Duke Bushido

Bless you, Sir. I submit that the kid in a school chair who casually sticks a foot out when his nemesis walks by is probably not a martial artist. I further submit that it is possible to slap, kick, punch, poke, bite, choke, grab, hold, throw, tackle and even gouge someone with _zero_ martial training. Yep. Almost as if martial artists can use skill levels to simulate their extensive training. As the topic was older editions, you have chosen a bad example, Sir. First, second, and third editions all list Haymker the in-game maneuver as being a Haymker the real-world version, with specific verbiage stating 'a Haymker is a special kind of punch.'. That is every bit as tied to SFX as is kick. I suspect that kick went away because by 4e, Ninja HERO had become an official HERO book, and the sentiment was similar to what it is today: "ooh! There are special martial arts rules. If it isn't a punch"- pardon; let's not confuse things-"if it isn't an offensive strike, then it is a martial arts maneuver, because...". Honestly, I really don't know why. Because martial arts are cool? Because the movies show big-jawed heroes throwing punches and looking totally amazed when the lithe and totally without body fat martial artist kicks some guy then wipes the sweat from his brow with his toes? Because only martial artists know how to kick, to the chagrin of soccer players all over the world? I don't know. In the early editions it meant you were HTH trained, and could deliver a more effective hit, more successfully, and avoid getting hit more successfully, all of which I am totally cool with. If you have trained at something, you are bound to be much better at it than someone who is just "self taught," for lack of a better word. But after Ninja HERO, martial arts more and more became a paywall behind which was locked some of the most common things in unschooled combat. The worst of it-to me-was the wired "add X dice" element. Sure, it works _great_ for a campaign of completely normal people: I have trained for fifteen years to maximize the application of my STR 15, and using the devastating Leaf Blower Moon strike, I can almost double the power of my blows! Really? I must be doing it wrong. I, too, have been training in the Shenanigans School since my radiation accident fifteen years ago. I, too, have mastered the Leaf Blower Moon technique, but no matter how flawlessly I apply my STR45, to the Leaf Blower Moon strike, I can only add 2 dice. It is as if I fell on them while striking. It is as if it was a nifty idea for a single campaign that caught on with fans of the genre, and suddenly it had to be everywhere. It just falls completely on its face in supers, but we keep insisting this is how it is done. Sure-supers on the table means building a power or some skill levels and declaring that it is the Body Odor Like Charcoal attack and rolling with it, but the fact that you can do that with normal people- build then a power like +2d6 HTH and allocate a few skill levels into it to up your chances-or possibly ly your damage, if you have a couple of ten-pointers lying around-really kind of points to HERO System Martial Arts as being both neat and totally unnecessary: it is outclassed by everything else possible within the system. Don't get me wrong: I have _always_ thought it was a cool idea with which to frame a particular 'this is how we do Ninjas' campaign-- which it actually _was_; I have never thought it had any place in the official rules. The only thing that gives it any validity has been the locking up of essentially common maneuvers within it. Wanna French Slap a guy? Sorry; that is not an NND. That, Sir is a _martial_ NND. Rabbit punch? No, Sir. That is a nerve strike; you will need to buy martial arts. This is totally workable. Well-done. Once I know martial arts, what do I pay for an NND? Or some kind of "Killing" something-or-other. I know: I paid a point, but while philosophically, the difference between one and zero is infinite, what is the difference in character building? I will not lie to you, Hugh: I _own_ HSM; it is one of the books I could afford t the time of release, in fact. I bought it because I wanted to support the company, feed the coffers to fund the next thing, etc. I own it. I am _never_ going to read it (it's not like I don't have four or five copies of 3e's Ninja HERO. I mean, if you leave a Harriet Carter book unattended for too long, it will just turn into Ninja HERO eventually). But I am willing to bet there is an NND element or maneuver and a killing element or maneuver that costs next to nothing in the grand scheme of Killing Attack pricing. And even 'I am a Ninja' doesn't justify having an attack that bypasses all defenses. I am sure I am completely wrong here, and I am open to correction, but before I learned much of anything about comics, I assumed the guy fighting Spiderman on the cover of one of Jim's comic was the guy that, having learned the name recently, was Iron Man. Turns out it was Dr Doom (Dr Death? Nope-a quick Google tells me that Doom is correct). At any rate, the guy appears to be covered in cast iron armor (hence my confusion back then). "My Fingerpoke of Doom easily bypasses his cast iron armor because I am a Ninja" makes every bit as much sense as Joey Pocketwrench grabs oppenent's his head and twists. I like it, at least for the editions where grab and hold are the same thing. As the odd man out here, I would still need to concoct some kind of Hold-By. Okay. This is really tedious on a phone....

I _love_ that one, but honestly, I don't use it often. I play mostly Heroic level, and it gets pretty nasty pretty fast that way.

Oh boy! A thread made for me! And, if memory serves, _only_ in Fantasy HERO (I will have to go crawling the bookshelf to confirm that), which has led to I-can't-keep-up-with-how-many conversations revolving around it being impossible to knock someone down without martial arts, because only then does something say "target falls. '. Knocked' em down to-30 Stun? Well, too bad; you don't have martial arts, he wobbles around on his get, unconscious, but still standing. You'll just have to shoot around him. I don't get that, either. I can see it changing, the same way Haymaker did, but I don't get why it wasn't forwarded. Except I kind of do. I am going to blame it on a combination of Aaron Alston and the absolute mania that tabletop gamers seem to have for martial arts. Once his truly-inspirational idea for a one-off campaign-- modify skill levels and pretend they are individual maneuvers, rip elements out of the standard maneuvers and tie them to these martial skill levels-was legitimized as _the_ HERO way to do things (not saying it isn't a lovely idea; I am just not pretending it is something that it isn't), suddenly common, everyday brawling maneuvers-things third graders instinctively know how to do-were reserved as "martial. You have to buy that martial." It's the same problem HERO has had since it was just Champions: there are going to be those people who think along the lines that "if it is _possible_ to pay points for it, then you _must_ pay points for it. It's the flamethrower thing all over again: yes; that is your Ed energy blast, but if you want it to set things on fire, then you have to also buy a transform, otherwise that giant pool of crude oil is perfectly safe. ". (the backdoor, of course, is a side-effect: may set flammable things on fire, which rebates points, so we get right back to the" points don't mean squat, balance-wise" discussion). Honestly, after Ninja HERO, I am pleasantly surprised we can still punch without having buy it martial. Seriously! Think about all the things kids do instinctively when fighting: the tackle, they slap, they grab, they hold, they choke, they bite, they kick-- you know what they don't do? They don't punch! Most of them don't even learn how to make a fist with their thumbs on the outside until they see it often enough, someone shows them, or they dislocate their thumb. Wierdly, all of those maneuvers are martial, and punching is not. Hold suffered a "roll into" problem. These days (since 4e, I think, but again, I would have to crawl the bookshelf) it is just assumed to be a part of grab. The problem is that in reality, grab is... Awkward. It is a quick maneuver to take someone off guard or pull them off balance or even just get their attention. You have to grab and then hold., realistically, and just because you grabbed them didn't mean you weren't going to take a poke or three to face or one to the groin before you managed to actually get a hold on them. In a fight, and once upon a time in Hero, you could grab, then hold, or grab, then punch, or grab, then choke, or grab, then throw, but somewhere along the way someone who maybe didn't fight a lot growing up thought 'well, of course you are going to hold them; what else would you do?' And that was the end of that. Man, you could even do a Grab By, and if you were running full-tilt across the room, there was no way you were going to put a hold on them. A grab is really nothing more than a maneuver to get your opponent off-balance (either literally, for a good shove, or figuratively, throwing his game off) and dropping his DCV a bit to give you better odds with your next maneuver (which is now hold, period). Not from this perspective, looking backwards from Grab and Hold rolled into one; not, it does not make sense. But once upon a time, you could do more than just squeeze them after you put the grab on them. Grab an arm with one hand and slam them with the other, grab them and shove them into a wall, grab them by the head and jam your things into their eyes (which you can know only do with Martial arts, as it adds a 'flash' element or something; I don't know....) _or_ grab them and attempt to put a hold on them. Or-a perrinial favorite: grab them and go into that haymaker. Got out of hand; became awesome.... Tomato, tomahto..... As it was only found in Champions, I always took it to be available as either someone's Schick, or for knocking down doors justicely. You know: before "Tunneling" became the way to knock down a door (or pick the lock, if you choose 'fills in behind me'). Maybe that facial-tick-inducing build came about because kick had gone away. You can _now_. In fact, that is pretty much all you can, if you don't have high STR or superpowers to either zap them or squeeze them. Respectful disagreement. Every high-school boy knows that a punch to the throat is brutal, as is a punch to the side of the neck, or a kick to the side of the knee, and lots of other things just as bad. Whether or not they choose to do these things in a fight is more a matter of how brutal they can really bring themselves to be. Seriously: a lifetime of "don't hit people" and "use your words" really does have an effect. With that in your background, you can probably still get threatened enough or enraged enough to trade a few punches, but there is a psychological line you have to cross before you can willingly cripple someone. Most people won't do it if they can stay alive without doing it (and that gives me hope, overall). But it is a bit like being a serial killer: pretty much everyone on earth knows how to kill another human being. Actually doing it has more to do with who you are and what lines you won't cross than it does any sort of ancient school of training or wizened old men on mountain tops. I was going to give an anecdotal example of this, but I cannot find a single bit of news coverage on it-not surprising; it involved minors, and there was no internet. Back in the mid to late 80s, I lived in Liberty County, Georgia. There was a call-out fight between two high school students. I remember one of them was a local DJ named Mike (called himself 'Stanto Jay' or some such on the radio and a tiny kid who went by the nickname Tojo, and he was 'known' to be a problem Al over town. They got in a fight and Tojo scammed Mike out to some teen hangout spot, so he went, and he was a 'use your words' kid, and kept trying to talk the situation down. According to witnesses, the entire time Mike was talking, trying to reason with him, the little guy pulled an aluminum bat from his car, walked over to Mike, and beat his head in, then left. I don't know how it came out ultimately, but I know Mike was still a drooling vegetable a couple of years later. (and these are the things that extinguish that hope). Even kids know what lethal is. Whether or not they go that far is a matter of who they are. Good thoughts. I just made it require a full phase and called it good. Agreed on structure: it's a sacrifice move-through or move-by. Respectfully disagree on makinf it martial, however, unless one of the kids I grew up was a well-disguised Master Sifu teaching us how to play Smear the - - look, I am going to leave that there; I rather hope it has a new name these days, but I know kids still play it: one kid has the Thing (usually a nerf football, for some reason) and all the other kids tackle him and keep jumping on until there is a dog pile wrestling to get the Thing, and whoever gets it takes off running until everyone figures it out. At any rate, at least for those of us for whom childhood play didn't involve a screen (I know I ain't the only old fart here, by cracky!), tackling is an everyman ability. Quite a lot, actually. Those modifiers are the reason my players would typically line up kicks instead of haymakers. I laugh because when the Haymaker change came out, we _sort of_ incorporated it.... By that I mean that we changed kick to be +50 percent _up to 4d6_, and left Haymaker alone. Still play it that way, actually. It just seemed more "right," especially if you have actually tried kicking something apart. Sure, your legs are much stronger than your arms, but outside of actual martial (and possibly gymnastic) training, you just aren't that good at bringing them to bear and keeping your feet, so you don't do a _lot_ of extra damage, just enough to notice. Just a total swag on my part, but possibly because you were only going to gain a die or a die and a half? It didn't really help you break down doors (Killing Strike did, though!), so it is possible the authors saw no need for Killing Strike, Kick, and Haymaker. Remember that for all of its universality, at the lower levels, HERO isn't really granular enough to justify a lot of identical-damage maneuvers. Probably why most guns in our games were listed on the character sheet as 'gun.' without any particular regard for what sort of gun it was. Even the seller Guns! Guns! Guns! Supplement did little but demonstrate how depressingly pointless it was to stress variations. We were disappointed. We did take some inspiration from the Haymaker, and kept kick anyway. Went over somehow above, but I am having editing issues with the new keyboard, so.... Which makes it a normal or standard maneuver: anyone willing to jump face-first at another human can do it. And they were AWESOME! Thank you again for that! They do now; yes. When Killing Strike was still around, there was no Ninja HERO, and most certainly no HERO System Martial Arts. There was just martial arts: here is some extra damage, and you have unlocked the maneuvers that say "martial" on them. That was it. Since anyone could kick a knee or punch a throat (the one maneuver that I never saw and always wanted to was dropkick. ), it wasn't considered Martial. Ooh! This sounds interesting! If you haven't by the time I have finished this, go on a bit more about this idea. I am very curious to know your thoughts on this. This is pretty spot-on. Though we might consider two options: a move-by that ends with both prone as well as a move-through. Sometimes the object is to catch them without roughing them up more than necessary. Ultimately, though, a tackle ends in a hold. Both are knocked down; yes, but the entire point of a tackle is to stop them by restraining them. Eh. You only get hurt the first time you try it, barring getting kicked in the face. After that, you realize you should land on top of the guy, and not throw yourself at the ground next to him. And, as mentioned above, it really isn't a stand-alone maneuver: the thing that makes it a tackle _instead of a move-by or - through is that it ends in a hold. Both prone, yes, but with one of them holding the other. Those folks who find validity to the HERO Martial Arts seem to be focusing on the falls and the damage but not the "hold" part. A tackle is itself a flying grab-by more than it is anything else. Agreed. A move-through in a tackle is called "clipping," and will cost your team some yards. ;). Seriously, though: I agree that move-by is a better model, as in particular, the goal is to restrain someone and not actually kill them. There is more "damage" from the fall than from the impact (unless you are clipping, which is why it is illegal). Now _this_ I can really get behind! With the Tackle ending in a hold and the Trample ending in a.... Well, I can't say Grab anymore for you later-edition guys, as they are now one and the same, but still, I do like the distinction that one is intended to capture and restrain and one is intended to deliver injury. Sorry about that; somehow, I have an extra quote box. Dude, that was... Brutal. Ugh.

Oh, yes. Power Destruction. I didn't _exactly_ take it off the table for my Champions players, but I reminded them that villains have access to the same powers that the heroes do, and it's been a few decades, but no one has touched it for Champions. I have used a sort of variant of it for counter-spells and counter-curses for my fantasy games, where the counter-caster beats the AP of the spell that was used to place the curse and thereby lifts the curse /counters the spell. You could do that in every edition, it just cost much more. In the early editions, the power recovered one per Segment beginning on the first Segment after the Phase in which the Adjustment power was used. This return could be delayed by one Segment by paying 2 pts times the cost of the thing being drained. To delay the return of STR, the attacker would pay 2x1 per Segment delayed. To delay it 4 segments, he would pay 8 pts. Similarly, to delay the return of a DEX drain, he would pay 2x3, or 6 pts per Segment delayed. To delay the return by 4 segments, he would pay an additional 24 pts. Now the rules never had an exactly-worded specification of what recurring effect such a delay had with regard to slowing down the delay, but the overall verbiage suggests that after the delay has passed, the return rate resumes at 1pt per Segment. We had a few players who felt that, if the delay was in play, it should delay each Segment individually. That is, if you paid for 4 segments of delay, it should delay each point. That is, a character hit with a drain on Phase 12 would suffer four segments of delay, recover 1 pip on Segment 5, endure another 4 segments of delay, regain a pip on Segment 10, etc. The problem was that, while the overall gist of the rules suggested (without stating) that this was not the case, the argument was sound and persuasive. To resolve it, we house ruled a second sort of delay return that did work in this way, and priced it at 3 x the cost of the thing being drained. It got bought regularly and deeply enough that we bumped it up to 4 pts x unit cost, and never really looked back. I still use that particular house rule, actually. At any rate, the point was that the ability to create 'Power Destruction" always existed, which, more than anything, was the reason I never adopted it (outside of a couple of isolated off-label uses in fantasy). Like the shades of transform, shapes shift, multiform, and a few others over the years: it was already there. All the official Power Destruction did was make it _so ridiculously cheap_ next to the extant methods. [/segue]

This has come up before, but I owned that exact bag of plastic monsters when I was a kid. Simple clear vynil bag with a paste board banner that had japanese script sprawled all over it, and the one word in enflish: Diosaurs! So yeah- my first introduction to D and D was "can they just do that? Just steal some Japanese toys and call it his? The answer was apparently" yes, " but then you have to remember that this is the same company that tried to trademark the word" Nazis" within the Indiana Jones rpg (you won't here this often, but Daredevils was _way_ better). For the record, if you dropped the "rust monster" _just right_, it would bounce and lurch forward. Owing to a combination of design and materials, the legs were springy and that weird tail dragged just enough to keep it from getting high enough to flip over. Of course, it made a noise like a herd of cats scampering across plate glass, but that was just a bonus.

I always had a soft spot for Endurance Transfer, but my favorite Drain was always Recovery (kinda pricey as a Transfer under the old rules). Most folks learned END management pretty quickly, and built the bulk of their tactics around it. Most of those tactics relied on knowing when you were going to recover (based on SPD which, in the old editions, cost a fortune to adjust) and REC. Start taking that away, and some folks would straight up balk; either they conserved too many actions (didn't want to risk the END cost of a miss at any kind of range), or they literally fled the field. The best ones were the ones that spent an extra Phase or two recovering (aka "target posing" ) instead of acting in spite of their sudden handicap. Do you have any idea how easy it is to hit someone taking a Recovery with Drain: REC, Ranged? Not only does it reduce their recovery further, but it totally denies them the one they wasted their phase on trying to take. Honestly, we needed those 4e STOP signs long before we had 4e. Don't get me wrong: outside of Paranoia (where, whatever you might _choose_ to believe, it was the freakin' _whole point of the game_), I was _never_ a "Killer GM.". However, I wasn't a stupid villain, either. (unless the villain in question actually was stupid, mind you.)

For those who started with later editions, the only appearance of Force that I can recall were a couple of build examples in the 2e book (I _think_ they were carry-overs from the 1e book, but I am not certain enough to state it as a fact.)

Wow. I was inclined to keep an open mind, pending evidence, investigation, etc-- because I one-hundred percent understand how social media prejudices the mind as a hobby, and that people tend to believe the first thing they hear based on the "why would they say it if it wasn't true" principle (turns out digital thumbs up are one hell of a motivator for way more people than you would have thought), but after watching the CEO's reply video, his conduct, and everything about how he chose to frame and present his reply..... Well, even if it comes out that he is completely in the right, he is still a gigantic ass of a human being.

Egad! I went into all that detail, but never bothered mentioning the 'final form' of the House Bushido Skills System. First, I wish to apologize to anyone who came over here because you got a notification that you were quoted. If I may explain: Evidently, when you spend a really long time working on a post, it "saves" in your editor. In that past, that has not been a problem, because the next time you pull the editor up for that thread, there is a "clear editor" button. To make the first lengthy post via phone, I opted to crawl the various ap stores and downloaded a keyboard with buttons almost large enough that you can only touch one at a time. Usually. It also has the unexpected benefit of an autocorrect that speaks English (just not enough English). Problematically, I havent see the Clear Editor. Button since, nor have I been able to delete quote blocks as I could before. Not sure why the keyboard makes that kind of difference, and of course, it could be coincidental. (it is a Microsoft app, so I am pretty sure I am being keyligged the entire time, but her! If they learn about Champions against their will, who's fault is that, ultimately? Next: I promise this will be _short_! All the above about the skills system was in use for years, and still is with my primary group, but I have been testing a simplified version of it with the youth group: When you want a Skill, you define it and buy a Skill level. Your skill is Characteristic roll plus 1. Rhis was derived as such things as buying +1 to Per (an INT roll at heart) with a skill level, or bonuses to coordinated attack when working with a particular character or maneuver, or even just bonuses to INT rolls when working on a particular item or topic (+1 when repairing antique computer tape drives). These are at their essence skills. You get a base characteristic roll and take a bonus because you are doing something with which you are familiar. Because you have skill in that area. A specific skill is a three-point skill level (+2 when cracking Defender brand sages or +1 when cracking old-fashioned sages). It is improved with additional 3 pt skill levels. A broader but skill that covers closely-related fields (+2 with woodcraft) is a 5pt skill level, and defaults to Characteristic roll +1. This "broad skill' can be improved with 5 pt skill levels. Additionally, a player may opt to break out an individual skill or three and raise them independently with 3pt skill levels: the woodcraft character might decide he is particularly good at tracking, and put an additional skill level in just that aspect of woodcraft. For an 8 pt skill level, the character can have what conversationally refer to as a broad skill (Science +3, for example). This skill starts, like the others, at characteristic roll plus 1. The player may opt to use a 5 pt skill level on a tightly-related set of skills (or science field in this case, such as 'chemistry') ) or he may opt to use a 3 pt skill level to break out one particular skill. (an additional bonus for 'Chemical analysis,' perhaps). I was concerned that it would get pricey quickly, but since the default is Char roll +1, a lot of initial cost is offset (versus what we had been doing) and we are able to mix broad and narrow and "cluster" skills on the same game. Thus far, it has been working well. It might not work as well for heroic, abut then I have to wonder how much of my concern there is based on some wish that points be expensive to slow down character progression, which I can just as easily do two other ways: Declare up front that XP will accrue somewhat more slowly than the group is used to . Put a gate between XP and Skills- some sort of rule like 'you must have used this skill for consecutive successes before you may use XP to raise it (woah- I am just spitballing at this point, folks) Or you must roll a certain number of 3s, or some such thing. I suspect if I go this route, the gate will depend _a lot_ on the intended length of the campaign. There. I apologize for totally forgetting to mention the current rules being (successfully) playtested at the moment.

As someone who has nothing but fond memories of many dates and nights out with that song in the background, I have never been able to appreciate why being "Rick rolled" was anything but awesome. Just sayin'.

Don't be. While I disagree with a lot of the changes, ultimately, Steve and DOJ did a _great_ job as both revivalists and stewards of the game. There is no way I could assure you that I would have done nearly as well. In fact, I encourage you to be as happy as I am that it _didnt_ happen. Well, that's a shame. I appreciate the insight, though, and yes: I will probably buy it anyway when I can find an affordable paper copy. I have seen it as one book and as three books. Does anyone know if there is a difference? I confess, it was only a few years ago that I heard of T4, and that it was out and gone a decade or two ago. Shame what I hear about the content, though. I saw that title "Marc Miller's Travellers, and I was all excited, thinking" yeah! Take _that_, Fugate! This is Traveller the way _Miller_ intended! Then I noticed just how many more books there where, and I thought "oh, I bet it isn't...." I still want a nice printed copy of the core rules, though. I can't help myself. Oh, Joe: as for collecting Classic Traveller, I'm good. I have my memories built around what I actually did manage to pick up off the shelves way back in the day. I would like to replace two or three things that have disappeared over the years, but I am at a point where if I didn't have it then, I don't want it now. Those other things are not part of those memories. I hope that makes sense. The core rules of later editions, though-those I will get eventually. My inner Traveller won't rest until I have them. Besides, something has to push T20 out of my long_term memory. Dungeons and Vargrs, woo-hoo!

Very much so; that is why I suggested it up-thread a bit. It plays with the very basic rules from the inception of the game, so there is no new mechanic or thing to wonder about. The biggest number of skills, at least originally, we're "pay X to gain a characteristic roll that simulates success or failure at this skill. Pay an additional point to increase that roll by 1." What do you do if someone doesn't have a skill, generally? "Blastro has disintegrated the observation deck out from beneath your feet! Do you have Acrobatics? No? Do you have Breakfall? No? Okay, gimme a DEX roll...." "can I remember anything more about the mysterious man who handed off this old bottle to me?" Do you have Eidetic Memory? No? Okay, give me an Intelligence roll.... " We studied this a lot when 4e hit. Well, shortly after 4e hit, because at first we were just enamored of this ground-breaking new skills system, but it didn't take too many campaigns to see lots of the problems with it, chief among them being skills as points sucks. The three of us that GM'ed in our group were slowly creeping toward mandating that your character didn't know it if you didn't buy it, and we were doing that simply because _it was possible_ to do it. Every possible knowledge, every possible hobby or trade, could be turned into a skill, for Pete's sake! And because we could, we too often _did_. I am sure you have heard me taking the position that just because your Inferno Blast _can_ set things on fire or your Freeze gun _can_ be used to chill a soft drink or your force field _could_ be played so as to serve as a ramp does _not_ automatically mean that a mechanic for this aspect must be paid for in addition to the base power. This Skills thing, way back when-- that was our own version of that. The point at which I finally got it to click was when it occurred to me that "I am going to ask for a DEX roll whether he has the Skill or not." Since then, I have been pretty vigilant about watching for instances of pointlessly charging for something. Getting back on topic, Anyway, you want a very tight, very specific skill? An in depth knowledge of the history, spread, and culture of variegated nasturtiums? Go for it. It costs one point, and gives you the lower of Characteristic roll or 8 or less. Not only that, but since any book left unattended for more than two weeks through the 1990s turned into a copy of Aaron Alton's Ninja Hero, we were all _very_ familiar with the idea that Skill Levels could be used to _simulate_ something specific, beyond just raw ability. (don't believe me about that Ninja Hero crack? Over the years, I have given away well over a dozen copies. I currently own 2 copies. I have never bought a copy, nor have I ever received one as a gift, so you tell me....) So why couldn't we use them as the skills themselves? Let me take a moment to point out to anyone not familiar with the old editions (pre-4 e) that the three magic numbers were 8, 11, and 14. They still show up on various things-berserk recoveries, etc, but that is why the skills system we use works this way. Skill points: the bare minimum cost of a skill level was 3pts for just one thing. This worked out great for us, because we decided for that three points, you would get the lower of 14- or Characteristic roll. That left two more of those magic numbers, so for a mere 2 pts, you could get the lower of Characteristic roll (no plus one, because you hadn't actually bought a full skill level). Similarly, for a mere 1 pt, you could have a field of knowledge on any one thing at the lower of Characteristics roll or 8 or less. Over the years, I have considered bringing those numbers more in line with the 6 9 11 thing, but at 8 or less, you have roughly a 25-ish percent chance on 3 dice, with 11 or less, call it 63 percent, and with 14 or less, you bump up to something like 90 percent, and I find this feels really 'right' for supers and for pulp. Given these results, I find it works particularly well for supers and pulp, where those who are good at something are very good at it. For most Heroic stuff, I drop the numbers down to a more modern 6, 9, or 11. Most player Characters will at worst match that 11 or less with their characteristics rolls, and a good number of them will beat it. Skills that don't tie well to a characteristics roll Start at 11 or less for a 3-pt skill level. If the skill is excessively narrow or non-utilitarian, then maybe two points, and often just one. Let's face it: while it may come in handy once during a long running campaign, certain overly-obscure and excessively narrow knowledge skills are more quirks of the character than anything actually worth paying a point for. Right off the bat, improving from a one pt skill to a two pt skill costs 1 point, and adds _up to_ e3 to your roll. Going from a 2 to a 3 costs one point, and adds _up to_ 3 to your roll. After that, improve with skill levels as one would improve them via skill levels in the actual written rules. A five-point Skill group is a small group of tightly-related Skills. Typically, I break the builds down as I would for the 1,2,3, pt skills described above: You have 5 points; buy any combination of tightly-related skills that spends those 5 points. All done? Good. Pick one more tightly-related Skill and take it at the 2 point level. Why? Because otherwise you are just buying more of the previous kinds of skills, with the unnecessary requirement that they be related. This is your reward for working within that limition. These skills may be improved as per the previous category, one at a time, or all at once with another 5 pt skill level. All skills are improved with a 10 pt skill level. At the 8 PT level, you may either take the eight points and spend them on tightly-related skills, then take two additional tightly-related skills at the two pt level. Alternatively, the eight point skill group can take eight points of loosely-related skills and one more loosely-related skill at the one pt level. Because of the way skills are built for one-at-a-time skills, there are no ten-point skill groups; ten point skill levels, as always, can advance all skill rolls by 1. 8 pt skill levels can advance all skills in any one 8-pt group or less by 1, or all loosely-related skills (such as if someone took an 8 pt group and a five pt group for a slew of science skills). Note that the related skills need not be in the same group. If one character has a five-point groups of skills with archaic weapons that includes javelins, discus, and darts in the group and another five point (or even an eight point) group that includes bolos and hammers (the stone-on-a-rope kind), they are all nicely related under a skill level for "thrown weapons.". Tightly or loosely will vary from table to table, of course. Five point skill levels advance any five point group by 1, or all skills in a tightly-related group (which, again, does not have to be contained entirely within one Skill Group, though they generally will be). Three point skill levels work as described above, save when the current roll exceeds the lower of Characteristic roll or 14-, at which point they will advance one skill by 1. Additional notes on Skills: all characters are assumed to have professional skills. For this reason, I allow up to three no-charge professional skills, one at each level of 8, 11, and 14. All characters are assumed to have background skills, and again: up to three, as above, for no charge. Everyman skills are still free, and I have a slightly higher tier scammed 'every adventurer skills' that varies from game to game. Generally, when I notice that either everyone in the game has bought the same skill (hunting, for example) that is not on the everyman list, that skill becomes an every-adventurer skill, and they all get it at the 1 PT level for no charge. Literacy is determined through disadvantolications, and not skill point spending. No matter how ignorant the typical person in the campaign is, lacking the ability to read is a disadvantage. Maybe not much of one, but it is indeed one. Additional languages are three-point skills as above, with 1, 2, and 3 PT levels. Mastery is assumed at 14 or less (at the very worst, you come across as low-brow or insulting or uneducated or something, but your point is completely made and understood. Accents are optional after 11-, and literacy is determined more by your background than any points spent. Conan could be literate (and eventually was) if he can explain it. Any 'Professional Skill' type skill is assumed to come with a sufficient knowledge base to perform that profession, allowing the roll for PS or KS to be on the same skill. Any purely academic KS- the character has the education, but no actual experience or perhaps even no idea how to physically do the thing- is 11 or less for three points. If it is a particularly broad field, then it is 8 or less for three points. If it is a narrow or obscure field, then it is 14 or less for one skill level. Any character who does not have a particular chracterisitcs-based skill may still attempt the skill using a characteristic roll. In most cases, a GM has already assigned a difficulty penalty to a task. Increase that penalty up to double (add no more than 4 additional penalties). A successful INT roll can be a complimentary roll to a physical task, because sometimes you have to stop and think about it) Why? Because these are superheroes, where even the impossible has a pretty good chance. This has allowed characters from all genres to have as many skills as they wanted, not have to pay for mundane things like foraging berries while marching, and with the various skill level options for increasing the characteristics, allows differences in skill levels to grow in ans the character moves through his story. It also really helps prevent skills becoming points-sucks. I think. That may just be a side effect of having done it for a couple of years making me extra-sensitive to it now. Now it is slightly more refined that it sounds-no more complex than martial arts or any other skill level usage, really, but as I am working on a phone, I can't really go back and see what I have or have not said thus far, so I am assuming I screwed it all up. Optional: For pulp, we use 5 point skill levels for very broad skills, and eight point skill levels for stupidly-broad skills, such as "Science!". (exclamation point not optional) Those are advance with additional skill levels, though the character may break out individual skills to advan e by one point per. Almost forgot! Yep. Always check for eighteens. Yeah, the way we do it, supers can still buy most of the powers they want and still have a nice assortment of skills. Heroic characters don't have to be built on what we used to use for supers, either. Well, we didn't do it so much for the pricing (that was just a happy accident) as much as we just had too many arguments about the "new" system and how it worked, _but_ we liked the idea of being able to make anything into a skill. Agreed. I just kind of got tired of the 'you know this is wrong, right?' responses the few things I posted in the past generated. You can only say "ni; this is _difgerenr_" so many times before you figure out that for some people, it is much more important to point out what isn't rules-legal, in spite of the fact that they are pointing it out to the guy who said 'these rules aren't working for us" then sat down with his group to figure out something different that did work. Wierd, I know, but there it is. I used to as well, but I have lost them over the years. Besides, the ones I tried and liked I continued to use, so I think I'm good. Well, it is when I met my wife, so you might be on to something there... Well, considering how many people loved 5e and still love 6e, I am going to guess it would have bombed horribly, so it is probably just as well DOJ beat me to it. Also, I would have had little budget after the initial rules run, because I would have withered up and blown away before I sold the rights to the flagship title. Though honestly, I have been posting here long enough that I think you can reasonably infer what it would have been like, perhaps not perfectly (because we will never know), UT I am sure you could get a reasonable picture. Yeah, I forgot to remove that box early on, and now I cant ...

Thank you, Joe; you are too kind. As for Duke's Hero System, that dream vanished in the 90s, when I first got on the internet. The first thing I did was spend some hours researching the status of Hero Games, became very sad, and then excited by the possible opportunities, gathered several potential backers, and learned that Steve and Company had acquired the rights already, and we're working on something, so I got all excited again-- to the point that when I heard there was a new edition in the works, I ran to my FLGS and demanded he keep an eye open, and that I wanted six copies. As to anything else-well, we all have House Rules, many of them not even "official options" in the big pale blue encyclopedia of options. Mine are neither better nor more interesting than anyone else's, I wouldn't think; they have just grown out of the need to solve problems at our tables. But again: I do thank you for the kind words, and the behind-the-scenes look at DGP part 2.

I am not entirely certain I could _read_ in another life else I would have learned about the possibility of reincarnation, and taken steps to prevent it. Unless, of course, my goal was to do better the second time around, and if I did manage to pull that off, then I am positively _jubilant_ that I can't remember the first go. Realistically, I think finding the lighter side habitually is just part and parcel of extreme extroversion, which I suffer from quite happily. Hail, and well-met, good fellow. I neither wear a trilby nor confuse them with fedoras, so that's about as cringe as I am able to get; I hope you're not disappointed. I shouldn't take the trouble, Sir, knowing what I know. In fact, you can know what I know in just a few short moments: It is neither terribly interesting nor exciting, and most of our discussions here are about a game we both play. The only pertinent piece of information from that entire list that I would bother to remember is that of all the people on this board, I am the least likely to know anything about comic books or any particular superhero, save the Iron Man and Spiderman movies (all eight of the modern ones, and the ultra-cool made for TV ones from the seventies). Oh- I also know that the Thor that starred alongside Ferigno's Hulk in the 80s looked considerably less-cool than the one that starred in the Marvel movies. Oh, and thanks to the Traveller's Tales video games, I can recognize Lego Stan Lee from up to two feet away. I feel that this counts for something. You want embarrassing? You should see the look my wife gives me when I am scrolling down threads and come across your name. Much like the inability not to moo at passing cows, I have to revive the 80s jingle from the tou commercials and sing out " Gee Emm Joooeee!" I have tried fighting it; my wife has tried avoidance therapy on my behalf (whereby she avoids noticing any attempt to get her attention for the next few hours), but thus far, I am completely unable to not do it. There. Now we are even. Now I am even with _all_ of you, dammit. Dead on. I really preferred Miller's meager stuff to DGP's stuff, and from Mega forward, it was pretty much all DGP. For what it's worth, even though I prefer the LBBs and vectored movement, The Traveller Book- also published in a traditional-at-that-tme three-booklets-and-a-map, all inside a box version as the "Beginner's Set-- seems to be a real sweet spot compromise of what I like and what my players like. That is to say, it has struck perfect compromise, observable by how equal our "generally cool with it but still slightly disappointed" is spread amongst us. OH MY GOD, _SPILL_! SPILL! Okay: my Classic Traveller collection is far from complete, but I have only recently begun to re-collect what I chunked out years ago (that being 2300, Mega, and TNE, all of which I hated, but Fire, Fusion, and Steel was the single greatest accessory ever published for any RPG, ever, period, even though it was a DGP manuscript, and that irritates like an unsanded seam on a butt plug. (I assume. At least, it sounds like it would irritate.) I completely missed T4, and didn't even hear of T5 until it, too, was out of print. I have yet to get my hands on either (it kills me that I don't have either of those, but I _do_ have T-20: the version I am least-likely to ever play. Gurps Traveller was pretty good, and I am delighted that Wiseman undid the assassination, though I have only the core rules (which is all I am interested in from any of the newer versions- it's a matter. Both money and time left on earth; under the circumstances, that makes me happy enough). I have heard that T4 had problems, but I do not know what they were (yet) and I am dying to hear from anyone involved in any sort of Traveller project! I don't care if it is a sentence, a PM, or an e-mail, asir; just _spill_! Oh, I also missed Mongoose Traveller, and from what I hear about it, all I had to do was add "and he died! " (/Nicholas Cage) back in and I would have loved it. As it stands, I do own a hardback of the Crowded Hours adventures anthology, and three of the four are _amazing_; totally worth the four bucks plus shipping I spent on it. :). I guess I could go the GURPS Traveller route: after creating your character, roll a single die. If it comes up 6, throw the character away and make another one, " but it doesn't have that same 'press your luck' element of danger to it. I have hated the three I have read, but I suspect that was because of the hard push to make us choke on the DGP- developed house system GDW was moving toward. (weirdly, it worked in both Twilight 2000 (though I didn't really like it) and Cadilacs and Dinosaurs (which presented a more polished, more fun-to-use version of it) but it just didn't capture that feeling of simplicity that somehow amplified the 'tiny speck in an endless universe' feeling that Miller's original barebones system brought forward. And of course, the "Kafers are just the bad guys; that's just how it works" that, because there will never be a better word, is overt permission to be racist. That did't fly well with me _at all_. Tell me _whi_ they are, like you do with all the other races, and not _what_ they are. But I think I can still see the topic from here; better head back towards it before I get completely turned around... So many stories... So many horrible, tragic, _hillarious_ stories.... More embarrassment: fans of Shadow run talk about how awful the first edition was. It was the only edition I really liked. even then, though, the fantasy trappings were not exactly to my taste. If I want your chocolate in my peanut butter, I will arrange an innocent accident at an aerobics class involving two people making weird snack decisions during their workout; that you very much. He absolutely nailed the 80s anesthetic for cyberpunk, I think., and that tends to be the way I like my cyberpunk. Yeah, ditto. Once you start thinking of it slang of the era, it gets better. Probably. One day. Really? You'd think you would have picked up on that "priceless collection of ancient Etruscan snoods" thing a ways back up. It's be just my luck that my superpower would be "immortality, except for the side effect' Oh yeah; those helped me develop a comic book feel more than anything else did, I think. I cribbed so many plot twists and locations from them early on.... It' a just elephants all the way down with you, isn't it? Technically, I didn't modify it. I threw it out completely. Well no; technically, I didn't do that, either. I opted not to back port it into my games except for very rare occasions, and decided that Skill Levels-a thing that already existed and already did what skills do- were the way to go. As an ezample: PS Archery becomes +2 with bows. KS: Engineering becomes +2 to INT rolls for engineering problems. Two weapon fighting becomes +4 with off-hand weapon, not to exceed the off-hand penalty. Area Knowledge becomes +3 to INT rolls about area X. Skill levels already have costing and mechanics in place for 'everything' to 'large, related groups,' to 'small, closely-related groups' to 'this one thing and no other thing.' A quick house rule that Skill Leves as Skills can't be allocated to something else-such as CV or extra damage-and it has worked pretty well since 4e came out a few days ago. Maybe some extensive okay testing will show me why it' s a bad idea. For Supers and pulp, build straight off the Characteristic roll. For more 'normal' heroic games, start with 9+ instead of 11+, and for grim, ultra-realistic stuff, start with 7+ Char. For something screwy, consider averaging 2 or more characteristics and deriving you 'bonus' (the thing after the plus) from that instead of one single characteristic. It really solves the 'points auck' problem, and retains the option for broad or narrow skills (buy then as 'one single thing, small closely - related group, or large related group, so pricing is' in line' with utility for those to whom that bit matters. If you are concerned about what else they might spend their 150 points on, the don't give them 150 points. If you are concerned about what they might spend their XP on, have a talk before hand and say 'look, I am going to try something with this campaign, but it involves reducing awarded XP along the way. That may or may not change after we have tried it a bit, but for now, we are going to kind of ease into this. Most importantly, if you are concerned about either of those, you should admit that you have been using skills as a points suck all this time, and let go of that. Thank you, Hugh. Thank you deeply. I was beginning to think I had wasted a lot of words not getting my point across: The skills section works as-is if you are a Hero player from way back. If you are new, and looking for some guidance, you aren't going to find it in the books.

Thank you. I could not come up with a more descriptive term than "lock out," at the time. I like the analogy you have created there, so long as everyone is clear that it is not derision. Well done. I do. I gave a rough example of how up above. I figure if they are good enough to fake martial arts, they are good enough to fake skills, too. This is also why I was so tickled at the idea of taking "terrible scientist: - r to all science-based INT rolls" it would actually work at my table, but I think we can all see the immediate abuses of allowing such a disadvantage. Have you guys never wondered why of all the people on this forum, I am the guy who doesnt post character write-ups?

Well, the Game Master has to learn from something, and if the goal is new blood to the game, that new blood will not have a game master from whom to learn. This points to a need for some sort of in-rules guidance, if only a discussion of the various "breadths" of skills and their impact on the shape of the game. I have had a love / hate relationship with the current format of Hero skills-- the breakdown and separation of PS, KS, and Familiarity-since it debuted in 4e. Does a PS include the necessary knowledge to actually have developed the PS in the first place? Does it not? Should a KS represent only the sorts of things which are purely knowledge, and for which there is no true "profession," such as KS: College football or KS: priceless collections of ancient Etruscan snoods? Or even KS: streets of San Francisco? Just what the hell is the point of a familiarity when it seems an 8 or less KS would be the same thing? As to reverting a PS to be a catch-all: Is that what is going on? Is it actually being reverted? Is being able to perform something professionally not indicative of a broader underlying knowledge and appropriate training? Obviously, that depends entirely on you assumptions. If you believe it is possible to operate professionally as a policeman without having any actual policeman-related knowledge or education, then no; it will not work for your games. If you believe that you can't actually develop the skills of a professional without working in the field, which requires that you already have appropriate knowledge related to performing in the field, then again: it works. Similarly, if you believe that KS is best reserved for not _all_ academic knowledge, but as a specific indicator that the knowledge possessed is academic -_only_, then it works fine. On the other hand, if you believe it is possible to have held a job in accounting without actually knowing anything about accounting, then no; it will not work. Your accountant will need both a PS and a KS. It boils down to a simple problem, or rather, it starts with a simple question: Should we assume that 'lesser' items of a skill are folded in? Should we assume that they are not? That is a given. I haven't used much of anything skill-wise that isn't pre-fourth edition except by special request, the only real exception being my heroic level sci-fi games, and even then, I use the skills from Star Hero and Robot Warriors before considering a KS /PS set up. But that wasn't really the point; the point was more along the lines of is this a good system or a frustratingly bad system? No one _could_ run a game where all skills are broken into their unique mosy individualized actions as separate skills. Even with infinity points to spend, just how many smaller knowledges are covered in physics skill? How many in 'computer programming?'". There should be a language chart for that, too. Every single skill from 4e onward-we talk about broad versus narrow and which works, and at the end of the day, no one is doing purely one or the other: how many of the narrow science skills include observation, record-keeping, research skills, and even algebra? Why are they not broken out as their own skills? Every single division- every single skill itself, built using this system, is completely arbitrary, leaving new students floundering about to figure out a solution or a possible "best," and they are doing it blind, because even the rule book offers diddly squat for guidance. That was the point I was trying to get across. Skills are totally arbitrary with this system, at every level, and there isn't anything that addresses it beyond a few-hundred rehash threads like this one. Even when 4e first landed with this, it always felt like "I could see how this was going to go in my head, but I couldn't quite get it to gell, so I gave up, but I had too much invested to throw it away, so.... Good luck!" and it has just been sort of left there, aside from periodic cheers about how wonderfully open-ended it is. I don't believe anyone is wrong about the skill system, either. It isn't complete enough to screw it up. But out of curiosity, what is your general rule of thumb for "narrow enough?". Even collecting fingerprints has multiple steps, each with different actions and different supplies. Is this a PS or a KS, or is it something you have decided requires both? To be absolutely clear: I am not picking on you nor am I saying that you aren't going narrow enough. I am just making the point that every one of us has a stopping point on specificity, and that ultimately, it is completely arbitrary, and likely to vary not just from GM to GM, but from skill to skill. We can tout it as brilliant and innovative, or we can accept that it is a level of broken that we are okay with, but realistically, the only changes I would like to see is some official in-the-rules guidance, even if it did the ol' "and here are eleven options" thing that has come to characterize the current edition.

While I get all the outpouring of 'you can't do that because you don't know when the phase ends,' if I have the high DEX, I can decide to go last. If I have a held action and count heads, I can decide to go last-er.

I am not familiar with Supers, save having heard it mentioned in these forums a few times. I am not shooting it down, of course-- I can't! I know nothing about it. I know that it is difficult to keep track of the details of what are essentially faceless strangers with a common hobby, so as a soft reminder, allow me to politely state that by and large, Superheroes isn't my bag. I have played, and do still play, _a lot_ of Champions, because after my Travellers /Tunnles and Trolls group broke up (the GM's wife was military, and had been reassigned to another duty station) way back in '79, the next non DnD group I found was a Champions group, and even if supers was not my favorite, I confess to having a romantic appreciation for clear-cut good guys and dastardly villains, so as long as the story is good, I can play supers. I was never a comic book kid (gearhead for life. Even as a kid, I loved tearing into engines and seeing if I could get them running again), so I had no serious self-insertion attraction to the settings or the characters, nor even a serious understanding of the tropes (he was bombarded with radiation and then _what?!! _. No-no-no-! I think you misread that. I think you meant gelatinous death via rapid cellular destruction and tissue degeneration. Or at least cancer, and lots of it). My preference is science fiction, my heart belongs to Classic Traveller, Cyberpunk is great from the 80's interpretation of the genre, and it is tied with post-apocalyptic adventures (and what is Cyberpunk but a unique take on an apocalypse of social structure and not just the entire human race?). You heard that right: I _loved_ Gama World despite it's absolute goofiness (up until the garbage that was 3e), had a love/hate relationship with Aftermath, and all of our Car Wars games were straight up Mad Max. There were two dozen other failed post-apoc games on the shelves, and I tried most of them. Pulp action is fun, but the people who really "get it" started dying off twenty-five years ago, and I can get into a well-realized non DND fantasy game. Then, after all that, comes superheroes and war gaming, in a constant switching of which I would prefer in that moment. To be fair, war gaming would win more consistently if I wasn't terrible at it. After all that, there is going to work, complete social isolation, self-mutilation, and repeatedly striking my thumb with a hammer. Just beyond that there is DnD, and finally, when self-torture starts to seem sort of pleasant, there is LARP. After that is taking a third job, then bobbing for French fries, eating okra, and then military RPGs (sadly, this includes FASA'a Star Trek, which made no allowances for non-Starfleet characters): those games where you are not your own agent and are tasked with goals in which you have no actual interest, and then get shot and die. It's like the retail industry simulator; why on earth would I want to do that to relax? Finally, at the bottom of the bottom, like the earth beneath the feet of the elephants that support the world (unless you are one of those who believes it is just more elephants all the way down forever, you heathen, you) , there are collectible card games. The shorter version of all this is that alternate ways to play superheroes really aren't on my radar at all, but if I find an inexpensive PDF for Supers, I might check it out for the skills system. Now to be fair, I will read adventures and modules from _any_ game, because ultimately, stories and plots are universal, and you never know what inspiration you might find or where you might find it. Oh, yes. It was quite an eye-opener, really, and it was the first time that I really started to notice that-- especially for 4e (latest and greatest at that time)-- too often, characters were being required to buy skills that one-hundred percent should have been everyman skills in their campaigns, and I started to realize that there were distinct levels of 'everyman skills' within a single campaign. Perhaps in your fantasy world "horse maintenance" is not an everyman skill. Is it possible that it should be an every-adventurer skill? If you find that you are requiring every adventurer to buy the same skill, then that skill, Sir, should be an every-adventurer skill. Any skill required to simply be in the game-- Let's paint me as the bad guy, because I did this one prior to having Miller open my eyes: I _required_ characters in a fantasy game to buy some sort of skill to represent their ability to get food while trekking across the continent. FOOD! I didn't care if it was foraging, hunting, trapping, fishing, or woodcraft, I insisted that all of the characters have a skill related to feeding themselves. (my favorite response to that request was Seduction, if you were wondering). You need to eat to stay alive and you need to stay alive to play in the game, and I was requiring them to pay for that simply because it _was possible_ to pay points for it, because the skills existed at all. That was when I began to look at how many skills that characters held that ultimately were not really necessary. If the skill does nothing but keep you in the game (never once have we ever role played hunting or fishing or fungi collecting for subsistence reasons. When we did, it was always about discovering (or failing to) something while in the process of doing the thing. I can't tell you how many times a player has picked up dice to roll his hunting skill when the party makes camp, and I responded with "no need. Game is plentiful here, and within the hour you have returned with meat enough for the entire party"), then that skill is a points suck. If the level of your skill is the same as your most relevant Characteristic, then purchasing that skill is a points suck. If it is lower than your most-relevant characteristic, then it is most _definitely_ a points suck because of Brick Fingers. No; that is not a typo. You guys remember Brick, right? I didn't use him, so other than poring over his 2e sheet for examples, I never kept up with him other than to note the squaring of his head for 4e, but if you remember Brick, then you likely remember "Brick Fingers: Cannot do fine work.". It's right up there with'"no fine manipulation" on Telekinesis. It is a _limitation_. A _disadvantage_. You can use your INT and DEX together for great feats of nimble-fingered adroit deftness, but _I cannot, as my brick finger do not allow me to do fine work. _ Here is a thing that I cannot do as well as my normal rolls indicate that I should. It is a personal flaw worth character points. If you have an INT-based Skill worth less than the Characteristics roll.... No; I am not saying that the characters should suddenly lay claim to thirty skills at 8 or less and then claim disadvantages because their INT roll is 12 or less. That way lies madness. Or Davien. If you have an INT of 16 then you have an INT roll of 12 (13 under super-permissive GMs). If you are being made to pay for an INT- based or even an INT-related skill with a roll of less than that, then that skill is a points suck. It won't work. At least. It won't work as a drop-in to HERO _as it stands now_. I say that because we are discussing the problems of infinitely splitting off such things as Professional Skills. And PS: X from HERO _is_ Expertise: X from M and M. That is what it is for: it is a catch-all for unspecified skills related to this field. The problem doesn't go away: a lack of guidelines on when to split or just what is covered under what, and when does this umbrella not cover that problem. I do not believe that you are in the minority for liking it; I believe we all have a considerable appreciation for it, as there is nothing inherently wrong with the concept. The problem is a complete lack of guidance (again, not really an issue once you realize that this skill means what the players and I have decided they mean, but still: that is considerably different from any sort of explanation or even an example of "this is too broad" and "this is too narrow.". If I may borrow your own examples: I don't know who Reed Richards is, but I have seen enough Marvel Movies to know the others. Hank Pym was Kirk Douglas, Tony Stark was RDJ, and David Banner was some other guy. I must have missed Reed Richards, but these three will do. Let's look at Stark. From the movies and your suggested differentiations, Stark has engineering, Robotics, and physics. We look at Pym, and the ant man suit and the wasp suit, which the movies specify that he designed and built himself-and he, too, has engineering, Robotics, and physics. I didn't watch any of the Hulk movies, but given Banner's use in the movies I did see, he clearly knows physics and engineering, and I am willing to be that if we asked enough comic guys, they could cite examples of every one of the three (four, because of Richards) casually knocking out feats of all four of your categories, bringing this right back to 'how many of these skills was it necessary to separate and charge individually for? Please be aware that I am not saying you are wrong; I am simply asking if, between these characters, there was enough difference in their documented knowledge bases that they could not just as easily bought "super-science" and declared a specialty within the field of super-science (because I know Banner is supposed to be the most knowledgeable about gamma rays or radiation or some-such to warrant a specialty there)? Stark buys Super-science and declares a specialty in Robotics or engineering, or maybe he has a double- major, but except for shrinking, there seems to be a ton of overlap between him and Pym (and Banner and Peter Parker, whose single limitation seems to be access to funds as opposed to a lack of super-science know-how). So does it seem more correct that each Character pay five points a whack (or whatever 6e is charging for them) for the identical four skills then buy either one up or three down to create an essentially negligible (and in the source material, generally ignored) distinction between the four, or to buy the one similar skill, and either declare a specialty, or buy a second skill for the specific specialty or- my favorite _at the moment_: buy two skill levels for use with rolls pertaining to their particular 'specialty'? The problem is that all of these are valid. All of these are accurate. Alll of these are rules-legal (so long as you are ignoring the 'most expensive is most correct way" rule the same way that the published material does). The only guidance is'"look how our amazing free-form skill system let's you do exactly what you want!" without even a fingerpoint in even one direction you might wish to go. Put another way: at one table, the same four skills at differing levels for these guys is perfect. At another, it is not enough, and at a third, it is a waste of fifteen points, And all of these are correct. Precisely. I get what you are going for, but the source material-- and in-games, the GM-- kind of invalidates it. In the source material, we know that these characters will be gifted with the knowledge of any field pertaining to the desires of the author. I am not familiar with the source material, but I have seen that just in the movies. I saw a couple of flinches when I said the GM will invalidate it as well. Well, here is why I believe that: The GM designs your adventures and he approves your characters. He helps you build them and makes suggestions to ensure that your character lines up with what the adventure has in store. If your GM approves your hydrophobic desert-dwelling non-swimming character and then declares that this campaign will deal with ancient and mysterious forces massing in the Marianas trench, and only characters with Submarine Ops and Scuba skills need apply, everyone on this board would call this 'a dick move," except possibly Hermit, who would have a much nicer way to say that it was, in fact, a dick move. The GM is going to make certain that either your characters work in the story, or the story works for your characters. Why? Well, what are Skills for in-game? Finding short-cuts, solving puzzles, and finding clues. Short-cuts: hey, if I use my PS: electrical lineman right now, I can route the power directly to those massive servos and make this hidden gate open up, and we won't have to spend the next two hours combing the hills looking for a concealed airshaft to sneak through! That is a pleasant little windfall for the players, and shortcuts them further along. But if no one has PS: electrical lineman? Absolutely not a problem, because there is a hidden ventilation shaft that can be used to gain entry. If no one has Concealment? Well, there is a narrative delay as the troupe spends _hours_ looking for a back door, (and any timed events advance that much closer), but the heroes _will_ find a way in, with or without the appropriate skills, because the story is _jnside_. I have yet to see a GM (outside of old school DnD) who would say "well, no one here has PS:electrical lineman, and no one has concealment. You comb the hills for several days, and the thermonuclear device goes off, resulting in a TPK and the death of over twenty-million people. You guys suck; buy the right skills next time. " If you have the right skills, a spectacular shortcut will reward you. If you don't have the right skills, then the GM will have a less-glorious and possibly more time consuming alternative route for you, and it was probably the one he built the adventure around to begin with, because what kind of killer GM builds the adventure around the necessity of you finding the way forward with a die roll? Finding clues (because I no longer remember the order in which I laid out the topics of discussion, or exactly what those topics were, and the new larger keyboard I downloaded means I can see even less of the screen now.): As Chris Goodwin once perfectly stated, clues _want_ to be found. If a clue is hidden behind a die roll, then the odds are that either that clue is helpful (providing a certainty for something the character already suspects and is investigating anyway) in a shortcut-for-the-plot kind of way, or was a fun an interesting but otherwise unessential tidbit (that may or may not come around elsewhere, later), or that you haven't found that essential clue _here and now_, because if it is essential to the plot that it be found, the GM will move the clue to the next opportunity for discovery, or reveal it blatantly just before it is too late, or, depending on the kind of game you play, just as or after it is too lye, but again: if it is essential, it shouldn't be hidden behind a die roll at all, but if it is, then it will be hidden behind a die roll for a skill or skills already found within that character group, and there will be multiple opportunities to find it. All you are really rolling for is to determine where and when you find it. Solving puzzles. This is your typical deathtrap situation: Hailey and Henry Hostage are tied to a rocket pointed at some culturally-important building in an antagonistic nation, and there are only seconds before the rocket launches! You must have Science Skill: Rockets to deactivate the rocket! Or Professional Skill: rocketry. Or Computer Programming. Or Security Systems. Or make a perception roll to notice the data cord going to the rocket and the terminal it is hooked to seems to still be uploading data. Or make a Luck roll to see the large red Abort button. Or shoot it in the computer. Or have your brick mangle the fuel nozzles. Or knock it over, and let the failsafe kick in. Or any of a dozen other the things the GM already knows will be acceptable, with perhaps varying degrees of success (you know: for fun!). Maybe Henry doesn't make it or something. Still, if it is absolutely essential to advance the story, there is more than one way to succeed. In your pivotal moments-the climax of the session, that is really the only point at which a pass/fail is really likely to occur, the only point where it is all going to hinge on a roll of the Skill dice, maybe, and unless you are playing for humour or your GM is really in to the TPK concept, that one critical skill has already been determined to be one that at least one party member has a 'close enough' version of. Yes, that is all incredibly meta, but that is the tool by which we measure objectively, as well as the mindset of the writers of the source material: if Banner needs to know something about Pym particles, he just will, because it falls under the superscience skill, but only if there are no Pym particle specialists on stage at that moment. Agreed. I badly-stated a similar comment up-thread regarding cost complaints: skills _are the powers_ of heroic-level games. Drop 60 points on an RKA and no one cares; that is what you do when you are building a superhuman. Drop ten points on two world-class level skills, and it is too much. Well, if you are playing supers, it does cut pretty deeply into your powers budget, but if you are playing heroic, well, as long as those skills aren't just mandated points sucks, go for it. It is your area of excellence. Agreed again. Now let me go a little bit into my comments about being inspired by Marc Miller. Miller ran the game such that the characteristic roll was the important roll. Everyone's complaints that Classic Traveller had too few skills and too few opportunities to earn buckets full of them were generally because they didn't understand that this was intentional. (to my dismay, in each subsequent edition of Traveller, to include the career books that eventually got published, Miller capitulated and made more skills and made them more attainable by the bucketful.) It was Miller's position that the character's backstory- both his service history and his history before that-determined if there was a chance that a character knew how to do something. You are going to hate that, Scott; and to be fair, it is one of only a tiny handful of pure-narativism bits with which I agree. If the character did not have the skill, then he made a characteristic roll. It was Miller's stance that a list of skills could not possibly be assembled that would cover even a portion of what a character actually knew, and that listed skills-those skills actually on the character sheet-represented those things at which the character was exceptionally-well trained or learned. I find that adopting that idea to Hero means that 'exceptional skills' can be represented by specific skill levels, and even combinations: two levels of 'life sciences' and then two levels of the more specific 'botany' and one more for 'plants with unusual effects on humans.' Now the standard defense of all the zero-guidelines rules and optional-optional-optional rules, at least since 6e published, is "well, it's it is no longer a game; it is a set of mechanics from which one picks and chooses and creates a game.'". But let's remember a couple of things: One, there are no useful guidelines for what is possible and Two, it has been like this since 4e, when it actually was still mostly a game. Now a look at going the other way-going toward increasing and possibly hyper-specificity. There are myriad little problems, but I think the most important one is lock out. Look at the example given above: for every single skill created, you are making the rule that 'no other skill does this.'. We can have superscience, or we can have superphysics, superchemistry, super radiation expert.... Going more humbly: We have paramedic. My character wants paramedic. Your character does not, but he thinks first aid might come in handy. He buys that for the same campaign. You have three choices: let their matching costs slide, alter the cost of one, or remove first aid from the wheelhouse of paramedic. Another character decides that he learned triage as a corpsman, and now the paramedic must buy three skills when before he needed only one. Forensics can be broken down into... Well, _lots_ of skills, taking each one out of the skill forensics and creating a CSI skills group worth over a hundred points. At the end of the day, there is absolutely no single solution that solves this problem for everyone short of either preparing an exhaustive list of every available skill per campaign, with definitions (hello, APGs three through forty-one) or removing skills entirely from the game, and let's be honest, the only reason that this solution is equally-just for all is because we will all hate it equally.

Agreed, but the Goodman School of Cost Effectiveness wasn't about reason so much as finding mechanics that could be lightly abused. Lightly.

True, but ultimately, if I have a held action and act in Phase 4, and decide to use my held action in Phase 3 so I can recover on Phase 4, what is the effective difference?

were I on my computer, I could move that to where I wanted to group it, but... Anyway, there are some interesting thoughts coming up from folks that shows a bit of concensus here for this idea. You and me both. Though for what it's worth, it is easy enough to add back in. Yes; I know that you know that, and that your complaint refers more to it being officially axed, and I know that you can't get Hero Designer to accept it for a 6e build, but I always hope there is a new guy out there reading these threads.... That was more for him. My own "issue" (I can't say complaint because I still use both of these things the way that I believe they were meant to be used) with Elemental Control was the interpretation that the community took and ran with for both Elemental Control and Multipower. You remember the early days: we had nothing. No settings, no modules, just the rules books. Eventually we got an adventure or two (honesty time: the original Island of Dr D was _terrible_, and we all know it. Christopher's rework of that piece is a billion miles ahead of the original-not just for the update, but because it is an RPG adventure and not just a war game capture-the-flag scenario.) and we got an enemies book. We didn't even have Adventurers club or a third-party rag with any interest in us in the early days. Best of all, we didn't have an internet. We could do whatever made us feel right about the game and not have to check in to make sure that remote faceless strangers agreed with us, and us remote faceless strangers couldn't get our kicks telling you that you were completely wrong, and therefore were not having a good time correctly. All we had were the examples in the rules, and by dribbles, in latter supplemental works. From those examples - the 'how-to' bits in the rules and the actual characters that we would come across, I got the distinct understanding that Elemental Control was more of a theme thing-- like Spiderman had a spider theme, and all of his wall crawling, leaping, and strength would fit into that, _and so could his web shooters _. Multipower, however, seemed to be reserved for characters who had single power source that they could use multiple ways: my command of gravity waves let's me fly, repel objects, create strength-sapping zones of heavy gravity, and generate concussive waves of tightly-mixed variable gravities, doing massive damage to whatever I strike. I can use my ability to create and manipulate heat to loft myself on tightly-controlled thermals, generate blasts of white-hot flame, and create a wall of heat so intense projectiles are vaporized before they get near me. All of these are _super cool_, right? And they are _one power_. The very nature of Multipower demonstrates that: I buy a control, which has the bulk of my 'stored geavity' or whatever, and slots, each of which represents things that I can do with that gravity. In fact, because I can only generate so much intense heat, if I raise my forcefield to it's maximum, I have to sort of hover, because there is barely enough left over to fly; blasting someone is just out of the question. (anyone else remember turning off Flight in mid-air, using a held action to attack full-force, and then turning Flight back on? Anyone? Okay; it's just me.) If you went with ultra slots, it was _painfully_ obvious that you were manipulating a single power source. The idea held for guns, too- a perinnial favorite build of the Multipower because then you could take that sweet Focus limitation as well (as you do when you are building 'the most expensive way' ). You have six slots, (usually Ultras) representing different ammo or different features of the gun. This holds up as evidence that you really have only a single power: Gun. If Arkelos the Mage casts "Dispell: Gun," you are _screwed. If the GM decides it is time for that Focus limitation to bite you just a bit, you do not have any of your slots because you lost the only one power you had: Gun. The most telling thing- to me, I mean-- was the rebate. The rebate was _huge_ (still is) for Multipower, which suggested some significant drawbacks. In modern discussions, when someone prooeses a 'not in the presence of X' type build where they cannot use one power when using another, or the two are somehow scaled, we recommend 'lockout' and similar limitations, which are fine, of course, but they don't offer the rebate value of Multipower. Finally, and this one goes all the way back to 1e: Multipower did not start out listed as a power framework. It was listed as a power. (as was Elemental Control, actually). I know a lot of you that never played 1e bought the Bundle of Holding when it popped up. Go check it out: Multipower was listed as a power that allowed one set of points to feed multiple abilities. Much like today; the wording really hasn't changed much at all. One set of points rolling from one power to another, or being split amongst the slots-- a single power : a multi-use power; a power that can be tapped and expressed multiple ways. So from the earliest days of Power Drain, we applied those Drains to _the whole multipower_. We treated it as one power. To this day, those are the types of builds for which I encourage Multipower (assuming the player is willing to accept the inherent drawbacks, of course). Now until I got online, I had no idea people bagged on Elemental Control so badly. (I also had no idea how many people were using incorrectly, and over-discounting the powers within, but that's another story. Well, a couple of examples: pay full price for your most expensive power and all others are half price. Pay full points for your first power, and all others are half price. How many people, do you suppose, had Instant Change or +1 STR as their first power at _that_ table?!). From chat rooms, then to Red October, and finally to these boards, people were constantly trashing Elemental Control. (I would like to point out that, much like "Killing Attack is broken!" the complaints almost always seemed to come from the "points are for game balance" camp. I do not know if that is significant, but the possibility is strong enough that it seems worth mentioning. Ironically, when used properly, the discount for EC didn't outweigh that of Multipower until you got up to eight or more powers, possibly more depending on how you built (you could over-pay on your control and end up paying too much for a slot with a low-cost power in it, or underpay your control cost and end up paying additional full-cost points far too often. You want my honest ooinion? People bagged on EC because it was complicated. ) Then along came- was it 4e or 5e? I seem to remember it was 5e, but that may just be the first time I noticed it- the declaration that Elemental Control was, in fact, one single power with Multiple aspects, and that adjustment powers that affected any EC power affected all EC powers, etc. Now I have read everything 4e, just as many of you have. I am pretty certain that I own everything 4e up on the bookshelves, including the dual-stat ICE stuff, because if you wanted a module for anything that wasn't Champions, then you had best be playing Fantasy HERO. (For those who did not venture into the world of Kulthea, it could be a bit dark. It could also be a bit murder-hobo ish, if you weren't careful.) Anyway, I have read it. Yes; I saw the same trends as everyone else: Multipower popping up on lots of places I would have gone with EC, and a few the other way around. My only thoughts at the time where, the construct doesn't really seem abusive, and Multipower _is_ easier to use, but the limitations..... Anyway we got to a point where the official rules stated that EC now has all the drawbacks that you assumed MP had, and MP does not. And I just kinda moped right out of that. Well, there commentary. So much commentary. So very much overly-colorful commentary.... Some of the less colorful was "yes; this make sense. Because Peter Parker got bitten by a radioactive spider who came back a week later and handed him some sweet web-shooting bracelets. That is just how these things go. Because draining his web"-shooters should automatically reduce his vertical leap. Anyway, as has been suggested before, "Unified Power," applied to enough slots, will eventually get you to the rebate point that Elemental Control used to get you, but it removes all the hoops, so now you can apply it to two powers. Not gonna stop using EC, though, and you aren't going to get all of your powers modified because one got adjusted. You will with Multipower, though. Gid dinged right it is! More than anything, this is the biggest use I have for it these days. Agreed again! Dude, even an inch of stretching, held as a surprise, can totally change a tactical situation, plus the fun things you can do: ersatz Swinging, climbing, grabs and holds. By far, though, my favorite use of just a small amount of Stretching is "Surprise! Looks like _one of us_ is in melee range!" That! That right there! Cascade skills are the thing for heroic or realistic type games, and I heartily encourage someone who does not write the rules (because I cannot imagine anyone thinking we need a longer rule book) to give this a try. You might go around and gather your players' skills and create your own lists for them to have when playing, though I would recommend asking your players something like "pick 5 skills that fall under that heading that you want at that level, then pick either two each from each of those that you want at (some lower level)" or even "then pick ten skills under that main heading you want at (some lower level), and possibly go to 15 total on a tertiary level. Shoot me, but I think that as an exercise, it would be _awesome_! Of course, I forgot to take all of my blood pressure and heart meds today, so I am feeling much better than I have in months, with energy and excitement to spare, so bear with my enthusiasm, please. I think it would be fun to do; seriously. I also think it would be a pain the rear to play, because there will be some aspect of police work that you or the player did not consider, and now he doesn't know how to do that. So here is an alternative: pick X amount of skills that believe comprise your specialty in 'police work.'. Pick Y amount that you are only passingly familiar with. The first set will be at the level of your Police work skill; the second set will be at 8 or less; all other aspects will be at (some agreeable midpoint). This way, the player gets to specify both his strengths and his weaknesses, but he won't necessarily come up shot in the clutch because he had to create a specific list of everything he knows. When Police work goes up, they all go up by the same amount, or, just to keep it lively, all but one from each group goes up with it (players choice, of course). You get a degree of granularity (possibly with increasing variation), and you are still reasonably close to Hero-normal. Just thoughts, and I would love to see someone try them. I likely won't, because I took a lot of inspiration from Marc Miller and don't often play a skills-heavy game: buy skills for things that you do exceptionally well, and we will do characteristics rolls or what-have-you for things that you just know or know about. (in supers, anyway). Right up until you are looked in a windowless room, anyway. I agree with the sentiment, thought, that skills are priced a bit high, at least for a superhero game. That is why I tend to (see above). For heroic games, I find them to be about right, and I don't go o super-granular (like that guy that wants me to tell him what five parts of my job I suck at). I run them tighter than I do in supers, but I also keep in mind that for normals, skills kind of _are_ their "special powers," so the pricing seems more fair. Besides, I fold a few things into them, Even then, though, this is a conversation about value for your points, and points balance because costs are similar and values are not. It doesn't make one of them wrongly"-costed, though. Still, because the skill system in Hero is so fascinatingly devoid of explanation, the best thing I can suggest is selecting a level of breadth that you are comfortable with: woodcraft instead of survival, msybe: I can survive, build a fire, hunt game, skin it and tan the hide, and build a log cabin. I can dig a well, read the seasons in tree bark, and the weather by the turn of the leaves. I can walk without leaving a trail, and am unimpeded by underbrush. I can craft a jug from tree bark and a canoe from deerskin. That sort of thing. Sorry; wrong quote. That's the quote. And honestly, I feel that stating precisely that would be far, far better that saying "use the most expensive build" and then demonstrably violating it a few dozen times in the rules ever was. It encourages the new player or GM to get comfortable with the rules-comfortable enough to identify a 'cheaty build' - and provides actionable advice: you make a build that does the thing, but it should have a reasonable price tag. It also doesn't say hat this price tag has to be the most expensive option. It just works better all around. Still, there is one more thought, but not right here. Right here. I think we should _encourage _ chesty builds, at least for a while. We _all_ did it during our learning phase. We did it because it was _fun_! We all _loved_ coming up with something outlandish (I once wiped out all my friends with a super I had built on eighty-eight points. It was _awesome_!) I can one-hundred percent truthfully say that if it wasn't for various challenges from Jim like 'we are doing a free for all tonight. You have one hundred fifty points to make a character, and we start fighting in twenty minutes, " that there is very little chance that I would know this system the way I do, or that I would have even been interested in learning it so deeply. (I have to say that we never really appreciated Jim as the GM he was. So much of what he did that we thought of as silly, or copping out because he had forgotten to prepare something, or tons of other things-- he had been gone for over a decade before I really understood how much he had taught me about not just learning a gsmr, but understanding it and running it in a way that worked for everyone-players and characters-at the table that nihht- about not just _knowing_ the rules, but totally _underdstanding_ them-- not as instructions, but as a favorite piece of fiction, to be enjoyed over and over. Jim was awesome, and I didn't know it in time to properly thank him. Anyway, you can't really _see_ some of the more clever "cheaty builds" until you know exactly what you are looking for. Or, as my gransfather once said, you don't look anywhere you don't already know a fella could hide. There are a number of reasons-famiarity with the system being topmost-that I feel we should _encoursge_ cheaty builds, even if only as a fun exercise with which one could do a battle Royale and show off to his friends. I also think it might be helpful to explain that this type of build can be harmful to a campaign, where not every player is going to be as savy as any other player, and mention that learning to "cheat" on a legendary scale can both demonstrate the problems with such builds, and help lewnr how to look for them. Whatever else we might do, I think we should encourage it as a 'special ourpose' sort of event that is catahrticc every now and again. I still enjoy doing it once in a while, and I have ebeen playing a long time. I learned so many things that way: Crain End (old rules) was stupid cheap; drain Recovery was more brutal than Driain Body, and for the same price. Nothing goes with T-form like a nice round of Drain: Bidy, though. Desolid: usable as Attack takes anyone completely out of combat, instantly. +10 Recovery usable as attack makes you everyone's favorite teammate. These aren't particularly cheaty, mind you. They re just a list of some of my favorites from way back when. Exactly. You're welcome, Sir. Always delighted to make an OG Champions playtester happy. Well, you know I didn't. Hinestly, I would have loved to see the new ideas keep coming in the Champions II and Champions III type format. You know: here are a few new ideas, and we have some revamps if you have found X to be too troublesme. A few disads, and we thought you might like these new disadvantages. That sort of thing. Maybe one a year, and after 5 of them, release a new core rules that is the original rules with the new material worked in. I know me well enough to tell you that I would buy bith: I couldn't wait five years for the new edition, so I would buy the updates as they came about, then I would buy the new edition to have it all organized so I wouldn't be flipping throu so many books to find what I want. Your core system wouldn't change: you would just have more powers, Disadvantages, limitations, and such to play with. 4e got some mileage like that out of Hero System Almanac, but it hasn't really been done since. One could say the APGs were kind of like that, but I read them essentially as 'here are some pre-built powers you might like" with some light advice scattered about. Oh, I agree. I very much agree. But as I said: it was an example of something that we have all seen right here. I chose this example specifically because I was confident it didn't involve anyone here; I wasn't trying to call anyone out. Barely related note: has anyone seen Filksinger since Red October shut down? I miss that guy. This isn't even an edition complaint. This happened in the age of chat rooms! When we all had free internet because those AOL disks just kept coming.... At the very latest, they could have been playing 4e. This was a the game is the mechanics / the game is what you do debate: which is more important? Creatively solving the problem with the resources and mechanics at hand, or mandating every mechanic be adhered to at the expense of a creative solution debate. This was the birth of 'Powe skill' kind of debate, where we created a catch-all to make certain that no possible action goes uncharged for. That is because it _is_ clever. It is players using their skull meat to plumb the depths of possibility, and teaching themselves how the elements of the game can be combined to interesting effect. I cannot discourage that practice as an exercise because it has too much value as a method of learning. Also agreed. It should not be allowed in a "regular" game, but I still think a nice throw-away munchkins cage match can inspire a lot of self-directed learning. Ditto on most counts. There is a guy on this board who might want to compare notes with you. He is currently running a HERO Star Wars game. You still remember how much fun it was at the time, though, right? Who are we to suggest depriving new players of those sensations when there is so much to be learned from the doing? You lost me there, Sir. Really? You never at any point saw character creation as its own game, and sat down to see how much you could get for some minimal amount of points? Not once? Or wondered about a particular combination of powers or moddlifiers- never wondered enough to just try it and see what happened? Similar here, but that is primarily because I am browsing for things I might want to add to my already-extant game; I have zero quibbles about just ignoring rules changes or new constructs with which I disagree. Agreed completely.

Indeed! But I am willing to bet you would not allow him to buy Missile Deflection at the 'bullets' level to begin with. Excellent point, and one I totally failed to address. Good catch!

For the love of little dishes, _stop doing that! _. All of you! Every one of you! Stop doing it in trade, in split signs, in casual conversation, in _anything_! You want us to catch up? _Make_ us! In all the history of humanity, no one has ever changed a behavior by pandering specifically to the undesirable behavior. It drives me crazy! You have seen our politicians, our actors, our celebrities, and our Uber-wealthy ruling class. What else do you need to make you understand that you are dealing with children?! When you want a child to change his behavior, step one is to make it extremely difficult to continue the undesired behavior, is it not? So please: either decide to give us no choice (and I would like to convert myself; I get super-tired of doing conversions on the fly all day long), or stop blaming us exclusively for something you are deeply complicit in reinforcing. Mostly, I want to see us adopt liters per hundred kilometers as the metric for fuel consumption, because a consumption difference of 2 mpg "doesn't seem like _that_ much...." and we crank out another four thousand coal burners....

Half of those guys should be named. Earth is the only planet with cloth.

Honestly? Quite possibly right here on this board. Browse around some old threads and see how many times some build or other is disagreed with because it doesn't include Chemical X, which it must have, because it can potentially do a thing that is entirely of the wheelhouse of Chemical X. Remember the old Swinging power, before it got folded into a more annoying version of Flight? Remember how it said 'character is assumed to have an appropriate swingline'? Not on this board, but way back when chat rooms were still a thing, I watched a five-way argument amongst GMs as one GM was recounting something a particularly quick-witted player had done. I don't remember all the details (just that I found the detractors really annoying), but rather than focus on the clever thing, they siezed on the part where the character cut his swingline to drop onto a trio of mooks, finished them off with some knuckles, and then proceeded to use the cut length of the swingline to tie up the mooks as he radioed his teammates. These guys argued for over an hour before I got sick of it and left- if any of those guys was one of you guys, please do tell me how it ended. The argument was that it was impossible for this character to do that because he did not have entangle. It was impossible to use a bit of rope to tie up mooks because that would be entangle, and he did not buy entangle. I believe we have all seen similar stuff here on this very board. This is exactly the mindset that lead to the creation of the Power Skill, when you get down to it. "well, it makes sense that his inferno cone _would_ set the hay bales on fire, but dang it, that's a Transform, and he didn't buy that. I've got to make sure he pays _something_ to do things like this...." When you look for official answers, you are often referred to specific skills or powers-- let's face it, you can't go wrong by the book if you can find something in the book that you can specifically point towards, right? All of that reinforces the idea that every ability must be paid for, and that off-label useage is completely forbidden. In the long run, this is hurting the game: it is leading to more and more hyper-specificity and more and more "can't must never only always" in the rules. Worst of all, it is just another thing to point out from the outside as more 'proof' that this game is too complex, to precision, too demanding to be worth picking up.