Ockham's Spoon

Re: Freezing the Time One of the Fantasy Hero supplements had a Time Stop spell that worked well; it allowed the mage to freeze his opponent so he could leave or do whatever, but not actually inflict damage on his foe (because any attack entering the area of frozen time would also freeze before it hit) so it wasn't abusive. It was built like this: Extra Dimensional Movement, through time, 12 seconds into the future, 400 kg, Usable On Others, Usable at Range, One Hex AE, Continuous, Uncontrolled, ½ END, (and then a bunch of limitations), Active cost 127 pts. Hope that helps. _________________________________________________________ "Rich people scare me. They can already evade taxes." - Grim Reaper

Re: Target dependent effect Unless you have a class of target that is totally unaffected by the attack (which would be a separate limitation), I think I would apply a -¼ limitation to the Multipower pool "Active slot is target dependent". Because it is a limitation not to be able to select which slot you use, but if you always have an attack it isn't much of a limitation. This way the -¼ limitation covers the cost of buying the slots (instead of a straight EB or RKA or whatever). Okay the points don't come out quite evenly between the Multipower and a straight attack, but the idea here is to create a reasonable special effect, and this would just about balance it out, IMHO. ________________________________________________________ "Rich people scare me. They can already evade taxes." - Grim Reaper

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet This one is inspired by Tim Powers novel "Declare" (and to a lesser extent Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum"), and ever since I read it I have wanted to run this campaign. Basically an espionage-type of campaign in which the supernatural exists, although it is largely hidden from the masses. However, various agencies have special, ultra-secret groups that deal with the supernatural threats and other agencies attempts to control the same. Characters would be your basic spy, but probably with some mentalist or occult powers. Characters would have to figure out who are their allies, who are their enemies, and who are just crackpots who have no real idea of what is going on. Most of the time would be spent on various missions, but the overarcing storyline would be to find out who is really pulling the strings and why, and ultimately where the characters loyalties really lie. ___________________________________________________________ "Rich people scare me. They can already evade taxes." - Grim Reaper

Re: "Mostly Harmless" powers My favorites for low-level powers are enhanced senses like parabolic hearing, Radio hearing, and No Conscious Control Telepathy. This allows NPCs with no crime-fighting abilities to "overhear" evil schemes, making it an easy plot hook when they have to contact the heroes for help. If they are a DNPC this is almost too easy; if they are adversarial with the heroes for some reason but suddenly need protection (now that they are a "witness") or only give the heroes partial details for their own reasons you can get some fun roleplaying out of this. On a side note, would anyone else like to see a supplement with low-level paranormals in it? I have always been slightly bothered by the idea that the majority of mutant powers seem to be tailored to crimefighting, with comparitively few minor or disadvantageous ones. To date in my campaigns this has been explained either by a major mutant creation incident or handwaving (yeah they are there, they just lay low), but I think there is a lot of possibility there. Similarly for low-level mages or technical geniuses or whatever. ________________________________________________________ "The rich scare me. They can already evade taxes." - Grim Reaper

Re: Limitation Boondoggles? The values for the limitations, especially circumstantial ones, really are dependent on the GM to justify their value. But from a character building standpoint, limitations are not only a way to help balance powers, but they should help define powers. When a player comes up with a limitation on a power, I don't want it there just because it saves a few points, it should be there to represent the nature of the power. When MagnetMan puts a limitation on his telekinesis, only vs metal, that helps define the power. When MunchkinMan buys an EB only vs metal because it so happens his hunted controls armies of robots, that is working the system. And as a GM I am inclined to give bigger values to limitations that define the power, especially if the power isn't going to be unbalancing in to course of the game (or at least as far as my myopic GM vision can tell). I am not much for activation rolls because I find too many activation rolls slows down gameplay. I generally find it easier and more dramatic for the GM to decide when an activation roll fails. In some cases I find the activation roll limitation a useful guideline for a power that always works except when it suits the plot for it not to (the primary example of this is when I have a group of dimension travellers whose EDM always works except when I need them to be trapped in some peculiar dimension and find another way out). Of course this treatment of activation rolls makes them again dependent on the GM instead of the more pure randomized variety, but if it makes for better gameplay, who cares? ____________________________________________________________ "The rich scare me. They can already evade taxes." - Grim Reaper

Re: When Aid Cost Went Up..... When I played 4e rules, I frequently had to rein in over-ambitious use of the Aid, both from a boosting-a-mediocre-character-into-a-melee-monster standpoint and a support-character-constantly-restoring-fallen-comrades standpoint. When 5e came out, it was generally agreed that Aid had been better priced. Now it is used less, but not infrequently (although Succor definitely is used more than a regular Aid). The bigger complaint in my group was the separation of Aid from Healing, which seemed unnecessary with the appropriate limitations on an Aid, and stymied some previous power constructs (the one that comes immediately to mind was a Fantasy Hero spell "Life Tap" which allowed a Druid to draw life force from the surrounding ecosystem to boost BDY, END, & STN to keep him from going down in the first place, but also to quickly restore him or his comrades if injured). ___________________________________________________________ "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: An attack without a predictable defence I agree with Sean that UAA is important for creating certain effects, and certainly one of the balancing features of the Hero System is that for every attack there is a defense. Rather than disallow UAA in general, the GM might consider requiring a reasonable way to avoid or cancel its effects, defined when the power is purchased, in a similar fashion to defining a defense for an NND or a class of attacks that will affect a desolid character. I don't think this is the elegant set of defenses that Sean was going for, but it would at least prevent abuse without trashing UAA entirely. _____________________________________________________________ "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: Stacking force walls Not that I have thought this out thoroughly, but perhaps the problem with stackable forcewalls (and TKs from another thread) is really how constant powers are handled. Force Field is a constant power, but I wouldn't allow characters to stack those, why allow stackable Force Walls? I don't think I am thrilled with the idea of multiple Suppress powers by one character either; sure it may be self-limiting from an END and PHA standpoint, but I think it tends to invite abuse, or at least constructs that are cumbersome and difficult to analyze as to the potential effect. I think if the player wants multiple Forcewalls I would allow them to separate a single forcewall into two weaker ones (you can have one 10/10 wall or two 5/5 walls or whatever). A similar construct could be done for other constant powers. This especially makes sense (to me) if you are using a Multipower; your Forcewall slot is already in use, you couldn't then switch to an Energy Blast without dropping the Forcewall, why should you be able to set up another Forcewall? Granted this would change the mechanics of constant powers, but I think it would make them easier to handle. So what do you think, is the problem Force Wall or just how constant powers are handled? ______________________________________________________________ "Nobody must know my name, for nobody would understand, and you kill what you fear, and you fear what you don't understand." - The Guide Vocal from The Duke's Travels

Re: TK Pondering I have had players abuse TK like this before, being able to pick up innumerable objects with successive uses (since the TK in question happened to be at 0 END; I didn't catch it until it was already in play). So for the sake of simplicity as well as to keep the power from being abused, my house rule is you have 15 STR TK, you can pick up 200 kg worth of stuff, either in a single object or ten 20 kg objects or whatever. The players cried, "Hey it is a constant power!" but let's face it, TK is different from other powers in a lot of respects (e.g. being inherently indirect), so this is just one more special rule about it, and a simplifying one at that. Just my 2 cents. _____________________________________________________________ "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: What's in a Name? This is a great thread! My contribution for Dreamweaver: Background: Selene Tejido originally thought that she might have a psychic gift, that her dreams predicted what was to come. As she concentrated more on her dreams, she found that universal childhood fantasy was reality for her; her dreams were coming true. She began to relish sleep, and her dream-self became a more active participant in her night-time visions. Although timid by day, her dream-self could do anything and was fearless, an alter-ego that accomplished her deepest, and ultimately her darkest desires. The alter-ego became more independent, and even took created a name for itself, Dreamweaver. When Dreamweaver killed her sister's abusive husband, Selene was a little disturbed, but the man had been beating her sister for years and deserved what he got. But after a co-worker she was merely irritated with turned up murdered, Selene got scared. The police had no clues, but Selene knew that she had lost control of her alter-ego. She began to have nightmares about Dreamweaver, and Dreamweaver made them come true. Now Selene is a nervous wreck, doing everything she can to keep from sleeping, from drinking coffee to taking illegal drugs. But she can't stay awake all the time, and when she finally succumbs to sleep, Dreamweaver will be waiting. Powers: Selene really is a psychic with some low-level psionic powers. But her mind has been co-opted by an atavistic spirit that is driven more by emotion than reason. Initially it gave Selene power in her dreams and she gave it direction, but now it is becoming more independent. It feeds off of emotions, especially strong emotions like fear, and Selene's own fear only powers it more. Still, it can only take control when she sleeps, and her exhausted state has hampered its forays into the night. Dreamweaver is a desolid version of Selene (an Astral Form in game terms), affected by mental powers and magic, with powerful Mental Illusion abilities. As its power has increased, Dreamweaver has also developed some telekinetic abilities that directly affect the real world. Quote: "This is the nightmare from which you will not awake." Okay, for the next character try: December ____________________________________________________________ "Why follow me to higher ground, lost as you swear I am?" - Ed Roland

Re: Ego Attack vs. AVLD Good discussion. In my experience, BOECV is not typically abused, so the +1 is probably reasonable despite the extra benefits it has over NND. This is perhaps in part because powers you would most likely apply it to, Drains and Transfers, aren't ranged and already have a comparatively high cost per d6. (The potential exception is Entangle BOECV, although to properly simulate that you need to tack on Transparent and Works vs. EGO not STR, so the advantage load is even higher and it shouldn't get out of hand if the GM is paying attention). On the other hand, I think NND and AVLD should maybe be rolled into one +1 advantage. NND is frustratingly all-or-nothing (players always feel like they have "wasted a shot" when they try to take out a foe who they do not realize is immune, this when they are trying to be heroic and just stun the guy) so AVLD is nice to let a few points through even if the appropriate defenses blunt the STN damage. But AVLD is expensive enough that you can't get a lot of dice and so it frequently seems ineffectual. Consider a character who could attack with a 3d6+1 Killing Attack or a 4d6 AVLD. Most players I have dealt with are going to play the STN lotto instead of the 14 STN average the AVLD will provide (okay maybe more of a problem with the Killing attack, but I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times my players have taken AVLD, and they are frequently disappointed with it). Okay, I am running stream-of-consciousness, of course you would still need NND to represent cases where something like Life Support was the appropriate defense; go reread Dr. Anomaly's post for a well composed opinion. ____________________________________________________________ "Why follow me to higher ground, lost as you swear I am?" - Ed Roland

Re: How do you plot out your Champions Campaign? You offer some good suggestions, especially in reintroducing an old enemy; in campaigns I have run they have a tendency to die (by either the players' hand or mine), which solves the resolution problem but leaves the character without a hunted. Consequently my players swap out disads on a semi-regular basis (hunteds and DNPCs mostly), which on the one hand helps keep the characters fresh, but on the other hand seems to cheapen the disads. Especially since new "hunteds" are, to paraphrase the rulebook, an occupational hazard. Does this argue for just a generic hunted that changes over time (kind of like the generic girlfriend DNPC, which always struck me as a rather diluted disad) or is there a better way to handle it? _____________________________________________________________ "Why follow me to higher ground, lost as you swear I am?" - Ed Roland

Re: How do you plot out your Champions Campaign? Well I will certainly agree that personalized plotlines are the best, but for me they are frequently the hardest to pull off, especially over the long haul. How many times and ways can Dr. Death try to slay his archenemy Captain Justice before he becomes comically incompetent? How often can his DNPC Peggy Sue be threatened or be suspcious of his late night activities before it becomes stale? I think of this as the "Moonlighting" problem (anyone remember that Bruce Willis/Cybil Shepard vehicle?) where you can keep the tension going for only so long before it becomes stupidly repetative, but once you resolve the issue the tension is gone and interest fades. I guess this is kind of off on a tangent from the original thread topic, but does anyone have any pointers on how to avoid or overcome this? _____________________________________________________________ "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate'', William of Ockham's famous Razor, which translates as "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily'' or KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). William didn't always follow his own advice.

Re: How do you plot out your Champions Campaign? Your summary is well thought out and would make a good guideline for beginning GMs (and a reminder for others like myself). One aspect of planning that I find useful for my campaigns is to develop a few (or several given time) organizations or groups with which the heroes will interact, to act as foils for the heroes. How will the heroes respond to a group bent on vigilante justice (especially if they are targeting a known nasty)? Or a holier-than-thou bunch that follows the law (or some religious text) to the letter? Will they cooperate with a nominally good bunch that feels the end justifies the means regardless of the laws that may be broken? Then there are darker, but not quite black folks like a group of bigots that will kill mutants if given the chance, but only ones wanted by the law, or a ambitious sorceror that will help the heroes defeat a supernatural menace but only if he gets something out of it. Once I have a number of groups laid out, I go through each in turn for each plotline, and decide first if they are likely to be involved and if so, how they will react to the plotline and to the other groups involved. This helps keep the world from becoming two-dimensional and forces the players to really think about how their characters are going to deal with moral shades of gray. It also can make it migraine-inducing complicated for the simple-minded (like myself), so the last rule is that if a plot is getting too complicated, pull a group or two out until it becomes managable again. _________________________________________________________ "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate'', William of Ockham's famous Razor, which translates as "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily'' or KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). William didn't always follow his own advice.

Re: Post padding? Pardon my ignorance, I am new to the board, but what exactly would the purpose of post padding be? And while I am being ignorant here, would someone please explain the meaning of "I owe rep to [name]" and why I should care (beyond a sense of politeness)? How does one give "rep" and why would one want to accumulate it? ____________________________________________________________ There are only two infinite things; the universe and human stupidity. And I am not completely sure about the universe. - Albert Einstein

Re: Endurance question. It depends if you want END to be an issue. For Fantasy Hero games, I use 1/5, because I want characters to get tired more quickly. But for Champions I like the 1/10 cost, because superheroes are above mere mortals and don't get winded easily. If they have a power that is supposed to exhaust them, just put the x3 END limitation on it. If I were introducing new players to the Hero system though, I would definitely go with 1/10 so they don't have to worry about END so much, and you can mostly ignore it until they get a handle on things. __________________________________________________________ "Trust me, I know what I'm doing." - Sledgehammer

Re: Overall Levels are they too good or not good enough?

Re: Overall Levels are they too good or not good enough? I can see the rationale for a 12pt Overall level cost, but I think I would stick with the 10pt for the simple reason that it encourages players to use them. And that is something I want because it means the players aren't spending points for straight combat levels, which I generally find more problematic. Players buying Overall levels do so because usually because they have lots of skills, and I in my experience that usually means a more balanced character instead of a combat machine. On a related note, I kind of consider Overall levels the cost savings for a skill-based character that another character might get from an Power Framework. Most skill-based characters I have seen have trouble keeping up with characters whose points are all in powers, so cutting them a break with Overall levels seems fair. This is especially so when the player has a good concept for those Overall levels. Some of my favorites have been: - A psychic with Overall levels to reflect intuition - An android with computer precision applied to any ability it has - A soceror with an inherent luck charm - A time manipulator who uses Overall levels to "move up the time chart" when performing an action just my 2 cents. __________________________________________________________ "Trust me, I know what I am doing." - Sledgehammer

Re: combat luck Yes, but Combat Luck with the limitation that it lets the first point through is cheaper to purchase and easier to use.

Re: Fantasy Adventures Or Why are we always underground...again On the contrary, I like dungeons. In part because I am a weak GM, and that linear plot line makes my life easier. But in part because I find dungeons have a dark, foreboding ambiance to them which can make a nice venue, and because they lend themselves to puzzles (ala Zork and other old Infocom games; I just dated myself didn’t I?) which I like to include. That said, I don’t do dungeon crawls; that is what video games are for in my mind. Since logically dungeons are problematic (although remember we are talking about worlds with elves and magic and such), I have a few conventions to make them more plausible and palatable. First, how did the dungeon get there? Well magic is one easy solution. In that I include magical creatures that may have left large burrows behind (“hey Merlin, what happened to all the giant ants that built these tunnels anyway?” “Uh, you don’t want to know...”). I also have a lot of natural subterranean tunnels that only required modest work to make them suitable for some other purpose. Ancient emperors (especially psychotic ones) with vast amounts of gold and slaves could accomplish some pretty amazing projects (consider the Pyramids). Large city sewer systems also can be used with slight modification. Finally, if the dungeon is small to begin with you don’t need so much work to complete it. Which leads me to my second point. Dungeons are generally small. Every room in a dungeon should have a purpose, both for the people/creatures who built them and from a role-playing standpoint. Also consider that not much is really going to live 24/7 in a dungeon, so you don’t need a lot a space for living quarters, larders, dining halls, or maternity wards. Which brings me to my last point. Dungeons shouldn’t be populated by much; there just isn’t enough of a biosphere down there to support a lot. Guardians are mostly going to be magically animated; undead and golems and such. Anything else is probably going to be some opportunistic creature that just uses the dungeon for its lair when it isn’t out terrorizing the countryside. You say you don’t like dungeons; maybe you should give them a try J I do not like them here or there, I do not like them anywhere, I do not like them Sam-I-am, I do not like green eggs and ham.

Re: Campaign idea! The amnesia plotline, cliche though it may be, is great for roleplaying, and it sounds like you have some good plot points to explore. I have run a similar idea, but with a pre-existing campaign where suddenly all the characters awoke in the middle of a wasteland with no idea how they got there or how much time had passed since their last memory. The unraveling of the mystery was a lot of fun. A couple of points you might want to consider. First, most characters derive their personalities from their backgrounds, so you might want to let them have something they remember in order to justify their Psych Lims (although it could be fun to discover why a character has a particular Psych Lim). Second, mystery plots like this require a lot a pacing control on the part of the GM; if the information comes out too fast there is little mystery, too slow and players get frustrated. In the campaign I ran, my pacing crutch was a psychotic fairy that was hounding the players and would taunt them with riddles. Whenever they got stuck, the fairy would show up and throw another riddle at them to give them some direction. ____________________________________________________________ "Nobody must know my name, for nobody would understand, and you kill what you fear, and you fear what you don't understand." the Guide Vocal from The Duke's Travels

Re: Psionic/Mental Combat I like astral plane mental combat concept but have never had enough interest in mentalists among players to establish such ground rules. To give the mentalists more flavor in a physical-combat dominated setting, I have built mental powers like: EGO Attack, Armor Piercing, AP doesn't activate unless a Telepathy roll is made at EGO+10, the special effect being the mentalist has found a chink in the mental defense by exploiting a psychological weakness or Drain vs. EGO, BOECV, Ranged, vs. Mental Defense instead of Power DEF, must make Mental Illusions roll at EGO+10, the special effect being the target is mentally distracted (akin to a DEX Drain by making someone off-balance) and others. The mentalist doesn't actually have to have an active Telepathy or Mental Illusions slot in his multipower (though obviously he must have the power); it is just a variation on Requires Skill Roll. This gives the powers a little more flavor and makes the mentalist work harder against another mentalist than against the average foe (who needs AP EGO attack against someone with no mental defense?) Powers built this way also give mentalists more utility against their kind; in my experience mentalists are nearly immune to each other because mental defense is so cheap and their EGOs are so high. ____________________________________________________________ "Nobody must know my name, for nobody would understand, and you kill what you fear, and you fear what you don't understand." the Guide Vocal from The Duke's Travels

Re: Long term endurance I like the idea of quantifying the LTE rules, but more as a frame of reference, because I find that keeping track of things like that slows gameplay down for someone with limited mental capacity like myself. Generally I just tell the players "Okay you have been marching all day through the swamp when the orcs attack, so you are all tired and down by half your normal END" or somesuch. Pragmatically this usually works, but certainly having a rule for it to give the GM some kind of guideline is a good idea. ______________________________________________________________ "Nobody must know my name, for nobody would understand, and you kill what you fear, and you fear what you don't understand." the Guide Vocal from the Duke's Travels

Re: But I want to play Champions I have been gaming for 20 years now, and as GM for 95% of that, mostly because no one else wanted to do it. I would love to be a player more often, but I would rather GM than not play at all. So my not entirely satisfactory solution to this problem is to run a "GM character", one that is a step above the regular NPC in that it is the character I would l play if I weren't the GM. This eases the longing somewhat, and has had a couple of interesting impacts on my GMing style (which I would rate as "mostly competent"). Because I am not good at extemporaneous plot hopping, this character lets me keep the players focused on the task at hand by, rather than wasting all-too-valuable gaming time investigating something that I haven't planned out and haven't the imagination to develop on the spot. The players rapidly figure out who the GM's character is and tend to place a great deal of faith in his (or her) opinions (he can read the GM's mind after all). This lets him make suggestions to keep them from going to far afield (although he is dead wrong just often enough to keep them on their toes). And because this character is generally trusted, he can keep a fractious group of players together, while letting the individual players have a lot of good role-playing strife and angst between them that would normally tear a sane group apart. I have learned a couple of problems with the GM's character over the years. Most importantly, he can't outshine the other players. This usually relagates him to a supporting role which can be frustrating for me, but is crucial for fair gameplay. Generally he can't be the focus of an adventure either, for similar reasons, which makes it difficult to develop him at times. But until I can find someone else to fill the GM's shoes consistently, it will just have to do. _____________________________________________________________ "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate'', (William of Ockham's famous razor), which translates as "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily'', or concisely as KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). William couldn't follow his own advice.