Arthur

That seems to be the achilles heel of universal systems. GURPS has the same problem. Buying a DR of 10 for 30 points makes you practically invincible in a medieval setting, while the same DR 10 for the same cost is only pretty good in a modern military campaign. There is a fairly easy way to correct this, which is easily compatible with Hero Designer: require a 'Difficulty' Advantage on certain Powers. For instance, Force Field may require a +1/2 Difficulty Advantage. That was also a response to the style of games I was in. We had a big combat every session. Point-based character creation systems tend to produce characters in a very Darwinian fashion: environment pushes characters to develop a certain way. The real solution is to construct adventures with less combat. The flying howitzer becomes less useful. The first approach just discourages all those neat little spells that add breadth to the character. The second is better, IMO, although I prefer Active Point caps. A Real Point cap encourages piling on the Lims. My point exactly. It's easy to make cheap spells without trying all that hard. It doesn't even take jumping through a lot of hoops. I designed a magic ring with a crosshair sight on it that gave OCV bonusses. A no-prize to anybody who knows where I got that idea from. Also, the character didn't have many friends...

Intriguing. I played a lot of FH in 1st and 2nd Ed, and all the complaints I heard were about how powerful the wizards could be. We did NOT allow Power Frameworks under any circumstances whatsoever. All spells had RSR. We had AP caps. With Gestures, Incantations, Concentration, Side Effects, etc., the average Limitation total on a spell was about 1.5. About the only thing we allowed that I remember being abusive was Flight with Persistent and 0 END. We played that as the mage could be knocked out or bleeding to death, and would float. One almost died up there - nobody could get to him to help out. IIRC, END cost was 1 per 5 AP. I highly recommend that for lower-point games anyway. Some typical spells (rough costs): Shield: FF 6/6. 12 AP; 5 RP. 2 END. Flight 7", Pers 0 END. 28 AP; 11 RP. Sense Magic: Detect with Sense, Ranged, and Analyze. 15 AP; 6 RP 3d RKA 1/2 END. 56 AP; 22 RP. 5 END. That's a grand total of 40 points, leaving 110 for everything else. With SPD 3, the END cost was quite manageable. Rest of character (roughly) with Age 40+ Lim: STR 13; DEX 14; CON 13; BOD 11; INT 23; EGO 14; PRE 15; COM 8; PD 6; ED 6; SPD 3; REC 6; END 26; STN 25. Characteristics 60 points. Magic Skill typically cost 15 points. That left 35 points for other skills and spells. The mage had the equivalent of heavy armor, out of range of melee combat, and a ranged attack the equal of a potent fighter's melee attack. The only thing stopping most players from designing wizard characters was the difficulty of the game mechanics. If you knew what you were doing with the game system, your wizard would dominate.

Combat Luck is a great idea. However, its execution is a little weird. Why would a larger attack be more likely to hit? The cleanest way is to just buy extra DCV. Here's an interesting thought: buy it as Damage Reduction with a special activation roll: roll 5d and multiply the number of sixes by 25. Apply that much percentage of Damage Reduction (I'd let it go to 100 - rolling that many sixes is going to be rare). You can play around with the number of dice you roll: 3d: 10 points 4d: 20 points 5d: 40 points However, that approach has the same problem of larger attacks tending to get through. Just throwing out ideas.

The only time I ever really liked it was when they did a crossover with User Friendly. That was a riot. If anybody has the gifs from that run, I'd love to get a copy. User Friendly is one of my faves: http://www.userfriendly.org

I'll concur with Derek on this one, FWIW. This is vanilla Autofire. Unless they all always hit, in which case it is just a special effect.

Nicely done. That's the cleanest way I've seen. However, that Limitation is not valid. An NND must have a defense by definition. You also need the Does BODY Advantage. You might want to add a Lim for "must put target at 2xBODY or does no damage" depending on the effect you want. That'd be about a -1/2. That's 270 AP. Even with a bunch of Lims, it would still be close to triple digits. In a setting where all spells have to take RSR (very common and a really good idea, IMO), that's -27 to skill. Furthermore, imagine the rep the character would acquire. "In the name of finodh! We have to take that guy out NOW!" Mr. Primary Target.

Bill Lockwood, known as Snotman (the most disgusting joker in Jokertown) until Croyd Crenson manifested a mutated strain of the virus that could affect someone already changed. Snotman became a pure ace with the abilities you described. He dubbed himself The Reflector, although most people kept referring to him as Snotman (to his dismay). He was probably the most powerful ace ever to live, with the possible exception of Fortunato. He was certainly the least vulnerable. He was beaten twice: once by Mr. Gravemold (AKA Black Shadow), an ace with darkness and cold powers (cold = sucking energy OUT of the area) and once by Modular Man who buried him under rubble. That's a good example of a tough character to port over to a game. There are things you can do in literature that don't translate well into a game. His defenses were effectively infinite. Or were they? He survived being hit by a moving train unhurt (I don't think it was made clear how fast the train was moving), but there are more powerful forces than that in the universe. What about a meteor a kilometer in radius? Unknown. What about ground zero at a strategic nuke? Unknown. What about the core of a star? Unknown. He was also shown to be immune to Dr. Tachyon's telepathy. Does that make him immune to every mental power in the universe? The only way to know is to test every single mentalist in the universe. What about deities? (if such exist in your game). What about beings like Q from Star Trek? Who's to say some sufficiently powerful telepath can't bypass his power? This is even fuzzier, since we have no telepaths to reality check.. It's the old "irresistible force vs immovable object" debate. It's a paradox because the force would require ALL the energy available in the universe and the object would also require ALL the energy in the universe. "....and God disappeared in a puff of logic" (from the Hitchhiker's Guide series, IIRC).

Sure. I'm just saying there's no UNIVERSAL way to do it. If you have a 250-point Champs game, you can design Carbide the Indestructible Man with PD and ED 60 with 30 of it Resistant. Nothing at that point level is going to get through that. "Invulnerability" has a different value depending on the power level of the campaign.

Really? Where in heroic fiction do you have absolutes? When I was very young, I drew my own comics. I made up my own characters. One character I recall even now was one who could "do anything". Even when my age was in single digits, I quickly realized there was no way to tell a meaningful story. In a point-based system, an infinitely powerful effect would cost an infinite number of points. If you want something like that, you then have to handwave it: "This character is completely invulnerable". It falls outside of any point limit.

I have come to the conclusion that the inability to do absolutes in HERO is a feature, not a bug. The system is open-ended. It never tells you what you can't do - it merely gives a point cost. Yes, you can simulate anything - with enough points. The characters are defined using values in the real number system (rounded into integer values). It then follows that having an absolute defense that will stop anything must be able to counter attacks of any point level no matter how large the number. For any attack of value n: the defense must be greater than or equal to n. Conclusion: Point cost of Invulnerability: infinite. You simply cannot do it within any point value within the set of integers (except in the sense that the set of integers is itself endless). Remember, "infinity" is not a number, it is a quality - the quality of endlessness.

I did the same thing when creating a super-powered version of the The Undertaker (WWF wrestler). At enough damage, he would appear dead, but still be lying there taking Recoveries and Regen. I used the same construct as your point one, but with the following interpretation: 20 BOD 20 (bought normally). 10 +10 BODY (-1: only to avoid death). This actually lets him take another 20 BODY without actually dying. Remember, each point of BODY is really 2 BODY for purposes of how much it takes to kill a character. Also bought: 10 +20 STN (-1: only to determine Recovery increment). For example, if he were at -25 STN, he would take Recoveries as though at -5 STN. The rest of your construct looks great.

The first one sounds like something from a Tex Avery cartoon. On a more serious note, I designed a character called Blast Radius, a direct knockoff of Nitro from Marvel. He would explode, turn into vapor, then come back together. Did it something like this: 18d EB, Explosion, Personal Immunity. Desolidification, automatically happens when he explodes, no actions while desolid, can be affected as vapor, comes back together in a number of segments = (dice of explosion/3). Don't remember the exact power construct of Desol. I think most of it can be done with standard Power Modifiers. The parts that couldn't, I just make something up. You know, I think a lot of players feel constrained by the listed Power Modifiers, as though they can't have something if it's not listed. Meadow muffins! The modifiers are there to SERVE us, not constrain us. If the effect you want is not listed, find one that is similar, define it, then tweak the modiifer value if necessary.

On a slightly related tangent, here is the worst HERO pun I ever came up with: If you buy Danger Sense, you must also by Extra Limbs. Why, you ask? Because..... wait for it .............. Forewarned is four-armed.

Extra Limb, Usable On Others, Ranged, Autofire. Just for the visual...

I was in a 250-point Champs game some years ago. My character was the only one with SPD 4 (and DEX 18). Everyone else (except agents) were 5+. In terms of DEX and SPD, he was outclassed by pretty much everyone. It was one of the best games I ever played in. Why? Because the GM let me build the character with the highest STR in the game (75). Nobody else came close. It took awhile for Ogre (not the green guy) to get in a shot, but when he did - watch out. The GM told me flat out "I freaked out when I saw that STR score, but when I saw the DEX and SPD I approved the character". I think the 350-point scheme is going to cause a lot of problems like this. It allows characters to max out in several areas. At a more reasonable point limitt (I prefer 200 or even 150*), if you want to excel in one area, you have to skimp on another. Sure, you can't build every concept you want. That's a feature, not a bug. If your concept is too powerful for the genre, it SHOULD be impossible to do. * at 150 points, I don't make characters pay points for mundane items. They can buy WF and such.

Here are some that have a prayer of being original: Jack Hammer (two words: his real name!). Pronounced as two separate words, not "jackhammer". Megadyne Mack the Knife Nemesis Starhawk

That's what I get for going from memory. I designed the character on way over the published high-end Dr. Destroyer. Destroyer was just an ersatz Doom anyway. I figured what made Doom especially scary was his being a master of both science and mysticism. Everybody else had to specialize in one or the other.

Very few things generate as much debate as "how do you do up established character..." It typically boils down to how much you are a fan of the character in question. The more you identify with the character, the more points you tend to build him on. I'm as guilty of that as anyone. In my old SilverAge game, I defined Dr. Doom on well over 1000 points.

FRED, page 175. Firelords "Immolation" attack. If you want to make it a real flamethrower rather than a superpower, then use fuel charges. Uncontrolled was pretty much originally introduced to simulate napalm.

Oh you a funny boy!!

I personally just ported over the GURPS charts. Most of it was pretty trivial. I did decide that "bypasses armor" was too brutal (in GURPS it happened only when you rolled a 13 on the 3d chart) and made it something like 2x damage. Bypassing armor isn't TOO bad in the typical Fantasy game. However, when you are in a SF game, wearing powered armor, and up against a Gatling Laser... ...poof! You're dead...

That was put out by FGU, who also put out Space Opera. It had more acronyms per square centimeter than any game I ever saw. Made the Unix man pages look explicit. I gave up on it because it was essentially unreadable.

Back around 2nd Edition FH, I used to run that genre with all the optional damage rules. Hit Location, Imparing, Disabling, Bleeding. It was a BLOODBATH. Almost as lethal as GURPS.

I have to ask: why? What's it get you? Is "instant death" really that important an effect to get? If you're looking at being more realisitc, "instant death" is VERY difficult to accomplish. About the only wa to do it is massive trauma to the brainstem. Seen reference to cases where someone died within ten minutes from injuries and the doctor listed it as "immediate death". I think the real problem is the frequency of getting 1x on STN from a KA. In reality, a serious injury causes a system shock much more easily. I use the HL chart myself - it gives more realism. If you're more interested in simulating heroic fiction: once again the higher STN multiples take care of that. If MuscleHead the Barbarian is dropping an orc with almost every swing of his sword, does it really matter whether they are dead NOW, or unconscious and bleeding to death (the Bleeding rules help too). They really only keep comin when the STN multiples are low.

Yamo wrote: >>> Really, I love HERO, but the seeming inability to just make things DIE (or turn to stone or whatever) without it mattering if they're Doctor Destroyer or Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman is slightly irksome to me. Other games can do "save or die" abilities just fine. Can HERO? >>> Sure. You just need an infinite number of points. Consider: most of these other games have to band-aid the gaping holes that spring up in absolute powers, with special immunities and the like, or they are designed assuming a certain level of power in mind. HERO can simulate any scale (some it does better than others). Suppose you defined a monster the size of Jupiter. It would probably be at least 1000 points, but you can do it. Do you really want some wizard to be able to turn Jovian-man into stone as easily as he does a human? An absurd example, to be sure, but it's up to ME where I draw the line, not some arbitrary limit set by the game designer. It does seem that the lack of absolutes in HERO is a failing. However, on deeper analysis, it is an inevitable feature of a well-designed open-ended point-based system. No matter how large your attack, it is still finite.