Cantriped

True, it is less common. But even in Low Fantasy energy weapons are more common than in Modern* (Non-Superheroic) campaigns. Torches may not be great weapons, but if you throw a flask of oil at the enemy first and then lite them up it will be far more effective than just beating on them with a club (flaming or otherwise). *In Low Fantasy, anyone can get their hands on Torches, Oil is likewise fairly commonly available in this era. Meanwhile, neither these, nor modern energy weapons (tasers and such) are especially common in a typical modern world. It also depends largely on the GM, and the setting. In Golarion (the pathfinder campaign setting) goblins are one of the most common enemies I throw at the players. They go to great lengths to weaponized fire. Most goblins carry (nonmagical) torches in addition to their swords or glaives. They also have actual combat skill with said Torches (in Hero: WF (Torch) and two or more 3-point CSLs). Goblin alchemists make Alchemist's Fire (a nonmagical slash weapon that ignites on contact with the air). So when I GM this setting, energy attacks tend to be somewhat more common than they would otherwise be (although physical attacks probably still win out).

I think many of us also fall into the trap of misusing the term 'campaign'. For example, when somebody casually says they are running a "Pathfinder Campaign"... they probably aren't running an actual campaign. The scenarios all too rarely have anything to do with one another. In that context they most meant that they are GM for a Table* running Pathfinder (which doesn't sound nearly as cool). * "Table" is the term I was taught for a group of tabletop gamers, like a Murder of Crows, or a Pride of Lions.

You can inure yourself to heat or cold by exposure. For example, as a result of years of washing dishes by hand in the hottest water I could endure, my hands can handle much, much, hotter temperatures than my feet. I sometimes even joke that my hands have 1 point of resistant ED. But it is true that training for ED would be much, much harder (and less efficient) than training for PD.

It is weird to be having different parts of this discussion in two threads simultaneously I agree that it is a very strange beast! It falls victim to being written to accommodate extant characters, as opposed to being written to serve a mechanical purpose. The mechanical assumption seems to be that Desolidification is somewhat selective by default regardless of SFX. Your mass doesn't actually disappear* (someone using Affects Desolid TK still has to be able to Lift your mass to pick you up), which is why normal Gravity still effects you (per RAW anyway). Although you cannot take falling damage if you never actually 'hit the ground', sans Flight that would require falling forever (since eventually you fall into the center of the earth and hang there, pulled along in its orbit until you starve or suffocate). You can choose to interact with solids (to walk on the ground, or climb a ladder, for example). You can also choose to sink into the earth (at a rate up to terminal velocity, since you are effectively choosing to 'fall' a limited distance into the ground. *Unless you use the variant Density Reduction/Desolidification rules from one of the APGs (which do explicitly affect your mass, until as Desolid it becomes 0 Mass). As for how they see and breath. Breathing is necessary for character life by default (barring Life Support that Desolidifidation explicitly does not grant). The rules explicitly note that attacks which target your breathing bypass Desolidification (without needing Affects Desolid). So the mechanical assumption is that your lungs automatically choose to interact with gasses to that you can breath, and your eyes automatically choose to interact with reflected light so that you can see. The same goes for every other sensory organ except Touch, which it is explicitly noted doesn't function.

You missed the qualifier "most". Desolidifiction doesn't make you immune to "all physical and energy attacks" it makes you immune to "most physical and energy attacks". The description notes that the bullet-pointed list in inclusive, not comprehensive. To reuse my previous example, Nerve Gas is a physical attack that works on desolidified character because they still have to breath, and it is an attack that targets their breathing. Humans are already mostly Water. When we "splash all over the ground" it hurts us because we cannot put ourselves back together (I.E. Regenerate the BODY Damage). Actual water is no different, if you look at a volume of water as a single object like a human (as opposed to countless loosely connected objects piled on top of one another), than when it "falls" it takes falling damage just like a Human. Every part of its 'body' is blown in different directions and it lacks the Regeneration to put itself back together (I.E. it is destroyed by BODY Damage). Being made of water (or gas) doesn't make you immune to "most physical and energy attacks" all by itself, you also have to be able to reform (I.E. Regeneration) any part of your body dissipated by an attack, or eventually an enemy will have displaced too much of you to remain of cohesive object (I.E. you take BODY damage and die). However reformation is generally the assumed special effect used to describe why Desolidification provides immunity to most physical and energy attacks. To be fair this is also why Desolidification is sometimes used as the Actual Effect for powers whose special effect is Instant Regeneration. Regarding Light: I wouldn't allow Light-Form Desolid to take Cannot Pass Through Solid Objects because there are transparent solids which Light can pass through. I might allow a lesser version of the limitation, such as Cannot Pass Through Opaque Objects (-1/4). In either case you only take damage if you choose to interact with the object while Desolidified. If a bus is thrown through you, you may choose to let it pass harmlessly through, or stop it. Likewise, if you were thrown (or fall) through a bus, you may choose to pass harmlessly through, or let it stop you. If you stop it, or let it stop you, than you take the appropriate amount of damage. As noted in 6e1, you can choose to fall through an object or the ground, but if you don't you take Falling Damage normally (I extend this logic to all collisions, but the rules are not so explicit unfortunately).

Considering the size of his hands? How does he handle all those human sized controls, switches and toggles anyway. Anyway, TF with every listed category in 6e1 92 (since CC omits such tables for brevity) costs about 34 points (including example Recreational Vehicles). So while it isn't super cheap to be familiar with literally every kind of vehicle and mountable animal in existence, nor is it particularly expensive. Thankfully for Ben Grimm in particular, He can buy every Science Fiction & Space Vehicle​ for just 2 points, and every Air Vehicle he needs for just 3 more points.

That is way more calculation than I think I would want to run during a combat. I'll stick to the (perhaps) unrealistic RAW over trying to supplant the game mechanics with physics. Perhaps a simpler (but more realistic than the current) mechanic could have been worked into the game, but that would require a unified system for quantifying Size and Mass which doesn't currently exist (akin to what is used for Bases and Vehicles). By default a character's Size and Mass and no game effect whatsoever, so changing them shouldn't either (beyond what is already prescribed by the powers which create such effects).

Sure you can have a superheroic campaign (in the sense that a "campaign" is simply a string of related "scenarios"), although they do tend to be less common in cinema and literature as a rule. I feel like true "campaigns" are actually becoming less common for other genre's too. Nobody seems to be running all that many traditional, epic, "slay the dark lord" style campaigns in Fantasy genres either. Most adventuring 'campaigns' I see these days don't really qualify, but I've played a lot of Dungeons & Murderhobos.

Kind of... but not really by RAW. However Steve gave a suggested value in the link (which is highly unusually of him, he must be tired of all the gravity threads...) of 25 points per level (with 1 level being equal to 1 G). Similarly I've written flat cost Change Environment combat effects for my house rules which allow the character to manipulate gravity in several ways (amplify it, reduce it, or change its vector).

Sure, it is a given that certain special effects bypass Desolidification. For example, if you define an attack as a Gas Attack (using NND for example), it works against Desolidified Characters (that don't also have Self-Contained Breathing) regardless of whether or not the attack paid for Affects Desolid. The rationale being that by default you still have to breath even if you can pass through solid objects (CC 58 explicitly notes in the second to last bullet point). Therefore, if a character can still Fall (take Falling damage) while Desolid, than they can also be subjected to any power which simulates that mechanic as well.

I frequently use the Extraordinary Skill rules (CC 25) for some of these things. For example: ​​Super Scientist: SS: All Science (Extraordinary). Cost: 13 points. Notes: This skill functions as a Characteristic-Based roll for any field of science. The rest I wouldn't touch with a 3m pole. But than again, I wrote a villain that spent something like 175 points on earth languages in addition to​ purchasing Universal Translator because Universal Translator only allows basic communication, not true fluency, and the character in question was fluent and literate in every known language. For brevity I think I omitted the entire list by simply noting that they were Fluent in All Earth Languages (as defined by CC 31).

If a character's method of Desolidification is "Turning Into Mist", I would require they also bought Flight to move in 3d (and decelerate from falls). However, if they fail to decelerate in time and cannot pass through solid objects, than they take falling/collision damage when they impact a solid object. Desolidification doesn't make you immune to Velocity based-effects, it simply limits what classes of objects you still interact with. I can't recall any rules for modifying Terminal Velocity (or Falling Acceleration) based on Size, Mass, or Form (powers such as Growth, Density Increase, Stretching, and Shrinking). Maybe it is hidden somewhere in an APG or toolkitting Side-Bar. Isofar as I am aware, the rules treat all automatons, characters, vehicles, and objects the same in this regard. a Size 20 Vehicle (the size of an Aircraft Carrier), falls at exactly the same velocity as an unfolded bed sheet, a sheet of paper, a single brick, or an unconscious human. Per RAW, all modes of movement work 'normally' while desolidified, with the exception of now being able to pass through solid objects while using them. None of the other qualities of the Movement Power change. Since I wouldn't allow a Solid character to use Running or Swimming to decelerate from a fall, neither will I allow a Desolidified character do so. Also note that being Desolidified should not allow you to 'swim' through whole gaseous and solid volumes (I.E. it doesn't become cheap Flight.). You still have to be immersed in a fluid volume for swimming to function (naturally you can still pass through intervening solids, and you could also use Running to walk along the bottom of a body of fluid).

This is very true. Encumbrance hardly ever gets used in Champions (honestly, it rarely gets used even in systems where it is integral to gameplay), and while I use Hit Locations in all my campaigns, I am very much in the minority in that regard.

CC doesn't mention this explicitly like 6e1 does (unfortunately): "A Desolidified character falls at normal velocity (see 6E2 140). He takes no damage from impacting the ground... but he doesn’t stop at the ground, he just keeps falling into and through it! This could cause serious problems if he doesn’t have Life Support or a Movement Power that can counteract the fall. He can use the same “force of will” that lets him walk on the ground to stop his fall when he hits the ground, but he takes normal falling damage." - 6e1 pg. 191.

I quite liked Robot Warriors, It had some very interesting concepts. Chris Goodwin also has a very nice Conversion document for Robot Warriors linked in his signature above. While it is true that the default Genre for Star Hero Complete would most likely be Space Opera, that isn't much different from the fact that Fantasy Hero Complete assumes High Fantasy, or that Champions Complete assumes Golden Age tropes. It won't really stop people from running other genres, although for more information regarding them, players should still turn to the relevant genre-source books for information.

The rules assumption is that you need TF for any vehicle you did not personally pay CP for (regardless of Campaign Type)*... The reason several example members of the Champions were given TF (The V-Jet) is because the V-Jet, Socrates, and Homestead are assumed to have been given to the Champions for Free (see CC 217) as an encouragement to form a Superteam. Since nobody actually paid for that Vehicle personally, nobody gets TF with it for free either. * It just doesn't come up very often in Superheroic Campaigns because: Everyone starts with a single 1-point TF as an Everyman Skill (usually allowing them to drive a car, or possibly a motorcycle instead). They are assumed to be purchasing any unusual vehicles they possess (which they might have needed TF with) with CP, and therefore get TF with them automatically. If they don't have a Vehicle (or at least TF with one), they usually have some personal movement power which is better than most vehicles, and therefore eschew them entirely (such as Kinetik; CC 197).

The most stripped down I've ever run HERO was using Champions Complete (with no supplements, not even FHC): Sans Knockback/Knockdown, Sans Hit Location Rules (which I otherwise use regardless of campaign type of genre), and banning most of the Perks and Talents.

Marking something as a "Heroic" rule is not the same as being marked as an Optional Rule*. The definition of the "Heroic Icon" can be found on CC page 8 and reads "Notes that the associated rules/concepts are intended primarily for Heroic Campaigns". That does not mean those rules automatically cease to apply, or that they are optional (except to the degree that You Can Change Anything (CC 6) makes every rule Optional). *One possible exception being Delayed Effect, which is marked as Heroic, and which isn't explicitly described as an Optional Rule, but is only applicable if an optional rule is in place (effectively making it an optional rule). Otherwise, the rules marked as optional rules are assumed to be "flipped-off" by default regardless of Campaign Type. The GM has to note that he is using the Bleeding Rules, because even in the Heroic Campaigns they are suggested for they are still marked as Optional Rules. In my opinion, the all of the Heroic and Superheroic Rules should be assumed to be in effect unless there are contradictory versions of the rule specific to the campaign type (or the GM explicitly says otherwise). For example, Knockback is assumed to be in effect in Superheroic Campaigns, and Knockdown is assumed to be in effect in Heroic Campaigns; you obviously cannot use both, and to use neither would be a House Rule. Conversely, there is no contradictory Superheroic version of the Weapon Familiarity Rules*, therefore I assume it is in place regardless of Campaign Type (unless the GM says otherwise). *The closest equivalent is purchasing equipment with points, but that isn't a specifically Superheroic Rule (Heroic Character have to do it too sometimes); a character might or might not be required to pay for any given equipment with CP regardless of the campaign being "Heroic" or "Superheroic". Since all that changes in this regard between the two is the Threshold for being considered something that the character has to pay for, getting WF for free by buying a weapon isn't a specifically Superheroic Rule.

This doesn't seem any simpler at all. If the main issue is just the point imbalance created by 'Martials' getting Free Normal Equipment that 'Casters' do not... there are much simpler solutions than extensive toolkitting. If the issue is just your players inability (or unwillingness) to use a calculator, there isn't a rules solution to stupid or lazy. The simplest solution to the problems created by the Heroic Equipment rules are not to use them. Just run Superheroic Fantasy instead. If everybody pays points for everything regardless of special effect, than there is no possibility of Martial/Caster Disparity causing an imbalance. You could also give a look at the Resource Point rules, they allow a GM to give the players lots of loot, while still restricting the amount of CP worth of equipment characters begin the scenario with. In addendum to, or separate from the above advice, you could write a few items up for spellcasters so that everyone has equal opportunities for Free Normal Equipment (by stretching the definition of 'normal' to include a great many minor magical items). For example, a Wand of Magic Missile (which requires the appropriate WF, and might have Charges Which Never Recover).

I started with 5th, so I missed out on that 4th edition clause. Thanks for citing it! It is true that 5th & 6th edition write-ups include a lot of things that probably aren't going to be worth points in a typical campaign... but by the same token, NPCs aren't strictly held to point budgets. They are built on as many points (and with as many) complications as is appropriate to represent their capabilities. It is only for PCs that we should be worried about whether or not the game element is going to come up. Regarding TFs/WFs: We are just quibbling over a half-dozen points at most. I can't think of many characters that need more than a few 2-point categories to use any available vehicles/weapons they so desire, and there is a reason why Combat Driving/Riding/Piloting include a 1-point TF (because it all your likely to need to make use of the skill). However I look at CSLs and WFs very differently than you. I wouldn't allow someone to purchase CSLs (with Blades for example), if they didn't already have an appropriate WF (Blades in this case). Nor should a single All Ranged CSL should function as a universal WF in addition to it's already described benefits (+1 OCV, +1 DCV, +1/2 DCs, etc). If I build a character that uses a magical sword, I'm also going to drop a point on WF (Blades) so that I can use the non-magical ones too (because I don't expect the GM to give me anything I didn't pay for). Likewise a character with a Super-cycle would also have the appropriate TF to use regular Motorcycles too (probably take that using the Everyman TF slot, or by purchasing Combat Driving.

Not sure if this version has already been mentioned (because I'm too lazy to read through the whole thread today): This was the last "Bag of Holding" like item I wrote... Minor Belt Pouch of Holding This purple silk belt pouch is highly sought after by adventurers and tax collectors alike, for it can hold over 960 silver coins, yet it never weighs more than an apple. It's drawstring is especially long, and the mouth of this pouch stretches to comical proportions. One famous story tells of an adventurer stuffing an entire tavern bench into their pouch. Objects placed within the pouch appear as embroidered patches upon it's surface, taking up space on the pouch's surface equivalent to how much of the pouch's capacity is occupied. Amongst the dwarves this pouch is known as the Hammer Space Pouch... but no one knows why. Game Info: Telekinesis (2 STR), Zero END (+1/2), Persistant (+1/4) (5 APs); No Range (-1/2), Affects Whole Object (-1/4), IIF Durable (-1/4). Cost: 2 points. ​This is built based on the logic that the intended benefit of the D&D style bag of holding is to allow the character to carry a fixed amount of additional weight. It being an extradimensional storage space is simply the special effect of the power. Naturally D&D doesn't have the same mechanics for damaging carried objects that Hero does: So I might make the bag Durable (or even Indestructible), and simply house rule that the Foci's Defences protect anything in the pouch (as defined by what the TK is carrying)... otherwise it starts getting complicated again.

I've never heard that before, nor played in a campaign where that was the case. I certainly can't recall any Hero Games Supplement I've ever read that suggested ignoring the Weapon Familiarity rules (but I could be wrong). They just don't usually come up in Superheroic Campaigns because most heroes, villains, and agents are all paying for their Equipment using CP, and therefore don't need WF for them. Even so... you can still find plenty of Champions-Universe cannon examples NPCs that purchased WFs, even for types of weapons they've purchased one or more of (such as Small Arms), just so that said characters can use normal versions of said equipment as well as their paid for versions. Regarding Team Vehicles: I would assume that basic training in a team's vehicle is just one of those things that happens off camera... because you only tell stories about interesting events, and "Ben Grimm practices in a Flight Simulator for eight hours" makes for a poor comic book issue. Plus there isn't an official Hero System 6th Edition write-up for characters like Ben Grimm. So its not like we can check if they actually bought TF with their team's vehicles 'like they should have'; most of which I would assume Mr. Fantastic pays for in that campaign... since his power-set is so cheap/weak that he has points to spare on Gadgeteering, Bases, Vehicles, etc (leaving him the only one with automatic Familiarity). As a GM, I would simply earmark some bonus XP towards the appropriate TFs/WFs in campaigns including lots of Team Equipment. Which produces the desired result of players not worrying about whether they know how to use the team super-car/jet, without producing the undesired result of them being able to pick up and use stolen/barrowed equipment without penalty.

Don't forget too that in a Superheroic Campaign you still need to pay for Weapon Familiarity with any Weapons you didn't personally pay points for. So if The Blink picks up ​The Sentencer's ​Big Revolver​ (built as RKA, Clips of Recoverable Charges, OAF Universal, etc) they suffer the -3 nonproficiency penalty unless they've taken the appropriate WF. Granted powers don't suffer that limitation (AFAIK) because as long as the grantee has the power, they also have proficiency with it just as if they'd actually purchased it themselves.

You can use everything I've seen in Star Hero ​just as effectively in Champions Complete​ as you can in 6e1&2. Fantasy Hero Complete​ would be supplemental (providing rules for Ranged Martial Maneuvers), but it lacks the Modern Skills (like Computer Programing) necessary to run most futuristic campaigns. As was mentioned above, copies of the 5th edition Vehicle source books will also be helpful in providing lots of stat blocks that require minimal conversion (mostly just changes to their costs).

Yes they have. Noncombat Movement works differently for Leaping. Your total Noncombat Leaping is also your maximum leap distance, yet you only travel your Combat Leaping per Phase. Therefore a character with 200m (the 6th/CC/FHC equivalent of 100") of Leaping with x8 Noncombat Multiplier can leap up to 1,600m in a single bound, but completing such a leap would take 8 phases. I wish for the sake of consistency that they had made Swinging work the same way.