Duke Bushido

Agreed. It is akin to having to "keep it primed," for lack of a better phrase. The value of the limitation should be variable a but: th3 base value requires xonstant expenditure equal to the cost of using the TK at full strength; for half the normal value, I would allow having to expend half the full endurance cost to "keep the engine running," as it were, with additional END for TK expenditures beyond this level paid as they arw incurred.

Thanks, Cancer, but that was sirected at Old Man, who clearly wasn't allowed to have any fun in science class. Oh, and Bolo: I just read the labels, Sir, to see what chemistry is tryinf to pretend to be in this particular package or that.

You, Sir, had very strict teachers.

Same. It's like pizza: the older I get, the less I like it. It doesn't really help that the "bacon craze" about ten years back has made it almost impossible to find bacon-flavored bacon, at least around these parts. Everyone has to tout some special magical flavor (apple wood smoked! Pecan and chicory! Thin-sliced weasel anus!), leaving pretty much all of them tasting not unlike a grade-school chemistry set.

I shall him Ron, and he shall be king of all Florida....

As we are all aware, it was an attempt to add C'thullu's Sanity type damage stat as a genre rule. I am not saying anything nehative about it, because it worked well enough as presented. I don't know that you could "better" it wccept perhaps brining stress more in line with the current long-term Endurance rules. I say that because- well, if you jave an official mechanic that can be re-named to do the same job, then use it: it keeps things "tight" within the rules, and also because at the wnd od the day, you are simply adding another "damage goes here" stat like STUN, Body, or- in a way- Endurance. We already know that idea works; it is simply figuring out if you want to require players to buy it from zero, make it a Figured characteristic (very not-6e, though), or assign a base value and allow players to improve it from there. _Realistically_, that last one is the least disruptive to the character building process as it doesn't require spending points you would normally use elsewhere. Yes; the option to just toss players a few more points to compensate is there, but I think you will find that those compensatory points end up spent to buy about the same amount of whatever you decide to to name,your new damage tracker. So let's explore a couple of other things: Presence defends against shock as it does a Presence Attack. Intelligence defends against Stress. Shock "damage" affects EGO- either you can directly "damage" EGO, or you can assign a damage stat that defaults to "equal to EGO" and then determine what happens when that stat gets to Zero or whatever levels you want effects to occur. Stress, at least basing it on job and child-rearing experience, damages Intelligence (determine how it recovers is up to you.) I would let both of these factors (or just the one that you want to most play-up in the game) contribute to a "sanity" or "personality schism" or what-have-you akin to Long Term Enduranve or Fatigue or whatever it is that 6e is calling it.

Thanks, Vlad. Yes, that sounds like a hot mess. On the other hand, it shows an attempt to address the issue, and that is something. You have to start somewhere, after all.

I am not making it an open roll. The way I do it. I am not making a roll at all. Still, id I were to so it the book-given way, I would be making a roll. There are two options: anticipate every single thing the PCs will try (Ha!) and predetermine every penalty number either by whim or roll for every possible contingency, or roll for what they actually _do_ try as they try it. This has reasons as well: I dont have a lot of time to prep a session. I run three monthly, one bi-monthly, and one at the whim of the player's (the youth group, not all of whom are "driving age," making getting that group together quite sporadic). I work a 72 hour week between two jobs. I still have Dad work, husband work, and homeowner work on top of that. Frankly, they are lucky if I show up with a pre-drawn map instead of scratching them out while everyone is still getring settled in. More importantly, at least to me, is that I one-hundred-percent expect my players to adhere to whims of the dice. To me, if the rules say this is a dice off-- that the penalty the player faces is assigned by the whim of the dice, it is nothing less than bad faith to not hold myself to the same rules that I hold them. Sure; I can pick long-gone NPC's skill level out of my left ear: he can have a 2 or less; he can have a 20 or less. But if I am going to hold the playera to a roll, then I am going to hold myself to one as well. Over the years, I have recieved variohs comments- both bad and good- about my GM style. However, I can say with absolute honesty that I have never- not even once- had my "fairness" or impartiality questioned. For the second part of the question, why _wouldn't_ I make this an open roll? The only thinf the player knows is "this is your target number." That tells him absolutely nothing about the character he is trying to defeat save how much he made his roll by, if I am doing it the book-straight way. Oh yes- there is a one-half of a percent chance that he rolled "3", resulting in his maximum possible penalty, but- well, if that maximum is still "4," the player doesnt get the information people are worried about him getting. We wont go into why we are worried about them knowing it, because that isn't this conversation, and because I have never seen the problem with the players knowing their opponent is good or bad at something. It's not like they wouldn't figure it out it in short order just from the narrative anyway.

I don't know if this is helpful (mainly because I can't remember if it was ever restated in either of the Long editions), but from the earliest days, there has a been a rule that can help you with these cases: A power with an Advantage is not the same power plus a new feature. It becomes an entirely new power that behaves in a way defined by the core power and the advantages. As an example, an "energy blast" can be defined by any SFX the player wants. Suppose he picks "fire." He can define this as a single flame-thrower-esque gout of flame, or a wizardly ball of fire that flies from his hands to the target or a Super Mario bouncing ball of flame or a burst of flame that rises directly from the ground beneath the target (hopefully). He decides he wishes to take Area of Effect: Cone for this Power. Now what he has is a cone of flames that originates from the target hex and forward, in an arc, and no matter how he defines it, that is the power: I send a bouncing ball of flame that lands in the target hex and explodes into a cone of flames. I cast a fireball that looks like a dragon made of flames. It leaps from my palm and into the target hex where it then stops and vomits a cone if fire. I fire a four of flame that hits a target hex at which point it separates into a thousand streamer of fire that ricochet and leap and twist throughout the affected area. No matter how he defines, this is how it will work unless modified by another advantage or limitation. A popular one in my fantasy group for fire spells is the limitation "no range" or "limited range: adjacent hex" to go with a cone of fire. Thus, the caster creates a cone of fire that starts directly in front of him and fills the cone area. It doesn't matter if it is a fireball that gets bigger as it moves forward, a thousand jets of flame moving vaguely forward, a literal cone of flame (hello, Dragon!), of if jets of flame erupt from the floor at six-inch intervals all over the affected area. It does not matter what he wants in the moment, his power is not "I can make fire and also in a cone," but "I create a some-shaped field of fire." That is exactly what it does, and that is what it does every time he uses it. The guy on his right creates a stream of flame; that is his magic spell /power. He creates a cone shaped area full of fire, because that is his magic spell /super power. If you have teleport, you have the power to teleport yourself. If you have teleport x2 mass, then you have the power to teleport yourself and up to one other you-sized guy; that is your power. If you make that power Usable By Others, then _that_ is the power they are using: the ability to teleport themselves and up to another him-sized guy worth of mass. Now there is also an interesting conversation on just how Usable by Others violates, and always has for most play groups of which I am aware, that very "it becomes a new and unique power" rule because _strictly speaking_, you are building a power that is usable by _others_: a whole new Power. You need to buy it again without that advantage to use it yourself. I cant remember if 5 or 6 addressed that (only read either once; didn't care for them, so I don't use them), but from the earliest I can recall, that one bit has been kind of been ignored: well of _course_ I can use it! I payed for it! True, but you also turned it into a power that _by the rules_ (of the period), isn't available to you anymore. Most folks solved this by making "usable by others" a selective sort of thing you could turn on and off at will; others solved it with semantic games: fine. I can let anyone use this power; this time, I am going to give it to me (or the guy I am teleporting). Others solved with Variable Advantage: either it is Usable by others or Zero END; whatever. A small few solved it with Ultra Slots. I solved it by creating an Advantage Modifier: Selective, that for an additional +1/4 on an advantage, lets you turn an advantage off or on. Yes, it can on certain advantages seem to provide a lot of utility, but if you charge too much, it is more cost-effective to go with Variable Advantage and give yourself access to the whole catalogue. Still, the largest majority solves it by just selectively ignoring the "becomes a new power that works this way every single time" rule as it applied to Usable By Others and Usable as Attack. And dont ger me started on the implications for "usable as some other kind of movement" horse crap.

Sorry; tried to edit a few typos and accidentally quoted myself. If you happen by, Hermit, feel free to wipe this post. Thanks!

Generally it is for things bought via Focus, as I understand it. Do be aware that I am _not_ your best source for 6e answers, and am in the bottom half for 5e as well. The idea being that you could have another gun for 5 pts, or three more for 10, or seven more for 15, or 15 more for twenty more points. Just within the last day or two, there was mention of talents and how the "tool kit" approach kind of wrecked them as unique things and robbed them of genre-specificity. This is another example of that. Ideally, it allows a weapons master to pass out swords or guns or what-have-you to the entire party in a heroic-level game. Supers-wise, it allows me to build a powerful gadget for dirt cheap by stacking limitations such as single-use only or high-level burnouts or other really nasty self-destruct type things, dropping what might be an eighty-point gadget down to five or six points, then spend twenty five more points to give myself 32 of them, which should see me through any combat, right? I mean, the rules allow me to define my gadget as being the size of a shirt button and with half the mass, so why spend thirty points plus the initial six or ten points to run around with 64 of my eighty-point semi-disposable gadgets? It works twice as well becauase there is a large majority subset of HERO gamers who will scream their throats raw that any Foci must ultimately be recoverable, findable, or otherwise make their way back to the character, so I will always have them no matter how self-destructive they are. As to the question of using it for innate powers, well, you got me. If you are going to allow Super GunGuy and Super GadgetMan to use it, well, if I have innate "eye lasers" and eight eyes, why can't I build my eye laser, take three doublings, and use it 8 times per phase? Eh... Okay, so that last one was a bit tongue in cheek, seing as how we don't expect Super GunGuy to use all twelve of his guns every phase, but here's a neat thing 5e brought us that 6e didnt undo: While it has always been a thing according to a number of players (no shade: just as may people assumed it was correct as there were people who assumed it wasn't, since it was never really specified in the early days and neither group was wrong at the time), 5e codified rules for "multiple power attacks," meaning there were rules for unloading every attack you have at your target. Since the Focus rules themselves don't specifically prevent it, and MPA rules don't specifically prevent it, and "weapon" is just a special effect which, under the SFX rules, have no impact on mechanics, Super GunGuy can legally unload all 32 of his one-shot super guns in a multipower attack in spite of having just the two hands. All that being said, this is an interesting bit of equipment rules that works great in specific genres for specific purposes, but got tool-kitted into something so abusable that I highlighted it with black Sharpie in my own rules.

I am not entirely certain what your asking (sorry; I had some students this morning, so part of my mind is preoccupied with listing motorcylce repairs that will have to be made before the next round of "practical labs."), so I will try to cover everything I can think of right now: Yes; it is just skill versus skill; the attack roll is skill versus skill. The attack roll can be broken into a pair of skill rolls: Attacker rolls (11 plus OCV) or less and notes,his "level of success:" Woo-hoo! Made it by six! Defender rolls (11 plus DCV) or less and notes his success: Too bad; I made it by eight! You missed me! This is perfectly valid as a replacement for the current to-hit system, and is bases on the current guidelines for contested skill usage that are in the book. We don't do that. Why wouldn't we? It "eliminates an orphan mechanic," so that might be worth considering. Well, for one, it is not an orphan mechanic. It is a mathematical shortcut that resloves two rolls at once. When the attack roll is "missed," the defender made,his roll roll (enjoyed a higher level of success) than did the attacker. As another reason, it puts the dice in the player's hands. That is, everything related to his attack is all right there in the roll that he makes. How does it speed things up? Well, there is only one roll. Using the given contested skill guidelines, there are _at a minimum_, two rolls. I say at a minimum, bevause under the current system, this is possible (and I offer anecdotally that it _does_ actually happen, and quite often in heroic-level skill-heavy games): I made my roll by four! Uhm... I _also_ made my roll by four. Who won? Well, let's see.... I suppose we can go with the character who has the higher skill level... (The player who's character has the lower skill level will almost _always_ balk at this). Okay, who has the higher base characteristic for this skill? (Not all skills have base characteristics, amd when they do, the player who's character has the lower base characteristic tends to balk: I paid more to get my skill up there; my character studied harder and practiced more to be at the same level! It isn't right! Okay, fine; just re-roll. Uh.... Mr GM, Sir...? You are not going to belive this...... Okay, reroll again. Finally! We have an answer! In this scenario, it would have saved five rolls. And finally: you have never seen an attack roll end in a draw. Not once. One player succeeds against the other every single time. It completely eliminates ties. Don'r get me wrong: I have nothing against the idea of a tie. It suggests that the narrative should reflect an,extended amount of time or an increased difficulty resolving the task, but that is still possible via the attack roll mechanic (which, for us, is the "contested skill mechanic." Simply see how well or poorly the character succeeded by checking his roll against his target number, just as you would have done to determine a die roll penalty in the first place. If his target number was 13 and,he rolled a 6, he had no difficulty at all finding the thing-- "even a rank amature should have taken a moment to position the couch so that the legs were pressed into same divots in the carpet! This was too easy!" If he made it by one, then,took some time, and was impressively well-concealed. If he just did hit his target, then he was really puzzled or taxed, and only,a tiny clue finally,led him to locate hising place. See, this is what happens _anyway_. When ties are rolled, or when successes are compared and,very close, we express that in the narrative. The narrative takes a few moments to describe the difficulty of the search, wxplaining away the ties or close levels of success (as it should), but becoming longer amd taking up more session time,in,the progress. And that is on top of the time taken up by the re-roll and sidebar on the breakers. The net result is a bit of time savings, and players getting to do their favorite thing: be in control of the dice (psychologically, anyway). I hope that answered whatever it was you were asking. If not, please, feel free to rephrase amd ask again.

You left out the part where in order to use this, you have to actually violate the Transform rule into which it was unnecessarily shoved: Transform cannot be used on self.

Yep. Ideal.

Easy solution: Town one is the "main entrance" and front half of the town; town 2 is the back road and sexond half of the prepared map. Let them explore just a little bit, but keep them distracted until the session runs out, then stay up all night and fix your problem. Alternatively, half the part is delayed any a freak avalanche.

To that end, I will re-state something I do for contested rolls: Many years ago we kind of figured out that this is the basis of the attack roll: one using his CV to attack, opposed by one using his CV to not hey attacked. Using Concelament as an example: By the rules, the concealer rolls his skill when he hides the thing, then the seeker rolls his skill when he seeks for it, with his roll being modified by the hider's success. Alternate: Roll (11 plus hider's concealment skill) minus (finder's concealment skill) or less. Not only do I find this to be faster- there is only one roll, and no pressure to pregenerate a bunch of skill rolls for all the hidden whatever's on the map, the dice are in the Player'a hands and not mine. It doesn't seem like much, but there is a noticeable change in both morale and ability to cope with a "blown roll" when all the rolls belong to the Player. Most importantly to me, unlike a pregenerated penalty number based on a skill roll you threw two days prior while planning the scenario, way more of the rolls are out in the open. So: Players are "in charge" of more rolls, more rolls are in the open, things go a bit faster, it is not a new mechanic to cobbled on top of everything else, and it keeps the attack roll from feeling like an orphan- Players have less quesrions about "why is this one thing like this" when the see more uses of it as a skill-versus-skill concept. Things going just a tiny bit faster is just a nice bonus.

More reasonable, I think, but,you don't really need points for that, either. If that is how you want to roll, you are much more likely to just play that way. With the points, the GM has to alter the follow-up into a fail forward. There is nothing stopping him from doing that without the points. In this case, the onky thing the points are doing is limiting the number of times you can fail forward versus a regular fail, which, if the group is more "I prefer a lighter tone" or "let's not have horrible failures, but maybe lucky setbacks," is ultimately just going to be _more_ frustrating, I think, when there srent enough points to do the thing the pleasant way.

You're right. You caught me. I care. It is super-important to me that this continue to be worked on and refined. It's critical to my well-being to stay abreast of every little tweak and success and failure. I thrive on knowing this is going to work, How could you tell?

Forty years, Double H brand, same model, steel toe, round toe, size 12. Three pairs: when they are new, they are the dress shoes. When they start to show a scuff or two, or age makes them polish up with creases, they are the everyday shoes. When they don't take polish anymore or are too scuffed to bother, they are the work shoes. I get about five years out of pair, and they are the most comfortable shoe I have ever owned, thick as racing leathers, amd tougher than a Huddle House steak.

I straight up don't care. I do not mean this to offend or belittle anyone who does, but look at this from further back- look at it from where 90-something percent of us stand: How the Hell did we get here? At what point did we secide to aim for a future in which a 63-year-old man with a half-dead enlarged heart with two blown valve's works two jobs (with more manual labor that he did in his youth)while married to an RN with a pedigree longer than his arm, just to barely make the astronomical bills and maybe- if he's really lucky- have just enough saved at the end of the year to buy. Christmas presents for those he loves and start all over again January 1, hooing he can save enough by April to cover his taxes, all while realizing that his retirement plan is the same as his healthcare plan: if I get really lucky, I can make it to 75 before I did on the job-- While computers and AI sit around writting stories and painting pictures? What the Hell kind of absolute dystopian crap _is_ this?! How did we get here?! Why are so damned many people acting like this is perfectly normal, acceptable-- expected, even!--?! Talking about how amazing it is? Is this the world we wanted? Then why are we so tickled by all this? What's thw practical upshot? When it's perfected, we can replace the entire artisan class, freeing up more laborers to chuck under the logs so we can build even more stone temples to the handful if people who will never be affected by it? This is so far beyond stupid as a societal development that I question the absolute sanity of any primate who doesn't live in a treetop somewhere in the jungle.

If changing names helped a streaming service generate customers, HBO should have won five times over by now.

Can't lie; I don't get it. Probably because I wouls be delighted with either, so I am not seeing a downside.

See? I _live_ for moments like that in a game. When you tell the stories of game sessions long ago, how many tales do you tell of "everything went exactly the way I expected / wanted" versus the number of tales you tell of the most miraculous and the most miserable of die rolls? And even when it's bad dice, the tales most often have further tales of the astounding ways you coped on the fly. They are more memorable than "I re-rolled it until I got what I wanted" or "I burned some brownie points to make come out fine." Yet another thing I enjoy about wild die rolls. How does it affect the game? What do we as a group do to keep things moving? Anyway, I know that you aren't me, but other than Scott, I am rather in the minority here on the "don't like them" side of "how do we change the dice?" I mean, we don't have to use them at all- there are lots of systems that don't. I find little reason to use them right up until I am not happy with them. Or maybe I am happy with then no matter what, as they are extremely impartial arbiters of what went down and what we have to deal with now.

Unless you want to be able to use them simultaneously at full strength, put them in a multipower. If you dont want to be able to use them simultaneously at all, go for Ultra slots on your MP. Attack /move / Force Field multipowers were very common once upon a time. I don't know if they still are, but it is worth considering. They weren't my favorite, but I am the odd man out here. Here's an odd one you might try: figure out how much FF you can get for the cost of your NCM. Deduct that much from your current FF. Create a multipower that has 2 Ultra slots: X2 NCM or "plus x Force Field." You still have access to your base FF any time you want, and so long as you aren't using the NCM, you have access to all of it. (It kills me that stuff like this happens at every session I have ever run or played in, yet Elemental Control was "too cheaty.") The savings are small in that second example, but significant. It is small builds and character-appropriate power limitations, all small increments, that add together for those "last few points" that you need. The easiest way to remember it is that Linked means "I cannot use Power 2 unless I am already using Power 1." There are further caveats, and I can't tell you what they are for 6e, but things like Instant Power requirements or Endurance costs, or things like that. Yeah- Linked isnt right for this. Consider Focus or "Only in Heroic ID." Right, but they could still be bought through your Focus or Heroic ID. Pay close attention to how limitations apply to Reserves and Slots, though id you are ysing the HD software, it will likely keep you straight. Not really sure how this is a Limitation as opposed to an origin. A little help? And I am sorry if you have already done the things I suggest; I dont use HD and cannot open the files.

Surprise kiss on the mouth? It works for me, usually.