Ganesh

Re: Detect Minds and Barriers

My players are talkative lately!

 

Anyway, the recent discussion concerns an Enhanced Sense I've allowed: Detect Minds. I've allowed this sense as part of the Mental Group and as a a non-sense group sense. What we were discussing is what stops it. Sight is stopped by opaque barriers, sound is stopped by nearby loud noises or soundproofed barriers, smell is stopped by overpowering odors or airtight barriers, etc. What stops Detect Minds?

 

As a default, I have it stopped by physical barriers, but that doesn't make much sense (as my players are pointing out, and I agree with them). The problem is that several characters, heroes and villains, have Detect Minds as a Targeting Sense. I want to avoid the game breaking mental sniper, which is really the only reason I have it stopped by physical barriers. What other options do I have?

A Dolphin Noise Generator. It's a dolphin bran in a box, generates constant nonsensical mental noise, really screws with telepaths.

But more seriously, anything with a mind or with mental def would probably block it. Depending on how far you take this, swarms of insects or even groves of plants could act like fog or block this sense.

Depending on how it works, sources of strong emotion (including party members) could make it hard to "see" minds.

Or, if you're detecting neuroelectrical activity, current and ferromagnetic metals would block.

SFX not only adds a lot of flavor to generic powers like "detect - Minds," but provides interesting answers to what messes with them.

Re: So, what do YOU want out of hero?

entourage.

Unless, I suppose, it's composed entirely of aunts. They could follow you around, serve tea, pinch cheeks, talk endlessly about your cousins, etc...

It's bound to suprise people, and may very well frighten them.

Re: What fundamental thing would you change about the Hero system?

I assumed you were going with base x/5 because you had five fingers on each hand

ah...no, sort of the opposite, really. The system seems built around multiples of 5, probably because of the 5-finger thing. If we all lived in Disneyland, it would probably be multiples of four. I like it when the fundamental unit is 1.

Then again, when I don't expect anyone to need to read my math, I like to use dodecimal and, if working with integers, base 3. So I may be a little odd in that respect.

Re: What fundamental thing would you change about the Hero system?

A little? Try a whole lot!

Hey, it's only half an order of magnitude

You have a girlfriend? You're not a True Gamer! Turn in your secret decoder ring at the counter when you leave!

Four, actually, and three of them are going through soul-crushingly stressful times at the moment. Aren't I lucky?

Casualplayer: yeah...these were the ones noted as "cosmetic changes," and as such they do change the look & feel of the system a large amount, even if the actual changes to the mechanics are debatably small. Which from the POV of holding onto hero fandom would make these a big mistake for the company.

Robyn: whisky, tango, foxtrot? Am I missing a hilarious yakuza reference somehwere?

I still think that by doing away with the concept of Base Cost, Hero could be made noticably more flexible and considerably cooler. Maybe I'll have time to write about that tomorrow.

Re: What fundamental thing would you change about the Hero system?

Are you saying eliminate the 3d6+1 and the 4d6-1 and go with stratight 4d6 and 3d6? Wouldn't you be losing some granularity there?

Not quite...this will take a little explaining, and the use of fudge dice.

Fudge dice are effectively d3-2 each (d6s with 2 sides -, two sides blank, and two sides +) They were invented for an RPG system for numerophobes, but they're useful for adding zero-centered variance to rolls, very very simply.

So, if the dc were the basic unit of damage, that means that Stun would only be inflicted in multiples of 3.5, body in multiples of 3, endurance in multiples of 3.5, and adjustment powers (and those mental powers that have to overcome an attribute) in multiples of 5.

If Blasterman hit ArmorGuy (5 dcs of DEF) with a 12dc blast, the progress would look like this:

Blasterman's player rolls four fudge dice, resulting in, say, a net +2. This means that the blast does 14dcs of stun damage.

As this is a normal blast, divide the damage by 3 to determine Body damage, that is 14/3 = 4 2/3 rounds to 5. Therefore, the blast does 14 stun and 5 body.

ArmorGuy has 5 dcs of armor, so he take 9dcs of stun and no body. That's the equivalent of 9*3.5 ~=32 stun damage. It's recorded as 9 dcs of stun, though, which makes all the numbers smaller.

There's some ways of folding the skills in so everything is "roll 4df, add effect, reduce by resistance," which is nice.

Yes, you lose a little granularity, but although most herophiles can count up the stun & body on 12 dice pretty quickly, it's not a trivial skill. Also, my aforementioned bias towards smaller numbers in tabletop.

ok...I'd write more, but my girlfriend is absconding with me now. Later!

Re: What fundamental thing would you change about the Hero system?

I've never actually interacted with the Fusion system before -- I know it's disliked by Herophiles, but the reasons I know are mostly historical. I've no idea what the system itself is like...I'm a little curious. Avoiding the mistakes of crappy systems is a good thing.

RKane_1: i'll respond in parts, as that seems better than creating more posts of the "hulk-blocking" size :']

So, part the first, cosmetic changes: Divide characteristics by 5, macropoints.

In Hero, Characteristics are always divided by 5 before being used (with two exceptions). Strength divided by 5 is dcs of punching damage, skills are all 9+(Characteristic/5)+skill levels, etc.

Dex and Ego are divided by 3 to determine OCV, DCV, etc. One could instead divide by 5, and add a 5-point combat skill level for each 5 points. Thus the defenses and attacks would act like normal skills.

So, an average characteristic becomes 2 (represents between 8 and 12), a very weak attribute (3-7) becomes 1, above average (13-17) is 3, and at 4 (that is, 18-22) you're well above average. Anything more pushes human limits, and therefore would be pushing the NCM and costing double points in a heroic game.

This eliminates rounding and breakpoints, and means that characteristics are in the form used for most things. Numbers are also smaller...I have a bias against large numbers in tabletop games.

The only odd issue at this point is some mental powers/PRE attacks (which must overcome Ego, Pre, or Con) and adjustment powers. This is resolved by increasing the cost of such powers by 50%, and making each DC have 5 points of effect.

Macropoints: dividing all point values by 5 pleases my sense of aesthetics. Not really fundamental (and makes MA a little weird, but then it was always a weird (but good) little subsystem), but I like it.

Re: What fundamental thing would you change about the Hero system?

Hey, just a little weighing in on the "desolid" issue...

Intangibility is an effect that makes very little physical sense: trying to model it "realistically" is...special.

The closest realistic model I can think of for desolid is mystform -- a somehow coherent body of gass that can alight on surfaces or waft through tiny openings, but can't exert any force. This obviously isn't the kind of desolid that people who walk through solid walls have, but there's nothing I've ocme up with to do reasonable compairisons on that.

In general, in comics, intagible characters seem to be in sensory interaction with the real world, but are actually moving through a world where only the scenery exists. What makes something scenery? Well, it's mostly dramatic logic, but large inanimate (or nonmotile) objects seem to be about it, and that only sometimes...you can see desolid characters sit on the hoods of cars, then have a car drive through them...sometimes with the desolid character passing through the hood, the front seat, and then tagging along in the back seat. You can see desolid characters sit in chairs, and then walk through them...same with leaning on walls. Some get to walk on clouds and other near-intangible substances. Some don't. There really isn't any logic to it. In other words, "desolid" is (IMMHO) a special effect, not a power.

What effects does it tend to have? Well, being a perfect dodge is a primary example. DVC: don't even think about it. This is true for basically all intangible characters. It also usually works against area attacks, in defiance of hero system logic.

Second, many of them have the ability to selectively walk through things, although they definitely get to choose what they walk through and what they don't...Shadowcat can dive through the floor as easily as walk on it, and don't get me started on stairs. :'] I think this is best simulated as a movement power: Teleportation is moving from here to there without caring about obstacles the path, so long as you move all at once. Walking while intangible is moving from here to there without caring about obstacles in the path, but you can move at any rate you please. This also allows fairly easily for adjustment, so Sandman can travel through chainlink, Stone Guy can only move through earth and rock, and Nutrino can move through whatever she darn well pleases.

However, when sandman is halfway through the fence, he can stop to cobber a few people...and Stone Guy can get hit with a club when he pokes his head through the wall, because he's never really intangible--he just merges with the rock on one end, adn comes out on the other.

Likewise, someone who is a hologram might be impervious to attacks, but unable to pass through any opaque or reflective object...possibly even including a pane of glass.

"I can pass through wood" and "I cannot be harmed by wood" might, depending on SFX, be linked powers, but there's plenty of models where one would hold and not the other.

Re: What fundamental thing would you change about the Hero system?

Heh. I love getting down into the guts of systems and playing with them (compulsive tinkerer/theoretical math nerd, it's a calling), so I have a few...

Cosmetically, I'd divide everything relating to points by 5, and just hold on to halves, thirds, fourths, etc. when costing. This also puts Characteristics on a 1-4 scale before NCM kicks in. Instead of Figured Characteristics, you have recommendations for what level of the "figured characteristics" fit with what Characteristics in a human being, which the GM may enforce more or less strongly.

While we're at it, make the DC the basic unit of damage, rather than the pip. This does require some basic adjusting, as amor, damage, stun, rec, body, and probably a few other things all become measured in DCs as well. Bump adjustment and mental powers a bit so that their basic "DC" is one point of effect (i.e. 5 of the old points of effect).

(other minor changes: an explicit lift/push power, movement powers turned into a skill with "movement groups" like sense groups, desolid divided into a movement power (sort of like continuous teleport) and a damage-resisting power with signifigant built-in side effects)

On a much more sweeping level, there are two big things I'd like to see:

First, and more simply, I'd like to see all the body-affecting powers done away with. Replace them with a power/skill construct that causes the character to have access to certain powers depending on what he's doing with his form, probably with something like a Reserve Cost (for how many RP of form can be expressed at once") and specific characteristics (either beneficial or disadvantagous) can be purchased for something like abs(real cost)/5. Having disadvantages (which you payed points to be able to have on your form) active increases the effective size of the reserve for the purposes of more beneficial characteristics, and there's some sort of advantage/limitation controlling the switching of forms, not unlike a VPP.

Second, and more fundamental: mode advantages and limitation multiplicative, rather than additive -- effectively doing away with the concept of Base Cost. My personal scheme is to make each +1/2 advantage into an Enhancer, seven of which multiply the base cost of a power by 12 (so 2 enhancers basically doubles the cost, three basically triples, yes a nice chart would be a good idea). Each -1/2 limitation becomes a Limiter, and each N limiters reduce the effective number of Enhancers by one for the purpose of cost. For example: with 1 limiter, reduce costs as though there were 1 less Enhacner. with 3 limiters, reduce costs as though there were 2 less Enhancers. With 6 limiters, reduce cost as though there were 3 less Enhancers. With 21 limiters, reduce costs as though there were 6 less enhancers.

This, along with generalizing some effects and putting things like "which kind of defense reduce this" into the Enhancer/Limiter soup, allows one to have far, far fewer base powers and I think cleans things up a good bit. On the other hand, it reduces some amount of system control on power selection, so I propose a variable enhancer/limiter, that may only be applied by the GM (recommended to help shape genre), on how commonly avaiable the power is. If teleport is difficult but possible in this world, make it more expensive. If magic is the most common SFX and anyone who claims to be a "keeper of the peace" carries around a fairly hefty Dispell Magic, then Magic should be cheaper. If Cyberkinetics are at the bleeding edge of corporate technology and can do things nobody else can, Cyberkinetic powers should be more costly. If desolid is commonplace, and security is designed accordingly, then desolid should be cheaper -- not only because its somewhat less useful (it doesn't make you a master intruder, it makes you an average intruder), but also to encourage everyone to actually take it.

Given this sort of thing, you can pare down to under 15 subsystems/powers pretty easily.

Basically, it gives PCs some mechanical reason to follow the physics of your particular genre, and explain what's common in the world and what isn't.

Re: How would you create this power?

This is a much stranger approach, and not rules-orthodox, but...

Mind Control: takes over (People -- a large, useful group), reduced by (Mental Def), must overcome (Ego), adjusted by (attitude), Breakout with (Ego roll).

So, to make a "machine control" power, find things of roughly equivalent value to those, then apply limitations (like Instant) as nec.

(People -- a large, useful group) to (Simple Machines -- a large, but not nearly so useful group) would be the obvious limitation

(Mental Def)...well, this is interesting. What's the SFX on the control of these machines? ED might be appropriate, although that would certainly be a large limitation. Power Defence might make sense, and mean that people might have "tamper-proof" devices with Power Defense. It should be fitting with the means of control.

(Ego) -- as mentioned before, these machines don't have Ego. Do you "infect" the machine with a cloud of nanites? It might want to overcome Body. Or perhaps this is more metaphysical, and you want to overcome some function of the AP of the device (how much AP does the standard device in the target range have in your world?) or something stranger.

(Attitude) -- control might be adjusted by complexity. If this is Cylon-like machine control, you might even want to flip that, and say simplicity -- complex devices with lots of parts (like a car) are more difficult than fairly simple devices (like a gun). Or it might be based on the actual attitude of the machine, as in one of the posts above -- more difficulty based on how far outside normal opperating parameters you want the device to go, or even on the attitude of the person who set the device.

(Ego Roll) -- well, for things that are being wielded by someone, an Operations roll (which might be Drive for cars, or OCV for a gun) makes a lot of sense for a breakout roll. For devices that aren't being used, i.e. control isn't resisted...I would just let him have it, given that you're talking about devices with no mind. The character might have to succeed in an operations roll with increasing penalties over longer durations. Again, if Concentration is required, this become less important.

Note that what you choose for these parameters dramatically affects what kind of things the power is most useful on...it's pretty easy to make Tanks difficult to control and electric razors easy, but it's done intentionally.

As with any such power, the player of this character must be willing to reevaluate its costs based on how powerful it is in gameplay.

(also...you need to decide if "a mech" counts as a single device, or if the ejection seat button is a separate device, or if it is part of the mech but can be targetted with a called shot....but you'd need to do that with any power of this sort.)

Re: New Player Hates All The Dice

heh. While on the topic of Deep Heresy...

I've actually played around with the idea of making the DC the fundamental unit, and just using 4dF.

(for those unfamiliar with fudge dice, or dFs, they're a 6-sider with two - faces (subtract one), two + faces (add one), and two blank faces (do nothing))

This does make the system less fine, an you can only buy defenses in terms of DCs rather than pips (I use 5 points per DC of PD or ED, -1/2 limitation "soft -- does not protect against killing attacks" available) and stun and body need to be measured in DCs as well (10 points for 3 stun or body, I suppose). It also keeps the numbers a whole lot smaller.

Body is 1/3 the final DCs of the attack, so an 8DC blast would do 8 stun, 3 body, and could do as little as 4 stun, 1 body (1/81st of the time), or as much as 12 stun, 4 body (1/81st of the time).

Of course, this requires the purchase of specialty dice, but then you can use them to play neat games like The Story of Yesterday, so it's all good in the long run.

Re: Wisdom

I'd be in favor of Luck, Requires Plausible Explanation.

The wise character makes a choice, or decides that they've prepaired something useful beforehand forseeing this possibility, gives a plausible explanation (or, in some games, quotes some bit of Taoist wisdom or the bible or some philosopher) related to why That's the Right Choice or How He Might Have Prepaired, and if he rolls well, lo and behold, there is something handy there.

This works better if the GM and player are willing to talk a bit about what precise course of action the character takes. I play a pretty descriptive style as a GM, and have a tendency to, if chararacters do clever things their players aren't clear on, adjust descriptions and narrate things accordingly.

Re: Build me a power

It does sound mostly like a bonus to skill levels, with a noticable but not overwhelming increase in Speed. One might consider throwing in some penalty skill levels, either generalized (you have time to think and account for all additional factors, so take no penalties for them) or specifically to remove penalties due to rushing actions.

That is, of course, after you've gotten used to the drug. An untrained person is likely to fall on their face when attempting to use physical skills, given their differences in reaction speed. That could be a simple as requiring dex rolls for even the simplest actions, penalized by 1/10th the active points of 'tick' in the person's system.

Re: Hero Modding: One Dice Mechanic

There have been some threads, and there is very simple math, for changing skills from roll-over to roll-under. Unfortunately, most of them involve addition in a way you don't see in effect rolls, too, so they're always a slightly different mechanic.

Now, I'm using a variant system these days, that actually uses Fudge Dice...you know, d6s with two + sides, two - sides, and two blank sides. Basically everything is a roll of 4dF

Effect and damage are measured in DCs, with a DC being 3.5 stun, 3ish body, or 5 points of effect from Control or Adjustment. A "DC" of skill winds up being about +2.

Statistics average 2, and go up to 4 or 5 before the NCM kicks in, skills add (well, actually it's slightly more complicated than that, but I'm working on it), and you just hope your (stat+skill) + 4dF is higher than the difficulty...which is frequently the other guy's skill...just like how you hope your damage roll is higher than the other guy's armor. If you want criticals, a roll of ++++ is a critical success, and a ---- is a critical failure.

There've been some fun twists...

normal damage costs 5 points per DC of stun, and does Stun/3 Body and 2m kb per DC stun.

killing damage costs 7.5 points per DC of stun, does Stun/2 (round up) Body and 3m kb per DC stun. Oh, and isn't stoped by unhardened armor.

"very killing damage" costs 10 points per DC, and does an equal amount of Body and Stun DCs, and 4m of kb per DC stun.

Part of the "killing" effect of those is that the amount of body done is more affected by the dieroll.

...but everything comes down to the same mechanic: take the rating, roll 4dF (adding one for +, subtracting one for -), possibly multiply or divide by 2 or 3, subtract the resistance and hope you've got a positive result.

Re: [CUSTOM] Threshold Framework

Ill add a block explicitly detailing how a Threshold Scale interacts with Adjustment Powers.

I was actually thinking more along the lines of "I can eat fire to make myself really powerful, but if I get rained on, I start going out" So it's part of the Threshold Capacity that water decreases threshold.

Or would you want a Susceptability that took away threshold?

Re: Euphoria -- How?

KillerShrike listed a Threshold mechanic in, um, this thread which might be a cool mechanic for that. The threshold condition would be something like "uses superpowers" and there would be interesting things like naked modifiers with serious side effects when the Threshold gets high enough. "My powers don't cost END any more! They just cost INT..." "My attack power just became continuous...but I'm going Berzerk."

The set of "addiction effects" might even be the same for everyone, especially at really high levels...and people using their superpowers a lot (maxing thier current threshold?), or fulfilling certain "tainting" conditions, results in you giving them a few extra points for their threshold...and discovering what interesting advantages live up in the 300 threshold range.

I expect that you won't even need to force the players to use their superpowers more...they'll look at high-threshold advantages and just push themselves. And that will give a much better feel of addiction than mind control.

And it would playtest his construct, which should be done :']

Re: Continuous Attack Faster than Character's Speed?

This one's come up on the forums before...summons, computers, and the like were all mentioned, but someone had an idea that seemed quite elegant(I don't remember who, sadly...Vorch, or something like that?)

You can cause things to act less frequently than you do with limitations that go up the time scale.

Why not have an advantage that makes them act faster? If it can act every phaze, that might be a +1 advantage.

Just another thought.

Re: Explaining the Unusual Sense Group

Well, there's the mechanical effects of whether a sense gets flashed, what it's rage (in time and space), how accurate it is, whether it's targetting, yadda yadda.

But there's also the question of how you describe the sensory input.

We do sort of divide our senses into roughly five categories. I think this is because we're brought up with the idea, not because it's intrinsic...after all, different cultures have different colors.

Visual information comes with descriptions like dark, bright, colors, flat, flickering, shapes, and the like.

Chemical information comes across with descriptions like sour, salty, pungent, faint, lingering, sweel, floral, etc.

Sonic information comes across mostly with volume, pitch, affect, vowels and consonants, and durations.

Touch and sonar are conveyed with terms like hard, soft, hollow, fuzzy, solid, liquid, tingly, squirming and such. I had a character at one point who was blind, but had a ranged sense of touch.

Mental senses can come across with any of the other terms, but also often come across with no or little terms at all...uneasy, or sudden awareness, or "you know." Flashes of symbolic images and eerie, dreamlike certainty are also useful for mental and/or mystical senses...so we can say the mental sense has all descriptors or none.

When using senses, information is filtered. Its neat, as a GM, to describe something and watch the player's face light up as they realize what it is. But in order to do that, we need some frame of reference and terms from that frame of reference.

It is useful, outside of notions of flashes and additional sensory organs and all that, to know what kind of information the player expects to have filter through that sense. But that's a separate issue from power build. Sean Walters descibed a third eye with non-light based spacial awareness -- it's a separate sensory organ, not part of the sight group...but the information that comes in should be descibed using visual language.

So yes, everything can be shoehorned into one of the sense modes, and it's often good to do so. But that doesn't mean that everything's part of one of those sense groups. Excercise for the reader -- have someone have a sense that uses descriptors from one sense, but has the qualities (range, blockage, field of view, etc) of another...say, sight and smell. It feels very distinct from either the sense it shares descriptors with or the sense that it has the properties of. Synesthesia, anyone?

Re: [CUSTOM] Threshold Framework

Oh...and the possibility of disads that kick in only when certain thresholds are exceeded (Berzerk and Distinctive Features come to mind) has me excited. One might have to build them as side-effects of Actualized powers, but I always like stories where your strength and your weakness are irrevocably linked.

Re: [CUSTOM] Threshold Framework

Cool...I certainly find it interesting. One thing I don't see, is a means of reducing threshold other than fade rate. One might want a "chi supresson" to reduce the Chi Vampire's effective threshold, or someone's "aura of calm" to have detremental effect on your Rage Meter. I suppose you could have people with these powers also buy an appropriate Supress, but it feels as though such logic should be handled internally by the Threshold mechanic, possibly with limitations that are a simple reflection of the Extra Condition enhancer.

I also like the idea of a Threshold that's increased by Draining people...not really a Transfer, but it sort of acts like it. That, to me, sounds like a much better mechanic for a vampire than the END reserve blood pool that's become popular. It becomes much less a question of "do I have the blood to do this" and much more "have I been feeding enough recently."

Actually...now here's a real challenge. Is there any way to build, without using the Threshold framework, your chi vampire power suite so that it behaves roughly the same way?

Re: Pink.....the underwear is pink...

On the narrow:

N-ray vision should be, in my mind, just some way of adding the "indirect" advantage to sight, allowing you to see past barriers. N-ray vision doesn't really allow you to see anything new, it just allows you to bypass a typical defense against perception -- putting up a barrier. If you go that route, it also means there's a fairly obvious way to counter N-ray vision, by making your lead-lined box's total blockage of senses Hardened as well.

You could then have Indirect Hearing (there's a charm in Exalted, Dragon-blooded that does this, letting oyu listen to things as if there were no walls in the way), and add indirect to Radio, if you want someone who can project/hear through that faraday cage.

On the substantially less narrow:

I do think a reconstruction of the sense group rules would fix a number of sticky Hero issues, including shapeshift and invisibility.

And, as another odd axample, the smell group has the ability to detect traces of things, after they're gone, which should be a distinct trait. Invisibility to Smell would thus make a character impossible to track through that method, as it should. Invisibility to sight, "lingering effect only" would make one pass without trace -- one would leave no visual cues as to one's presence.

Extend this far enough, and you can do away with the Clairsentience power, and get a more reasonable cost for Eidetic Memory.

Then again, I'd like to see a reconstruction of the movement rules with a movement "skill" and various "movement groups" purchsed to be used with it. So teleporting along the ground could be done by purchasing "indirect" for your Running, and would be stopped by hardenend PD (wham!)

Re: Occult Powers Difficult to Stat in Hero

Why not make it a perk, "able to teach others the Ancient Knowledge skill, requires big schmancy ritual"? The transform might be a useful way to get some notion of the point value, but "I give other people the excuse to spend character points on something important" feels much more like a perk to me...like "access to military hardware" or "great gobs of money".

This approach makes more sense if there are a fair number of "let someone else change their character sheet" spells. You can then price them according to how common you want the restricted powers they make possible to be.

Come to think of it, it seems like Kult has an entirely different approach to XP and character sheet modification than HERO. For a sensible conversion, you might want to take that into account.

Re: Building "Eye of Thoth" (Kult Conversion)

Rather than starting with Clairsentience, you might go a slightly different route, starting with Mind Scan, probably doubled in cost because you can detect the location of all sorts of things that aren't "minds" per se, and simply state that it gives you a visual bead on the target, not a mental one. Give it the extradimentional and extratemporal advantages, the "instant" disadvangage, and the "spellcasting" disadvantages (which in a Kult convesion, you probably want to specify at the beginning and then simply list "ritual spell (-8)" after all of them.

This has the advantage that some things can have mystical defenses, making themselves harder to scry, and and having some vague idea of where your target is helps.

If you really want an all-or-nothing effect, rather than a skill-roll based search, then modified Mind Scan is definitely not the way to go, but it bears mentioning.

Re: STUN and stunning attack

Yep

but player argued that "system shock is no something can be represented with point loss".

Heh. System shock can't be represented with point loss? Why not?

It almost sounds like what he wants is "probabilistic hit points" -- like what they have in Warhammer 20k, where when a figure takes a hit, you roll to see if they're down or not -- if they're down, they're a casualty, but if they're not, there's no sort of lingering effect. Is that what your player wants? All-or-nothing takedowns, with only actual BODY damage being tracked?

It's a valid mood for combat, just not the one HERO typically uses. You have to keep in mind, though -- if you're just as likely to go down from the 10th hit as from the 1st, then PCs going down on the first hit won't be too unlikely. That's the nature of an all-or-nothing -- only with "point loss" of some sort can you simulate cumulative effect.

If you want to do that, it should be possible to modify HERO a little to make it happen...let's see, some ideas...

Well, the simplest would be to make all EB, RKA, and HA abilities have the limitation "stun is all-or-nothing." Use the stun lottery (i.e. roll the stun multiplier) and state that people who are down to zero or less stun are down for the fight barring someone giving them a hit with a stimpack or something.

This will probably require adjusting the numbers somewhat to make KO even possible -- perhaps, since you're mostly using Killing Attacks, just balance a -1/2 limitation (stun doesn't linger) with a +1/2 (stun is BODY * (d6+1) or BODY * 5 for simplicity) or simply increase the DCs to keep point values for weapons similar. I like the former -- it's a universe change from normal rules, so you just make a new set of "attack" powers and it keeps things simple.

Keep in mind that you should apply the same rules to your players as to the NPCs, unless you specifically want to create a Name Character/Mook distinction.

You should look at the actual damage numbers, and this may require a little fiddling to find the new balance points, but if they want all-or-nothing takedowns, it's a way to do it...

Re: Power Construction - theoretical question

Sorry, Zornwil -- you cited two complaints: one, that the "all or nothing blast" wound up saving 1 point per DC (which was a rounding error) and the other that keeping track of power levels was harder. The former seems like it could be fixed by eliminating the rounding wherever possible, while the latter...seems like much more of an issue. Then again, there are so many other "rule of X" rules out there, perhaps AP has simplicity as its major merit? ::shrugs::

The problem with making limitations simply multiplicative is that they shrink the cost of powers stupidly fast. Take two -1 limitations, and you're left with something that's not 1/3 the cost, but 1/4. Apply another -1 limitation, and the cost is down to 1/8, not 1/4. All those "destroy the earth on a 5 RP budget!" powers just got cheaper, and the drive to take lots of limitations just got gobs stronger. In general, I like the fact that in hero, piling on the limitations fairly quickly hits a point of...well, pointlessness from the point of view of points savings. ::grin::

Advantages, on the other hand...if I had a dollar for every time someone said "any power with +N in advantages or more needs to be very seriously looked at/is obviously a munchkin tool" where N is either 2 or 3, I'd be a wealthier man. Making them explode doesn't seem too bad, from that point of view.

Also to Zornwil:

I'd be willing to post what I've scraped together if you like, though I'm not sure here's the place to do it. It was pulled together using a wiki, the ultimate tool for nonlinear (i.e. scatterbrained) thinkers like myself, so pulling out the data in a reasonable order will take a little while.

Re: Power Construction - theoretical question

Zornwil: it seems like your mathematical objection there is due to rounding error. If not for that, do you think it would still be a problem? You could just as easily only have people buy from the "more basic" power list, which gives you a similar effect to just a more extreme HERO.

As an aside, I've been working on pulling apart the basic components of HERO and stringing them into something much more basic, with far fewer powers for some while now. Unfortunately, ever since changing ISPs, I haven't been able to make the wiki accessable anywhere outside the house network. ::sigh::

Anyway, the way I dealt with the "what's the base power?" problem was to change the way advantages and limitations stacked...each +1/2 advantage was a PowerEnhancer, every 2 PowerEnhancers doubled the cost of the power, every 3 PowerEnhancers trippled the cost of the power. Actually approximated things with the 7th root of 12, and made a chart.

Limitations were similar...every -1/2 limitation was a PowerLimiter, and then you reduced the effective number of PowerEnhancers. Reduce by one for one PowerLimiter, by two for three PowerLimiters, by three for six PowerLimiters, by four for ten, etc. The GM (and only the GM) has the option to allow some number of limiters to just cancel with some number of enhancers, creating a new "base power."

My "short power list" wound up being Defense (cost 10 points a die for all corporial damage, limitation to make it nonresistant, and with options to make it into things like Damage Reduction), Body Modification (with pulled-apart bits of DI, Stretching, Growth, Shrinking, some of the "touch sense group" shapeshift effects, etc.), Change Environment, Endurance Reserve, Luck, Images (with modifications like "must overcome target's {Characteristic} to allow for Mental Illusion and modifiers to make Darkness or many of the effects of Shapeshift), Summon/Create (for forcewalls, entangles, and summons of different stripes), Move (for making flight, jumping, teleportation, TK, EDM and a number of other effects), Adjustment, Blast, and Command (which is definitely a stopsign power, the thing used to build mind control).

Missile Deflection, Senses (including seekersense/mindscan, clairsentience, and mind-link), and most Movement was made part of the skill system (skills do All-Or-Nothing much better, and aren't affected by adjustment powers nearly as much).

It's actually been a lot of fun to put together. I heartily recommend it as a mental excercise.