Roy_The_Ruthles

Re: World of Darkness Garou Template So, I might be wrong, but is the Rage Powers Multipower supposed to draw from the Rage Pool END reserve? If so, the rage powers all cost 4 END (with the exception of changing forms) which costs 1 END. This means that 3 of the 4 actions deplete the pool 4x as fast as the 4th action, rather than all actions costing 1 Rage Point. My suggestion would be to quadruple the size and recovery of the Rage Pool then add Costs x4 Endurance to Changing Forms. Also, I would probably build the "recover from being stunned" power differently, but that doesn't mean this build is bad.

Re: 6th Ed House Rules My group has extensive house rules, but I'll try to briefly summarize the issues so far addressed: We always have used Hit Locations for Killing Damage Stun, and continue to do so. This fixes the change quite nicely. We doubled the BODY and DEF costs for barrier, which turns it into an average option, not the best, but useable. We use a house rule that genericly held actions must be "used or lost" in order from lowest dex count to highest. Thus a higher DEX score allows characters to wait out their opponets or get the drop on them. Definitly worth 2 points per point.

Re: How does a Megacorp make money? In most cyberpunk settings, corporations make money by being evil. Literally. Basically around the time that cyberware got invented and people started decking the matrix, everyone realized that money as a representation of goods and services was no longer functional in the dark dystopian future. So some very smart economists put together a nobel prize winning paper which instead related money to how many people you oppress and the soul-crushing effiency by which you oppress them. This allows each mega-corporation to continue to generate positive bottom lines, despite the fact that they create goods and services which no one would purchase.

Re: How do Hero System players/GM view DnD? Balancing HERO encounters is a skill. Unfortunately it is both an art and a science. I regret that you got pasted, but I don’t think that was the system’s fault, it seems more like the GM just double the PC numbers and didn’t think about it. As far as the tactics go, I think we have had different experiences. Once the levels go past 10 I’ve had the tactics just become meaningless grinds, and past 20 a painfully long grind. I’ve yet to find HERO tactics a systemic problem at any power level of play (from 50 points to 800).

Re: Soon to be New Player 1. It's moderately hard. The system is easy to manipulate once you understand it, but I've found most people don't learn from reading books (if you are, that's awesome). 2. Very easy. Playing HERO is not hard, and I've had new people to HERO in the same game as a few vets, while character creation can be intimidating, playing is easy and fun. 3a. Yes, I always use minis 3b. Yes, but HERO has on AoOs. Instead people will be hitting each other across the field (if you use Knockback) and throwing each other into buildings. You can also do more controlled smaller scale movement. 3c. Depends entirely on the character. I think the system encourages fluid combat rather than one style or the other. Sniping is do-able but has the same flaws as in many RPGs. I find HERO combat has people moving around a great deal, while spouting quips, one liners, and taunts.3d. Yes. HERO divorces special effects (what a thing looks like) from Effects (what a thing does). A fighter can work with a GM to make in-genre and awesome powers. I would go into more detail since I just did this, but I'm time limited.

Re: How do Hero System players/GM view DnD?

Re: How do Hero System players/GM view DnD? Uh, by me. OP asked for opinions of HERO gamers, and my opinion is that it is less fun for listed reasons.

Re: How do Hero System players/GM view DnD? My $.02: I see D&D as less fun than HERO by default. I don’t want to say that D&D is not fun at all, simply that more fun can be had by using HERO rules. Both systems can be house ruled to patch them, so I’ll only mention some what I see as the fundamental reasons I prefer HERO to D&D (I am talking about 3.5 rather than 4th, 4th has different issues). 1) HERO is more active: HERO you can abort when it is not your action, and you are not penalized for holding/delaying (D&D resets initiative count and requires a full phase to hold std. action). The fact that you can actively defend yourself keeps people interested when it is not their turn. 2) HERO is simpler: HERO has an unified rules system, where once you grok it, it is all fairly simple. There are exceptions, but it is far less than D&D, where if you know how grappling works, trip checks are fairly different. D&D is an exception based rules system where there are dozens of minor exceptions and sub-rules requiring you to memorize all the exceptions (or where to find them). 3) It is harder to recognize that a spell/feat is broken before play in D&D. Both HERO and D&D can have under or overpowered options, but in HERO it tends to be more obvious before play. This allows GMs to catch potential problems before they arise. 4) Inequality of options: In D&D many options are presented as equal. Unfortunately some options are better than others. An example is fireball vs. stinking cloud. Both are level 3 wizard/sorc spells, but stinking cloud is significantly better. It is easy for new players to be tricked into bad choices. 5) Crowd Control is less effective in HERO: In D&D spells/abilities that remove people from combat are much more effective than doing damage. They are so effective that whichever side wins initiative can suppress enough of the other team to insure a victory. Also due to the nature of D&D, you tend to have binary results (alive/dead), and I prefer the (alive/unconscious/dead) system from HERO. I’d be happy to write a longer post explaining any of these issues if requested, or list more, but I wanted to keep it “short”

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction? I won't argue on EGO +mental defense, both are effective, and it just matters what exactly you want. The DN thing is mostly for stuff like "NND: Defense is something you don't have" (like "does not breath, is a dwarf, being left handed). DN still works on those, just like DR. I didn't think about "Reduced Negation", that does make DN rather sad.

Re: Abjurer My thoughts are to perhaps take away NCC and "user does not control trigger activate" and go with "Requires an opposed attack roll" (-1/2). It's based on Requires a Skill Roll, 6E1 P389. That way you have to "block" the enemy attack with your own OCV to deflect it. You could also make it based on some other value (like an INT roll or something). That's my thought if I was the GM (and you wanted to put limitations on it). Your GM might have different wishes. I would also want Standard Effect Rule (+0) just to speed up game play. Another way to build this power, would be as a continuous Dispel or a continuous suppress. Or just Damage Negation, only vs. spells (-1/2).

Re: Stacking Damage Reduction? In my experience defenses work like this: Static DEF (resistant protection) works to keep you from being nickle and dime'd down. Many small hits are worse if you have a high DEF. A character definitely needs some of this. If you take larger sized hits, you will take significantly more damage than if you had a combination of less DEF and DR though. Damage Reduction excels at mitigating the effect of large hits. You do get taken apart by many small hits, but larger hits will have much less of an effect. I usually build any super heroic character with some amount of DR. It is also useful against weird AVADS. Mental Damage Reduction will cripple all EGO+X powers. Suddenly an EGO +30 effect means EGOx2 + 60 (if you have 50% DR). The way around that is either removing it from your game, or using mental powers with +0 and +10 effects in creative ways. Damage Negation is best for dealing with really oddly advantaged attacks. At least that's what I've found. That's been my only experience and I wish I could comment more.

Re: Abjurer

Re: Not sure how to apply the Power skill My group usually uses power skill to do any related *minor* effect (and if you keep using it, you should probably buy it as a power). This means if you want to melt a door with PS: Fire Magic, do that once, then buy tunneling (or an attack). Basically it's not as good as a VPP but used when you want to do a related effect you should be able to do, but didn't buy as a power because you weren't thinking about it.

Re: Instagib Move Throughs? I once built a super speedster with an extra large HKA: Side effect (takes full damage), to represent running into someone at super fast speeds. If you do want to pull this trick off multiple times, I suggest building it as a power (also it is easier to hit that way). The character in question also had regeneration (since his powers were based on super metabolism), and a ton of body to not die. None the less, he only used it once in the entire adventure.

Re: Abjurer If you don't want to use other schools of magic, you can make a perfectly fine offensive abjurer. I'd use Englobing Barriers as my magic circles (great to slow down an enemy, sometimes you can get a net action over them), I'd also use PRE with Extra Time (full phase) for things like dismissal, so I can send enemies running. Add some defensive buffs for your friends (Resistance, Protection from X, etc). Now you've got some personal defenses, some defenses to share, and some interesting attacks. If you want to go high powered, nothing beats a complicated linked damage/transform/EDM UAA prismatic wall or sphere. Finally a Teleportation UAA (I have no idea what the balanced defense is), can function as your imprisonment. You won't be throwing 12d6 blasts around, and you'll mostly be a crowd controller/support character, but you will be fairly interesting.

Re: Complete Newcomer to the System I want to agree with all the people suggesting you build some sample chars and post them. Also remember that every group has their own "style" of HERO so people are only posting from their own experiences and styles. For example: I've found at low point heroic games, that most characters tend to be built in a rather similar fashion. Most end up investing a majority of their points in Characteristics, have a little combat luck to not die, and rely on equipment to attack and defend (you better believe I'd like my sword and armor in a fantasy world, or my gun and kevlar vest in a dark champions one). Because of this, be mindful when creating equipment. If you make a single weapon significiantly better than the others (or just more useful), expect to see several players want to use it. An example of this is that I played a Low Fantasy world where the Halberd was slightly better than any other weapon in the game (highest damage by 1 DC and it has 2m reach), as a result half the party used halberds while the other half used swords because they weren't strong enough to exploit the halberd (and didn't want to pay the points to generalize CSLs when they were strong enough). Basically at low point totals, characters can be built very similar, and if a varity of equally good weapons is required if you want them to all use different ones. That's my only observation with low powered HERO.

Re: DCV Drain

Re: GMing a Post Apocalypse campaign Fallout is inherently awesome and any campaign in it is by definition great. Your real question must be: which Fallout are you using to set the tone/theme/mood of the game?

Re: New to 6E. Wow! Amazing system I agree with the idea of low powered heroic. That's how I got into HERO. Talk with your players about what character they want and then make sure you do the majority of character creation (unless they feel they have a good grip on the system, some people pick up new systems easily). I find that if each character was made by the same person (everyone has their own HERO "style") they tend to be easier to balance. I was also introduced to HERO by my character gaining a VPP pool about 4 sessions into the game, which forced me to read the power rules and learn to build powers on the fly. EDIT: Also Fireg0lem, we had 50 points of disads, (Roy had 2 total psych disads)

Re: DCV Drain Yes it totally does. I was reading the section on dispelling attacks (to prevent being hit) which it doesn't apply.

Re: How to give Players their "Great Responsabilities"? I think this is a genre problem. You need to talk to the players about what genre you are playing. They seem to think it is a conspiracy/horror genre (which I can see, since they are the only supers because of some tampering on them 20 years ago by some mystery organization). There is also the astronomical event but they might be focused more on the "someone messed around with us and we need to not be found and made lab subjects again" aspect of their back story. When you suggested this game, how did you pitch it? Did you make it clear that they were supposed to be heroic? Suggest they take psych disads related to being heroic. I feel this is probably just a huge disconnect where they are playing an urban fantasy instead of champions. Also, I want to say I would avoid using in game actions to fix this, it will only reinforce the paranoia, while an out of game solution should cut it off at the source. I also really hate the kitchen timer idea and advise against it. I played in a timed game exactly once, and will never do so again. That's a easy way to get an adversarial effect. Remember PCs are penalized time when the GM explains things, goes over rules, uses the bathroom etc. That can make it easy to feel like the GM is purposefully running down the clock.

Re: Fused Powers I agree with "multiple users" on a new power, multiform, using the teamwork skill, and boost as all good ways to do this. You can also do it with CSLs that only work when you preform your "special attack" with another character.

Re: Vampire: the masquerade style blood pool First off, I want to agree with everyone saying "use an END reserve", because that's how I would do it (with Increased/decreased END). Now, I'll also throw out another option: One multipower with recoverable (and some continuous) charges. Different slots can cost different amounts of charges, and you can use slots for things like +10 STR continuing charge lasting 1 hour. Then have the recovery condition be feeding on someone. You can say how many charges you can gain from feeding one someone, and then hand wave recovery fairly easily (whenever I played vampire, it was more the "Dark superheroes with blood batteries" variant).

Re: DCV Drain In the games I've been in we rarely use drain and find that it is not very effective. To explain this I should give some background on my group's habits. I play with a group where nearly all characters have Power Defense equal to about half of their physical/energy defense. This would translate to about 12 power defense in a 12 DC game. That means 6d6 drain (21 average) only does 9 points of drain. That's not enough to strip off a single point of DCV. What I've found to wreck people is dispel. You need to grab a friend for this one. Fight the other guy and figure out how his defenses are built. Probably with resistant protection but he might have some DN or DR on that. Wait till he acts (this probably requires you going on a DCV dropping maneuver the previous phase so that he wants to attack before you get an action, assuming his dex is higher than yours, otherwise you can force him to abort just by attacking). Once he's acted and cannot abort, then you hit him with the biggest Dispel (Defense) you can. Dispel isn't resisted by power defense, and it isn't an adjustment power so it doesn't take twice as much to dispel a defensive power. It is all or nothing though, so you need to both roll well and put your levels in damage. If you succeed, your friend immediately hits them, usually for massive damage. If you let them abort, they will abort to reactive the defense, plus any additional defensive slots, plus some dodging, so don't let them do that. I've only pulled it off once in a campaign but it was pretty devastating. Great for the long shot, last ditch, combine attack.

Re: Should Speed have a scaling cost? So I personally wouldn't mind a scaling cost for speed. While you can limit it with caps and outer extra-book-rules (rules from outside the book), a scaling cost would be nice to represent how going from 2-4 is much better than 4-6. OTOH this would make heroic games cost more points so I can see an argument for keeping it linear and simple. I guess my opinion is in 7th edition it would be nice from an aestic perspective but it's not a problem in 6th.