JasonPacker

Thinking about building powers for some Heroic Abilities for a FH game, and one that is always popular is for the beefy swordsman to be able to stop the minions of evil from getting past him to the soft targets behind him. So, I put this together, but I'm always leery of builds that use CE that I've gone off the beaten path a bit. So, I offer it up here for suggestions, or outright to point out things I've missed.

 

10 Impassable: Change Environment (-12m of any mode of Movement), Area Of Effect (2m Radius; +1/4), Selective (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (24 Active Points); Requires A Roll (Attack roll; Must be made each Phase/use; -1), No Range (-1/2)     Notes: This power represents the ability of the character to stop anyone from passing them by. It demands that they can detect the indivdiual and threaten them, and effectively causes the target to stop moving by reducing his movement rate by 12m, but only on a successful attack roll, at -2, that otherwise causes no damage. 0

 

Only peripherally related to the subject at hand, but does anyone enforce the optional rule about buying down movement if you buy up speed, for more realistic games? To keep your players from buying SPD 4 and suddenly being powerful sprinters as well as having the action advantage?

You're very close to modern (5th edition) Shadowrun with this concept. They, too, use initiative that allows one action every 10 units, but a normal joe might have a 6+1d6 for his Initiative, while an amped up street samurai might be at 10+3d6 or higher. 

 

I could get behind this as an alternative to the SPD chart if it had that element of uncertainty, but as a flat value I'm not sure I see any added value.

I surely do hope you're misremembering, or it was in a prior edition, because just a quick scan through the Champions Solo Villains has at least four with movement powers in a multipower where only one slot has megascale.

This isn't about an intentional move-through or a knockback situation, but a mistake while moving. 

 

A brand new player has a flight power that has megascale to allow him to fly at 260,000m per phase, speed 6 (works out to 290,000 miles per hour) - it's not his only flight choice, but one of three multipower slots.

 

He just now worried "what if I hit an airplane, or a building, or a mountain?

 

I know damage would be based on velocity, limited by PD and BODY of the object, but are there any other rulings for this situation to keep it relatively straightforward? Should he be buying linked proportional defenses?

That's definitely what I'm after, effect-wise. Five points feels awfully cheap, but them's the rules.

Is that an official build? I'm not sure I'd think it was legit - after all, you aren't making a second attack with those additional shots, unlike a multi-attack.

How much more do you think Autofire should be worth if you hit with an extra shot for every 1 point you make your roll by, rather than 2? Would it be worth less (though never less than +1/4) if the margin of success requirement was 3 or more? Or, notably, is this already in one of the APGs and my searching failed me?

 

Just curious - it's pulling from the GURPS autofire rules that use a "recoil" factor for any attack, real weapon or otherwise, to determine how many shots actually hit (though, they also offer a meager bonus to hit for very high RoF).

 

 

I'm already compiling notes. This has all been great stuff - some that just make sense for any RPG, others for Hero as a whole and still others for specific kinds of Hero games.

 

The only thing I will throw out there is that you need to be careful with equating role playing and improv too closely. No, it's not a scripted show, and you're allowed to go off-book, but some GMs have a more rigid style and while they will accommodate your ideas, they will want to be able to consider them and decide if they need any tweaking, and how they fit into the storyline so far. 

 

From a GMs perspective (and sometimes a player's), I would modify it to say that you should usually say "Yes," and where you can, say "Yes, and..." but don't be afraid to also include "No, but..." in your bag of tricks. 

Well, sure.  In the 3e point level days (base 100 points), you were more or less "forced" to take enough Disadvantages that your character would be at least viable if not competitive, but upper limits weren't formalized.  In 6e, you're not so much; 350 or even 325 points can easily be viable in a game with 400 point characters.  

 

4e kind of changed it, from "no upper limit" to "here's a 150 point hole that you can fill, But No More."  Which is what we've had ever since.  

 

I personally think that 75 points is enough for a standard heroic game but not quite enough for a standard superhero, and my own anecdata from looking over posted builds seems to bear this out.  So if you were to play in the 400 point game, with no requirement for Complications, would you take 100 points worth?  I've had superheroes that I could easily come up with 100 points worth for, and in fact many where those last 50 were somewhat painful (and then I was making painful point shavings on top of that to get it down to the hard limit).  

 

If you were to play in, let's say, a superheroic game where you got 300 points for free, and could take any number above that -- and got points for all of them, except with 3e style diminishing returns* -- how many would you take?  Let's say around 75-125 points, with most characters taking around 100.  I know, the answer is fully "It depends," but I'm curious about reasoning.  

 

* First two at full value, next two at half value, all further ones at one-quarter.  

 

Wasn't the old rule that you got full value for the first two examples of a specific disadvantage (Hunted, say, or Psych Lim), not just for your two highest-valued disadvantages. I recall this because of the sheer number of people who had two Hunteds, two Psych Lims, two Vulnerabilities, two...

Based on this thread this is the exact sort of thing I had been mulling over. I've never played FATE, so had no idea how that system worked.

I'm not sure there's a more different game from Hero than Fate, but as it is available for free on the web-based SRD, it's easy enough to read up on how Aspects work and how they might slot into Hero.  fate-srd.com

 

Briefly, a good Aspect is supposed to be a double-edged sword. Good, so you can invoke it yourself to gain bonuses in play, but also potentially bad so the GM can invoke that side on you and you gain more fate points to use to enable you to use the good side of the aspect. I wouldn't go quite that far with my implementation in Hero, but I would definitely leverage those hooks they handed to me in both positive and negative ways.

Having read your initial thoughts on this, Lucius, I've had a hard time letting go of the idea. I immediately wandered into thoughts of using a FATE-like Aspects approach, where every hero gets his 400 points no matter what, but must provide the GM with five hooks, including one that can be secret or public identity. No specific numbers associated with them, just possible actual complicating situations. 

I'm a bit surprised that Killer Shrike's stuff hasn't been brought up in this thread:

 

http://www.killershrike.com/fantasyhero/HighFantasyHERO/shrikeArmsArmament_Weapon_Chart.aspx

 

That's some extensive differentiation.

No, you get to be the one to compile it.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

nonstandard palindromedary value

Fine. I'll let you know what I come up with.

Note that other BRP/RQ variants had explicit "front-loaded" mechanics for this, as far as I know this change was introduced in Mongoose RuneQuest. So it's not like either are tied implicitly to the general "gestalt" of the system.

 

Hmm, what about tying this to the weapons used? So a two-handed weapon would get a crit effect of max damage (or +X DC if you want to change things) as usual, but fencing weapons get something different (disarm/AP), clubs get +1 STUNx etc.

 

This would make the change less invasive, and differentiate weapons a bit more.

 

I'm actually fond of this idea, and don't tend to save it only for "critical" hits. Weapon differentiation just makes good sense to me, so if you wanted to tie it to a strong success roll, it wouldn't be a bad thing at all. 

I don't think there is a list. 

 

DEX, CON, EGO, and PRE have their own point-for-point benefits (combat order, stunning, resistance to Mental Powers, and resistance to Presence Attacks, respectively).  You can interpolate STR numbers for exact lift values if you want, plus in heroic games most weapons have a STR minimum.  INT is pretty much the only one without any point-for-point functionality at all, although some GMs let combat order ties for DEX go to the higher INT, or ties in Skill vs. Skill to the higher INT (or the higher above the breakpoint).  

 

Well, they may be relatively minor effects, but they are pretty solid ones. I already use INT as the tie-breaker for DEX being the same when it comes to when folks get to go.

Has anyone compiled a list of the sorts of benefits that accrue to a character that chooses to take a non-standard attribute value? Everyone knows the breakpoints - 13 being popular as it gets you the bonus to skills and attribute rolls, 5's and 10's popular for getting full dice of damage on Strength - but what about the odd ones. Is there a document that collects in one place the benefits of having an 11 STR, a 14 DEX (in 6e, that was a sweet spot in 5e and before), a 17 CON or the like?

I like the idea (I'm a fan of some of the things that RQ6 brings to the table in particular), but it definitely is a different mind-set, and might need some extensive tweaking.

 

Hero is a very deliberate system. You decide to target a location; you decide to make an attack that puts you at risk of retaliation for greater chance to hit or damage done; you decide to disarm or grapple or trip an opponent. Then you roll to see if you succeed.

 

RQ6 is much the opposite. You attack an individual, and if you're successful enough you do more than just cause them damage, you may trip them, disarm them, impale them, hit a specific location of your choice, or sunder their armor or shield. It's a consequence of the successful attack, but not something you specifically set out to do before the dice were rolled.

 

Not sure if that actually influences things or not, but it might help in the discussion for those that aren't aware of how it works in RQ6.

Being a fan of both systems, I would say that GURPS might actually do Sci Fi better than Hero. Hear me out here...

 

As much as I love Hero, there's a real lack of granularity at the low, heroic levels. Certainly less so than GURPS. While I find Hero to be broadly flexible, and certainly more amenable to cinematic, Space Opera style play, I do find myself chafing against the lack of significant difference between various primary attributes in the 10-20 range.

Hero is my go-to system for cinematic, especially super heroic games. I can't imagine a system that would do that better without abandoning the RPG space entirely for a more narrative style of play.

I, too, would like to see a more robust set of "realism" optional rules for Hero. I'd also like to see a thorough set of tactical minis rules. I think both would have a small but energetic audience.

As simply a campaign feature, I have placed adjustments on COM depending upon which species is looking at you.  In general, when it comes to Orcs looking at Elves and humans, the better looking you are, the worse you look to the Orcs and vice versa, so I simply reverse the COM.  A COM 10 is normal all across the board.  So an elf or human with COM higher than 10, is actually considered to having COM less than 10 to Orcs and other goblinoids.  When orcs and goblins have COM higher than 10, they appear uglier to humans, elves etc.

Interesting idea, but artificial, isn't it? What if you're just an ugly, deformed Orc? Orcs think you got the short end of the stick and humans can't tell you apart from any other Orc...

 

Though it does make me want to play an Orc in a game with you. Buy my COM down to -10 and be the prettiest orc lass in all the land. "Look at her - disgusting! All pinkish and soft, and her underbite and tusks are barely visible. Why they didn't drown her when she was born all mutated like that is beyond me..."

The biggest benefit to me of Striking Appearance is that it has a built in limitation to allow it to be subjective, where COM was rarely purchased with any limitations on it, and so you wound up with Elves that were beautiful even to Orcs, as an example.

 

I'm not such a fan of the name, and might go even more granular (3 pts per level for everyone, 2 pts for a large group or not effective on a small group, and 1 pt for a small group or not effective on a large group), but I'm generally fond of it.

Well, if I said that the existing rules were unrealistic, that was foolish of me. My issue is, and remains, that they are subjective rather than objective, qualitative rather than quantitative.

But complicated, by itself, is a net loss. Detailed, which may mean a little more complexity, might well be a net win (your mileage may vary). 

 

And while I agree with you - there's a rule that covers it - it doesn't fix that I had some hope of a quantitative rule rather than a qualitative rule. It's not quite as bad as "this entirely common situation isn't covered by the rules, so your GM will have to make up a rule on the fly" but it's definitely not an ideal solution to my way of thinking.