Ockham's Spoon

Re: Crossfire? I am not familiar with the Sucker manuever, but that sounds like what you want. If not, you might try modeling it as "grab and block" manuever, the exception being the "grab" doesn't actually restrain anybody and would be a DEX vs. DEX roll instead of STR vs. STR. If you make a good "DEX grab" then you have successfully interposed yourself between your target and someone else attacking you. Then you can "block" with the target of the DEX grab (OCV vs. OCV roll), the SFX being you duck out of the way at the last instant and the poor shmuck you set up gets hit instead of you. If you blow the block roll, then you weren't fast enough or you timed it wrong and get hit yourself. To be really good at this manuever, either have a high DEX or buy levels with it. Lots of supers have much higher DEX than the mooks this would typically be used on, so you wouldn't need too many levels to make it reasonably effective. ______________________________________________________ Drained and blue I bleed for you You think its funny But you're drowning in it too. - Alice in Chain

Re: Not-Quite-So-Deadly-As-You-Might-Suspect Blow There are several ways to model the "killing blow" ability, it just depends on what you want it to do. In most cases, when the character's attack is always a KA, and probably the same weapon at that, the easiest way to do it is buy +1d6 KA. But if you want a more flexible solution try one of these: The multipower mentioned above; nuff said. Martial Arts package (obviously) with the appropriate weapon familiarity. The character is well trained and so can do extra damage. The drawback is that you cannot more than double the damage of your weapon. Personally I think that is more realistic anyway, and should probably be applied to the Killing Blow ability too. Extra OCV (5 point levels) with the limitation Only to increase Damage Class (-½). To match the 1d6 KA from the Killing Blow ability, you need to spend 20 points (+6 levels OCV to get +3 DC) instead of 15, but you can use it with any attack, although again it can only double the DC of a given weapon. This would represent being able to strike vital areas with great accuracy. 5d6 Aid to any 1 attack power (+¼), Standard Effect +15 points. This is really expensive comparatively (62 points), but lets you more than double a weapon's DC. It also requires an action to set up, and you might want to tack on some limitations to make it less pricey. This would be something like electrically or magically charging a weapon, hypervelocity attacks, superheating the weapons, etc. 15 pt Variable Power Pool, Cosmic, only to improve attack powers (-1). Total cost here is 25 points and will not only let you boost damage beyond the doubling limit, but it can also make attacks Armor Piercing, Autofire, etc., and possibly +3 OCV if the GM is lenient. Of course if the GM isn't wild about VPPs, then you have to go with the Aid. I have played with this build as a super version of the Power Skill, and it worked pretty nicely. One of the beauties of the Hero system, so may ways to do things

Re: Healing You make an excellent point about the baseline cost and the affect that has on power frameworks. Maybe that is why they split Aid up into standard Aid and Succor. Personally I still like lumping them all together, but maybe that is just me. Of course I haven't done exhaustive analysis on it either, I might think differently if I had. __________________________________________________________ Drained and blue I bleed for you You think its funny But you're drowning in it too - Alice in Chains

Re: Healing Well you are right, but it took a lot more damage to stun the 20 CON person in the first place. My thought is that if you want to reverse the effect of the stunning, you need to do an equivalent amount of healing, which just happens to be greater in the case of the 20 CON person. If you prefer, you could say that if you heal enough STN to drop the total amount of damage below the CON of the target then it is as if their CON was never exceeded in the first place. But that will take a lot less healing to accomplish; probably only a couple d6 for most cases in my experience. Maybe that is a better way to go since it would allow tactical use of a low level Healing power that wouldn't get as much use otherwise. But it also makes it easier to make an AoE Healing that could simultaneously unstun several comrades. That could dramatically shift the outcome of a combat, especially a surprise attack (although this is a pretty specific instance and may not be worth worrying about). Okay Lucius, as I ponder while writing I think you are right, and the second approach is better. The ability to unstun is already limited by the need for timing, so requiring a large number of dice is probably unnecessary. ____________________________________________________________ Drained and blue I bleed for you You think its funny But you're drowning in it too. - Alice in Chains

Re: Detect Minds and Barriers If you want to build N-ray vision you have to define something that you can't see through, I think it only reasonable that the player do the same with an equivalent mental power. Or else make them buy Clairsentience. If you want to keep this from being abusive, let them target the person from behind a wall, but unless they have an Indirect attack they can't actually hurt the person. Unless they make a Mind Scan roll. Isn't that what Mind Scan is for after all? ________________________________________________ Drained and blue I bleed for you You think its funny But you're drowning in it too. - Alice in Chains

Re: Healing I would allow Healing to unstun someone as a freebie, but only if the amount of STN healed exceeded the target's CON; essentially just the reverse of stunning, just like Healing is the reverse of taking the STN in the first place. I am all for combining Aid and Healing into one power and then adding limitations or advantages to suit. The two powers are so close already as to be almost redundant which makes them confusing and opens up questions as to which is overpriced. I think I would build the default power like the current Succor. To have it fade instead of shut off instantly when the END stops, add a +½ advantage; but to have it fade 5pts/turn notice that you have to move it two steps down the time chart (from 1 PHA to 1 turn) so to replicate the current Aid would be a total of +1 Advantage. To create healing, you add +1 Advantage "Restored values do not fade". This would be offset somewhat by -½ limitation "only to restore lost values". (Yes I think Healing as currently written is a tad too expensive.) You also notice that with this set up you could build an Aid that would supercharge you and heal you at the same time, although the extra points will ultimately fade of course. There is no nice way to do that right now. I would also get rid of the ability to boost the max number of points. That just cries out for abuse. If you want to boost something by 30 points, you have to buy at least 5d6. If you want a gradual effect, then take that as a limitation. Finally, while I am on the soapbox, you can build Regeneration with the healing options listed above, but add 0 END, Continuous, and Persistant (did I miss any?). This will give you a somewhat cheaper Regen build than current rules because the base cost per d6 is 5 instead of 10. (Yes, I think Regen is a bit overpriced too), and it will be consistent with the other Aid/Healing type abilities. Well that's my 2 cents (with a $2 tip even). ____________________________________________________________ "Why follow me to higher ground, lost as you swear I am?" - Ed Roland

Re: Autofire Find Weakness I don't think I would allow an Autofire Find Weakness myself, but then I can't see any rationale for it. Obviously you do or you wouldn't be considering it. What SFX are you trying to build here that you would come up with this power?

Re: Incantations Usable By Other.... I agree with the -1 NCC on Capt. Generic. But Abdadama is a trickier case, because he might have team-mates that would use his summon power to the team's advantage. Sure Abdadama might not be able to summon a dragon to help them fight their foe, but who cares if one of his team-mates can do it for him? It is like the guy with powers that only work in high magnetic fields, but conveniently his buddy generates high magnetic fields. Suddenly that limitation is worth a lot less. _______________________________________________________ Drained and blue I bleed for you You think its funny But you're drowning in it too - Alice in Chains

Re: Links to high-lim Powers I think this depends on what you want your precog power to do. If you want to consciously look into the future so you can protect yourself from ambush, avoid potential pitfalls, or make a killing in the stock market, then you want Clairsentience with the Precog adder. If you want a similar effect, but unconscious or vague, then go with Danger Sense. If you want an unconscious level of precog that has the effect of giving you lightning fast reflexes, etc, then buy all the separate powers; precog is just the SFX. You should not get any link bonus for the separate powers because they aren't really "linked"; they don't go off together when you attack or anything, it is just SFX. If someone Drains your precog abilities (say a drugged dart with the effect of Drain vs All (+2) mental powers) then you lose them. I don't see this as any different from Pyroboy getting hit by Dr. McQuark's Ultra-fire extinguisher and losing all his flame powers, because that is just the SFX. The only thing you have to be careful of is when you buy CHA as part of a special effect, be sure both player and GM have an understanding of what the "base" CHA are so if you lose all your precog DEX you know what your "normal" DEX is. ________________________________________________________ Drained and blue I bleed for you You think its funny But you're drowning in it too - Alice in Chains

Re: Need Help with new power idea. When I have had players that wanted to "advance quickly", I let them build a character on 200 points (where the normal start was 250), but with a full allotment of Disads. Basically they start with 50 pts they haven't spent. Then they can use those unspent points to magnify their XPs (at some rate appropriate to the character background). I have taken this approach for a character who had a spell book that he haven't fully absorbed yet, for one that wanted a planned "radiation" accident, and for a Highlander-type character who got chunks of XP every time he killed off one of his rivals. They started out weak, rapidly caught up to the other characters, but never surpassed them. This will give you the fast advancement without being unbalanced, but it has to be built into the storyline; it is done for effect, not just to get XPs. Otherwise, as everyone else has mentioned, it is major munchkinsim. __________________________________________________ Drained and blue I bleed for you You think its funny But you're drowning in it too - Alice in Chains

Re: Help! I'm stuck in a disad rut! One of my favorite Psych Lims is "Bluntly honest". Everyone respects honesty, but the tactless comments made it fun. This is especially good when combined with a high level of the Psych Lims "Naive" or "Cultural fish out of water." Further afield was Dist. Feat. "Living Hair", a character whose waist length hair was fully prehensile (bought as Extra Limbs) but habitually waved and twitched with a mind of its own like the tail of a cat. Finally I had a Manic/Depressive character with the Dist. Feat. "Smells like Teen Spirit". All apologies.

Re: Modeling Leverage I think I would build it as a Suppress vs. STR, NND - defense is Flight, Suppress only to negate STR "leverage". Maybe throw in Range and AoE too. This sidesteps the Power Def issue. If the character can fly, then they can use that ability to generate leverage. _____________________________________________________________ Drained and blue I bleed for you You think its funny But you're drowning in it too - Alice in Chains

Re: Do PSL vs Hit Locations Unablance the Game? I like this idea a lot. I will definitely have to use this approach for hit locations in the future. Repped.

Re: Do PSL vs Hit Locations Unablance the Game? I ran a campaign with an ex-assassin character who bought PSL to reflect his ability to kill with a single blow. Since most of his weapons were small, concealable sorts, the double damage from a head shot was not too unbalancing. But... What happened was that not only was the BDY doubled, but the STN multiplier for a head shot is x5. So this character became all or nothing; either he missed entirely or he took the foe out (sometimes killing, but almost always K.O.'ed). This was very frustrating for both me and the player. My solution: get rid of PSL for hit location. If the assassin (or someone else)wants to do extra damage, buy Deadly Blow +1d6 KA with a DEX roll attached or martial arts or something. Personally I do not see much logical justification for them anyway. Why is the character more accurate doing a placed shot than just hitting in general? With the exception of a the magical vorpal blade (+8 PSL only vs. head) and its ilk, I do not see a basis for it. Well there are my well-worn two cents. For what it is worth (with inflation, probably not even two cents). ___________________________________________________________ Drained and blue I bleed for you You think its funny But you're drowning in it too - Alice in Chains

Re: Shoot First, Ask later Most players are reasonable enough to see that the gameplay is more interesting and richer if they let the villain talk first. I will even let characters do subtle actions (like PER rolls or maybe a Sleight of Hand roll) while the villain is speechifying. But if the players aren't going to listen, it only takes a few scenarios like the one Hugh described to keep them from being so trigger-happy. The one that convinced my hard-headed players to slow down was when they nearly killed the evil biochemist in his lab, only to discover that upon entering his lab they had become infected with the horrible pathogen he was building (the biochemist had already innoculated himself). Then it became a race to save the evil villain so they could find out how to cure themselves. It made for good, if not heroically selfless, drama.

Re: Getting rid of Endurance I generally concur with what has already been said here. Just tell the players if they don't like tracking END (via scraps of paper, or poker chips or whatever), then build their characters so they don't have to. I have had players across the spectrum on END; players that buy everything 0 END, players who think charges are easier to keep track of than END (why I don't know, but it made them happy), players that know pretty much how much END they use per turn and so how long they will last in combat, and I even had a player who actually liked tracking END and figuring out how much power her character had left to finish the turn. Personally I think END adds too much flavor to the game to dispense with it entirely. Downplay it if you must to keep book-keeping simple, but don't do away with it. My 2 cents.

Re: Simplifying Power Construction? Okay, I am a nerd who loves the math, so I am not totally relating here, but I do have times where I want to build a character on the fly without having to do all the accounting (that kind of slows gameplay down). Most often I just grab another character already written up for this purpose but I invariably need to add or adjust a power or two. So do this: Don't worry about the point cost. Just a quick judgement call on the utility of the power to make sure it isn't over the top, and then run with it. You can calculate the points later. If it turns out to be way more expensive than you anticipated, figure out why and adjust the power as needed (remove a superfluous Advantage, tack on a couple more Limitations, whatever). You're the GM, man! You can do anything you want! __________________________________________________________ "The fiction in her family was that she was never nice. I'd say she was very, I just did not see the price." - S. Vega

Re: Ambidexterty- too expensive? Thanks for the feedback ghost-angel. I know a number of lefties that were forced to write with their right hands by stupid people as well, resulting in poor penmanship marks until the advent of the word processor made it a moot point. The irony of course is that the properly used keyboard has no "handedness" associated with it, so we all get a taste of ambidexterity. Okay, not really, but I can dream can't I? EDIT: Oh, and thanks for your input as well Dust Raven. Anyone else out there ambidextrous? Now I am going to start to get jealous. ________________________________________________________ "Some people spread joy wherever they go. Others, whenever they go."

Re: (Fun) Character: The Named Extra I like Fred. Good concept. We had a couple "reoccuring" type characters like that. One was the man (or woman) in the red shirt (per old Star Trek episodes) that was always used to demonstrate the villain's awesome power. It was sort of a warning sign to the players, like a musical flourish in a movie, when they saw someone in a red shirt something bad was about to happen. The other was a priest named Father Hildegard. The good father always helped in minor ways up to the point in the plot where he nobly sacrificed his life so that the PCs might live. Originally his death was dramatic and tragic, but as he reoccured in other campaigns it just started to get silly.

Re: What pre-5th Edition Hero books do you still use? I use everything that I have, outdated or not. My favorites are Ninja Hero, The Ultimate Mentalist, and the Ultimate Supermage. I have also gotten a lot of mileage out of Strikeforce, the Hero Bestiary, Cyberhero, and all the Fantasy Hero stuff. Although some of the stuff might not translate directly point-wise, you can still use most of it as written. I change names and backgrounds, maybe alter a power or two, and reuse characters all the time. This is especially useful since my games tend to have a fairly high lethality, so I need new NPCs a lot. Even supplements that I did not really care for (the Zodiac Conspiracy comes to mind) have been useful for either inspiration or pieces&parts. Bottom line is that I don't regret a single Hero-product purchase (even when I got two copies of 4th Ed. Champions as gifts; just meant my players had a reference they could share without swiping mine).

Re: "Active Points" in VPPs - follow up from the Hero System Questions forum First let me say that you are fortunate to have players adept enough at running VPPs that they can make awesome characters with them; most players either fall into a rut of the same power again and again, or they spend too much time tinkering in the middle of gameplay. I would second ghost-angel's point about Active points not being the only metric to look at. I think a more comprehensive way to do it would be to cap attack powers, defense powers, movement powers, characteristics, and "other" powers separately (maybe you want to break that down in some other fashion, but you get the point). This will also allow you to define the level and lethality of play. Now when a player sets up their VPP, it doesn't matter how big it is; that just determines how many powers they can run at once. The level of those powers is set by the individual power caps. So there is two more cents. (and as an aside, I personally love running characters with VPPs)

Re: Ambidexterty- too expensive? So taking you at your word here on your ambidexterity, I have a question I have always wondered about. Since practice makes perfect, would you find that although you are capable of writing with either hand that it is easier with your right hand because that is the one you typically use? Or brushing your teeth, or putting in contact lenses or whatever? Just wondering. ______________________________________________________________ "Some people spread joy wherever they go. Others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde

Re: Trigger Clarification I haven't looked at the rulebook on this, but I thought a Trigger, even an autoreseting Trigger, could only reset once per PHA anyway. If so, there is no problem with the Teleport idea (although Dust Raven's point about movement totals was an excellent argument too). Or am I wrong about this? In any event, this kind of Trigger power I would not allow unless there was a reasonably common means to prevent it. I would have the character buy extra levels in DCV to represent the fact they were really hard to hit if that is what they were going for. (Or maybe I would have them battle on ledges and narrow bridges and stuff a lot...) Otherwise it smacks of munchkinism to me. _____________________________________________________________ "Why follow me to higher ground, lost as you swear I am?" - Ed Roland

Re: Ambidexterty- too expensive? One of the stated advantages of Ambidexterity is that if your primary hand is injured you can still function normally. How often does that happen in your games? Rarely in games I have played, so Ambidexterity loses some of its value. Ambidexterity also allows you to do things other than just attack, like Lockpicking, Sleight of Hand, etc, which could make it more useful. Some of those things would be easier with the "other" hand just due to the orientation of the task (if you have ever worked on a car and tried to change the oil filter with your off hand because you couldn't reach it easily with your good hand you know what I mean). But this kind of penalty (in my experience) is rarely if ever applied, which again robs Ambidexterity of some of its usefulness. I think that realistically that Ambidexterity is probably priced correctly, but it does not come into play as often as it probably should. It kind of falls into the catagory of skills that are appropriate for your character to have, but that don't actually have a great deal of impact on the game. And given that, I would probably allow a 5 or 6 point cost for Ambidexterity to reflect it realtive usefulness. ____________________________________________________________ "Some people spread joy wherever they go. Others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde

Re: Amnesia I have a player that loves the idea of amnesia and a mystery past, and makes such characters frequently. I have, at times, allowed a 5 point Disad for it as a Psych Lim (Compelled to discover past), with the understanding that it will have to be bought off as the past is revealed. 5 points isn't much of a Psych Lim, and it is played at the 15 point level, but having to devote the first 15 XP to buying off a Disad is too onerous for most, so we let it sit at 5. Typically, from a character building standpoint, amnesia serves two purposes in my games. First, it means the character almost inevitably has a Mystery Hunted, which makes it easy for the player initially, but they have to deal with whatever I come up with for a Hunted. Second, it allows the player to have a background that they can't actually pay for, on account of the fact they have "forgotten" some of their skills.