Ockham's Spoon

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.

Re: Recharging Things? I have modelled this power before by figuring what the normal END cost is for the item (in this case 6 END for a 4d6 RKA) and have it recharge at that rate with a Healing power with a custom advantage, like so 3d6 Healing vs. END, Can heal Charges of appropriate SFX (+¼), END per Charge = (Active Cost of Power being recharged/10), Act 14-, Side Effect: 2d6 RKA Explosion, centered on equipment being recharged. Active: 37, Real: 18 I did this in a heroic level campaign, where equipment being recharged was already "free" so there was no problem with someone saving points where they should not have. Besides which, when it failed to work (hey, it is tricky recharging a hydrogen fuel cell without proper connectors) the equipment was effectively destroyed and it stung a bit (or a lot), so it was only a last resort sort of thing anyway. LazerBlast might not be too eager to get a recharge if he knows his gun might be melted and his eyebrows burned off if it didn't go quite right. _______________________________________________________________ "Some people spread joy wherever they go. Others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde

Re: Undetectable Firearms Invisible Power Effects would have been my first thought too, but bigdamnhero does make a valid point that it really affects the use of the weapon not the focus of the gun itself. So you could build it with Images or Invisibility only vs the gun, but I think bigdamnhero is right (again) about the negative PER levels. You might also buy it as a bonus to a Concealment roll, only vs weapon detectors, but that is essentially the same thing. Well, no not quite I guess... Enough babbling. Just read bigdamnhero's post and forget I signed on. __________________________________________________________ "Some people spread joy whervever they go. Others whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde

Re: Practical Costuming (not quite a WWYCD) Now this is something I have always wondered about: how is a burka a practical garment? I realize you do not want the sun beating directly down upon you, but being enveloped in all that black cloth has got to be stifling. What am I missing here?

Re: Practical Costuming (not quite a WWYCD) Nice pics freakboy; I especially like the viceral artistry of the second.

Re: Looking for help - stealth suit powers? Just because you have the points doesn't mean they have to go into the suit. In fact, the character might be more balanced if you spent them elsewhere. How about some Martial Arts (he takes Tae Kwon Do as a hobby or something) or an Overall level or two? If you do put them in the suit, some other considerations are: Screening Circuitry: Mental Def (I guess this is a stretch if he doesn't have a helmet) Stim-Booster: Aid to STN, with charges Pain Inhibitor: Extra PD/ED, only vs. STN, with continuing charges Chameleon Field: Images only to blend into surroundings, probably vs Sight, Hearing, & Radar

Re: Practical Costuming (not quite a WWYCD) Costumes have always been kind of a sticking point for me, and when I GM I let my players handwave the outfit because it fits the genre, but when I make my own characters, I go out of my way to make the suit at least remotely practical. Consequently my characters almost always have one or more of the following: LS: Immune to Temperature - so they don't roast wearing their costume under street clothes or freeze in the winter when wearing that skimpy outfit Instant Change: usually to "fire form" or something similar, but sometimes in the broader use to be able to make the costume suitable to the environment. SFX or Transform that allows easy repair of costume. Shapeshifting powers (extensive or limited) or Multiform so no costume is needed. Illusions or holograms programmed to "create" a costume or at least obscure the character's identity. Public or Only in Hero ID No costume (or just a mask or something that could be carried in a pocket), and by this I mean street clothes or an alien body-type that does not really need clothes, not someone with the Psych Lim: Exhibitionist ____________________________________________________ "Joel, why is the heroine wearing a hubcab?" - Crow from "Cave Dwellers"

Re: How should a Super-Power Suppression Field affect characteristics? Well, heck, if this is just a plot device, do whatever you want. Put everyone at all base 10 CHA. Or 20 CHA. Or 5 CHA. Or not. Now the question is, what is it you want your players to accomplish once they are enfeebled? What abilities do they need to retain to escape their predicament? Are they going to need a modicum of combat prowess to beat off some low-level thugs, or will this be entirely a mental exercise? Instead of calling it a super-power draining ray, call it a cosmic crippling ray and strip them of whatever powers you want/need to get rid of and leave them with the rest of their abilities so they don't feel completely emasculated. _______________________________________________________ The only two infinite things are the universe and stupidity. And I am not altogether certain about the universe. - Albert Einstien

Re: How to block the "unblockable" punch? An excellent discussion, again demonstrating how many ways there are to do things in HERO. And perhaps how careful you have to be defining things My kneejerk response to this was that due to the SFX the attack is blockable; if the player did not take a -¼ limitation for it, they should have. But I also think that it should not be as easy to block as a normal attack; there is a +½ Advantage on it after all. For the sake of computing the effective OCV for purposes of blocking, figure out how many active points were spent adding the advantage, and convert them to 5 point HTH attack levels (5 point levels instead of 3 point because powers with built in levels are not allow to have them cheaper than 5 pointers, IIRC). So, for an 8d6 AoE 1 Hex attack, that is 60 active points total, 20 of which go to the cost of the advantage, which gives you +4 OCV for the purposes of an OCV vs. OCV block roll. Fair enough? ________________________________________________________ "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: How should a Super-Power Suppression Field affect characteristics? Regardless of what constitutes superhuman or normal, the real issue here as I see it is how was the Drain/Suppression defined? If a player came to me with a "superpower" draining ray, I would make him tell me how it was supposed to work, because that is way too vague. If the Drain is a time constriction field that slows the reflexes, then both SuperSpeedGuy and DarkKnightGadgetGuy are affected. If the Drain siphons off molecular vibration energy, then SuperSpeedGuy is going to get slammed hard, but DarkKnightGadgetGuy is unaffected. As for how badly SuperSpeedGuy will be affected (that is, will he drop to 20 DEX or 10 DEX), that depends on how the character of SuperSpeedGuy is defined. Was he a highly trained athlete who was given super powers by a dying alien or was he a bookworm geek who was subjected to a radiation accident? The background will give you a reasonable idea of how much DEX he is going to lose. ____________________________________________________________ "Trumpy, you can do magic things!" "Its called evil kid." - MST does "Pod People"