Ockham's Spoon

Re: Variant types of damage? Some nice ideas, although maybe your pages of notes give some more details. I see an appeal to mental-type attacks (including extreme PRE) doing damage other than BDY damage, and EGO would be a good choice if you go that route. (I don't see "mystical" as a separate catagory myself; either the magic has physical or psychological impact so it doesn't require its own heading.) Since BDY and EGO are priced the same, you could easily define an EB saying it affects EGO instead of BDY to change the flavor of the power a bit. The problem is that most people don't have much if any Mental Defense, which is why BOECV is a +1 Advantage (and makes the attack STN only IIRC). If you want it to do BDY too (or EGO in this case) you need another +1 Advantage. Suddenly those adjustment powers don't look so bad... You might consider this though. If a mental attack stuns someone, or if the "BDY" rolled on the dice would cause impairment (per the impairment rules but use EGO in place of BDY and obviously no EGO is actually lost) the target might pick up a temporary Psych Lim or have to make an EGO roll to perform an action. That is going to make mental attacks potentially a lot more powerful, so be careful (this could be offset by giving everyone base level mental defense of EGO/5). My only other comment is that heroes are often supposed to be strong-willed and most players hate their characters being psychologically handicapped more than being physically handicapped. There is an appeal to someone overcoming physical adversity, while psychological adversity is often considered just weak-willed (maybe that says something about how our society views mental illness, but that is another topic). Anyway, if you are going to have mental/mystical attacks do damage to EGO be careful not to turn the heroes into cowardly, wishy-washy wimps.

Re: Nnd I very much like the idea of rolling NND and AVLD together; even now you can almost say that NND is a special case of AVLD in which the attack is completely stopped instead of just reduced. And the idea of some kind of sliding scale for the frequency of the defense is probably a good one (I have certainly had players argue over what constitutes a sufficiently common NND defense). I think at the high end you have gone a bit overboard though; a +5 Advangtage? Not to be munchkiny, but is anything worth that? Consider that to buy a 4d6 EB with a +5 Advantage I would have 120 active points. For that I could get a 24d6 EB that will average 24 BDY and 84 STN, compared to the average of 14 STN (guarenteed!). Not much of a contest there. Even a +3 Advantage is probably not worth it; I can get a 16d6 EB for the 80 active points that my 4d6 "MPA" EB would cost.

Re: Earthquake How about: Earthquake!: 20 STR Telekinesis, AoE radius, Personal Immunity, Only to simulate earthquake effects (-1½), No range (-½) (Active: 67, Real: 22) "Earthquake effects" would be defined as a grab and throw against loose objects like people and furniture, but crushing damage against objects that are well connected to the ground like buildings. This build strikes me as closer to what an earthquake actually does, except that I think that damage to buildings should probably be a lot higher given that this will knock most people down. If you are going for building damage, you might add: They all fall down!: 2d6 RKA, AoE, AP, Only vs. buildings and rigid structures on the ground (-1) No range (-½) (Active: 75, Real: 30)

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... The heroes have fallen into an underground river, and lost their light source. As they are wading toward shore in the pitch black, Gemini feels something brush against his leg. Gemini: [to Quinn, who is a notorious pickpocket] "That better not be your hand on my leg, Quinn!" GM: "It doesn't feel like a hand, more like a snake or a tentacle." Gemini: "That better not be any part of your body Quinn!" Quinn: "Hey, I'm flattered you think it might be, since I am standing waaay over here. In cold water yet."

Re: Balancing Mental Powers I have to agree with you there. The idea is for everyone to have fun. Mentalists are difficult to deal with because they tend to be either super-effective or useless, depending on whether their adversaries have brains or not. For mentalist villians it doesn't matter because they are villians and it is okay for them to be lopsided. But in campaigns I have run, the rule is that you cannot make a character that is completely castrated by a particular situation, be that the mentalist against robots, power-armor guy without his armor, or supernatural creature who is only buffed at night. That may not fit exactly with the initial character conception, but it makes the game a lot more fun because the hero doesn't alternate between unstoppably powerful (which is a bummer for other PCs) and pathetically wimpy (which is a bummer for the mentalist). I would suggest that your mentalist hero drop his mental powers a little to make him less dominating against the average foe, and use those points to round him out (buy martial arts, some backup weapon, or maybe empathic healing or something and let him buff his teammates). One other trick to "balancing" mentalists is to break up their powers so that the first 8d6 works automatically, but the next 4d6 depends on a successful telepathic probe to find the opponents mental weaknesses (say Telepathy at EGO+10; this would be a -1/2 limitation on the extra dice). If you require an actual use of Telepathy, this will really slow the mentalist down, either because he will have to alternate mental attacks with Telepathy, or he will burn through endurance if he does a Multiple Power Attack. But you can also just call it a -1/2 limitation like Requires Skill Roll, but instead of a 3d6 skill roll, use the Telepathy mechanic to determine if he is successful (ie rolled EGO+10). You should probably give the mentalist some insight into his foes Psych Lims this way, and maybe give him a bonus for fights with reoccuring opponents. Finally, one other way to keep the mentalist from dominating things is to realize that most people hate the thought of having their minds toyed with; it isn't really a Psych Lim or a Berserk, but I don't think it unreasonable to give most people a +1 or +2 to their Breakout roll depending on the circumstances. That won't stop the mentalist from controlling/confusing most people because as you noted EGOs tend to run low, but it takes the edge off a bit.

Re: TK Techniques for a BIG FIGHT??? Grabbing a hero and then using him as a shield to block or slamming him into another hero would be good of course, but if he is facing a team of heroes, I would make sure that he has some large heavy objects about that he can grab and use as an area affect attack so that he can nail multiple heroes at once. The other classic use of TK in combat is to throw a non-flying character way, way up, but that isn't an option here. But on a starship he might open up an airlock (since he has LS himself) and then use the TK to help the resulting vacuum suck the heroes into space. If that isn't an option, throwing the heroes into the transmogrification generators might work well, especially if they are stunned by being slammed in there and someone else has to pull them out before they are reduced to soup.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Sort of gives new meaning to the concept of "rock hard" doesn't it?

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... The heroes are leading a landing party into a thick jungle, and are trying to prepare for any contingency. Gemini: "Okay, everyone needs to stick close so we don't lose anybody." GM: "Well since none of you are colorblind, you don't have to worry because their red uniforms stand out pretty well against the lush green foliage." Viceroy: "You mean we have an entire landing party dressed in red uniforms? This does not bode well..." Of course the group gets separated, and later Viceroy is trying to avoid being eaten by a creature that resembles an armor-plated T Rex, which has already killed two of the red-shirted crewmembers. Kateomi shows up at the last moment and kills the monster with a rocket laucher, splattering dinosaur-gore over everything. Viceroy [dripping dino guts]: "Gee Kateomi, thanks. I think." Kateomi: "What? Aren't you glad to see me?" Viceroy: "Flowers would have been more romantic." Kateomi: "But this was more practical. Besides, nothing says 'I care' like the judicious application of high power explosives." Viceroy: "Well I certainly saw fireworks. And now I am all hot, wet, and sticky.' Kateomi: "So it was good for you too?"

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool Initially Hero won me over with the idea of building instead of rolling up a character (especially the concept of Disads), the separation of STN and BDY, and the concept of END and REC. I have become an die-hard fan because of the incredible flexibility; you have a tool-kit to build anything you want instead of a set list of powers and skills. You can play in any genre, and across genres easily. Sure there are going to be a few house rules because everyone has different tastes, but Hero lends itself to that too because the tool-kit gives you some balance when you invent new powers/effects; you don't break it when you try to fix it. Once you have experienced the Hero system, you are spoiled for anything else.

Re: Manouevre and combat bonuses In our campaigns, if you wanted to do extra damage with a fancy manuever, you used the OCV bonus provided by the surprise to offset the penalty for a placed shot. That always seems reasonable to me. However, cinematically I would agree it follows that a surprise blow does extra damage, even if the attack shouldn't be all that effective. Giving damage bonuses might encourage players to fight more creatively instead of just relying on their highest DC attack every time. On that cinematic train of thought, one might also make it easier to stun an opponent with a surprise attack, even if the damage isn't spectacular. How many times have you seen in the movies the hero being throttled by the big tough guy and the only way he can manage to escape is by whacking him with a bottle or other handy implement? In any campaign I have ever played, no one would do such a thing because a bottle simply doesn't do much damage, but yet it always seems to make the big tough guy let go in the movies. Just a thought.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Background: The heroes are being aggressively hunted by a powerful criminal organization called Xafia. An NPC named Strake, who would consider himself a businessman but is really closer to a pirate, has teamed with the heroes in the past under the conceit "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Strake has a history of hitting on one of the heroes, Kateomi, and the more she has turned him down the more determined he has become. Now Strake claims that he can get the heroes off the hook with Xafia, if Kateomi will “cooperate”. Strake: “So the choice is have a little fun with me, or be hunted down and slaughtered by Xafia. Which will it be? I need to know, and I need to know now. Tick tock, tick tock…” Kateomi: “Tick tock? Here I thought women were the ones with the biological clocks.” [GM: Strake tries to pass this off as a joke.] Strake: “Such a flirt. I am merely pointing out I can’t wait forever for you to decide, not that it should be such a difficult decision. So, what is your answer?” [someone irreverently starts singing the Jeopardy theme] Kateomi: "Okay so let me recap here. I can either doom us all to a hideous death at the hands of ruthless killers who want to make an example of us, or I can sleep with a repugnant extortionist whose biological clock not only has a theme song, but the Jeopardy theme at that. I'd say it looks like a good day to die."

Re: Non Combat Movement I freely admit that I have little knowledge of aerial combat in planes, but the key to the OCV penalty question in my mind is *relative* velocity. In a dogfight, the pilot tries to get behind his enemy and tail him so that even though they are both travelling at hundreds of miles an hour, relative to each other the difference isn't nearly so great. Likewise, divebombing was developed because it essentially allowed pilots to "aim" their bombs by diving directly toward the target so that their horizontal velocity relative to the target was minimal even if the vertical velocity was terrific. So the real question is how to you easily track relative velocity in game terms? For simple geometries it is straight forward. But now let's say LaserGirl is trying to target BulletBoy who is travelling at high speed and will pass within a few hexes of her. Is it better to attack while BulletBoy is far away so that it seems to be coming almost straight at her because the angle is so shallow, or is it better to shoot him as he passes because he is so close even though his relative velocity is incredible? BulletBoy isn't changing speed, but as he gets closer to LaserGirl his horizontal velocity changes quite a bit. (Okay, that sounded a bit more lewd than I had intended). Of course if LaserGirl has a No Range Mod attack it becomes a no-brainer. So is there an elegant solution or should this just be handwaved for the sake of easy gameplay?

Re: Non Combat Movement You offer some good solutions Sean (esp. the DCV modifiers), but rather than penalize OCV of NCM, why not just rule NonCombat Move means No Combat so you simply can't attack when moving like that (I might make an exception for a movethrough on a large stationary object). I thought the whole point of NCM was to give characters the ability to reach high speeds to travel across the city or country in a timely fashion before Megascale was introduced (and it still provides a nice transition between Combat movement and Megascale movement), so its potential use in combat seems munchkiny to me.

Re: Hero Philosophy - SPEED A SPD of 8 is a definite advantage over a SPD of 4. You are correct that the SPD 8 character dedicated a lot of points for that ability, which may be outweighed by effective point allocation for the SPD 4 character, but that really depends on how efficiently the two characters were built. In my experience, SPD provides a lot of bang for the buck. But I fully agree with your contention that low SPD leaves lots of points for other powers and skills which is generally a good thing.

Re: Pain Ray I am in total agreement with Doc and Sean about building the effect you want rather than assuming that microwave must be an EB, but if you are microwaving people, will you not eventually do physical damage by boiling the water in their skin? Of course if it never goes that far there is no point building it that way. On a related note, I think that doing STN damage is not an altogether inappropriate way to model pain. The more painful an injury the more likely the victim will pass out or go into shock. It may not be the best way to model the microwave gun, but it shouldn't be ignored. I once had an evil mentalist character who did not have inherently powerful attacks (he was basically a normal physically), but could mentally boost the pain inflicted by them so as to do more damage. Likewise, there are official builds for Killing Attacks with Increased STN Multiplier with the rationale that they inflict particularly painful injuries.

Re: Hero Philosophy - SPEED I am a big advocate of low-SPD campaigns. For heroic level it just makes sense. For superheroic level it allows agent-types to be a threat and for talented and/or well-equipped "normals" to be superheroes, which broadens the number of character types and backgrounds available. Finally, it just makes accounting easier, because you don't have as many SPDs and as many PHA per SPD to track. I would say that although the most obvious way to make a speedster is with a high SPD, there are lots of alternatives to simulate high SPD, like Autofire attacks, levels to offset Sweep manuever penalties, AoE attacks, and powers bought with "speedster tricks" sfx. The Ultimate Speedster covers the topic well. But the point is you can keep your speedster's SPD fairly low (say 5 or 6) and still have a "fast" character with the flavor you want without resorting to a 9+ SPD.

Re: Starting power level for a superhero game I would strongly suggest you err on the low side. If the characters are having trouble built on 250 points, it is easy to give them extra points with lots of experience, extra equipment, or a radiation accident or something. I have never met a player that got upset because I gave them extra points to work with. If the characters are too powerful at 350, you can't take the points away without making for some very unhappy players.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... We had a new GM who was having difficulty keeping his plot on track when the characters did things he did not expect. The classic instance was when the heroes were trying to sneak into a castle. The GM had a very specific way he thought this would go down, but the players had other ideas. They decided to create a distraction at the front gate by propelling a flaming haycart against the castle gate, and while the guards were putting out the fire they would sneak in. That did not fit into the GM's plans unfortunately... Players: "Okay, so the cart has crashed into the gate and is burning furiously. Riley uses his flight spell to get to the top of the wall and drops a rope to the others as soon as the guards leave to deal with the fire." GM: "The guards don't leave their posts. They will spot Riley the moment he reaches the top of the wall." Players: "What?! How can they ignore a flaming cart burning at the castle door?" GM: "It is outside the castle walls, so it is out of their jurisdiction." Now in our games, the phrase "Sorry, that's out of my jurisidiction" has come to mean "That is the stupidest thing I ever heard."

Re: Someone Please Explain This to Me? Whether you consider the mechanic behind Killing Attacks a chimerical construct or a useful alternative, I would say that the plethora of house rules for dealing with the STN multiplier (and I include the use of Hit Locations in that catagory) should be a pretty clear sign that the basic calculation of STN for Killing Attacks is broken. Personally I think that the BDY calculation of Killing Attacks is problematic too, but I do have players that very consciously create characters built around Killing Attacks because the players know how effective they are. This is especially problematic for higher level attacks where the Normal attack has lots of dice to average out, but the Killing Attack still only has a few. One way to balance the utility of Killing vs. Normal attacks is to only give everyone 3 dice to roll. If you have a 9d6 normal attack, you roll 3 dice and multiply by 3 instead of rolling 3 times. Now the Normal attack has nearly the same randomness of the Killing Attack. Yes, that makes Normal attack more dangerous (well except it is blocked by nonresistant defenses), but you can just adjust defenses upward slightly as necessary. That may not be the flavor you want for the Normal attack, but at least the attacks will all be on equal footing.

Re: defense against grabs / throws, and TK grabs / throws The "defense" I have always used for throw-happy heroes is Breakfall. It doesn't prevent the throw, but it potentially nullifies it. It isn't appropriate for everyone, but it keeps the villain from ending up prone, waiting for the coup de grace from the other heroes. I find it especially fitting after the heroes have used the down-to-the-ground-and-pound manuever (which is good teamwork BTW) on the minor bad guys, but then have to be more clever for the master villian.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... I would just like to note that the point of this thread is laughs, and I have gotten plenty from the mutant freak watermelons in the front of her suit. Not really appropriate for a Dark Champions-type campaign, but for a campaign that doesn't take itself too seriously, satiric jabs at comic book conventions can be great fun. Besides which if you saw a real woman walking down the street with those proportions (if that were physically possible) you would stare not with lust but with either the pity or the lurid fascination of seeing someone horribly deformed. And even if input.jack did not necessarily intend for her to be quite so ludicrously endowed, he is a darn sight better at drawing than I am, so I can't criticize (but I will laugh).

Re: Side Effects that Change or Incur Disadvantages Sean, I like the concept of your magic system; it makes a lot of logical sense, and from a storyline perspective could lend itself to some dramatic manuevers. However, I wonder how well it translated into game terms. That is to say, aging is generally such a vague concept in most games that it really doesn't impact play. Age is more of a distinctive feature than any kind of actual disadvantage generally. Logically your PC mages are going to use magic sparingly, being benevolent types of course, but when push comes to shove I have rarely seen players use restraint. I generally have to enforce some kind of immediate (and generally harsh) side effects to keep players from using their "only in case of emergency" type powers on a routine basis. On another note, about Side Effects, I have never had a player take a regular EB as a Side Effect; it is almost always a NND or a Drain so that they don't have to worry about killing themselves accidentally. Although I understand the rationale for not allowing defenses to be used against Side Effects, basing the limitation solely on the active points in the side effect is obviously skewing the value of the limitation. I would suggest doubling the Side Effect limitation value, or at least adding and addtional -½ limitation, if the damage taken is long term.

Re: Surprisingly Effective Builds? The three powers that caught me off-guard as a GM that really messed with the game balance were: A character with a supernatural PRE boost (+40 PRE cost END). I can't tell you how many combats ended before they began with that one. A character with enough regular and penalty skill levels that he could make placed shots to the head routinely, meaning he could take out almost any opponent with one shot despite the fact the active points in his attack were fairly low compared to the other players. It was supposed to be a Critical Hit kind of power, and boy was it ever. 4d6 Killing Attack. Always a problem.

Re: Focus on focus I think that the generic approach is a good starting point, but it is my experience that most players benefit mightily from examples. It gives everyone a reference point, promoting consistency as Sean pointed out, and lets people know what is reasonable. Examples also frequently spark the imagination, which is what RPGs are all about.