Ganesh

Re: Silver Threads in Cyberspace Ah...good thought. Good special effects can certainly make you more convincing, even without added substance to you arguments (ref: entire field of advertising) while many webcomics that might otherwise be amazing are merely interesting due to the crappy artwork. And you can't exactly fold that into COM...it gets too clunky too fast. Part of the difficulty is that PRE, like STR, is a bundle of things all claiming to be the same, linearly quantizable thing. ::shrugs:: But such is the nature of the beast.

Re: Silver Threads in Cyberspace I'm a little surprised that PRE is defined by your avatar, not yourself. COM being defined that way is obvious, but... I tend to think that differences in PRE between online and in real life mostly come from psychological limitations that don't apply in one realm or another (Shy, or Flames Compulsively) and different social skills (Writing online tends to be much more useful than Fast Talk, and all those empathy abilities based on body language aren't as useful as being able to read between the lines, and the langauge dialects are different. In general, if you can't get your point across well and effectively in cyberspace, I'm not at all clear how buying a better avatar would reasonably affect that.

Re: How to creat Feedback power? Would it be terribly breaking to just think of this as a modification of EB? After all, EB removes stun, which is then Recovered normally. END is half as expensive, but a normal person has roughly equal amounts of each, and recovers at the same rate. Nd6 EB, Affects END not Stun (+0?), NND (having less than 4 END), Does Body. Just say it removes 4 END and 1 BODY up to the number of dice bought, or until the subject runs out of END (thus becoming invulnerable to the effect), whichever comes first. Come to think of it, that's pretty lethal...given that in order to escape from your deadly feedback attack, someone basically has to keep themselves driven to the point of exhaustion. What else restricts this thing? On the other hand, you can bet that your players are going to start paying very careful attention to their END bookkeeping.

Re: Side Effects attached to Foci

Re: Flash: Inner ear/ Sense of Gravity/ Sense of Balence I've actually been using a modified version of the sense groups, with the addition of the "no-range sense group" that overlaps with all other sense groups, but cannot be blinded in any way, and effectively acts as "touch" or "fringe." Vision sense group is as normal, with heat being the no-range component (add range to that for heat vision). Tactile sense group is hearing, with tactile touch as the no-range component, measuring texture, density, and the like. Extend the no-sense group to get sonar. Chemical sense group is smell, with taste being no-range. Mental sense group is as normal, but the no-range component is what allows you to "hear" your own thoughts, feelings, and needs, and tell when a mental power is affecting you directly. Buying "mental awareness" is gaining the ranged part of the mental sense group. So four senses makes a lot more sense to me. You can buy the no-range sense group on your invisibility to eliminate the fringe, and on your Images to make it possible to fool people who are right nearby. I maintian that the five senses are as much an artifact of our current shoddly understanding of how the brain actually works as the four elements (or five elements, or two elements) are of former shoddy understanding of matter. If you haven't, you should find an article or two on the notion of Active Perception, the idea that we actively (though automatically) querry our environment for information, rather than just passively taking it in, and how perception is related to imagination and memory. It's interestingly orthogonal to any "the n senses" models.

Re: Legendary thread Hmm...that sounds like superskills. Contest you SuperStealth against my SuperPercetion, and we'll see who succeeds...oh, you have SuperSuperStealth? Sorry, my bad. Let me know if your fringe covers my character and then I can check. substitute "disguise" for "stealth" for many of the effects of shapeshift. It's reminding me of HeroQuest, where everything's an ability--no difference between skills and powers. Each "super" is effectively a couple masteries. Which is an interesting development, given that I tend to think of Hero and HeroQuest as being two diametrically opposed systems...in heroquest, the special effects ARE the mechanics. I'd actually been thinking of something along the lines of the rules for sense groups. Perception is the useful skill for every sense group you have. Sight, Tactile, Chemical, Mental, etc. groups are prebuilt, but you can add capabilities to them (generally, something that would be a +1/2 advantage seems to be about +10 points to the cost of the sense group) like adding Indirect to get n-ray vision. "Projection" is something that some sense groups have for most people -- we can speak, and 2-way radios can broadcast and receive. Now, normally, the projection is obviously discernible as being a specific character, especially to anyone with discriminatory or analyze. But using images as a model, we could extend that...for 1.5x the cost of "having a voice" you can have any voice (more if you need to minim particular people), for for 2x the cost of "having a voice" you could make any noise (perhaps you're robot, with speakers?) Range Vision Projection effectively makes holograms. And projecting the image of "nothing here" could be used to obscure things, or make them invisible, or blanket areas in impenetrable fog or darkness.

Re: Cure for Cancer (Healing) For a stranger idea, but one based on the real world concepts... make a disease be a desolid automaton. It has clinging and various attacks to represent its detrimental effects, all with Affects Real World. The attacks may have charges which tend to be used when the "host" character is under significant stress or otherwise susceptible, refreshing each day (or more or less frequently, depending) to mete out the 'damage' at an appropriate rate. The automaton would be vulnerable to things that would normally cure the disease, but might also have armor, or lots of hitpoints/extra powers to lose for particularly tenacious infections. Vulnerabilities to "being outside a host" would be common -- they'd be reasonable for things like the common cold, but lethal amounts of damage for, say, AIDs. For "cure" powers, you either need EBs with the appropriate special effects (probably in a multipower with your Healing), or the diseases would have to bu susceptible to healing powers. Some would take damage from normal healing--others would be armored against that, and have Absorption to soak up the healing you throw at them and come back nastier (to make cancer nastier for regenerators). Summons, or just "the natural life cycle of the disease" would result in more cropping up and possibly moving on to try and find new hosts. Poisons, of course wouldn't be able to spread like diseases, but could otherwise be thought of in the same way -- an foreign thing, hiding in the body, doing damage to its host until it is 'killed' by healing, purification, or exhausting itself. Now, instead of paying 200-some-odd points for a snake-venom attack, buy the 40 points required to summon the poison into your opponent, probably linked to a normal attack of some type. I'm not even sure how comparable costs would be, as the build will be entirely different, but it might be more reasonable.

Re: Legendary thread I've been working, on and off, on cobbling together something that 'streamlines' hero while preserving the flexibility and precision. My list is currently down to ~12 powers-- BodyModification (also includes armor, stun capacity, END reserve, damage reduction and other passive effects where having the power on rather than "using it" is important, buying off disads (like that pesky "Needs Air to Survive" and "Has a Discernible Identity") and many form-changing effects can be bought--for example, a no-range blast can be bought as part of BodyModification for your clawed werewolf form, as can extra strength and Jumping, or more senses or skills) ChangeEnvironment Images (includes invisibility, flash, and darkness. Normally absolute, use RSR to give the uncertain effect of Images in Hero) Summoning/Creation (for forcewalls, some entangles, summoning, duplication, object creation, and can be used for Multiform with proper modifications and some Control) Jump (make it constant for Flight, Extradimentional for EDM, etc...also the basic power behind telekinesis, which is just controlled, invisible movement of things at a distance) Adjustment (an advantage allows this to add or remove powers or disadvantages) Blast Command (can be used to build possession-style Mind Control and the like, doesn't actually (as far as I can tell) exist in Hero. How would you do "I can turn on and drive cars at range"?) and "Fortune" is a sort of power/disadvantage that combines fudging rolls with affecting the plot... ------------------ "Perception" and "Movement" are skills with enhancers, as is Missile Deflection. Powers are by default ranged, cost no END, visible when used, have an Instant duration, and require no time to activate. Enhancers are limiters allow you to change that. Desolid can either be built as Jump (constant, extradimentional, costs end) with a linked extradimentional sense with the "visible at point of sense" limitation, or it can be build with 100% damage reduction and constant indirect movement for being able to walk through walls and other people. Most of the mental powers are bought with suites of advantages and disadvantages like "Must overcome (attribute) to be effective" "Invisible except to mental sense group" and "Lasts until Breakout Roll is made." Mind Control as it exists in Hero is built as an Adjustment that is reduced by Ego, has a duration of "breakout," and gives the subject various compulsions as disadvantages. I'm not sure how to usefully collapse things down more, without combining effects that have totally disparate and nongeneralizing mechanics.