Ockham's Spoon

Re: Dissecting Powers Not to derail the thread or anything, but how is HERO more "stop motion" than any other game system? The stop motion effects might be more noticeable because HERO has SPD while most games (that I have played) just take turns back and forth. That makes HERO more granular so the "stop motion" effect may be more obvious, but it doesn't change the basic idea of "on my turn I move X distance." The only game I ever played that didn't work like that was Car Wars, but the nature of the game kind of demanded more careful accounting of movement.

Re: Order of the Stick I'm thinking that maybe Thor's aching bunions could use some Flumphs for cushioning.

Re: Dissecting Powers Lucius's breakdown is excellent, but admittedly space intensive. For what it's worth, I find that when I create abilities that have several linked powers, it is usually easier to read if the linked powers are listed separately with some notation to indicate they are all part of a single ability. You can also put common Advantages and Limitations in a single block which make it a little cleaner. This is nice for reading on the character sheet, although you probably don't want to compute the cost this way. Going out with a Bang: Sight Group Flash 1 ½d6 (standard effect: 2 Segments), Area Of Effect (16m Radius Explosion; ), Limited Power Not against someone who has their eyes closed or turned away that phase plus Darkness to Sight Group 2m radius, Linked (Flash! Bang!; Lesser Power can only be used when character uses greater Power at full value), Instant, No Range plus Trigger Cost (as below) and Invisible Power Effects (Fully Invisible) for up to 5 Active Points of Leaping, Linked, Costs Endurance plus +5 with Stealth All Going out with a Bang powers have (as appropriate): Trigger (Activating the Trigger requires a Zero Phase Action, Trigger requires a Turn or more to reset; 2 Charges which Recover every 1 Week , No Range, Conditional Power Power does not work if wet (raining, Pipkin's been in water, etc) , IIF This is a neat concept for a power, but why include the Darkness, especially since it is instant? If it hung around for a few segments or longer I could see including it, but as is it looks more like a sfx to me.

Re: Order of the Stick Thanks for the link. I am sure this "monster" was created for a reason, but I fail to see why, although clearly they serve a role in OotS.

Re: Order of the Stick It has been a while since I played D&D, but what the heck is a Flump?

Re: Unusual Magic Items Phantom Steed This looks just like a bridle, but when the command word is spoken, a phantom horse appears under the holder. The horse can run at high speed tirelessly over any surface, even while weighed down. A second command and the horse disappears, allowing the rider to roll up the bridle for later use. In game terms this is: 40m Flight, x8 NCM, 0 END, Only over surfaces and for jumping (-¼). Linked with 20 STR Telekinesis, 0 END, only to offset encumbrance (-2). OIF - Bridle.

Re: Chryckan's general dumb questions thread.... One of my favorite aspects of HERO is the character creation, so maybe I do this often enough that it seems straightforward to me. In my mind the secret to making it easier is to make the Advantage a separate line item rather than trying to roll it into another power. So lets take a guy with powered armor who has Density Increase and Absorption to STR, and he wants Hardened PD/ED and Armor Piercing STR that Requires a Skill Roll. His normal STR is 20. His Density Increase can provide +15 STR. At maximum, his Absorption can provide +15 STR. His maximum STR is then 50. AP is a +¼ advantage, so 50 x 0.25 = 12.5 = 12 Active points for the AP advantage. Say the Requires Skill Roll level is -½, so the real cost of the AP STR advantage is 12/1.5 = 8 real points. Now lets look at his PD/ED. His base PD/ED is 2 and 2. His Armor provides +25 PD, +15 ED. His DI can increase his PD/ED by +3. His armor and the PD/ED from DI should be resistant, but all his PD/ED is Hardened. So the total resistant PD/ED is 28 and 18 respectively, for a total of 46 points. Resistant is +½, so the cost to make 46 points resistant is 46 x 0.5 = 23 Active points. If his DI is dependent on his OIF power armor, then the real cost is 23/1.5 = 15. If not then we have to go back a step and buy the resistant PD/ED from DI separately. Now to Harden all his PD/ED. From above, his power armor provides a maximum of 46 points of defense. Hardened is +¼, so the active cost is 46 x 0.25 = 11.5 = 11. Since that is all through his suit, he gets the OIF on that so the real cost is 11/1.5 = 8. His regular PD/ED total is 4. To Harden that is 4 x 0.25 = 1 point. Personally I wouldn't harden his base PD/ED because it doesn't make sense to me since it is his power armor that provides the defense. When he gets hit with an AP attack, halve his base PD or ED but not the rest.

Re: Chryckan's general dumb questions thread.... If you want to avoid the complication of extra STR that doesn't have the advantage on it, buy a naked advantage for the maximum value that the character's STR might reach. Say your character has Penetrating for his normal STR. If his Density Increase adds +15 STR and he has Absorbtion that could potentially give him another +10 STR, then buy a naked Penetrating cost for 25 STR. As for Hardening extra PD/ED from DI, again, buy a naked advantage for the amount you want Hardened. Don't apply Hardened to DI itself.

Re: Transplanted Immortality I think cloning people genetically is almost certainly possible. But it would not be the same person; too much of your personality is shaped by your environment. I doubt anyone could duplicate something as complex as a mature human brain so that it could be transfered into another body, so while your clones might survive you, they would be more like your children and not a new you. Even if it were possible to transfer brains or brain patterns between bodies, you have some major ethical issues to deal with. Personally I think it would be a bad idea. Just watch Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" for a small taste of what could happen.

Re: Based on ECV and inanimate objects If he bought it as BoECV, then it doesn't work against inanimate objects. If he wants to be able to destroy stuff, then buy a regular RKA and define it as telekinetic blades or something. It seems to me that a BoECV RKA is not a very heroic sort of power since it is really only good for killing people. Is that really what he wanted, or was he looking for something to battle robots and such? If he just didn't understand what power he was building, I'd let him switch it out with a regular RKA. He might want to build a few levels into it though if he is primarily a mentalist and doesn't have a very high OCV.

Re: Always on Death Touch If you want the character to be deadly whenever she touches someone or someone touches her, you need to buy it with the Area of Effect option Damage Shield (+¼). As for whether it works through clothes or not, just put a modifier on it, Requires skin to skin contact (±0). It is a limitation on a regular damage shield because it will be harder to make skin contact, but it is an advantage that the character can cover up to keep from accidentally killing off her friends.

Re: A House Rule for Healing - Might this Blow Up in my face? Both D&D and Hero limit healing to keep PCs from becoming nearly indestructible. D&D limits healing by keeping the number of times it can be done limited (only so many Cure Wounds spells or healing potions). Hero limits healing by putting a maximum on the amount of damage healed per day by a given Healing power. If you want to mimic the D&D style, get rid of the Hero limit on Healing maximum, but impose the D&D limit by forcing all Healing powers to be bought with charges. You just house rule in favor of one limitation over the other. As long as the number of charges doesn't get out of hand you shouldn't have any balance issues.

Re: More cosmic weirdness: diamond planet A diamond planet? More proof that truth can be stranger than fiction.

Re: Getting There: Non-Combat Movement As convenient as Multipowers are, I like this clean, one-line approach to superpowered Flight. Nice idea.

Re: The Five Families--an organized crime group, with a twist I will throw out Peter Lorre's role of Abbott in Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much". You might also also tap Lorre's character Joel Cairo from the "Maltese Falcon". Lorre makes for some creepy and often idiosyncratic villains which could easily be played up.

Re: The Nightmare of Megascale Teleport If you want to overcome the slowness of Megascaled teleportation, just buy it flat out without the advantage. Way too costly to get to the asteroid belt, but you don't actually need a heck of a lot of teleport to effectively remove most people from a fight (100m straight up should do the trick in most cases; that is 4 segments they are out of the combat at the end of which they take 20d6 falling damage if they can't fly). You still have the limitations of the Grab to contend with, but whatever solution you come up with should take into account that the Megascale is only part of the problem, so its limitations can only be part of the solution.

Re: The Nightmare of Megascale Teleport You mentioned that due to immunities the villains don't die out on the asteroid, they just can't get back. How many villains do you have that can survive in outer space? This seems self-limiting to me if you simply don't give villains the Life Support they need to stay out there. Then this "tactical manuever" becomes murder. The hero might not have legal issues with stranding them there but capital punishment without a trial isn't going to go over well. Are the villains all going to the same asteroid or are they randomly scattered through the asteroid belt? If it is the same asteroid, one might expect the villains that are already there will lay an ambush. If it is a random asteroid, how does the hero find it? Does he have the appropriate super-sense or is he teleporting blind? And if he is teleporting blind, sooner or later he is going to end up inside the asteroid and he might not come back from that. I am not suggesting that you kill the PC, but point out the inherent danger of the operation so that they would only use this tactic as a last resort.

Re: Current Techology: Bullet-Proof Skin Why leave anything unarmored? As I understand it this stuff is very flexible, it just won't tear enough to let a bullet through (it would bruise like hell though). It is relatively stretchy so you wouldn't have your movement or (ahem) anything else restricted. The downside might be if you had to have surgery. The upside is that if your girlfriend is Loreena Bobbit, you might not need a surgeon in the first place.

Okay, bullet-proof with a few caveats, but this was too cool not to share: http://www.pddnet.com/news-utah-researcher-help-develop-bulletproof-skin-082211/

Re: The Force Good point. A Focus then, but make it OIF instead of OAF to represent the fact it is hard to take away and keep away.

Re: Life Support and NNDs Life Support is one of those powers for which utility depends heavily on the setting and the opponents. If your campaign is one that pits the heroes against the evil Time Raiders who have lots of aging/entropy powers that are nullified by immortality, then Longevity is going to be more useful than Immunity to Botanical Poisons or the ability to breathe water. Personally I see LS: Longevity as more of a defining trait, like background skills. Not necessarily useful, but important for concept. A good GM will try to bring them into play, but you paid 5 or fewer points for it so don't sweat it if it doesn't happen. That said, I could easily see the argument that Longevity should max out at 3 points for immortality, but that could be house ruled if it bothers you.

Re: The Force Nice work on the Lightsaber, but I think it could be streamlined a bit; if STR doesn't add damage and you can always pull it back to your hand, it is just an RKA with the special effect of being a energy sword. Remove the OAF limitation and make it Restrainable (-½) to represent the fact a Jedi can be disarmed. There is no need for Constant. That is for continuing effects like acid or poison or something. Most anything else can be represented by a series of discrete hits. Finally, in 6e Armor Piercing is only a +¼ advantage instead of +½.

Re: Religion in Science-Fiction? What Kraven Kor said. There will always be believers and always be skeptics. The believers will adapt their views to fit with the universe as they understand it, so religion in some form will never die. Since many religious explanations of science conclude with "Because God wanted it that way" there is no evidence to argue one way or the other, so it boils down to whatever the individual believes. Where science and religion become antagonistic is that transition period between a scientific discovery and the believers adapting their dogma to it. For Galileo that was a heliocentric solar system. Today in America it is evolution. In a SF setting, there will doubtless be some religious folk protesting some form of science (or alien species), but there will be plenty who are comfortable accepting both religion and science without them being mutually exclusive.

Re: The Force To counter Force powers by using the Force, just use the Block mechanic with the caveat that the Force can only be blocked by the Force. This is akin to saying you need a weapon or a shield to block a sword - you generally can't do it with your hand. To use it at range, buy Deflection. To represent using the Force to make Jedi better warriors, buy them Aid to DEX, OCV, DCV, DCV, and SPD (+2; DCV is in there twice because as a defensive power it costs twice as much to affect it). You could also buy them Overall Levels, Cost END. Most of your Force powers look good, but I will throw out a couple suggestions. First, why have a Detect Force and Detect Dark Side? I would probably roll that into one Detect and get rid of the "Vague" limitation, but that might not be quite the flavor you want. For the empathy power, why not use Detect: Emotions instead of Telepathy? Since you aren't sending, this is just as effective but cheaper. Higher level Jedi with full-blown Telepathy might ditch the Detect, but this would be the easy way for most of them.

Re: The Force If you want to go with the Force as a omnipresent entity that all Jedi have a Mind Link with but don't want casual eavesdropping, how about making "the Force" an alien class of mind, and the Mind Link only works with that particular alien class of mind. Now you can't get crosstalk from other Jedi because they are the wrong class of mind. If you want to be able to mentally contact other Jedi, use Mind Scan. The Mind Link could enable you to narrow the search field from "entire universe" down to "those connected to the Force". If you want to avoid having to buy Telepathy, you might then buy the adder for an additional class of minds (Jedi) with the Mind Link, with the limitation "only useable with Mind Scan".