Ockham's Spoon

Re: House Rule: Adding body damage to a game I think Willpower has a good point about BDY damage, esp. for gritty superhero and non-superhero genres. It has always bothered me slightly that a really tough normal (8 PD) would be effectively immune to BDY damage from a normal guy with a baseball bat (I am assuming here the bat is +4d6 HTH but has a STR min that keeps the total dice at 4d6 and that a head shot can't exceed the maximum damage for the weapon). I have tried a house rule when a 6 is rolled on a normal attack, the extra BDY it does is considered Killing. That worked okay, esp. for heroic level campaigns, although in a supers game the biggest effect was that the heroes (most of whom had some resistant defenses) were more wary about smacking thugs and other normals for fear of killing them accidentally. I like the idea of the CON roll though, because it allow people to take damage from NND attacks that mechanically can't kill someone but in the real world might actually do so (like a taser gun). May not be appropriate for all games, but it could add a nice flavor to some. ________________________________________________________ Some people spread joy wherever they go. Others, whenever they go. - Oscar Wilde

Re: Alternate Initiative Rolls There are certainly merits to this approach for other reasons, but if you are looking to mix up combat order, this only works if everyone has a different SPD which may not be the case, especially in heroic level campaigns. ________________________________________________________ "The rich scare me. They can already avoid taxes." - Grim Reaper

Re: Problem with Missile Deflection So... what I see here is that DEX is better than levels in DCV, which I argue is better than Missile Deflection, so maybe extra DEX is the way to go? Okay I take your point that you should buy the power you want to represent and not just the most cost effective ability. But this is HERO, which I love for its (mostly) balanced point system, and my contention is that Missile Deflection, as written, is getting shorted. You are right that at 5 points levels in DCV can't compete with levels in Missile Deflection, but I still contend you are comparing apples and oranges unless the two function the same way. If you put an advantage on the Missile Deflection to make it Continuous, or a limitation on the DCV levels to make them require a half PHA action, then the cost differential is not so great. And still the DCV levels apply to all attacks, not just ranged ones. Thank you everyone who has defended Missile Deflection; I certainly have a more favorable view of it than when this thread started. Still, I am not entirely happy with it and am tempted to give everyone Missile Deflection vs. Thrown for free, in part to ameliorate the cost and in part because it makes logical sense that people could block ranged attacks like HTH attacks as a standard manuever. _________________________________________________________ "How do you train to catch a bullet?" - student "Very carefully." - teacher

Re: Problem with Missile Deflection Thanks for the clarification. A good point, although as Bloodstone mentioned you could always buy the DCV levels as Useable by Others, though granted you would have to pay for it.

Re: Problem with Missile Deflection Unfortunately I have 5E and not 5ER, so I am ignorant of said metarule. And I would generally agree with your assessment of relative uses of Missile Deflection, Desolid, and extra DCV. But I still think the DCV build for blocking incoming missiles is valid, especially if you are simulating a speedster type who can effectively "block" and attack in the same PHA, because that is his shtick. I am not trying to be munchkiny here, but Missile Deflection just doesn't seem to be costed properly, esp. when compared to the reasonably valid extra DCV build.

Re: Problem with Missile Deflection If you are not going for Full Missile Deflection, I can see where point-wise it could be cheaper than extra DCV. But to make it completely comparable, we would also have to either make the Missile Deflection passive (that is, pay for Continuous) or make the extra DCV active (require half PHA action - yes I know this is putting a limitation on skill levels, but as Lord L. mentioned a shield is legit which is extra DCV through a focus, so it isn't out of line). So Full Missile Deflection, Continuous Uncontrolled (+1) is 50 AP, for which you could also buy +10 DCV (although I wager no GM would allow either, but just for the sake of comparison). Now extra levels for Missile Deflection are 4 pts each, which is almost as much as the extra DCV, so Missile Deflection is never going to catch up effectiveness-wise there. But even if you only buy 10pts of Missile Deflection Continuous, that is still 20 AP which is 4 levels DCV. The DCV is going to be at least as effective still, plus it is useable against all ranged attacks. I still don't see Missile Deflection being worth it. And just to muddy the water further, regular Missile Deflection can block AoE attacks with the appropriate SFX, like a grenade. That is completely a SFX effect, there was no points paid for it, it is just logical. By the same token, why couldn't your levels in DCV defined as "I block it with my shield" be used the same way? It isn't an advantage on the DCV levels, rather it is a limitation of the SFX of the attack. Now Comic has a good point about putting Missile Deflect in Multipower, which makes it more cost effective (because even if you did allow DCV levels in the Multipower, you would still have to dedicate a slot to it which means the advantage of being passive is greatly reduced). And certainly if you are working your way to Missile Reflect or even if you just want to be able to catch the knife that was thrown at you, Missile Deflect is the way to go. Mechanically Missile Deflection is a block for ranged attacks. But everyone gets "Block" for free, why not some level of Missile Deflection? Would you make anyone who plays baseball buy Missile Deflection to be able to hit a ball with a bat or catch a ball thrown at them? If you get the first level of Missile Deflection for free, then it suddenly becomes more cost effective, esp. if the GM lets you deflect at higher levels with some kind of OCV penalty. Does that seem reasonable? ________________________________________________________ Get the new Derek Jeter cologne, the scent that says "I'm not stopping at second base!"

Re: How do you keep your dark knights from going "squish"? Depends on the exact concept for your dark knight. Comic covered most of them but I would also throw in Luck and Combat Luck. A high DCV helps too, frequently because he is combat trained enough to anticipate opponent behavior. Finally, the dark knight type is all about knowing his opponent strengths and weaknesses and using his intellect to outwit the villain. __________________________________________________________ You just can't kill him; he is like a cockroach! - Larry Drake on Darkman

Re: Problem with Missile Deflection I will grant that vs. some AoE attacks Missile Deflection would work, depending on SFX, but I have to agree with Killer Shrike that this is generally such a limited class of attacks that the advantage of Missile Deflection is hardly worth it. Hyper-Man, your example of a magic missile spell is well-taken, as that would be exactly the sort of thing Missile Deflection would work against that extra DCV wouldn't. But could you really legitimately block a giant's fist or Missile Deflect an oversized projectile like a thrown car or something? I guess that is the GM's call, but it seems unreasonable to me to block a huge object.

If I want to be able to redirect an attack back at the attacker, the Missile Reflection is obviously the way to go; there is no other clean mechanic to handle it. But if I only want to be able to block incoming attacks and I don't care where they go, Missile Deflection seems like a ridiculous power to use. For 25 points Captain America can buy Missile Deflection vs. any type of attack. Or he could buy +5 levels DCV with the SFX "I block it with my shield". The extra levels of DCV have the advantage that they are passive so no half PHA action required, they work against both ranged and HTH attacks, and they are generally more effective to boot. Consider Cap is facing an opponent who happens to have the same combat value. This means his foe hits on 11- and Cap can Missile Deflect on 11-. Or Cap could have +5 DCV and his opponent would only hit on a 6-. Clearly the high DCV "missile deflection" is superior. (Okay, if you want to get picky, limit the DCV only to ranged attacks, but it is still better). Has anyone else addressed this issue in their games? Beyond violating possible DCV limits, I don't see why the high DCV option wouldn't be the preferred choice here. Comments?

Re: What was your best plot twist One of my best plot twists was for a Fantasy Hero game: Some orcs had been troubling the local area with magic more powerful than one might expect from mere orcs, so the heroes investigate. Their encounters with various low-level undead and orcs (sometimes one in the same) seem to indicate that the orc shaman is running the show. The heroes chase the shaman into an ancient crypt and after dealing with some nasty traps and undead they find the shaman cowering behind a lich that claims to be the great Azeri (who the heroes know from previous encounters was supposedly killed by the great hero Roarnok ages ago). Or is the shaman really controlling the lich and using the magical artifacts from the crypt to enhance his power? They kill the lich only to discover that it is really the animated corpse of Roarnok who apparently had sacrificed his life in defeating the lich so many years ago. They finally manage to catch up to the slippery shaman fleeing deeper into the crypt and kill him with one clean stroke, beheading him. Then the shaman’s head slowly twists around to face the heroes and cackles “Do you think this pathetic pawn is behind the power you have witnessed? You have entered Azeri’s crypt and have thus sealed your doom!” The heroes come to discover that Roarnok merely managed to imprison Azeri, but the orc shaman freed him. Since then Azeri has been using the shaman as his puppet to explore the current state of the world before conquering it. Needless to say, the lich who was nearly unstoppable in combat and the heroes only won in the end by using their wits. ____________________________________________________________ "The rich scare me. They can already evade taxes." - Grim Reaper

Re: Killing Attack + Explosion Advantage? I have always determined how many hexes away the center of the blast is and then subtract that many damage classes from the attack. Then each person hit gets a separate roll (unless they are low-level thugs or something). So with your 3d6 RKA EX, a person standing 2 hexes away gets hit by 2d6+1 RKA. This means someone close to the blast might conceivably take less damage than someone a bit further away, but to me this just reflects the random nature of explosions. ____________________________________________________________ "Trust me, I know what I'm doing." - Sledgehammer

Re: Unproportionate Proportionately linked powers Oh, I see. Sorry, my bad. Time to get my prescription for glasses checked. _______________________________________________________ "How much would you paid now? But wait! There's more!" - Ron Popeil

Re: What is your most humous story Seriously? I thought it was one of those icons of American "culture" that everyone knew about. Amway used to combine the least savory qualities of door-to-door salesmen and pyramid schemes. When I was a kid they had a reputation for being pretty aggressive, kind of the commercial equivalent of the Jehovah's Witnesses (am I showing my age here?). But with laws against con games and regulations against solicitation, Amway has become either more respectable or more insidious depending on your take. They sell a huge variety of products using joe average as salesmen pitching to anyone who will listen. They get some commission on anything they sell, but the real way to make money in Amway is to sign up other salesmen. Legally it is legit, but some would say it is predatory. __________________________________________________________ "How much would you pay now? But wait! There's more!" - Ron Popeil

Re: What is your most humous story The characters had barely defeated a lich in a desert tomb, nearly been buried alive, and came staggering out of the wastelands to an oasis looking like death warmed over. There was a small group of nomads at the oasis who were surprised and wary at the characters' approach. Nomad Leader: "What manner of being are you coming from the Cursed Desert?" Jack the Wizard: "We're Amway salesmen!" It took ten minutes for everyone to stop laughing.

Re: Unproportionate Proportionately linked powers The quick and easy way is for the GM to rule that you need to have nice dice ratios to keep the math easy and the game rolling along. But to be exact, just take the ratio you need and round. For your example, if I use 11d6 of my 13d6 EB, then I use (7x11/13)d6 of Flash, so about 6d6 of Flash. You can use a half die at GM's discretion. As for your second example, how can you have 9 points of Growth? And what would be the SFX of Growth linked to Leaping? _____________________________________________________________ The rich scare me. They can already evade taxes. - Grim Reaper

Re: Attacks OK Defenses No Way? I thought the aversion to the defensive MP came about from players trying to put exotic defenses in it (okay, maybe only legal with GM permission nowadays, but years ago things were a bit looser). So if you had a character with even a small MP (say 15pt pool) with Lack of Weakness, Flash, Power, and Mental Defense in it, maybe along with small PD/ED Force Field, then you could render yourself highly resistant if not immune to lots of unusual attacks and NNDs for a paltry number of points. Of course you won't find that now, but the GM still has to be careful of VPPs that try to do the same thing. ___________________________________________________________ Rich people scare me. They can already evade taxes. - Grim Reaper

Re: Testimonials: Perfect Pitch We had a sonic-based character who had Perfect Pitch, which didn't affect anything she did directly. However many of her abilities had Req. Skill Roll, and we let her PS: Musician be a complementary skill roll for it. So the Perfect Pitch gave her a slight edge there. We also had a bard-type character with Perfect Pitch. He could create audial illusions (Images vs Hearing), and successfully argued that because he had Perfect Pitch, he should be able to tell when his illusions were just right, effectively making him better at it than if he didn't have Perfect Pitch. So we let him have an additional -1 PER to the modifier for his sound illusions. Ironically it cost him more to buy that -1 PER as Perfect Pitch than it would have if it were part of the rest of his spell, but then the Perfect Pitch made him a better bard too. In any event, the impact was small but it made the player happy.

Re: Make everyone fight at your level... a heroic fighter in a supers world.

Re: Make everyone fight at your level... a heroic fighter in a supers world. To come at this from a completely different angle, if the ultimate goal here is for this guy to fight normals on equal terms and then superheroes on equal terms, why not make him a decent kung fu master (but still basically a normal), and then give him some ability like "Ch'i Focusing" or somesuch that would be bought as Xd6 Aid to All Physical characteristics, but it is something that is so taxing he can only do it a few times a day (give it charges or its own END Reserve, or a Burnout roll). That way he will only use his boosting ability when he absolutely has to, so when he faces normals, he will fight as a normal, but against supers he has an ace in the hole. Of course the Aid effectively makes him superhuman (albeit temporary), so if that is out of concept, I would suggest buying him a Find Weakness with a high roll, because that will help him hurt supers, but will make little difference when fighting already low defense normals. Also get him something like Blow Slipping: +15 PD/ED Armor, only if able to dodge (-½), All attacks treated as Penetrating (-½); this means anyone can hurt him, but he has better protection against high damage attacks. ___________________________________________________________ The rich scare me. They can already avoid taxes - Grim Reaper

Re: Regrettable Disads

Re: Look out! It's Conservation of Energy Man! From your description, it sounds like the transformation of energy is instantaneous so that Energy Transducer man essentially gets two game effects for each action he performs. This would require lots of Triggers or linking with some if not all of his powers. Depending on how flexible you wanted to make him, that could get really pricey. You might consider that he has to take a moment to convert the energy or store it. That would allow you to do a Dispel or Transfer or what have you on one PHA, and then release it as a separate attack on another. You could give him an END Reserve to represent his stored energy, and only give it REC when he siphons the energy off of something else. This approach might make him more manageable from a character building standpoint, and less potentially abusive in combat. This approach might also take the soul out of the character you envisioned, so take it for what it is worth. _________________________________________________________ "Dancing screaming itching squealing fevered-feeling hot hot hot!!!" - The Cure

Re: IR Perception Question Let me first ask this: does IR vision get a bonus for a normal sized person because of their heat signature under normally lit conditions? No. So should you get a bonus on a shrunken person under normally lit conditions? No. Now if you are in the dark, your normal vision doesn't work, but your IR vision allows you to function "normally". But do you get an extra bonus for seeing in the dark? No. What you really need to ask are what are the other modifiers. For normal vision, if you have a high contrast situation (white object against a black background) you might get a bonus. Similarly for IR vision if you might get a bonus for high contrast, a "hot" object against a "cold" background. In this case it is up to the GM to decide if the circumstances merit a PER bonus (or penalty) or not. On a related topic, I have often given characters +1 to their PER roll for each enhanced sense they have that applies. The reasoning here is that you are more likely to have at least one sense that has a favorable high contrast the more senses you have. That puts kind of a mechanic to it without me having to think what the scene might look like for any given sense, which is hard enough to get my mind around when we aren't in the middle of combat. _______________________________________________________ "Dancing screaming itching squealing fevered Feeling hot hot hot!!!" - The Cure

Re: Regrettable Disads Had player once take Susc. 3d6 STN to Visual Flash attacks and Vuln x2 STN to Light attacks. Which meant he was really taking 6d6 STN from Flash attacks. He got rid of the Susc. pretty quickly. Had another player playing an Iceman type. He bought Vuln x2 STN to heat attacks, but also put the limitation on his ice armor "Not vs. heat attacks". Needless to say even low-level agents with a flamethrower could take him out in one shot. Thank goodness his Vuln was only vs. STN and not BDY. _____________________________________________________ Oh no! Bad dive! She missed the pool. That will affect her score. - Crow

Re: Standard vs. Dramatic scenes (Torg-inspired) I like the card flipping idea from the standpoint that it keeps little combat handicaps like a bonus hit from feeling arbitrary, because players hate nothing more than an arbitrary GM. When I want to put the heroes at an advantage or disadvantage for the sake of drama, I usually pick a combat setting where one of the combatants has substantial benefit or handicap. Like setting the fight on the scaffolding on a high rise where one of the combatants can fly but the other can't, or giving a brick plenty of large objects on the battlefield to throw at opponents. I might also bring other circumstances into play, like the hero was badly injured in the last combat or is getting over the flu or something. _______________________________________________________ "Why follow me to higher ground, lost as you swear I am?" - Ed Roland

Re: Theory Discussion: Defense Alternative Well logically you are right, the convict can get out given enough time and sufficiently unobservant guards, though admittedly that is not a very dramatic way to escape without a lot of time compression. If a variable defense scheme works for you, go for it. I think in most cases though you could just use GM fiat to accomplish the same thing, because it won't really come up that much. This is a good time to encourage players to be creative and maybe use some of those esoteric knowledge skills. For instance Dr. Metallurgy's player asks if he can use his knowledge about metals to find a weak spot in his cell. He doesn't have Find Weakness, but the GM might rule that a PER roll and a KS: Metals allow him to notice that one of the weld joints holding his cell together was not heated sufficiently and is brittle enough that the DEF is a point or two lower than the rest of the cell. Just enough for Dr. Metallurgy to damage it and break out. Or the GM might say "You realize that the cell is superbly constructed and your chances of physically breaking out are nil" because the plot requires Dr. Metallurgy to be rescued later. The gameplay is potentially improved without additional rules. This of course relies on a flexible GM and creative player, so the argument for having a standard rule on it is not without merit.