Duke Bushido

It doesn't really require the dream,child, but it would be interesting that you entered his real by landing there during a falling dream.

Thanks. I dont hate him; I am just completely uninterested. Of course, now I am a bit scared: that whole "took him in a different direction" thing. Once upon a time there was a woman who did a whole fan fiction (ie, ripoff) of Twilight. The author encouraged her: "your stuff is prerty good, but you should go in a different direction," And that is how we got Fifty Shadws of Grey. But no; there will never be anything that owns as much of my hatred as Tolkien-esque elves. Never. Though we recently had a certain head of state that almost tied. Almost.

Right with you.... Kind of. I also thought "oh; it's a Force thing. Like compressed liquid force in a tube or something. Got it. When I saw Han Solo use it to slice open an arctic kangaroo, I though "well if anyone can do it, why aren't we making force fields out of this stuff?" But, as you know, not a fan, and that idiosynchracy was just one among hundreds- like the ancient religion from way back whe- well, except this guy. Oh, and the ten thousand others that were doing there thing even after you were born. Other than that, though, it's just a myth....) But I digress. I took the kids to see one of the newer ones where it was declared that they were oowered by crystals from the heart of A STAR! A freakin' _star_! So I began to wonder just how microscopic these necessarily hyper-densne star crystals were and how they hansle them and h- Holy crap it's thw aize of a baseball and they are tossinf them around like hollow chocolates.... (Moving on beyond Lucas helped _a lot_, but not,nearly enough....)

Most likely on the nose with that. I know he has way more interest in Mechanon than anyone I ever played with did. Yeah, I biught the book because I wanr to support where I can, but honestly, I would have been more interested on a book on Bulldozer or Daemon. Never liked Ultron as a concept; even less interested in a blatant ripoff.

I have two questions. I have three quest-- I got some questions, Dude. 1) are you limiting yourself to 6e (5e?) because rhose are rhe books you have? Are we going to make a game of this where anyone can join in? Where does Foxbat fit here? He is kinda (heavy stress) trained, but mostly for fitness. He has a couple of gadgets but isnt really shown to be an inventor. Where would a Batmunch-like character belong? He is both trained and an inventor. Why isn't a cyborg a gadget user? Thanks in advance.

Don't forget the power source, which needs replacing when it adds tension, but not before. And the difficulty of locating a power source! They run on pure plotonium.

Dude, as soon as you grab 3d6 and ask for DCV, we'll recognize it.

Edit: Not sure how I double posted that _hours_ apart.....

Scott and BJB beat me to it, but to adress the question directly: A skills chart like the language doesn't work because only a handful of skills are described, and even then, their granularity is entirely up to the playgroup: Security Systems does what it says it does, but is that all it does? If it defeats computerized security, does it also allow some level of computer programming or hacking? Or is a person clueless without buying computer programming? Must he also have a familiarity to be a computer user? If it defeats a common deadbolt, is that because it also imparts the knowledge to build one? That answer is entirely up to the group. Some people want a granularity that results in a college professor or an auto mechanic having spent eighty-six points on Professional and Knowledge Skills. Some people want PS: Scientist, and want it to mean everything it meant in a 1950s drive-in sci-fi horror show. As you might imagine, there are infinite points in between. As someone above commented, I tend to let the character's background decide what he does or does not know to a situationally-useful degree, though I do like them to buy their "signature skills," such as Detective or medical doctor or south american historian. I dont need many: a job (or two), a hobby (or two), and anything they might consider to be their Schtick. After that- we pull it from the background, perhaps influenced by other skills or even similar situations in previous adventures. I can't take credit for the idea, though: I sat in the audience for a Q and A session with Mark Miller decades ago and several people asked him why Traveller had so few skills. His response (heavily paraphrased owing to the limits of memory) was that the skills you gained,in Character generation were your specialties; these were things you were trained in and drilled in and which may have saved your life a hundred times; these were the things that you could be almost positive that you knew better than most of the people you were likely to meet. They weren't limits. Anyone could know how to do anything; have some training in any concievable skill. Because it was impossible to make an inclusive list, he never considered trying. He made a system that generated the sorts of specialties that gamers [at that time, at least] tended to feel most important for their games- which, at that time, were pretty much operating vehicles and killing things. HERO, being what it is, took the exact opposite approach (eventually) and handed you the tools to make stand-alone skills out of absolute minutiae (PS: lecturing on the development of porpoise navels). HERO fans being who _they_ are, someone is carrying specificity _this_ far: No. Yes; you _do_ have 'drive a car' skill, and yes; that _does_ include a familiarity with the 'start the car' subskill, but in this instance, you need 'start a carbeureted car in sub-zero temperature' skill, and you just don't have that. I am _sort_ of kidding.... _sort of_... I have seen some pretty grim skill requirements from some GMs. Me? Okay, my Character is a former restraunteur and is an _excellent_ cook. I took PS: cooking 16- as one of my signature skills; amazing food from very little to work with is kind of my Schtick. Some GMs: The dwarf lord is horrified and disgusted at and by the near-bile you attempt to feed him! But... I have cooking 16- Yes, but you are a human; that is for feeding humans! Duke as GM: Okay, you said you are a restraunteur. Was this your father's profession? No; we were farmers, but when I was young, I would help take the crops to market, and I was always fascinated by the strange and exotic smells and tastes of the food some of the vendors were selling! Travellers from two or three days beyond the market were here, and sometimes elves and half-orcs and Norwegians, and .... Sorry; I am boring you. Nonsense! Norwegians are never boring! Anyway, I would sneak off and sit where I could watch them cook and I would smell the delicious aromas... When I left the farm, the first thing I did was to apprentice to a family that made rhe most heavenly-scented fish-and-pea dish.... I apprenticed to others, and I travelled for several years, earning money as a cook, until I could start my own resta- I have heard enough. You are clearly just as good with any kind of ethnic dish or racial preference- It was a point of pride! Okay, roll your cooking.... The dwarf lord is amazed. He looks at you- seven feet of reptilian giant, from a sun-loving jungle people, and his eyes are wide and confused... "How could you.... It's not possible... You know nothing of stone and darkness and growing tubers..." Was it.,. Satisfactory, Sir? "This dish- not the recipe, but this dish prepared and served by an outsider.... It feeds my very soul.... You truly understand our people...." All people eat, Sir. I am glad you liked it. Etc, etc. Alternatively: Yeah, there was a pub in town, and we ran a short-order kitchen- you know: fish, frogs, fried veggies, the occasional squab. I got quite good at sliced pork and eggs; it was a local favorite when the snow season started. Well, your food is undoubtably delicious, but what the dwarf lord has requested... You have never even heard of some of the _ingredients_, let alone the dish. Still, you have an excellent sense of combining flavors and knowing _exactly_ when something is cooked to perfection... Perhaps if you could ask a few quesrions of him, you'd have a shot at nailing this. Roll your cooking, but at -4. And on the most extreme of extremes: No. You can cook bacon on 16-. That's the skill. If you want to cook liver, then buy "cook liver" at a reasonable level. However, the corn is in season, and free for the taking where the field abutts the woods... Do you have "cook corn" as a skill? Anyway, _all_ of this is why there just cant be a skills overlap chart for HERO without some hard and fast rules for skill breadth and overlap.

I am not. I have scampered away from my son's concert and out to the parking lot because I noticed on the progeam that Feliz Navidad was coming up. I have successfully dodged that abomination against creativity for almost a decade now. I am not going to give up so easily... Hmmm.... I've dodged Elvis's murdering of Blue Christmas, too, for five years now I think... If I can keep it up foe the rest of my life, I will still have trauma.

Negation. Our klusge for damage negation was built from Champuins III's "new power" called Negation. It seems to be what eventually became Dispell, but our initial understanding of it was more like Supress, in that we understood it to work by degrees. Essentially we allowed it as a defense, keyed to a particular SFX, with the limitation that it only affwctwd that power when used against you (in real rukes terms, this would have been either a -0 or a -1/4 at best; we allowed it a -1/2, since most defenses _do_ only apply to you, but there was still the game's underlying tradition the sefenses should be less costly than the attacks they guard against, and you had to add a couple of levels of Reduced End on top of that, so for our thinking the end result was about right- a tad high on price, and still cost a tiny amount of END unless you wantes to add more Red END. The "only against SFX X" waa an additional -1/8 to -1/2, depwnsing on the SFX chosen, ] since the utiliry of being immune to fire in any situation was deemed to overall be less useful than being able to Supress any kind of Energy Blast. When Damage Reduction came along, we dis a similar build with rhat, but it was less popular than Players being able to look at me and say "remember, you can only roll dive dice against me this time!"

It is kind of funny: I had all the 3e supplements (pretty much just adventure modules, but the ones that had additional rules in them (like drowning) made it difficult for me to not view them as 'supplements" instead of just modules. But I put off buying 3e for the longest time! It is no secret that 2e just sort od hit my personal sweet spot, and because the core nature of the game didn't change- none of the subsystems and mechanics has ever changed significantly save range modifiers and 6e ditching the digured stats and formulae-- I just backported the small bits od newer stuff I wanted (Clairsentience, for example, was just so much cleaner than the kludges we had built to accomplish the same thing ), and ran,with it.i had two players with the perfect bound 3e book, and one with the boxed set, so I had read it several times before i finally sis buy it. Of course, I had also read (and bought) 5e before I bought 3e as well!

Ah. Thanks to all.

For what it is worth, I liked Prime-Ape, though I would pluralise it as a team name. I like it because you have Ape-X as a team already, and you said that this group was a splinter group, so the inclusion of "prime" in the name also suggests they find rhemselves to be superior to the other group. So, if you were so inclined (as I have already forgotten all the names save Harangatan (which I only remember because of the Venture Brothers character of the same name)), they could be The Prime-Apes, lead by the Prime Ape.

To add (not to contradict): in terms of what HERO is today, yes: that idea of the "HERO System" began _officially_ with 4e. Range modifiers and END costs were really the only thing that was different from all that had gone before; realistically, it was Expanded Champions: two minor tweaks and a bunch of new-to-Champions stuff pulled from various games and supplements (including Champions supplements) and put in one place. This was also the first stress on using the game for multiple genres without adopting special rules from supplemental sources. (Not as amazing as it sounds, since this worked because Bell had already gone through the existing supplements and pulled those special rules from them and into the core rules before hand. This was a new(ish) idea at the game, but Superworld and Palladium had already demonstrated it could be done while GDW was busy proving that it could be done badly if one wasn't careful.) The actual term "HERO System" had begun to appear in marketing before the release of 3e: advertising for Espionage had changed from "by HERO Games" to "built on (something-or-other-award)-winning HERO System." Similarly, extant advertising for Champions had changed from "using the HERO Games system" to "using the HERO System," while a few adds and a couple of reviews for Champions supplements would also use the phrase "HERO System." The cementing of this advertising came when an official logo appeared in HERO Games advertising- usually in the lower right corner, featuring a generic superhero, a stack of hexes (cant remember if it was 3 or 5 hexes) and a tag line that featured "HERO System" prominently. This logo started to appear just before the launch of 3e Champions, and would exist throughout its run. Again, none of this changes what Hugh has said; none of this contradicts what Hugh has said. It does reinforce the idea that the creators had also come to realize what a lot of us has come to realize: the building-block style of characters, powers, and _items_ (personally, I find this to be the most important "breakthrough" aspect in terms of making the existing Champions game truly universal) and the disrinct split between SFX and mechanics made the game universal as-is-- or rather, as-was. We discovered this back with 1e: We had 1 GM and 9 Players, and only the GM and his brother really knew anything about comic books (surprise to all you Champions fans way back when who thought non-comics guys would not be playing your perfect comic book simulator! ) After a lengthy 'how do I make a superhero' and 'let's rummage through some comic books' session-- as an aside, I have mentioned in the past that there were _always_ comics scattered around Jim's (the GM) house back then. This was _specifically done_ because we as his Players had only a fractional knowledge of comics; that fraction, in the words of the great Oliver Wendell Jones, was best represented as Diddly/Squat. Browsing comics during breaks or after the game or wating for everyone to show up-- it helped us get the tone, get inspiration, etc. Anyway, back on course: During the first game for which we were allowed to design our own characters without Jim's or his brother's assistance, we all made superheroes, but none of them were superheroes. That is, none of them were mutants or exposed to radiation or given super-serum or bitten by a thing or blessed by an aztec God or what-have-you. We had two straight-up DnD characters- one wizard and one meaty slab of barbarian, both of whom had activated a trap that slid them to our remote dimension (they decided they were coworkers after noting they were both fantasy-themed, and tweaked their 'origin' to reflect this). I had a time-travelling character from the future with high-tech weaponry, a force field, and teleport who has been pursuing a criminal through time when he fo9t trapped here: his target had laid a trap that destroyed all but the barest of functionality from his time travel equipment. Like any other policeman, he can _drive_ a Crown Victoria, but has no idea how to build one from scratch. There was a vampire-type who had simply lived long enough to still be around, an alien power-armor type ended up stuck here, a demon who had been summoned to do a vile thing that he refused to do (he hated being tricked more than he hated being stuck here), and couldn't go back until he did the thing he refused to do (he had a low-level Hunted by other demons that had been summoned to make an example of him for his disobedience)-- Well, everyone was like this (except for the straight-up superhero Jim's brother made, who became our defacto leader) we were none of us as players really comfortable with putting on tights and being virtuous and just because it was morally superior; we all had favorite genres, and we had been exposed to enough comics to see that gods and knights and spaceships and aliens were all cool in comics, and we kind of focused on the wrong parts of genre-crossing on comic books (remember: we were fully-formed adults being exposed to comics for the first time in our lives). We presented our characters, Jim looked a bit disappointed, his brother said "I think I have a high enough Presence and the right skills that I can get them to cooperate (not that we wouldn't have: we were all well-experienced with role play, just not comic books). Jim started his campaign, and about ten minutes in, he said "wait; i've got a better idea! We Will get back to this next week. Break out the Atari!" The next week, the superhero had been reworked as a dimension-hopping mystic, and we were a team assembled from various dimensions (read that as "genres"), assembled to thwart an insane god bent on pushing all dimenions into one, watching the inhabitabts destroy each other in the ultimate war over resources, then ruling over whoever was left, with the idea that no matter who lost most (or all) of their followers, the other God's would be weakened enough that the villain could easily destroy them, too). I won2t go much further on the plot, as most of the participants here are westerners, and as the plot unfolded, well... Ultimately, the villain was Jehova, who only escaped his final justice by having himself be reborn as a human child. That's enough, right? At any rate, the campaign was incredible: one month we were playing straight-up DnD for four or five sessions, then Traveller, then some post-apocalyptic nightmare, and on and on. It was great fun (if annoying, because Jim painted himself into a corner when he realized that, him being who he was and many of us being who we were, he couldn't _really_ let us just kill God). But it was during that first arc- when we were trying to save the fantasy dimensions (failed miserably, by the way), that we all knew we could do pretty much anything with Champions, and for years it would become our go-to system for everything. In fact, the first game I ran in 2e was a western that eventually took on some hardcore occult angles. It ran for three and a half years. Getting back on track (again): the game designers had already developed and released Espionage, which was built on Champions, with the idea of just hiding the fiddly bits: guns don't take OAF or detail their builds; they just cost money. Things like that. Even as the marketing began to shift toward "HERO games System" and then into "HERO System," it is obvious that the designers already knew what we had just started to discover, and I am one-hundred-percent certain that one small group of South-Georgia rednecks could not possibly be the only people to have figured this out. I know a lot of people tout the separation of SFX from mechanics as the reason that all the cross-dimensional utility exists, but I have aleays maintained that without the Focus rules from the very first release, that separation would not have been enough. Why? Because unless an item can exist as a solid, stand-alone set piece, it cannot exist at all. If I buy Blast, I am free to call it a gun, but that gun can never be lost, can never run out of bullets, and can never be given to another person, etc. It will always be my character pointing at another character and yelling Bang! Why point? I can shoot it from my eyes, if I want to! It is not _actually_ a gun, after all. It is not a gun- no matter what I call it; no matter how I use it- until I make it a physical object- a focus. We _could_ build zero END, usuable by others (only one at a time), and other reasonable custom modifiers into the power. Maybe something like "Subject to periodic loss", (then lots of custom rules for how and when that happens), and _eventually_ we would be able to use Independant (when did that happen? More importantly, _would it have happened if we dis not already have Focus rules? Is that not what it was originally intended for?) As it turns out, we had "Focus" from day 1, and I maintain that this is what makes the all-genres from one rule set possible, because it is _the_ subset of rules that makes divorcing _all_ SFX from _all_ mechanics. Without Focus, a gun would never be a real gun; an axe would never be a real axe. Unlike the previous quote, I have one quibble here. 4e _did_ publish "all the extant rules" (at least, at the time it was published), but then it went on to continue the tradition of publishing more rules in various additional sourcebooks. When the First HERO System Almanac was released, I had hoped that this was an attempt to collect the various new rules and put them into one easily-references sourcebook, but... Well, not so much, nor was the second. Second quibble is that war gaming worked well enough with the rules in HERO System (4e) precisely as presented. One could build a very complex board game immediately, even with no other knowledge of Champions, but there was no genre: there was nothing to flavor your games beyond example snippets in the book itself, all of which were very carefully chosen to include a broad selection of genres (remember Arkelos the Mage? I was starting to think he was a bumbling idiot by the time I finished reading the Powers section) Biggest quibble is the idea that 4e was the first publication of a system from which an entire separate game could be built. Our own experiences demonstrated that this happened with the first release of Champions. The release of Espionage (2e), Danger International, and others (3e), along with the steady and deliberate changes in marketing confirm that the developers knew it, too. I am not contradicting what Hugh said; I am wishing to add a qualifier: 4e was the first time that HERO games was intentionally marketing that particular strength of the game, and the first time the rules were available in a "genre-free" (sort of) version. Multiform was in Champions III, which- if going purely on publication dates- makes it a 2e construct. Absorption and Light Illusions were decidely 2e, originally released in '82, in the supplement Champions II, while the first printing of 3e Champions was in November of '84. Similarly, Champions III was released before 3e- but just barely: it beat 3e to presses and to store shelves by a mere month. Like Enemies, Champions II would get a rerelease with a new cover during 3e, though Champs III did not: there wasn't any reason to do so, as the two were nearly simultaneous anyway, and while Champs III did not have the 3e logo that all 3e products (including the two re-released products) would bear, it also did not have the iconic (if dated) 1 and 2e logo, either, and was the first published product to feature the layout that would be characteristic to all 3e products. In fact, the only things tying Champs III to 2e were the Williams cover and the release date. As both supplements work perfectly with both editions, there is no end of debate as to which edition they were released for. One of the bits of evidence that supports the idea that Champs III was intended as a 2e product is that 3e was released two ways: there was a boxed set _and_ a perfect bound all-in-one book. While I no longer remember which came first (because I no longer remember the release date for the perfect bound book), it is worth noting that even with the opportunity to work the better Champs 3 material into the second format, it was never actually done. I would have to look that up, as I really don't remember when automatons showed up in official rules- like vehicle rules (2e), we already had something in play when official rules got published, so,we never really adopted the official rules; they werent too far from what we had anyway. I _believe_ automatons were originally an article in the Adventurers Club, but I am not one-hundred-percent in that. I would hope so. They were both introduced in 1e. Yep. First published in 2e's supplement Champions II. If ir helps, I cant either, at least not at the moment. Doubly amusing since LL once referred to me as a frustrated librarian. It did end up in Enhanced Senses eventually, however- I _think_ that was in 4e. I know it was not in any version of Champions 3e and prior. Fantasy HERO? Not sure. Same with Change Environment. Honestly, I am not as "up" on things that originated outside of Champions simply because we used Champions to play those games as well. Want Fantasy? Fine. Make Champions characters that are appropriate for Runequest (or whatever). Want Gamma World? Cool. Make,Champions characters appropriate for that, etc. Correct. We has to use cobbles of various defenses to demonstrate high-level resistance to things prior to 6e, though the eventual release of Damage Reducrion helped a lot with that. In truth, we still use those cobbles- they are not necessarily better or worse; we are simply already familiar with them and they work fine for our needs. Good God, _yes_! Though how many people bought Lucha HERO? Just me and Darren? PS 238 I think underperformed as well, though I suspect because it was ultimately a sandboxed Champions game. MHI had real potential, but the owner of the IP wrecked a lot of interest in that. Yes. Though with considerably less "Champions." Not to say that it isnt there, but there is consistent flavor throughout. Sacrifices were to get all the rules n there, so you dont learn a lot about the official setting, bur you get enough that win minimal elbow grease, you can get a superhero game off the ground and keep it running for a long time. That depends entirely on how invested you are in the official setting, or how much guidance you would like with setting the tone of your games. For instance, I have been playing since 1e, and have never set anything in an official setting. The closest thing we came to an official setting was killing off the 4e Champions one-by-one as part of a background plot. (We didnt want to create background characters just to kill them off, so let's use these characters that none of us really like anyway)

Ditto.

What he said. If you have decided that 6e is going to be your bag, this is the best place to start: much easier to use as a reference, a lot less redundancy, etc. Be aware that its concise nature makes it very information dense, though. That is my personal preference, but a lot of people don't enjoy that kind of reading (hence the up-front warning label). For the first few years of 6e, all I had was CC and HERO System Basic. I cant say objectively, already having been a long-time user, but I am pretty certain that the entire 6e experience can be distilled from just those two books. If you have some Champions experience, you could likely get by with just Basic. If you need the "how to play" and the adventuring rules, etc, then CC is, in my opinion, the best book out of the entire lineup for a brand-new player (second choice is Fantasy HERO Complete, but there is a specific focus there that might influence your interpretations of what you are reading. Put HSB with either of those and you are golden for prerty much anything 6e can throw at you.) Still, if you already have the big Books 1 and 2, I can understand not wanting to buy another book that is essentially a condensing of those books. If this is the case, then work out what you can as best you can, and feel free to post a hundred questions here. The status of HERO (and pretty much any non-DnD game being what they are these days, we see few enough new players or GMs that I can all but promise two hundred answers.

WIR?

80 pages is very much doable: the 2e book is 88 pages; 8 od those pages are character sheets. The 1e book is 60-some pages long, and 8 of _those_ pages is character sheets. You are quite correct that eliminating "excess verbiage" has a lot to do with this difference. CC was indeed much more concise, which is why I reas that one more than once. I am not trying to make a grandiose commentary when I say "I read 6e once and will never read it again." I am simply statinf the truth: I am 62. I work roughly 80 hiurs a week. I have kids to finish raising, a home and vehicles to maintain, and a total of six people in my household. My last heart attack left 40 percent of my already-enlarged heart dead and useless, amd I have a chronic rattling cough that will never let me forget that I have begun the decade-or-so long process of drowning to death in my own juices. Even if I had an absolute gaurantee that I woukd live another sixty-two years, my personal time is too hard-won to waste it reading all of that to learn to play a game (assuming I had no prior experience, I mean). I just wouldn't; it fails an important test of practicality for me. In my case, I _did_ read it (took about eight months, my schedules and life demands being what they are), and there is absolutely no way I will ever do it again (though the books do look nice crammed against each other on their private 40-inch 6e-blue-books-only" shelf. Even if you dont accept that the game can be presented playably,in under a hundred pages, you have to at leasr grudginfly accept that 38 inches of "core rules books" is a textbook example,of "unnecessary", or at least "dauntingly extreme." The Sidekick books were great; HERO System basic" is pretty good; Champions Complete was extremely well-done. How many words could be dropped from the pale blue encyclopedia if we just cut the individualized lists or "X _must_ do Y when added to rhis power, and may never do Z" that follows every single power entry? The entire "advantages" list follows every single power! It's nuts! Now to bw fair to your assertion that it cant be done in 80 pages: 2e does not include T-form, Dispell, Damage Reduction, and Damage Negation (and I think one or two other powers), and that will run the book over 80 pages. Still, thise that appeared in 2e /3e supplements such as Champs II and Champs III and the old AC magazines coould still retain their original "here is a short paragraph about what this power does" and modidiers xould retain their original "this sentence is all you nwes to know to have fun with this" entries, and the book couls still land at under a hundred pages.

I can't lie to you, Amigo: if I had never played before, I sure as Heck wouldnt start now. Just the amount of rules to have to have to learn from scratch is.... Well, politely put, "off-putting." Like a huge chunk of the membership here, I started when the rules were less than 80 pages, and just kind of grew with it as it swelled. I think the majority here found 4e to be the sweet spot, and 5e isnt too different from that- it is different, to be sure, but not so much that you couldn't move from one to the other without really noticing. A few others found 2e or 5e to be their personal jam, and I never rwally left 2e. (There is a lot to be said for an 89 page rules book. )

Thanks, Christopher. Technically, any change is disadvantageous to _someone_, even if that person isn't here. I think I am going to continue to allow Jetstream to use his wind control powers in such a way that is advantageous to the team's glider. This is such a normal comic book thing that making the rules declare it illegal was a laughably bad decision. I mean, the fastball special is based off of symbiosis between power sets, is it not?

Quick question: _when_ did the rules start saying,CE was for negative effects only? (It is a serious question; let's remember I still play 2e. I read some of the other stuff, but use almost none of it.

Amusingly enough, I have two: one for each asking.

First, let me,say that Chris Goodwin was absolutely correct: the answers to all your questions is indeed "Yes!" Be on the lookout for the "but" below. There are no such limits. Even your imagination is not a limit, because you can ask someone else for inspirational help. There is still a "but" coming up, though. As Chris pointed out: yes. This is entirely within the scope of EDM, because you are making a whole new dimension. Or maybe you are not; maybe you are using a dimension with which we are quite familiar. I had a player in the 90s buy EDM as a movement power: he would send a letter, then move himself to "the second dimenension," manifesting as a drawing in the letter. He would move back to the third dimension when the letter arrived at his destination. He would hitch a ride with a teleporter by moving to the second dimension and manifesting as the photo on the teleporter's driving license. Yes: I know that the rules say you need to use some other power or adder or advantage or what-have-you if you want to reapper in the "the normal world" at a place other than where you left it. Let me tell you why (beyond the sheer novelty of it) I ignored that completely (and quite often still do). Because Hugh Neilson (sorry if I misspelled that, Hugh- my son is Neil, so that's what sticks) is also completely correct: EDM is best handled as a completely narrative thing as opposed to a structured (and kinda pricey, since you get nothing out of it except paying to meet the needs of the story: "Well, I have this great adventure planned where you guys are going plane-hopping. One of you will need to buy EDM." Excuse me? Just set it here; we can grab a bus and go county-hopping. "No; this needs to,have that dimension-hopping feeling to it. So; who is going to pony up? Ooh! You could all pitch in for a dimension-travelling bus! That's only one point for five, and you can share the cost! Pretty cheap if you ask me... ") Now here is the wierd thing: In the Long Editions- and possibly even back to 4e; I can't say because we always used "dimensional movement" not as a special power, but as a special effect. I do know that examples from the Long Editions are pretty clear that it is acceptable to know that you have to fight Galactus and his ridiculous hat, and spend some points to travel to the dimension where I won the fight with Galactus (and his hat), then live out the rest of the campaign there as if this had been my life all along. Now let me explain why Hugh is also correct, and Dimension hopping is something that should be handled narratively. I am going to start with your passage of time question: can this dimension have experienced a much longer time than the one in which the campaign is set? Yes (as Chris said), _so long as there is absolutely no benefit to you_ from that difference. For example: you are in battle in Campaign Dimension, and you are doing quite poorly. You leap over to Quick dimension for some medical attention and two weeks bed rest (and all those lovely recoveries) and leap back to Campaign Dimension a mere half-phase after you leaped out, fresh as a daisy! You even mended your costume. No. You can't do that. (Unless the GM says 'well, it's the only way he is going to beat Galactus; he nearly died just trying to dent that hat.) You can _simulate_ that, though: Regeneration, Healing, Aid- whatever it takes to get yourself,back to fighting trim, and declare that the special effects are "I nipped off to the Quick Dimension for a month of surgeries, six weeks of rehab, and a lovely weekend at the beach, then popped back here a mere microsecond after I left." That is legitimate. That is legal. That is also technically not EDM; its SFX are EDM, but mechanically, the are not the same. This is doubly frustrating since, for the exact same points (and often considerably less points), you could have bought EDM directly to the dimension where Galactus had a glass jaw and you felled him with a Presence Attack, then live out the rest of the campaign as the Galactus Slayer, because this universe was identical in every other way except that it was trivial for you to take out Galactus. That _is_ legit, but getting a bit of freebie healing and going back? Not so much. All in all, it is a but maddening, and casts a lot of shade on making "the dimenion where I cannot be defeated" a book-legal thing. Again: yes, you can! but only so long as it brings you no benefit in Campaign Dimension. I can't think of any right now (because I am exhausted and a bit malnourished), but immediately coming to mind is, again, taking a breather while your opponent doesnt have the ability to fight you, then hoping back to finish him off. Yes; it is the same example, but it is valid. I have no doubt that fresher minds could think of other reasons: hey! Let's go sneak into his house and look for clues! Even if this dimension's version of him finds out, he can't exact any vengeance! Then we will be a leg-up when we get back! I am afraid not. Buy Clairsentience or PS: detective' 28 or less- something to pay for the benefit you expect to receive. Cyber HERO (4th edition product. It always felt unfinished (turns out it was. The author was killed in an auto accident right after announcing his intention to do a follow-up book) specifically suggests EDM to model Cyberspace). I do not remember for certain, but I think Kazei 5 dis as well. I will have to re-read that. But Again, even that takes a bit of GM fiat if you are doing things like "I hack his brain and render him a drooling zombie!" Why? Because by the strictest dedinition of EDM, you did that to an alternate dimension's version of him, and not Campaign Universe him. True: for cyberpunk games, that GM fiat is almost always in play, but strictly by the rules, you'd have to EGO Attack Campaign Dimension him to render Campaign Dimension him into a drooling zombie. The special effects, though, would be "I hopped my cyberdeck,and hacked his brain." Either way, by the definitions of HERO, it is something that you would have to buy that is _not_ EDM to get the effect you want. (Barring, of course, GM fiat, which- again- is likely already in play for such a game. Just be aware that the rules _must_ be bent to make this work.) This, so far as I know, is the single best (read: nastiest) use of EDM; EDM:UAA; banish them to dimension of complete vacuum. And accordingly, almost every GM I know either disallows it out or hand, or requires that there be a time-limit or other means for the banished character to return to Campaign Dimension. (Note that this is also a bending of the rules- unless the Long Esitions have codified it as a mandate- but as it is a bend to the rules to prevent an outright rape of the spirit of the rules, I am one-hundred percent okay with it). Now I do know one GM who required that the character using EDM as an attack continue to pay END to keep the target banished, but I spent some EPs on Reduced EN- okay; Okay. It was me. Davien had it coming. He had wrecked like six attempted campaigns already, and _something_ had to be done. Jim was just too easy-going to tell him "be a team player or GTFO." Anyway, he came around to the "no; you can't do that" side of things pretty quickly. other fun things (not just from mt characters): Desolidification UAA x10 END Cost on X points of (villain's most annoying power) UAA, Ranged and on and on Realistically, like everything else with this game, do not start with how the thing happened. That will almost always be SFX. Start with what you want the end result to be and figure out how to build that. In my experience, the ultimate goal is rarely "I want to go to another dimension and look around, maybe get some cheaper groceries....), but instead something tangible: I want to travel to the X-plane and seek the counsel of the wizened masters I want to pop-off for some healing and pop right back into battle I want to pop into the quick dimension, catch a bus, and pop back out in Wisconsin almost instantly. I wish to do battle with eldritch threats that endanger our universe Okay, that last one was a trick. That last one _was_ EDM; the others are best handled by other power constructs, claiming EDM _as the special effect_. That last one, however, could be better handled narratively: Okay, you spent a lot of points on the ability to bring the whole team to this dimension and provide whatever life-support, footing, and sanity-defenses they will need to battle this monster. Shame you didn't have any points left for powers to battle this monster, but let's hope the team is up to it without you... Narratively: Your sources were sketchy; some od the details conflicted from account to account, and not everyone involved in bringing you the few manuscripts remaining was reputable, but after what seems like endless hours of study and cross-checking rhe various journals and accounts of half-remembered conversations from long ago, you _think_ you know how to open rhe gate. Wordlessly, rhe team assembles behind you as you take your feet. The amulet is the key. You concentrate on the signature hatred of your target, and your will to end his millenium of terror. You press the amulet to your forehead, and with your sleep-deprived giddiness, you wonder if it is waterproof against nervous sweat.... You press it to your heart and recite your vow to stop this foe, then cast the ruby-and-gold amulet into the fireplace. It rises from the flames. "Are we agreed?" You bellow, never taking your eyes from the amulet floating in the fireplace. "We are one mind. One promise. One vow" you hear them chant solemnly behind you. A small crescent of pure black spirals from rhe fireplace. It gows larger, blacker, and somehow closer. You extend youe hands, and feel firm, resolved grips in return. The crescent is a spiral now; you can see stars! It continues to grow, faster and faster, and before it can swallow you, as one, the team steps through--! And enters a world gone mad.... See? Naratively handled. Why? Because ir was essential to the story of the planned campaign. It has been a rare game where I allowed someone to pay for EDM- mostly fantasy games where there really and was something to be gained for the points: communing with knowledgeable dead people, speaking to the Gods in person, hiding your candy bars, etc- where ir was somerhinf that you acrually used a,lot, and got good vakue doe rhe points spent. Before the inevitable "well Blast is essential; should the GM just give out guns if no one buys blast?!" That is silly. Blast has immediate and obvious benefits both through the use of violence (superheroes are poor role models for conflict resolution, Kids!) and through the threat of violence. There is immediate and obvious utility to the ability to to damage to one's environment and subdue one's foes. EDM, on the other hand, provides- realistically provides- damned little in terms of value. While corner cases can always be found (I even gave an example of one myself, from one of my own games- but even then, the entire universe had been built _specifically_ to give EDM practical utility), but by and large, what most people want to do with EDM is better modeled with other powers using dimension-hopping as a special effect. EDM is like FTL in Traveller: it is an enabling device. It is like long-distance travel in almost any game or story: the author has set some of the action in Location X. Because he has done that, he is responsible to make certain that his characters have some sort of access to location X. If no one on the team has enough movement / recovery to get there, he is going to either have to rewrite a major portion of the story, or have the characters discover a great group rate discount on a Carnival Cruise. Either one works. Forcing the characters to buy swimming: 50", x16 NCM _is_ viable, but if you are only going to go to Atlantis just the one time before proceeding to the next eight sessions in Des Moines, culminating with a big boss fight in the Mojave.... Well, it'a a jerk thing to so. Maybe the governmenr will ask them to test out the new experimental submarine instead. Again: it is more of,an enabling device than it is a useful power in most games. Make sure that EDM for its own sake is exactly the right thing before buying it or requiring Your players to buy it. If you don't want a ship's mortgage in Traveller, you can still fly coach to get where the GM has set the next leg of the adventure. You are absolutely correct. In fact, for most uses of EDM, a group will have to decide on how they want it to work, simply because typically, EDM doesnt provide it by itself-teleport, healing, knowledge drops, etc: these all have extant powers that will have to be bought _unless the entire group decided they are okay with EDM allowing rhese rhings to happen (like the healing scenario) jusr because. If they agree, then so be it: that is how it works, at leasr doe this campaign. Remember that if a power has some serious "freebies," there are likely to be a few villains with that same power, enjoying those same freebies.

I dont know if that qualifies as new: setting things on fire is decidely changing the environment, but I do agree it should be spelled out better; it isnt like a couple thousand words weren't added to every other subject. for what it's worth, I have been using it that way for decades. Of course, I have also been using to increase the illumination in a given area, too. (Ducks quickly)