tesuji

Re: Inherent: SFX, any? [quote=Naanomi;19271 From a balance perspective: LS powers are cheap and thus 'too easy' to drain. Like Skills are cheap and thus 'too easy' to drain, no matter how fun it would be to drain someone's language skills for a long time. fwiw drain int is pretty cheap for most characters and draining int for a long time again seeems to be perfectly legal. draining int will effectively shut down both perception and int based skills. should int also get the life support protection clause? what other powers and traits should get this exemption? PRE is cheap easily drained and feeds lots of skill that losing for a long time would be bad. is pre protected? i mean saying "skills are protected" but allowing the characteristics that make the skills useful easily drained seems rather short sighted? like saying "its wrong to have a 4d6 drain ls sc breathing plus vacuum" but allowing the same power to be shredded by a 1d6 rka that shreds the spacesuit, wiping out a power per attack. but seriously can you provide a list of all the things legally allowed to be drained that you feel derserve exemption due to this protection clause? i am curious as to how far it goes. thanks

Re: Inherent: SFX, any? i have no idea what type of game you are referring to but did you read the same example powers i wrote? the most effective attack in terms of getting rid of enemies as quickly as possible was the eb nnd like db suggested as valid. it will clear the area of atlanteans a lot quicker than the drowning "lose an end and cannot take recoveries" does. yet it is cheaper. sure the hokey drain recovery build is a lot more expensive but thats because it is trying to achieve the same effect in a more round about way. the cost is in line with its effectiveness, this drain ls, as opposed to the massive cost of the drain recovery then drain end them drain body. or would you compare drain recovery to 6d6 nnd? so its ok to get rid of ls and drown someone but only if you use transform to do it? it has to cost a whoe lot more than an eb approach that would take out the character in less time? why? but we come back to the basic question i agree the game disallows certain things from being drained, but you do realize life support isn;t one of them, right? a gm might decide "this form of life support is not drainable" and allow it to be bought inherent but barring that, ls is drainable by the rules. no transform required. you do understand that the core rules do not agree with yopu. they allow ls to be drained. right? certainly it is within a gm purview to declare gills an "innate part of character" or somesuch and undrainable by inherent or by fiat. itsw just not the defult position of the rulebook. just curious tho, if we were in space and i had a power defined as loosening seals on space suits or some such would you also disallow me buying ls vs self contained breathing or vs immune to vacuum? would ls bought sfx space suit also be immune to loss by say damage from rka? how far does the "must protect life support from attack" thing extend? as for cost, imx characters often have more points invested in ls than they do in recovery, many even including the 5e freebie recovery. so depending on the scope of ls, it might not be cheaper than drain recovery but certainly would be cheaper than the other complex drain build.

Re: Inherent: SFX, any? one more question duke bushido why is it more appropriate to drain his purchased ability recovery, end and body and inappropriate to drain his purchased ability life support? is life support more a "natural part of him" or somesuch than his recovery, end and body?

Re: Inherent: SFX, any? one man's semantics is another man;s rulebook emphasis. they go to special trouble to tell you not to use "lack of" as a key for nnds, so to them it isnt semantics. i am not sure where this comes from. i dont think i asked for anapology. are you perhaps confusing my post with someone elses? well, first, i cannot invoke the suffocation rules except by doing something which mechanically does so. i cannot choke someone - causing inability to recover and loss of end etc - with an eb. or an rka. or a flash - mechanically they all do their own thing but they do not choke. sure i can build an eb and call it "choking damage" with nnd. it will work mechanically much like a meson burst nnd eb or a taser nnd eb. thats why i bought this one as a drain, even though an effective nnd would cost a little less and frankly be more debilitating. instead of just blasting stunnoff under another label i want to actually get the suffocation drowning rules in effect. its more of a purist "make the mechanics match the effect" thing. by the book, drain doesn't work that way. drain all the end and then it stops draining. are you suggesting a third drain for body? thats now a very very expensive attack, whose cost seems way out of whack compared to its effectiveness. with typical rec scores in the 8-10 you need about 6 dice of drain to get it first go round - that means the power weighs in at about 225 cp instead of 75 after advantages. lims may reduce it some. but its still going to weigh in at the low hundreds, for a power less debilitating and less likely to knock them out quickly than the 3d6 eb you mentioned earlier. how is that cost appropriate for the effect? showing my math 2d6 drain ls: breath water standard effect 6 cp +1 continuous +1 aoe4" rad +1/2 x4 radius 16"r +1/4 fade 1 cp per turn 75 ap 3d6 eb +1 nnd "some variant of lack of reath water" +1 continuous +1 aoe4" rad +1/2 x4 radius 16"r 67 ap 6d6 drain recovery std effect 9 pts of recovery +1 nnd "some variant of lack of reath water" +1 continuous +1 aoe 18" rad 240 ap apply lim for water breathing only which varies by campaign. absolutely, didnt i say something about how many gms like to just whack off stun and players too, its usually the most effective and quickest and often cost effective way to take down an enemy. i think writing up a choking cloud as a whack off stun will keep you in line with many many players and gms. myself, i preferred actually having the choking cloud invoke the drowning rules. different strokes. neither invalid. well, at least to my way of thinking.

Re: Inherent: SFX, any? yes... target has an immunity, in this case, immunity to breathing in essense. nnd defeated by power purchased - good.

Re: Inherent: SFX, any?

Re: Inherent: SFX, any?

Re: Inherent: SFX, any? first issue: nnd does not allow you to define a lac as the defense. so i cannot define "doesnt need to breath water" as a valid nnd defense, tho that is precisely the counter for such an nnd attack. so your preferred build is illegal. barring gm fiat of course but if invoking gm fiat one shouldn't be tossing around terms like invalid. second: drains and suppresses are used frequently in published materials for effects which dont remove the ability but stop it from functioning. i have seen itching powder writte up as drain dex even though the deterity is stilll there but the itching powder makes the character unable to use it. dont ask for a cite, books packed up. and its a lot of books. of course, in your game, whatever you say goes. third issue effectiveness: a 3d6 nnd would have costed similarly and frankly would have been much more effective, knocking them out fairly quickly. and not actually making them choke at all. fourth issue mechanics and sfx: by draining their water breathing, we actually got to invoke the suffocate rules - cannot recover, losde end, etc. so the sfx is "they cannot breath" and were i a gm a mechanical effect which caused the actual suffocation rules to be applied to the victim as opposed to simply whacking off more stun would be the more valid build. i am really curious as to why you think whacking off stun is a more valid mechanical build than invoking the choking/suffocation rules is for an sfx of clogged gills? i do think many hero players would prefer the gm to let them use the 3d6 area continual nnd as it whacks off stun and is quicker to knock them down. but as gm the ndd stops affecting you as soon as you leave, while the clogged gill drain clears slowly as you recover the points. that seems more appropriate. but to each his own. some gms prefer to keep things in stun only effects. i wanted the power that stopped them from breathing to actually invoke the "not breathing" rules - not just whack off stun.

Re: Inherent: SFX, any? this is IMo a problem with the broad uses adjustment powers get. Gravity vs flight is better, IMO, tho maybe more expensively, bought as an actual opposing force, say a tk. neither power defense nor inherent then play a role and it becomes simply a matter of force vs force. transform can alter the powers of anyone regardless of inherent. change the powersand the issue is moot. might as well change him into a snail. here we disagree somewhat. The life support for say a skeleton isn't a "power" thats keeping him from breathing but an utter lack of breathing apparatus. Sure he could be transformed to need to breath but thats not draining his life support is it? In a previous game i whipped up a "gill clogger" area spray that worked vs the "life support breath water' over a large area. It worked great when we did the undersea atlantean thingy. 3d6 std effect drain ranged area etc - fairly cheap for a cloud of nanites that clogged gills.

Re: Inherent: SFX, any? Frankly I use inherent for things like "i am naturally large so my growth is inherent." or "i am naturally small so my shrinking is inherent" (these might be 5e style i think 6e has templates?) So for instance my elephant cannot be dispelled back to human size. I also use it for things like some forms of life support - a golem for instance cannot have his "does not need to breath" drained or dispelled. Similar for an android who has no lungs. those are the kind of things i use inherent for. For things like "my power comes from higher source" I tend to apply "difficult to dispel" and not inherent. This can usually work to show its "tougher to reduce" but frankly, if we are in a polytheistic environment, why can your god's gifts not be disrupted by another god? But generally, since inherent is an absolute - and one of heroes tenets is "no absolutes" - I tend to only use it when it is unquestionable - a case of ""the power is less a power than a natural state. So i don't just allow inherent for anyone who is willing to pay points - you gotta have good reason to get an absolute, especially one so cheap, when i run hero.

Re: 6E Telekinetic Strength i tend to use dc limits not ap limits. so a tk character and a brick character can get to 60 strength. the tk guy simply pays more because he has his as 90 ap tk. but he also has advantages in ranges etc. then again the brick has 30 pts to spend elsewhere.

Re: moving Darkness iirc +1 advantage useable as attack was needed

Re: What is a MP and what is not ? A MP exists to answer the following issue. FIREGUY has the ability to throw three different attacks using his massive firepower - a blast 12d6 eb fire, a hotter, narrower bolt 4d6 rka, OR an even wider stream 6d6 cone fire. he can throw any one of these attacks at any one time but cannot do all three at once. These are all separated by OR. Choose one. (I tend to think of them as different flavors of his basic 60 pt fire attack.) he pays X for those three attacks. Now this other fire type, firestorm, has the same three attack but he can throw them all at once. he can throw a 12d6 fire eb AND the 4d6 fire rka at the same time at the same target. He might even be able to throw the fire cone too, but i have to look up whether you can use combi9ned attack to throw aoe and single target. He pays Y for this ability. BY THE BOOK y is 180 pts, full price 60 pts for each of the powers. Thats what firestorm pays for the ability to throw all three 60 pt attacks at once or singly or in pairs as he chooses. Now it seems very obvious that fireguy should pay less than that because he is limited to only one at a time, right? he should not pay 180 like firestorm because he is only able to use 1/3 as much at any time, 60 vs 180. So thats whwere the mp comes in. He lumps the three into a 60 pt pool mp paying 60 plus 18 (6 each for three fixed slots) and so he pays 78. Fire guy pays 78 for three 60 pt attacks one at a time and firestorm pays 180 for three 60 pt attacks at the same time. that feels right to me. in practice mp work great when used this way. They let a character like a fireguy have several different flavors of attacks or a vrick to have severla different "strength tricks, for a reasonable cost since its not adding MORE POWER but adding DIFFERENT POWERS along the same lines. Where i think Mp start to have problems and need gm policing (and this is echoed to a degree in a cautionary column in 6e1) ios when you start throwing diverse powers into the pool - to 6e1 they caution about lots of non-combat powers - i caution more precisely about allowing powers in the pool that are never going to be used together anyway. For example - a mp with a 12d6 eb, a 20/20 force field and 60m flight would be fine under either my or 6e1 standards since in combat you want all three of these and so you are forcing the guy to choose between them - he suffers a drawback in exchange for the cost savings. But add in say a slot for clairvoyance and a slot for mind scan and a slot for megascale teleport and you start to run into trouble because these are usually non-combat powers and also unlikely to ever be needed at the same time... so they may start to amount to free savings for no real drawback. I am myself going to take the 6e1 advice and pay particluar attention to mp and police them fairly tightly. I will likely be reducing them to a narrow "different flavors of a given power" type of restriction. but i would not consider eliminating them. To do so will drive - thru economics of a point driven game- everyone towrds one power one attack characters. Were i to consider dropping mp seriously, i would also look at empowering the POWER SKILL - so that with a minor investment in that skill a character with ONE FIRE POWER - say 12d6 eb - he could then use the power skill to create altered effects such as the cone or the rka. Many comic character do seem to have one power but several ways to use it... and the mp or the power skill provide methods for making such much more accurate in cost to just buying them all separate.

Re: Multipower imbalance Exactly - there is a tremendous difference between someone who can throw a 12d6eb or a 4d6rka and someone who can throw a 12d6eb and a 4d6 rka. if "alternative attacks" were charged at anything near full price, the structure and pressures of point driven chargen would result in a preponderance of "one use power" characters. There would be no Human Torch with his firebolt, fireball, fire stream, or bright fire pyrotechnics flash or smoke cloud and so on. Tho actually what we would see in such a case IMO is broader use of the power skill. Buy one fire attack power, say 12d6eb, and then buy a cheap skill that lets you do tricks with it like "sweep" it for an aoe, to burn dirty to create a smoke screen, etc. the net result is the same - pay the main price for the main use and then pay a small price to dial up alternatives. Instead of paying per slot you pay for skill. Now personally, i am fodn of that approach. I think it is more intuitively obvious to newbies... buy power then buy a skill for tricks. Its also more forgiving. The multipower makes you think of tricks ahead of time. The skill lets it be done "on the fly" Frankly, i think MP could be dropped if the power skill were more fully fleshed out. The cases mp is good for can be handled with power skill revisited fairly well.

Re: Multipower imbalance in 6e its called a combined attack. In 5e it was called multi-power attack. I never found mp hard to justify for the effects it seemed to fit. For example, a force fields character might be able to use his as a force wall or a force field or a force spear or a force disk or as a force bubble forming inside your brain and expanding until your head explodes... but not do all of these at once... so a multipower of various effects seems apropos. A utility belt seems a lot less apropos since the justification for the "cannot use at same time" especially if the mp is set up to only allow one at a time, seems very thin. Now i might buy a multipower with a lim for "load up the slots at the base" where the pool represents the stuff you put in the belt but you pick which slots are "on" when you leave your base.

Re: Multipower imbalance i dont see the difference. both vpp and mp have a pool which limits the number of slots that can ve active. if i want a mp able to run three slots at once i just need a big enough pool. both vpp and mp can run into "i have to cut off one to get another" issues. the math is a little different but the problem ramins the same. i often build mp to be able to run three powers out of many at once. particularly i have seen several utility belts wirtten up as only change in lab, representing loading the poches before heading out. these seem to be cosmic utility belts which somehow teleport in whatever you need however, which i have not seen used in my games.

Re: Multipower imbalance for the record i think vpps are appropriately priced, or think they were. i have no practical experience yet with the new vpp pricing in actual play. however, some vpp i have found inappropriate for pcs. best real play example was a magic vpp which grew onto a character who started with a broad magic mp. problem wasn't cost vs power. he proved no more effective in combat than the others. problem was everything else non-combat. want to scout ahead? send in tigerman? no wait instead give mr wizard a minute to dial up a 60 pt clairvoy or a 60 pt invisibility... want to ge tto new york quick? have mr gadgeteer warm up his quinjet. no wait let mr wizard dial up a mass megaflight spell. he became the one stop answer guy for nearly any non-combat task and basic shat all over every other characters secondary schtick again and again. it wasn't him doing it. they asked him to. but it was just not fun. so now i insist on significant lims on vpps. if the vpp is broad enough to be a problem there have to be significant access lims so that using the guys who can do this is preferable... so you only rely on the vpp when you have no other option. otherwise if the vpp is quick and easy to access, it has to be very limited in scope, so it wont be stomping everyone else's schtick. thats to be approved for a pc, of course.

Re: Multipower imbalance dirst to the op you cannot take two data points and show "one is too cheap". given your analysis one might also conclude just as reasonably that vpp is too expensive. however in fact a mp works if applied a certain way. As i have argued before, if a mp is used to combine powers that are never used together, then it is potentially imbalancing. this is now even brought up in the rulebook in 6e where the gm is cautioned against allowing mp of non-combat powers where using them only one at a time is meaningless. its like trying to put lockout on your healing touch because it cannot be used when you fire your firebolt. no go! When used on powers that one would normally like to use together, like say an eb and an rka, then the mp creates the effect of being a discount for flavor. A guy with a 12d6 eb and a 4d6 rka has two equally effective powers and if they are in a mp then i can choose which flavor i want. but i cannot combine them into one massive attack. that costs just 20% more than having only one attack. thats about right. if i made you pay full price then you could combine them together at once for a masive attack or you could pay the same price for one 24 dice attack. so mp do the job of providing alternative attacks for a reasonable cost. but the problem comes when the mp becomes a catch all and is used for a lot of powers many of which were never to be used together. then you can have problems of balance. Magic multipowers where the only unifying element is "its magic" are frequent violators. before allowing a power into a mp ask "is not using the other powers while using this actually going to matter?"

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor your experiences are different than mine. i have had many powered armor guys in games under me over the years. most followed the book examples of oif. some had oaf on some weapons. here is how it played. the typical oif armor powered armor guy spent his extra points on MORE powers not MORE POWER. no he didn't get 18d6 attacks in a 12d6 game but he did get a 12d6 energy blast AND a 12d6 strength punch and so on. Like iron man, he was a brick and a projector and at times fast etc. the more creative had additional stealth suits and so forth. in other words they became a "wonder tool" characater who was always applicable. this was due to campaign restrictions. i wouldn't let them spend the points on more potent attacks, so they spent it on alternatives so they ar always "one of the guys". however it was not a free ride. i enforced damage to their armor and so power failed as they got hit and hurt. since te suits contained literally a dozen or more powers it was easy to have something valuable fail and so it was frequent that they had someting offline during a combat. this provided not only an in game deficit, not every power all at once but any power frequently, it also gave them a drain on their "downtime" as they were constantly in lab making repairs. secondly, it was also not infrequent that they had a delay as a sudden encounter went awry so while the others just turned on powers and went at it, the pa guys spent a few actions getting suited up... delaying their arrival until say end of turn 1. this one was used more sparingly but when it occurred it was a rational outgrowth of the scenario. i never had a problem with pa oif guys feeling they were being too abused nor other players feeling the oif guys got a free ride. however dont take that to mean i like focus. most of my handling was handwaving, based on my upfront general descriptions of "i will afflict problems commensurate to the lim you choose". i think focus should be less specific with more generic lists of possible problems . then again IMO limitations should be defined more generically... name a frequency in sessions per 10 the problem occurs name a severity as in how much of the power is lost... say minor, then half then total. then list flavors... as in "player list three sample problems, gm list two." For example POWERED ARMOR - Gendarm Suit Frequency 3 sessions in 10 Severity - MAJOR (50% or more) come up with a figure Player list sometimes damage causes systems to fail sometimes not in suit and takes a turn to get involved strong em fields cause unreliability of systems - occasional activation rolls gm list sometimes subject to hacking/hidden viruses sometimes shortage of parts for repairs/reloads/operations armoed with the above, both player and gm have the same understanding - how often problems will arise, how serious they will be in terms of how much power loss, and also five example flavors the problems will take. sounds to me like a good recipe for collaboration. of course imo this works for most limitations.

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor Well thats where we differ - slightly. Like i said, i discourage the use of unbreakable especially for this reason. But if the player insists on it with full knowledge this means the item will get lost and be gone for some time, then we go with it. Now obviously a character with all his power in an unbreakable focus would make for an inappropriate PC - since he is effectively shut down during his lost focus period, so i would not allow that. But if the focus were just a part of his power, something he can do without tho its tough, then sure. like say a guy who loses his magic sword but still has his magic bow and dagger. mostly though i just push breakable.

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor As a different option remove the book rule as is. however add to the basic focus rule - most foci are occasionally subject to damage - sometimes directly as in "that megabeam blew out my scanner" and sometinmes indirectly as in "every time he casts the nether tornado spell my amulet of power overheats". This is part of the focus drawback - another way you sometimes lose the power. At the GMs discretion these powers can fail, perhaps completely, perhaps partially, perhaps acquiring activation rolls until repaired, perhaps requiring extra power to function. Whatever reasonable effect reflecting "the item is damaged and malfunctioning" can be applied at the gms discretion and will persist until the item is fixed - the default being taking about a day in proper workshop. In other words if you aren't going to detail it them specifically make it a fluffy "anything can happen" kind of thing. One great example i used for "malfunctioning" I had an evil groups summoning spell go awry and a wave of chaos magic swept across the city. Every magic item - specifically items - got tainted and items could not clean themselves like people could. so now every item had a random roll for side effects. the mage's amulet of power - he used once and then didn't - except in an emergency - until he cleaned it. so he spent the entire session and fight in extremis trying to not use his big gizmo - it was fun for him and quite a challenge. he took the chance once and got semi burned for it but it still saved his bacon. some people have said i screwed him over because i did not have a villain target his focus irectly and nothing says i can do that to focus... but to me the focus is all about "its an item and items sometimes dont work for you" and so it seemed fine to me. then again i am willing to give focus on claws that can easily be clipped.

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor the catch with unbreakable is while it doesn't go away routinely from damage when it does go away its gone for a long time. breakable = easily lost but quickly replaced unbreakable = rarely lost but hard to replace so to me those are reasonable trade offs tho imx players hate having unbreakable foci gone for "a long time" so i tend to discourage them. imo there has been a problem with this since 4e at least, at least thats when i started griping, and repeated cries of "well the gm can ignore ir" leads to just what we have now... the rule still in place unchanged decades later. so lets fix the damn thing and see if we can get it into 7e first thing first... the rule which says the focus is hit by any attack that hits the defense... THATS NOT A BREAKABILITY rule but is actually an ACCESSIBILITY rule. INACCESSIBLE - not touched in combat ACCESSIBLE - can be targetted at -2 in combat UNAVOIDABLE - is hit automatically by any attacks blah blah UNAVOIDABLE should be an additional +1/2 lim at least. Breakability I think the default for breakability should be either: Lose 5 ap per attack that gets past body def with additional bonus if you want 10 ap per or 20 ap per or Activation rolls... first attack that gets thru causes activation roll 15- for any powers. next attack drops it to 14- then 13- etc.

Re: Hero Basic 6th : Destructible FOCUS and Power Armor "Any Focus that provides defenses to a character is automatically hit by any attack that hits the character based on a successful Attack Roll" pg 379 hero 6e1 Normally an OAF is hit when specifically targetted, taking iirc a -2 to hit against the characters dcv. Normally OIF and such are not subject to attacks except when out of combat etc. GM discretion applies of course, but the reason oif is less than OAF is the "not targettable in combat" usually. But the huge exception is for focus which provide defenses and they get a huge whammy because they are always hit when their defenses apply. They lose powers every time they take body bamage past their defenses. so a powered armor suit with a lot of built in functions can lose one power from any attack that gets body past its defense. (past just that fosu not the total defenses) in the past there was an option, perhaps house rule, that had the focus lose 5 ap worth instead of "a power" every time it was breached. this helps the glass armor problem where for instance a bullet proof vest 6 rpd 6red dies as soon as it takes one 7 body hit.

Re: Barrier Issue Ok are you also assuming a 1 m long barrier is protecting the character from all sides? I would think he needs 6 m to surround his hex fully? or ar you assuming he can always move the barrier to intercept attacks no matter how many time in a phase that happens? if inly one m l is protected it seems very easy to slip round the side and wham.

Re: Telepathic Writing i would do images to mental sense group or maybe just to the telepathy sense. bought to 0 end and persistent it could remain indefinitely. alternatively a continuing charge setup could let it remain for a limited time. but images and proper sense selection would be my initial approach.