky) Darkness is images that are impenetrable (no contested skill rolls), but doesn't generate a "fooling" image -- anyone looking at (or hearing, for the "It's quiet -- too quiet" effect) or whatever notices that the sense is entirely blocked. It's area effect. Images is more flexible than darkness, as it can create stuff. It, however, requires contested skill rolls. It's also area effect. Invisibility is darkness, personal only, IPE. Imagine, if you will, invisibility IPE...not particularly sensical, right? Shapeshift is mostly images, personal only. Extend these a bit, and you can imagine hitting someone with an illusion (not area effect) so only they can see it...hey! That's mental illusions! attack darkness would be something like "suppress sense." So I think that darkness, IPE, would be an invisibility effect, and give it the invisibility "fringe" rules unless invisibility to touch is also bought. Those effected by the darkness can't see, can't be seen, but nobody notices that there's someone/thing there who can't be seen. the only ultimate mystic book talks about using images "obscuring only" for similar cross between images and invisibility.

Re: Why divide by 5? On the other side, I once (in a fit of frustration at breakpoint rounding) considered making it so attributes could only be bought in multiples of 5. CV and ECV were based on (characteristic/5), but every +5 dex also got you a 5-point combat skill level, and every 5 points of ego a 5-point ego combat skill level. This had the problem that non-mentalists, having nothing else to do with their ego combat levels, would put them all into defense all the time. I hadn't worked out a non-kludgy way of fixing that. If you divide the average stat by 5, this then means that it's added directly to all skill rolls, gives you that much PD or ED or rec, etc. You also wind up with a normal range of 2, 3, or 4 for normal characteristics. You can do the white-wolf thing, if you want a gentile but ever-increasing disincentive for NCM characters to buy high characteristics.

Re: "Understanding limitations and advantages" This only really becomes a problem when you're mixing PC and NPC vulnerabilities. For an NPC flaw example, imagine our hypothetical "Invasion from Krypton" campaign, where most of the high-level baddies have problems with little green rocks. In this case, such attacks should be purchased as normal attacks, with an "Only affects Kryptonians" limitation of appropriate value for the campaign world. For a PC flaw example, we have Superman, who takes a vulnerability, or a susceptability, or both, and thus keels over whenever exposed to chunks of his exploded home planet. Now the difficulty arises when you have an "Invasion from Krypton" campaign, and someone wants to play the noble Superman, who has gone native and sided with the earthlings against his brothers. Using susceptabilities and vulnerabilities and whatnot leads to math that doesn't work out...he winds up either taking set amounts of damage when other kryptonians are taking damae based on the powers his friends have bought, or taking more damage than other kryptonians, or other such problems. I'd imagine, as long as Supes is the exception, that the best way to handle him in that case is to give the character the Physical Limitation "Kryptonian Physiology" -- with frequency and severity based on how often his teammates have the opportunity to use kryptonite-based weaponry (and either do, causing him problems, or don't, causing them problems) and just have him be damaged/affected by things that only affect kryptonians, as normal. Now, if it's a band of kryptonian rebels and one guy is playing the human, you might not have kryptonite-based attacks be limited, or not as much, not allow Kryptonians to take a Physical Limitation, and just have humans all buy enough armor, or desolid, or something, limited to only protect them from kryptonite-sfx effects (other than being beaned by actual chunks of mineral). I don't know what one would do if one were running an "Invasion from Krypton" campaign and about half your life-forms were kryptonians and half weren't. Use GM discretion and pick something, I guess.

Re: VPPs and Game World Logic I don't know if anyone has suggested this, but buy your flight liked, to enough TK to lift your character? This actually mimics the logic behind "it takes a lot of power to lift myself and fly." I've played around with the notion of a GM-level dial to affect "rare or difficult powers in game world paradigm" with a Scarcity (stop-sign) advantage -- powers that are rare and difficult must take a +1/2 or +1 advantage that doesn't actually grant any additional game effect: it just means you have a power construct on the limits of what's physically possible (or mechanically allowed) in the game world, and you can expect the power you have to be rare, or, at higher levels, unique. I've never thought about applying this to specific characters and their power paradigms, rather than a whole world. It seems a little less sound.

Re: Heroic Characteristic Maxima? Two thoughts: There's the limitation "real weapon" that can be taken on some equipment. I was in a FH 1-shot at one point where we got a certain number of points to spend on equipment, and someone decided to build a magic sword (well, set of sword-chucks, actually) without the Real Weapon limitation. We wound up using it to chop through a stone door at one point. It took a time-lapsed scene, as any body getting through was unlikely, but as the sword wasn't a real weapon, he didn't have to worry about the edge dulling or the blade breaking or any of the problems a real weapon would have had. NCM can be thought of as the "real human" limitation on your character...the equvalent of having Aspect zero in Nobilis, if you're familiar with the system. Taking it can be interpreted as saying "I'm limiting myself to what human physiology is capable of. The rest of you have fun being alien cyborg mystic whatevers, I'll struggle under the burden of being Merely Human." A lot of this is having a less-effective stat build, which looks to me to be Frequently, Slightly limiting, or Infrequently, Severly limiting when you wake up in the hospital -- as a couple people have pointed out is various ways. This brings me to the second thought... This has to do with NCM, not particularly with the NCM limitation. Characteristics are Efficient. There's really not much argument against this. Dex and Strength are really quite good buys. Good enough that some people argue they should cost more. Other stats are also pretty efficient -- doing the same things that any primary characteristic does by purchasing secondary characteristics and skill levels tends to be a little more expensive (Com may be the exception, and there's no Power or Skill that mimics certain Characteristic effects). Each Characteristic, with its little halo of figured effects, is like a little mini-framework unto itself. NCM limits the efficiency you get out of those characteristic "mini-frameworks." You only get to buy so much, and then you start paying through the nose. Somewhere between Strength 20 and 40, you've payed "what you should" for all that strength and figured characteristics. Limited characteristics, on the other hand, don't give you any figured attributes. Thus it makes more sense for them to not fall under NCM. Not complete sense. But more.

Re: Problem with Missile Deflection Hmm...area attack already can't be missile deflected, unless they take a limitation. I can see two ways of making an attack difficult to deflect, or undeflectable: And "undeflectable" advantage (compare to 1-hex area, nonselective, with a limitation that it only hits one target...would this approximately a +1/4 advantage? Mirrors nicely the -1/4 limitation, "can be missile deflected.") OCV levels, "only v. missile deflection," which is probably a fairly huge limitation. -3? So a OAF gun could by +4 OCV v. missile deflection for 5 points, and a real lazer (as opposed to much-slower-than-light sci-fi "lazers") might have +8 or more v. deflection, or just be undeflectable.

Re: Luck Power Advantage Idea

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks? Heh. If you want to be able to take Body without taking Stun... two different colors of dice, one for stun total and one for body total. Don't count body -- the number of pips on the body die is the body damage. No, variation is too large...half the pips on the body dice is body damage. So for normal EB, you get 1 body die for every 2 stun dice (+1 pip of body, if there are an odd number of DCs). 60AP EB? that's 12 dice of Stun...and you roll 6 body dice (average 21/2 = 11, maximum 36/2=18, minimum 6/2=3). Haymakering? Add four stun dice -- and two more body dice. Want to make an attack more or less lethal? Add (or remove) more body dice. Have an NND? If it doesn't do body, leave the body dice alone. If you want, you can use d3s instead. A little more body, then -- the above example averages 12 body, even. But it might be nicer to do away with half-dice entirely, and make everything just d6s. If you want more variability, have an advantage that "doubles body" -- body dice aren't halved. Now that's a killing attack!

Re: Transform - Do We Need It? well, that's kind of what I'm wondering -- I've already had some fun with house rules replacing Elemental Controls with lumps of self-only, 0-end Aid, all powers with this SFX, appropriate number at a time, limitation: affected by any negative adjustment that affects any power this is aiding. The flexibility of adjustment powers was what originally caught my eye about HERO. If the VPP of Multiforms is a specific form of "approved" abuse, would some form of adjustment power, which seems the intuitive way to build a "power stealer," be more balanced?

Re: Transform - Do We Need It? I've been thinking about this (dangerous, I know...) ... basically, you're talking about allowing the basic adjustment powers to add and remove disadvantages. The one thing this doesn't do that transform does is permanent effects, but Permanent is dangerous -- it's an absolute effect, and we all know HERO has a positive allergy to absolute effects. But I'm curious how you would cost this. It sounds dangerously powerful -- giving people vulnerabilities, dependencies, and the like is a mighty effect. My off-the-cuff instinct would be to say that adjustment powers that grant new disadvantages are double cost, and that the reduced fade rade advantage is doubled as well. Oh, and if you're making someone vulnerable to a power or SFX, it's defined to be Ubiquitous, unless there's noone in the party who actually has that power or SFX, and no way for anyone in the party to carry it. And the other question, of course, is that if an adjustment power can grant a disadvantage, how about granting a power? What would that do to the system?

Re: Implicit Mental Senses

Re: Implicit Mental Senses To be fair, physical limitations like "mind blind" -- cannot determine when under mental assault -- can exist without a notion of a mental sense group. The effects of the "No Sense of Touch" physical limitation aren't obvious from the rules, they come from understanding of what people with no sense of touch suffer in real life, translated into game terms. In real life, Face Blindness is a problem some people suffer from -- I know a few. They know people are there, they can identify eyes and noses and mouths and chins, they just can't put the image together into a face that they can recognize, no matter how many times they see a person or how well they know them. We don't build a specific "Detect faces" power, ranged, discriminatory. We assume it, like we assume character have two arms, need to breathe air, and are recognizable.

Re: Theory Discussion: Defense Alternative One other reason -- I think one wants roughly so much predictability and so much randomness in one's game, in particular when one's dealing with the "does my character live or die?" subsystem. Rolling for both damage and defense means that a high damage roll and a low defense roll leaves Lots Of Body the only real protection against death by paper cut (and play some of those old storyteller system games at some point for some rather goofy examples -- places where a mage survives a car crash with hardly a scratch, then gets splatted by getting punched by a twerpy kid). Having only one thing rolled -- damage or defense -- seems to give the "expected level of randomness." So yes, that's a holdover from all the games that have gone before, but it's not an entirely poor one. I think the reason that damage is rolled instead of defense is that doing damage feels active, and rolling dice feels active. Similarly, you roll to hit, and you roll when using a skill -- rather than rolling to Be Missed, and the door lock rolling to Not Be Picked. I think this largely is so that players get to roll a lot more, because players like rolling shiny dice. Yay dice! If you could make it genuinely symmetric, so that rolling for defense and rolling for damage were equivalent, then you could probably just have the players roll dice or the GM decide to roll dice if he wanted. I was in a Feng Shui game at one point, where dice rolls are entirely symmetric, and it wasn't uncommon to hear the GM say "Big Boss attacks each of you three on a 16. Roll to see if he misses."

Re: Implicit Mental Senses Well, I normally use a slightly different take on the normal sense rules, in which Mental is one of the basic four sense groups. It includes the idea that each sense has a "no range" component which cannot be flashed or hidden with darkness, and is why invisible things have a fringe. The Mental Sense in my games is "detect systems" -- it detects things like hunger, balance (which the body has a system to detect, and is different from simple up/down), thoughts, feelings, pain, internal state, and the like. The Chemical sense group detects smells -- the Mental sense group can detect someone smelling something. Most people only have the "no range" component -- they can only detect these things as they apply to themselves, and this is, in fact, why they can tell when someone's using a mental power on them. Something is infringing on their mental state, and it has a "mental flavor" and a direction and whatnot. Mental powers require you to be able to sense your target with a targeting sense. Mind Scan is a ranged, indirect, targeting sense. So yeah...I'd think that mental images or shapeshifting would allow you to change your "mental flavor" so someone detecting you over Mind Scan would think you were someone else. If they could see you, that might give them conflicting information, unless you also have visual images/shapeshift. But it wouldn't change the directionality of the mental sense -- "that guy" is Mind Blasting me, and I think that guy is Psycho Boy...well, maybe he's not Psycho Boy, but it's definitely that guy over there. Darkness to the Mental Sense, I do run, protects you from Mind Scan, and makes it so that mental powers are touch range (because, you know, the "no range" component of a sense cannot be blocked by flash or darkness). However, the Mental Group is effectively a targeting sense, so Darkness, Invisibility, Images, etc. need to be bought accordingly.

Re: Detect Minds and Barriers oh, for additional examples: in Julian May's Intervention and Pleocene Exile books, light interpheres with mental senses (not much, just enough that scrying a night is preferable), and water requires special techniques to scry through or around, so it's blocked by rainstorms and rivers. This gives a sort of pseudo-witchery feeling to the Farsensing power.