tesuji

Re: Limited SPD fyi for skill checks in general - you might want to look at buying skill levels, or psls, to offset "hasty" skill use which iirc is a -3 for every time chart step quicker - that might be better than trying for "double speed" by buying +6 speed.

Re: Limited SPD My gauge would be "how many useful things can he do under these restrictions?" If all of his useful powers are "COSTS END" then this might be worth a lot, but if he has useful things to do while at 0 end, then thats a whole nuther thing. So some questions are his defenses all 0 end? will he for instance not have his force field up during these extra phases? will he not be evading at full dcv? does he have useful combat actions even at 0 end? now you provide at least one bit of info, he can sit back and take find weakness rolls. does he have 0 end movement powers? etc... if it boiled down to "i will use these in combat for find weakness rolls" and he maintains full defenses during that time period and fid weakness was an integral part of his offense, i would go for -1/2 but no more. starts adding in 0 end movement, etc and it drops to -1/4.

Re: Problem with Drain/Suppress. Explain please. sorry but 60 cp for the aid to speed seems likel a waste.thats about 42 cp of gain. instead buy +4 speed with something like "cost end to activate -1/4 for 32 cp and then spend the extra 28 cp on say POWER DEFENSE. sure the aid has a potential of +7 speed (and also the potential of +1 speed) but the practicality is +4 speed will be the normal result. aid self only is almost never good unless bought to multiple multiple traits.

Re: Review this character OK looking at the powers and stats - what i can assume is that the Dc for the game is AT LEAST 10d6. thats an average of 35 stun for your basic 10d6 eb. Well going from that 10 force field + 14 con + 11 pd = 35. So an average attack hitting you causes 35-21 or 14 stun and you can take two of those. thats OK EXCEPT that if it rolls 1 pt above average you get con stunned, force field drops, lose phase etc. thats a rather weak level of defense in my experience. if the DC is set above 10d6 then your weakness will show even more. I would buy up con, trading in points spent on rec end and ed, to get it to 18 maybe 23 as an alternative for you ig you dont wish to be physically healthy to super levels try this Mental discipline 10 cp +10 CON as a power with ONLY FOR COUNTING AGAINST STUNNING -1/2 and ACT 14- -1/2 (same as your ego roll) 20 ap 10 cp this lets you resists pain for stunning as if you had a 10 higher con and is relatively cheap. NOTE this is not "effective" as just buying 10 con straight up also earns you freebies in 5 stun, 2 ed, 2 rec, 20 end etc worth more than this saves HOWEVER it is sometimes necessary to hit the concept when superhuman health is not fitting concept. finally what does aid figure into? if it is an attempt to raise the mental powers and the dc is set at 10 most gms wont let it boost above the dc.

Re: Iron Kingdoms-ish healing not sure of what effect you are looking for but one thing i have done in the past is to give the healing powers, or whatever power you want, a side effect called TAINT. in game terms it could be a transform, a rather small one, so that getting one healing spell is not a problem, two, probably not but three or four etc and the transform from each accumulates over time and eventually it hits your double body score and - whatever bad happens. also best if it works with partial transform so ou get signs. one possibility for this would be - healing based on getting blood from regenerating lizard folk- slowly transform into ugly half-breed. another could be - aging - as it heals you it also ages you, drawing on your life force - cosmetic at first then more serious consequences. Eventually, when it reaches double-body, you die of old age. or you could add - addiction - and gradually give them a psych lim for "wants more healing" as it just "feels so good" and it gets stronger and stronger the more they get healed. i would base the transform off ego for this one.

Re: Triggered Weapon Takeaway iirc damage shield can also apply vs a blocked attack - so th sequence would be the enemy strikes at you and you throw a block - then the damage shield kicks in and you snag the blade (or try to) even with trigger, the trigger cannot go before the triggering action so the enemy strike still gets thru - trigger isn't a defense.

Re: Healing Flash or transform damage to me it would depend on the size of the heal vs the typical campaign power levels. it basically boils down to an activation roll - if the healing dice did not roll high enough, it fails, so i would price it accordingly looking at the typical wounds and how likely this healing dice are to meet that total. 90% success = -1/2 75% success = -3/4 62% success = -1 25% success = -2 i think etc

Re: Triggered Weapon Takeaway trigger has expanded in 5er and now yes does wind up doing damage shields job if you want it to, but i resist using the general to replace the more specific. however, the automatic riposte on pg 270 hero 5er shows the necessary cost at +1 for this kind of trigger. +1 AP on 30 strenght 30 ap trigger (when character attacked by weapon, takes no time, reset automatically) -1/2 (only for takeaway maneuver) total cost 20 cp. the difference between trigger and DS in this case is trigger requires to hit roll automatically, damage shield got you a lim for that, and trigger defines the attacking triggger for you. the net ap i less but the final cost is proximate. I just prefer using the specific elements over the general elements.

Re: Making Dancing weapons? you use the computer rules to give int and ego and actions and such to objects.

Re: Triggered Weapon Takeaway I think what you are looking at is DAMAGE SHIELD, thats the advantage for "when i am attacked i get to hurt them" most likely applied to whatever strength you can use. Example - assuming 20 str plus 10 str for takeaway +1/2 on 30 ap of strength damage shield = 15 cp +1 continuous 30 cp total 45 ap with maybe a -1 for "only when attacked by a weapon and only for takeaway maneuver" though some may argue that limit and a -1/2 for requires to-hit roll. net 18 cp. now that seems a lot but frankly, i have found the "constant counter-strike" to be quite potent in a heroic lecvel game where weapons are common. there may be other requirements needed, like maybe some level of ipe (if its not obvious he can do this) or reduced end. as gm i would not allow trigger to supercede damage shield and i would not allow either on martial arts maneuvers without also covering the AP of the relevent strength. I mean, i cannot buy +1 ocv with guns and then apply +1/4 autofire to that 5 cp skill level and use that to claim "i now can fire all guns autofire". I consider martial arts maneuvers to be "add ons" like skill levels to your strength, and so i dont allow advntages on those maneuvers to do squat to the strength, unless you account for those points.

Re: Requires Skill roll with multiple skill levels well comparing RSR to ACt is slightly off for non-instant powers, as RSR only needs to rool once while, IIRC, ACT rolls every phase. this allows an RSR power to be started off-scene and then be up ad running when trouble starts. RSR is a better buy the more powers you have based off the skill roll. As for the initial question, I haven't seen a problem with people buying up the skill roll to get to 14- etc. If its one power, they saved little or nothing. if it is multiple powers, they are practically committing to only bring them up one by one and not all at once (or they suffer combined penalties.) so it can all be made to even out.

Re: Hero System: Design and Intent In principle i find this to be usually a bad design. In practice i find providing multiple ways to overcome a challenge is critical for ongoing game survival. frequent use of "one way" challenges frankly leads to boondoggled scenarios where for whatever reason the pcs did not find the "gm one solution" and thus things wind up pretty messed up, given these scenes are frequently rather pivotal ones. So I dont for instance often or even hardly ever if ever provide a scene where "if this character is not present you lose this challenge" I especially try to avoid the same sort of scene where there is also "and that one specific character needs to make exceptional choices - like using flaws." These lead to too many chance of just outright failure for me to see the benefits. Instead,, i can provide challenges with mixes of solutions, some requiring exceptional play, some not, and that varying by character. So its not "social butterfly sits and watches brute guy smash opposition for an hour." because social butterfly cannot hurt the bad guys even with his best efforts. Nor is it "brute guy watches as social butterfly handles the complex negotiations for an hour". In either kind of challenge, i can let the big guy SHINE by letting him get more, or more easily, to the solution. for example, in combat i can provide a scenario where the evil dude has minions, who are pursuing important tasks, which the sb can engage. Even if the brute isn't there, they can by distraction draw off big evil and deal with the minions, in a more diversly populated scene. finally, i might provide environmental things like power lines and water mains that serve to enable social but to engage with some chance of success the evil dude. these kinds of scene design let everyone play and still let others shine in their areas. in negotiation scenes, a poor negotiator party might still be able to talk the bad guys into their plan, but without good talker guy they might have to do extra favors or get a lessen share of the loot, etc and when social dude is there he might be able to cut himself a side deal and so on. basically, you can shine in your area of expertise without needing a scenario setup so that only you get to have effect. too many one way scenarios tend to cause breakdowns as players all too often do not wind up with their pcs at the right spot at the right time and in best form.

Re: Hero System: Design and Intent thats why i asked. Agreed absolutely. When i said "tells a convincing lie" i was specifically referring to as stated things like tieing into recent events and plays well to the audience etc IN GAME. These are basically the equivalent of tactical decisions made for purpose and gain benefits, just like tactical choices if good provide benefits, albeit more indirectly, in combat. the player's own acting and speechifying.... that might get him extra XP for "good roleplaying" or "fun performance" but wont gain the pc material benefits in the task at hand. agreed. The player may weel stumble on his pickup line, but the pc whose skill AND ROLL shows he is better than that, doesn't. (and the same in reverse - the player says what his character is TRYING to say and his skill in character determines the success.) agreed.

Re: Hero System: Design and Intent hugh, i am now somewhat flumoxed. what are you considering to be "a persuasive speech" that is separate from the other factors you describe - using mob boss flaws, tieing in with recent events well, etc? to me a persuasive speech is exactly those "use environment" types f things. we both agree those should affect the outcome, player utilizing those, so thats one level of agreement, even if we may differ on amount. but i am confused as to what other thing you define as "persuasive speech" that you feel shouldn't be applied?

Re: Spell upgrades another spell

Re: Hero System: Design and Intent yes i am, even with your extreme swing of the capabilities. But be careful - you said "willing to allow" and i agree to that - but thats not saying "willing to overlook" as in I am letting player role override the stats. What would happen in this case - the player delivers a good convincing lie that plays to the mobster's flaws - that would earn the player a bonus, say up to +3 (one for good play and 2 for the mobster's flaws - say a strong psych lim) and that raises the baseline roll from 8- to 11- which boils down to a fairly decent chance - 62.5% in fact. and then he rolls the dice. What the players choices did was improve the chance of him winning. they did not override the character stats. Well, again you swi9ng to the extreme (which seems to be your favborite playground)... even further extreme than the previous social case because you are not even willing to give this character the familiarities with combat that the previous character has with social skills, but thats ok. If the guy has a chance against the bodyguard, two things have to happen. first he has to get lucky, as there will be die rolls involved. Second he has to make a good choice, good tactical decisions, so that he can excel. There are numerous possibilities - he could make a grab for one of the other goons guns, he can grab a bottle to use as a club then knife, he can at a crucial moment throw a rum and coke into the bad guys eyes, but basically somehow using the scene at hand what he has to do is make a choice tactically that gives him an edge. the specific details of course would vary with the scene. the main difference between the two scenes is that the social engagement will be resolved in one roll, maybe a couple, with little tracking iof other traits. The combat engagement has a more detailed subsystem and will be resolved by several rolls and tracking. The social engagement involves tactical choices - what story has outside confirmation available, what lie do i tell, where does he seem weak, what can i exploit - that all add up to the same kinds of decision making as the combat scene - what weapons are at hand, how fast is this guy, how can i distract him - and all equally exploitable. Now of course, in either type of combat, i can setup as gm a scene where in sp[ite of the PC choices, no matter what he does, he loses. I as GM have decided to give him a no-win scenario, where he simply loses, which seems to be what you are angling at. If i do that tho, maybe you play differently, I rarely play thru that scene in detail. I dont as gm make the player sit thru what amounts to a long pseudo-sesssion watching his character get beat up or struggle to talk his way out when the situation is predetermined. These would be more dialog - as in "hauled before the mob boss who briefly pretends to listen but who quickly shows he is not listening" etc. or put another way - the character traits and the relevent die rolls and subsystems, these only matter for scenes where the outcome is in doubt, right? if you have decided "the pc cannot win this one" then there is little reason for rolling thru the scene. no argument there except to say that the impression i get is the sense of proportion. In either case, you can script a scenario so that the outcome is a foregone conclusion - give one side a large enough advantage that baring uterrly unreasonable luck its a done deal. you can have a large enough "material" combat advantage that no amount of good tactics can win. you can also have a lopsided enough social challenge as to be again unwinnable. but if the outcome is not predetermined, the the underdog can win the combat contest - by using better tatics, by taking advantage of scenary, by using the enemies flaws like vulnerabilities and psych lims against him - and in the same way the underdog can win the social engagement - by exploiting the enemy's flaws, psych lims, using recent events that make the lie seem plausible. to me, the player telling the more convincing lie is just like the player choosing to hit the cold guy with fire instead of the lightning guy - he is making a good tactical choice - and those choices modify the results of the actions - in combat by increasing the stun the enemy takes, likely dropping him sooner and thus IMPROVING THE CHANCE OF WINNING THE CONTEST. In the social skill engagement - since we dont have the elaborate subsystem - it just applies as a modifier to the skill check for the contest, but it does the same thing - IMPROVING THE CHANCE OF WINNING THE CONTEST. Hugh - i have a question for you. How many of you combat scenes have a foregone conclusion? How many of your combat scenes have been setup by you so that practically regardless of player choices the outcome is going to be the same? How many of those scenes are the players choices irrelevent to the outcome? for me the answer is ALMOST NONE, after all, I run games where their choices are key to the story. I have the same basic design breakdown for social scenes too. If we are running the scene and in mechanical detail, its one where their choices matter, not one thats foregone conclusion. In both cases for me, the player's choices apply to their character's stats and these combine with the scenery (including npc) to produce an outcome.

Re: BODY into STUN well my first thought is why convert body into stun? They are handled separately. wouldn't "armor doesn't stop stun" a better handling of the issue? A bullet proof vest wont make the bullet hurt more and do more stun than having no armor would? right? so when the bullet slams in with 7 body and 21 stun, build the armor with a lim for "doesn't stop stun" on some of it. if you actually convert each body into 2 stun the two people side by side one with a vest and one without - bullet strikes for base of 7 body and 21 stun. no armor takes it all 7 body and 27 stun. 6 pt armor guys takes 1 body and 39 stun - 6 armor = 33 stun which is more than without. so thats a little off. just have some of the armor not stop stun. now a potentially more realistic version would have the armor totally fail if body exceeded the armor. it either stops the bullet and bruises the heck out of you or it gets inside and then you are screwed - not much more protection than if the bullet had hit you straight away.

Re: Hero System: Design and Intent I would disagree. (anyone surprised??) I find both of these to be more of extreme, especially when considering social engagements. I think you can also frame the methodo0logy to make PLAYER input and STAT input relatively equal. have them play relatively equivalent impacts. in HERO for instance, if the player comes up with a convincing story when he lies to the mob boss, one playing to the mob boss flaws, then as GM i can apply a modifier to the skill check, calling it EASY or somesuch and with a significant enough bonus it can turn a difficult or maybe 50/50 roll into a near certainty. or as gm i can decide to not allow this much at all, giving only a +1"roleplaying" bonus. all depends on how i want them to balance out, the skill level of character and the skill of the player. But i sure dont want social engagements outcome determined by the character stats "primarily" because that takes me out of the equation for the most part. I am here for making choices. Now in truth, in combat, the players traits DO play a huge role. They don't play a role in necessarily any given die roll of any given skill check, but the player choices are as likely to determine the outcome as the power and attributes are. Who do I shoot at now? When do i shoot? What do I shoot with? these all are the choices the player makes that lead to the answer, the resolution of the "combat task". We all know there will be usually a huge difference between a veteran player and a novice as to how the fight goes. now with social engagements, we dont have the elaborate round by round sstem of combats which break down our player choices this way - but thats where i feel using the player input AS MUCH AS the STATS comes into play. The player picking a convincing lie is his equivalent of choosing to punch this guy because "he has the nnd weapon which hurts a lot" instead of the agent. So i tend to use "PLAYER SPEAK" and we all understand thats what he was trying to say, but how well and convincing he delivered it is also a measure of the character stat. both relatively equally. neither character nor player need to be mostly out of the equation - just like in combat. its just a little more abstract. I think some of the divergence on this is sometimes people equate "make a persuasion roll" with "make an attack roll" since they both involve one roll, where as i see it as equivalent to "lets win this fight" with the punches and such more abstracted.

Re: Hero System: Design and Intent I think its more of a genre-ism built into the core rules. In the money perk itself they discuss how money doesn't usually impact the superhero genre much but would be incredibly significant in fantasy, and so they specify the limits on buying money - not unless the Gm is Ok with it. As an example - you ought not to use the same cost for wealth in "spyhunters" heroic level game as you do in the Avebngers supersgame becuase between those two campaigns wealth goes from "flavor" to "resource" when equipment becomes not based on cp but on $$ in character. (simply put, there really ought to be an explicit price adjustment for wealth between heroic (wealth = actual purchasing power) and superheroic (wealth = flavor)) similar for perks such as position and such - they are all priced for the superheroic style game and no real guidelines on how to adjust for their heroic level counterparts.

Re: Mind Link: Touch: Only to sync movement Well, still not sure of the mechanical effect you are seeking... but to match someone else's moves i would use a PERFORM skill, or dance or acrobatics whichever the gm prefers. I would then buy "bonuses to this skill roll" at 2 cp per +1 with SFX "mind touched to sync movements" and possibly a lim if it is willing only or if it is not vs those with MenDef etc. For example, i once had a mentalist with bonuses rto dcv with SFX "reading mind to see when/where to dodge" and even more that were limited to dodge maneuver itself, all with a -1/4 small lim for "wont get thru mental def" the "mind touch" is just the sfx. the gain is the skill bonuses. now, if you also want to acquire their movement powers, thats a mimic pool. it can help dupe their speed cv etc.

Re: How to Build Delayable Absorption Ok so how long can you hold the charge? a day, a week, indefinitely? looking at normal absorption you would first have to handle the "i can use it later" which means buying up the fade time to cove3r that. So if your abs can hold a charge for a day you start with buying absorption that fade per day instead of per turn or +1.5 iirc. Unless you have a really weird build thats not going to be price effective, paying more for a "sometimes i have it" than "all the time" would cost. But since aid is likely to be similarly overpricey, I fall back to the easiest default. BUY +10 strength apply a custom lim for "when i get to use it" and go from there and skip the adjustment powers altogether. for example, if the rule is "as long as within a day of getting hit by an electrical attack that causes me some stun" then thats maybe -1/2 if electrical attacks aren't all that common, or -0 if you can just grab an electrical outlet or stick a knife in it and so you are almost always juiced.) or maybe its a "continuing charge strength lasting a turn but the key thing to look out for is if you can keep the charge from previous combats, you can easily juice up out of combat and so this might be little more than sfx for "extra strength i almost always have" but barring funky multiple characteristics builds, once you go beyond the norm fade with these powers, and sometimes even with normal, you are better off buying the gained effect straight up and limiting it, rather than buying a power to add to it. For example, i think one of the write ups for "combat fighting array" uses a dex aid to get up to +9 dex that costs like 24 cp when +9 dex all the time only costs 18 cp (nfc)

Re: Hero System: Design and Intent well we got into champions - and it was champions then, in order to roleplay supers and have a great comic book action game sessions. many times a "great game session" was a long involved very tactically challenging fight. at other times, it was much more plot and social based. in the former type game sessions, the rules were pivotal. in the latter, the rules often played little role. We dont need pages of social combat skill and maneuvers. we can do those, or do our best geeks pretending to play social types impersonation, and we can fall back o0n skill rolls and applying difficulties to handle the basics. now would it be great if hero had a little more depth in skill resolution? sure. would it be great to have a wider range, or more graduated range since we have basically both, fail, succeed, and outstanding success with the difficulty of skill listed spearately in a modifer chart even some veterans never use letting everything from flipping a car to crossing the street be a "roll 12-" or whatever the stat is. sure it would. i saw a game once, might have been spycraft 2 or 3, that had a "build your own subsystem" which tried to let you break any task of any type down into a "combat like" series of rounds with abstract choices and the like for "punch", "kick" dodge etc.... did not find it useful. in most games, i think the players are happy with having the rules for things like social interactions, solving problems, and the like be rather simplified and vague so as to let the mechanics not play as much of a part. I mean, these are the things the PLAYER is there to do, this is HIS role, as opposed to the "characters" role which is fighting. The player isn't going to throw a punch or pick up the car, so we need mechanics for that, but the player is going to construct the lie his character tells his boss when he is late for work, and so we dont need a lot of rules for that - though its good to have them especially for cases where the character is better/worse than the player.

Re: Taser hmmm... in my games this write up would hit some issues - beam has almost no effect on entangles, which cannot be spread and there is no downside to using at max effect - and since this is charges there is as far as i can tell literally no disadvantage to using it as is. the target cannot use attack powers to break the entangle. this is not covered anywhere as an advantage and its a serious one, especially considering the "use con not strength" as a freebie. Takes no damage merely means at +1/4 that some types of attacks directed AT THE CHARACTER dont affect the entangle but still lets attacks against the entangle blast it to bits. The net result of ignoring this in the build is a serious up in the net power for no increase in cost. Example - Take this power without the funky stuff - at 60 cp a standard entangle thrown against a brick sees a 60 str used to break it. if that entangle takes the "no defense" big time cost savings then it gets whacked by even minions blasters and such. its easily broken. Throw it at an energy blaster (if oif etc) and while his strength doesn't get the job done his 12d6 eb does. against minions they get thru the no defense version. now throw in the freebie "uses con" and the +1/4 not attacked and somehow it gains a lot of effectiveness... without "no defense" yout typical brick or blaster wont even be able to escape as their 6d6 con vs 6 def is useless. after the "no def" they are back to likely, assuming con in the 30 range, able to fight out as quickly as before, but they attack is 60% cheaper for being "as effective." IMo in most games i have run going from "can use strength and/or attacks to escape entangle" to "can break out with con only" is a gross increase in effectiveness as almost not character would be that much worse off. IF i were to allow such a build, the caveat of "cannot use strength/attacks to break out" would be a no cost "also has no defense for free" kind of like the way when you move an EB to not work vs ED I might well consider "use con not strength and attacks as equitable trade off for "no defense"

Re: Distinctive Features and Multiform Working from a modern day supers perspective - it would vary with setting of course demonic visage would likely be common and strong reaction for about 15 cp hulk would be applied to the hulk form only and be similar to demon, unless the large hulk isn't fearsome, in which case it would jedi iirc is somewhat covered by rule using "noticeable by those with specialized training" but in general unless the knowledge of jedi training is very widespread i would have it be small group. However the quyestion becomes "so what"? Does being spotted as a jedi provide some disadvantage? Is their prejudice against them? Do you gain bonuses in combat if you know they are jedi? If not, then what disadvantaghe is there. For instance, you cannot take a disad for "DF: wears green" because wearing green doesn't disadvantage you, again unless wearing green (same for "is a martial artist")) is a societal negative. Supers dont get DF for being supers in many genres although particular types might, like mutants in a mutant-hostile/suspicious world like xmen.

Re: How to Build Delayable Absorption trying to figure out the effct being desired, the in game mechanical effect that is. Are you wanting to delay getting the benegits in order to: 1 - if my boost from abs is already at the max i can hold off on newly acquired points and only spend them after the fade allows them to not be lost? i mean if you are absorbing energy like to fill a battery then thats abs to end going to an end reserve or to your regular end. But since abs can be used for most anything even body or int, i need more info on the "storing" and what benefits you see cvoming from it. give me an example of how its different from regular abs.