TaxiMan

[building up my post count here...] I looked up a battleship, the Iowa. It's 362' long, 72' wide and 24' high and weighs 12,000 tons. A hex is about 37.5 sqft. Assuming the Iowa is 75% of the rectangle of length * width, it covers 0.75 * 362 * 72 = 19,550 sqft. That's 521 hexes. About twice the size of that huge AoE in my previous post. And 12,000 tons is about 11 million kilograms. WAAAAYYYYY more than the puny 62,330 kg of the huge AoE. Hmmmmm..... So a big ship is about the right size, but weighs too much to lift by multiple orders of magnitude. There isn't too much in my "game world" that I could effectively use the "huge AoE" power on. Most would be small, and thus severely limit total lifting. Anything big enough and it would weigh too much. I'm feeling more like it isn't unbalanced after all.

I don't really have a point with this post, just offering up food for thought. For 60ap you could get: 40 STR TK - 6400 kg lift 20 STR TK AoE 3" radius - 400 kg lift, 19 hexes 16 STR TK AoE 10" radius - 230 kg lift, 271 hexes Now, 19 hexes * 400kg = 7600 kg which isn't unreasonable for applying the "lift everything with full TK STR" concept. BUT, 271 hexes * 230 kg = 62,330 kg ... Whoa! That would let you lift awesome weight IF it was incredibly huge. I have no idea if that's restrictive enough so that the "affect-each-hex" concept isn't broken here.

Having AoE TK limited to total lifting capacity = STR makes sense in your points. Where it might fail is in situations where TK AoE is used to model gravity powers or magnetic powers, etc. In those cases, I don't want to have to add up the weight of all the appliances in a kitchen before deciding that "gravity" has been reduced by X %. It doesn't fit the concept. So what would you propose for that?

Two recent rulings from Steve seem to be at odds with each other. Earlier, when asked how much weight an Area of Effect TK power could lift, he replied it was the same as the STR of the TK. His latest question asked how AoE TK hit and grabbed multiple people. He replied that the victims are damaged by and must fight against the TK STR. So in one case, you have to apportion out your TK STR over an area, and in the other you can apply the STR to multiple objects simultaneously. Doesn't this seem inconsistent? I'd like it better if AoE TK could apply its STR against each hex simultaneously - what do you think? Is there a game balance problem with that? P.S. (attempt to nip some flames in the bud) I understand "official rulings" and am not trying to dispute them. I greatly respect the efforts Steve makes and am thrilled at the current state of Hero Games.

Villians don't ever need power frameworks - they have all the points the GM wishes them to have. An EC or Multipower could be devised to hinder the villian, so drains work more effectively etc. VPPs can be used to reflect that a villian has so many powers that the GM doesn't want to enumerate them all. It's shorthand for "he's got whatever I want to give him." I don't like to do a lot of extra work on my villians. I assume all their powers have "Linked to anything the GM feels is appropriate, -0" to handle drains and stuff. Bases and Followers come and go as the plot dictates - near infinite (within genre and common sense) when the bad guy is on top, dropping as the heros clean house until there's almost nothing left. What I do care about for my villians is power descriptions, power levels, motivations, plans, and how he fits in the grand scheme of things. Very broad brush, with specifics to make him memorable (mostly in personality and motivations). That makes it easy to scale to fit the game - I usually start him off as low-end offensively and uber tough (escape schemes galore). He has legions of mooks or a few supervillians do his dirty work. After a few encounters, I know how much to crank up his offensive abilities and drop in a defensive weakness if required. Especially when the players are creative and figure stuff out about the villian that makes so much sense it has to be right! Whatever makes the game better. In short, I cheat. I don't dictate the outcome of encounters, but I certainly load the dice! The object is to have fun, and that includes me as GM. It ain't fun for me to sweat creating the perfect writeup for a master villian - many times, 95% of the effort is wasted. Worse, I've been trapped with outcomes I didn't want because I messed up the writeup. So I go with 50% concept, and it works fine. YMMV

Ho! All of you assume the robot is real, thus completely and willingly falling into the mental illusion that has siezed all the defenders. Give it up, by the time you realize what happened, Impulse is gone!

Why can't legions of fighters coordinate their attacks? Doesn't that increase their chance to hit and damage? Seems appropriate too.

How about some extra 5pt skill levels to his RKA, with the limitation "Attack Automatically Misses if Target Dances" (-1), "Reduced Penetration (attack is at the feet)", and "Defense Must be Announced" (-2)? Super tough dudes can choose to ignore it, wimps do so at their own peril. It's a minor power (at least in campaigns I'm imagining), so it really shouldn't cost a ton.

Rapidfire hmmmm..... Musta missed it. I'll read up about it tonight. Thanks!

The well-worn barroom doors noisily slap behind Matt as he walks into the place. Dried blood and wet beer stain the floor and a thick cloud of stale smoke hangs at eye level in the dim light of yellow-burning gas lamps. The poker players and the drunks go quiet, sensing the coming confrontation. Gentleman Jim slowly rises from the card game, and straightens his San Francisco silk vest. Calmly, with the arrogance known only to those who never lose, he faces Matt. His hands do the normal things hands do; check his pocketwatch, straighten his tie, smooth his shirt sleeves - never straying far from his pearl handled revolvers. Matt peripherally notices two of Jim's hired guns, one to each side of him. They make no effort to hide the shotguns they lazily handle, barrels drifting towards Matt's position. More blood will hit the floor tonight. Gentleman Jim's eyes slide over his two henchmen, and they nod back their acknowledgement. In that split instant, Matt jerks his father's pair of Colts from their cracked leather holsters and stretches his arms forth to the sides like a priest giving benediction. The guns crack and spit flame almost instantaneously - two shotguns drop to the floor as the men are knocked back over tables and barstools, leaking out their lives alongside spitoons and cigar butts. Gentleman Jim takes in this man with a fresh eye. This farmer's son is more than he first thought! So how do I have Matt fire at two thugs? A huge autofire with skipover sprayfire and enormous bonuses to counteract the 180 degree separation? Yuck! He doesn't have massive SPD, so that's not what I want - besides, he shoots the two goons at the same time. I've read about autofire and the special skills and stuff, but I've never had to do this before (it never came up). Is this the only way to shoot twice? Is there a better way? If not, can anyone explain the ins and outs of the weird power / skill construct necessary to shoot two goons?

WARNING! Graphic images, of a snake that ate a guy in the Amazon: http://www.strangecosmos.com/view.adp?picture_id=9766

Great writeup for a river! I suppose the TK is strong enough to cut channels through mountains over time? Sure it is! And the TK can carry super heavy stuff like barges loaded with coal. I suppose we could add a Flash, Only When Reflecting Sunlight (-2), Suppress Fire FX, All At The Same Time, and Mind Control, "Come Relax On My Banks", ... Good job, Marcus! You captured the essence of a river with only three (or so) powers. I'm impressed - I just threw that out there thinking it'd be a royal mess of powers and limitations, but you proved me [mostly] wrong. Congrats!

Ditto Kintara. Of course, if a really cool way of doing it cheaply comes up, I'll steal it in a heartbeat! So I'm not adding anything to this thread, but I got to increase my post count (that used to be important!).

It occurred to me - I might have totally misread your post! Are you the GM, or are you a PC trying to build stuff?

Maybe I cheat, but when I GM I don't worry about writeups for these kind of things. As an exercise, writing this up might hone skills with Hero - otherwise, I wouldn't bother. It just works. In the same vein, I wouldn't let a writeup of a feature like this dictate the fine details of what it can do. I wouldn't want a trivial mistake to affect the game. For example, if it's an ancient powerful artifact and a PC shows up with "1d6 Drain Teleportation" - and I forgot to add Power Defense, I'd hate to be trapped into declaring the portal shuts down (when it wasn't supposed to!). But hey, I just had a weird thought! If you HAD to write up everything in the game-universe, ... How would you write up a river?

I've winged this for a long time - and finally realized I could ask you! So here goes: If a PC attempts an action for which they do not have the skill, how is that handled? For example: A PC in desperation tries to jump a creek (with a car) without combat driving (or even any more than the Everyman transport familiarity!). Another PC tries bribing a guard to "look the other way" - no skill. Yet another tries to travel at night, using the North Star (while not going directly north), ... without Navigation. I've faked all these occasions, making decisions based more on what I want to happen than on a rulebook. What do you say?

Don't forget the special effects. Missile Deflection can be lots of things, same for your missile. Why can't it be deflected? How does the Missile Deflection work? You can buy AE-1hex accurate and a load of skill levels, but what is it? If it's a heat seeker and the Missile Deflection is a wall of ice, then the missile should be deflected. It's not just numbers. [edited to make clearer the "it blocks heat" special effect of missile deflection]

I don't see anything wrong with what you propose. I also don't see the problem with Duplication you seem to think exists, so I might not be a good judge! Maybe you're overconstraining the mathmatical problem of matching the base form to the duplicates? You don't HAVE to spend 75 points unless you want to. If you do, then the rest of your discussion makes perfect sense - you've pre-paid for more costly duplicates so they can add powers for "free" for a while. I don't see where a house rule comes in. If you want to optimize your character, then paying 75 points for Duplication isn't the answer. Solve the following: 350 - (x+10) = 5 * x Once you know "x", you know how many other points you could spend on all your forms. In this case, x=56.7 (round to 57). So if you pay 67 points for Duplication (that includes the +10) you get five characters all of 283 points each. Of course, the base form is 350 since it pays the additional 67 for the power. The first two xp can pump up everyone at once, due to the rounding. After that, add 5xp to each character for every 6xp earned. The extra xp goes into Duplication so they all even out. Is this helpful, or did I completely miss the problem?

So PC takes on PC. Lots of interpersonal stuff here, but I'll ignore that. (talk to the player is good advice.) Probably the nuke is your best bet, but what GM is going to let you have it? And the unstoppable solution isn't any fun - you're dead already, so just wait about 100 years & he'll be gone. Besides, you've got things to do, and they need doing now! (you're a tortured soul, anyone tell you that?) Here's the plan. Set yourself up to look like the bad guy. Shouldn't be hard! Say a bunch of demons announce they'll attack an orphanage, and you are there seen going in with them. The pre-announcement gives enough time for the news media to film the whole thing, and S.O.B. gets there too. Just, a little after you. He beats you up again and stops the demons - what a hero! There were even internal video cameras catching the action! Too bad a couple of orphans died, but most were saved! Later review of the internal video tapes show you were fighting the demons. You personally saved a dozen. You were effectively dealing with the demons, until S.O.B. showed up and wrecked the whole thing. While he was pounding on you, the demons had free rein and killed the kids. Of course, you prearranged all this with the demons. You picked the site, knew the cameras were working, choreographed the entire thing. You knew how to stop the demons, or they all take dives for your attacks. They are instructed to be scary - until S.O.B. shows up. THEN, they kill everyone they can. Assuming your culpability never is exposed, the media and S.O.B.'s guilt will take care of the rest.

Awww, crud Gary! I was trying to find where it failed & did a lousy job - forgot to go for abnormal odds to hit. You did - kudos to you!

Thanks all for the feedback. I must have gotten a wire crossed somewhere - never let it be said TaxiMan can't change his mind! To recap, a PC with TK can use Objects of Opportunity to attack at range with no OCV penalty. The damage is limited to (TK STR/5) DC or (BODY + DEF) of the object, whichever is lower. The damage is Normal or Killing, depending on the object, its usage, and is the GM's call. IDHMBIFOM so I'll review any potential range penalties tonight. Thanks again! You know how sometimes you look at a common word and say, "that can't be spelled right!" - that must have been what happened. Hey archermoo - sorry if I ruffled feathers, was not my intent. 'Preciate the feedback!

Specifically, here's what I'd do: To perform a Move-Through with a HUGE object (fills a hex), target the hex you want to hit. If it is not adjacent to you, its DCV is 3. If it is adjacent to you, its DCV is 0. Do the rest of the attack as per Move-Through. If you hit, anything in the hex gets hit. If you miss and you are using some Huge Object Of Opportunity (HOOO ), you might want to know how badly you missed. Let a six-sider tell direction (1=2 o'clock, 2=4o'clock, ... 6=12o'clock). Determine the distance missed by doubling 1" for every point you failed your roll. (miss by 1=2"; miss by 2=4"; miss by 3=8" etc.) If you want, Megascale those inches if it's a Megascale-sized attack! If your object is big enough, you might still hit! Example: OCV is 10, DCV is 3 (hex), speed penalties = 4; you need to roll 14 or less (11+OCV-DCV-4) to hit. You roll a 17! You missed by 3 (17-14), so that's 1" x 2^3 = 8". If your HOOO can miss by 50 yards and STILL hit - CONGRATULATIONS! Your Asteroid Blast just smeared your opponent! Of course, this is for unique, one-time attacks and the environment. If you want to do this regularly, buy an Area of Effect attack. So if you had a really huge PC, he'd need to buy his attacks Area of Effect.

Exactly my question! Where do you draw the line between SFX and Powers? You are generous with SFX apparently. For example, would you require your players to have a "Brick Tricks" multipower? One that lets them tie up bad guys with steel bars, knock down opponents by pounding the ground, etc. etc. I've mostly seen people say "let 'em do it once, maybe with a Power Skill roll - if they do it more often, they have to buy the Power." You seem to be saying, let them do it all the time for free - forgive me if I'm misunderstanding you. But a Brick "paid points for" his STR, so he should be able to deafen people with supersonic eraser clapping? I'm not sold either way, but I lean towards explicitly buying some uses for TK. I was confused a little by the EB / RKA thing since I really DIDN'T want to explicitly buy those (it's a personal thing). But with the addition of the -3 OCV for unfamiliar weapon, I'm now a happy camper - you don't have to buy EB and RKA but you don't get an exact duplicate of an EB / RKA - you have to use it like a Real Weapon. This approach lets me buy those uses of TK that I want to use without penalty, and not buy those that I don't mind the penalty. I can still perform those actions, but not as well as if I had them in a "TK Tricks" multipower. I like that.

Restating it so you can tell me if I get it: With X equal attacks, add X-1 to the OCV and use Autofire rules to determine how many shots hit. Cool again! Let's do a simple test. Say I need a 10 or lower to hit for a single shot (50%). If I had 100 cannons, odds are really good that 50 will hit (the standard deviation is small with 100 rolls). I'll almost never get 99 and almost never get 1 hit. With the simplified rule I'd roll for Autofire against 10 + (100-1) = 109. If I roll 10 I hit about 50 times. If I roll 18 I hit 4 less, and if I roll 3 I hit about 4 more. Not bad! I wondered if I'd find an obvious flaw and I didn't! Since keeping the game fast keeps it fun for my group, I'll remember that trick. Very useful!

Excellent idea Geoff Speare! (weird putting a name there instead of a handle!) Another one to add to my short list of Hero "improvements".