Thia Halmades

Low power magic generally means divination, long incantations, curses, hexes and alchemy. I would point to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, particularly film one, for what low magic looks like; Gandalf is pretty nerfed compared to what he can do in the books. Prophecy also tends to make itself known. In terms of a low magic system, I know I’m going to sound like a broken record when I say this, “What do you want people to be capable of?” And on the heels of that question, “What is the thematic source of this magic?” I need both of those to provide a reasonable answer. But. As I’m late and speed posting, here’s a combination: 1) The Touched. Those who are “touched” are highly sought after, and for all the traditional trope reasons. Some folk want to hire them, some want to own them, some want to set them free somewhere... far far away from where they are. Some want to kill ‘em. The Touched all have something in common: near death experiences where they made a permanent link with the energy wall between worlds. This tends to manifest as classic divination magic, but has other manifestations. 2) You cannot create a Touched on purpose. People keep trying. No one knows why, or how, the Touched come to be and that includes themselves. Some people are born that way, some get it after nearly dying, but interestingly, no one who has sought to become one has ever succeeded. The energy has some kind of will, and it cannot be chosen, only choose. 3) I see dead people. 4) I see the future seven seconds at a time, giving me combat precognition. I see a soul who is about to die and I can through great effort, redirect them — Battle Meditation. I can place a curse on a family line; I can infuse a mundane item with magical energy. 5) I cannot cast any spell in less than 10 minutes. 6) I am actually a conduit for magic; good old fashioned 6th element magic. But it was sealed away by time and ignorance. Which is why no one can choose it, because none of them know what they’re looking for. So, there’s a few ideas to kick about.

This one! I LOVE THIS ONE!! Warning: I’m up a little late and when that happens I tend to ramble. So I’ve put my answer to your question up front, where it’s easy to see: Answer 1: It actually doesn’t matter as long as you’re consistent. You’d be surprised how much punishment the HERO system can take and still put out a balanced game experience. To go back to @Ninja-Bear, it’s easiest to make all weapons free, because the cost was paid by the player when they invested in the Martial Art to use it. For example, Kusari-Gama. If I pick one of those up, I’m going to smash my own skull. Someone trained in it, however, is going to have the opposite experience. This is how I did it in Persona; you pay the points for what you want, you have the thing more as a manifestation of the point investment, rather than the other way around. If a bunch of points are paid for magic, great. Here’s your spell list based on the rules laid down for this system, etc. Answer 2: There are a number of other things to consider before you can answer it. And based on the question, I’m making a couple of assumptions: That you’re doing some kind of high fantasy setting, that said setting involves the collection of gear and loot, and that said gear and loot is plentiful enough that it prompts the question. So if Kage, the Shadow Mage, doesn’t have 33 points available, he can’t pick up the enchanted hand crossbow? Or the bracers of archery? It’s downright skull breaking. So how else do you solve for it? You can do this: Each character can soul-bind/befriend/attune (to use the 5th Ed D&D word) to X number of magical items. This is a campaign rule and costs zero points that the players can see, but you can see them. If you want to be hard and fast with it, you can give everyone their build cost in magical attunement. I build a 200 point Rogue, I can equip up to 200 points of magical gear. Or if you’re concerned, just, “gear.” This can include spell books, spells as well as swords and shields. Going this route removes all of the messy player level book keeping from the equation, and leaves the GM free to run a game that plays like it should. Alternatively, each player may be limited to the Rule of 9; head, chest, arms, legs, two weapons, two rings and a necklace. There’s no “canonical right way” to do it. In ... FH 5th Ed? Steve put forth the idea, as an option, gear is gold, magic is points. But that’s not always the case. And, more importantly, ignoring that is not necessarily going to create any kind of imbalance in your campaign. Your best bet, IMO, is to ignore this question entirely, and instead drill down to stat spread, skill selection, core powers/abilities, damage dealt, and damage that can be sustained, in addition to any other non-combat abilities that your casting classes are going to have. So let’s break down the reasoning: In a traditional fantasy setting, there are three and a half core classes; Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard/Cleric. I say 3.5 because there’s a ton of campaigns and systems that just go with “magic” and that includes healing, there’s systems with all kinds of different ways to tap into other worldly... or natural but normally inaccessible... or... you get my point. The more critical question, in my mind, is not about point assignment or gold spent, but functionality and general balance. To that end, I would say that those three classes don’t really provide much framework. Whereas tank, blaster, scrapper, controller, etc., more traditional super heroic tropes, do the job much better. The tank wears heavy armor, carries some variety of weaponry, has a shield. Do those cost points? Someone brought up: things paid with gold are fungible, things paid with points are not, however, there’s a counter to that, and that’s “everything has a point cost.” There’s a nasty rabbit hole you can fall down trying to reconcile the cost of a shield against gold against real cost in points to the character. Meanwhile, your casting classes have to spend points on their spells — unless you say they don’t. And you treat spells like equipment. Also an option. My late night rambling aside, here are my hard learned lessons from years of GMing Fantasy HERO: 1) Power level is, broadly, a lie. After a while it becomes nearly impossible to do a decent audit. I became much more interested in this question: Does everyone have roughly the same points invested in base stats and core skills? Do they all fall within the guidelines for CSLs, and are they utilizing the tools provided accordingly? Last, but not least, is their general DPR (damage per round) equivalent? A fighter who hits every round may not be as sexy as a Rogue with extra dice in Backstab, or a wizard who can throw chain lightning through an entire group, but that just means they’re doing their job. Standing up front, drawing fire, surviving, and dealing out punishment. The Rogue should be able to outpace the fighter in damage, because that’s the rogue’s job. 2) Damage output caps are critical. Decide early what your max number of KA dice is, AND your highest Active Point cost, and hold that line for a while as you continue to balance encounters and defenses. 3) Remember: Defense wins championships. Unless you let someone buy an NND Killing Attack that’s disruptive, or the Wizard can call down oodles of Meteors every round. You don’t want that to happen, that gets gnarly. 4) This in a very looping way comes back to my point, and your question: when is it appropriate and how do you do it? My answer is “ignore the common application, and approach it differently.” We can math everything to death. Doesn’t mean we should.

TL;DR; Long Term Endurance is a solid way to represent physical wear of heavy armor. Other thoughts follow. I always get lost in these threads. Are you asking about a fundamental rules question? I.e., “how do I?” Or are you asking “how would you to achieve verisimilitude?” Because we’ll be here for a while depending on how you answer. Short version: Build Armor with the limitation, “weight category, (-x/y).” Weight categories are: Clothing (-0), Light (-1/4) Medium (-1/2) Heavy (-3/4) and Urk (-1). Then the fun starts. What do you want that weight category to mean? This is the beauty and the beast of HERO; you can define for yourself and your campaign what happens when you put on armor of each weight class, and you can also bake in the appropriate skill/ability/super skill to wear it without those restrictions, or have it factor in strength, etc. etc. For example: When I did Persona, every power included the limitation “Persona Ability (-2).” For that campaign, that was short hand for: Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4), Only Equipped Persona Ability (-1), Costs END (-1/2). Then there was a bunch of other mods that went after it, which made powers themselves, as you might guess, super cheap! But that’s because you had to pick from a list and each Persona had a corresponding set of powers it could learn. The relationship to your problem being, you can easily bundle whatever it is armor restriction means to you. If you want armor to fatigue, you can use Encumbrance or, for me, Long Term Endurance. If you’re going for a Dark Souls/NIOH vibe, that’s your jam right there. Longer you wear it, the more it wears you down.

Wow, I remember when this happened to me (not identically, but similarly). It made me restructure how I assemble games and parties and the “basic buy-in” that everyone agrees to. But that’s not your question. My answer is “let it ride.” Instead of coughing up a new plot line, really think about what all of your other major actors are doing: 1) Who was affected the most? What is their angle, and what is their end goal? 2) What toll has this taken on the town? What is their response going to be? PS: There’s always a response. It can be leaving, it can be assembling a militia, it can be any number of things, but a leader will always rise. Will that leader blame the party? 3) Who has lost the most? 4) Who had the most to GAIN from this? In any tragedy, someone comes out ahead. Seeing as your game is not about gleaming armor and heroism, delve into that. Once you know how your major actors are responding to these events, you can start to ask the next logical series of questions; among them, who is interested in the PCs? You should come out with one individual and/or group who: Wants to hire them, one who wants them to suffer, at least who has picked a specific party member to have their thread pulled from the tapestry early and permanently, and one who wants to see what they do next. That will hopefully get you off the ground and out of the corner.

I believe this was already said, but what you’re describing is fancy Retrocognition. It’s going to have a few qualifiers; 1. You’ll need to define your OIF, and if you like, give it Charges 2. Since the character is recording what’s happening as it’s going on, then playback is limited only to what was witnessed (-1) 3. Which raises the separate question, “Can this be used as an attack?” By which I mean, how does he get in, and do I get a breakout roll? Personally I don’t want someone in my head that I didn’t actively invite. So while you have Retrocognition, it must be UAO, with a focus, and you still need a mechanic for getting in. He stares at you hard, he does a Vulcan mind meld, etc. This seems like an interesting steampunk version of the power, but it needs to be fleshed out a bit more before I can definitively say “build it like so.”

You’re looking for Extra Con, only to ignore being dazed (aka CON Stunned, -1). Or, simplify your life, make him “a construct” (even if he isn’t) and STUN I.e. pain becomes a non issue.

CRT is correct, it’s a transform. In terms of purchasing, you can buy it as a multi power, which chains into a tight group and varying sub functions, or a VPP if it’s wide enough in effect. Then throw on Extra Time, Cumulative, Requires a Lab, and so on, and there you have it.

This is why I keep asking “What’s the goal?” If it really is “gate someone out of armor against their will” then as a GM, I’d rule that down. There are too many other, cleaner, better mechanical options, including a good old fashioned EMP burst.

There are also mind control and mental illusion options, both of which can take someone out of a fight, which can be defended against. I want to loop back to the original question; is the goal purely to teleport someone out of their armor, or is the goal to disrupt the offensive? I’m with you on the idea, generally speaking, but I (personally) would not allow either teleport as an attack or someone to use a 50 point power to dismantle a 600 point power armor suite. As mentioned before, raining hell on a power armor in a gun fight is within the boundaries of the rules. Dodge, Block. Abort. And so on. There’s no defense (against, prior notation) against a UOO TP..

There’s a fairly easy way to do this, actually. Your build is fine, you have two options to finish it (as always, this is my design, your opinion/mileage may vary). Option 1: Do your core build, then add the adder “up to X power based on result, Limitation: +1 per point roll succeeds. (-1/2)” Now the effect is paid for, with a limitation that makes sense and the upper limit can be expanded. Option 2: Add a straight Advantage based on the cost of the base power, for example, +1/4 for 5 point powers, +1/2 for 10, +3/4 for 15. You may have to do some math until you find the balance that works for you, and it is custom, where version 1 is more traditionally canon, but it will give you scaling while keeping powers properly costed and consistent. So to AD&D at you a moment, and knowing that no effect can more than double the base, a 4d6 RKA Lightning Bolt that gets a +3/4 Advantage will need some hefty Limitations to be affordable, but the results on a good Power Skill roll would be spectacular.

Mega playboy is correct. It’s a base with the requisite skills assigned to it. In other words, make a character who is an idiot savant and can build guns by hand. Now give that idiot Wealth and turn them into a base. Yahtzee.

Ehh. I’m with the board here, this is a mess of a question. Before an answer can be reached; Define ‘power armor.” Indirect was previously mentioned, and is correct, at a minimum. Second, define the special effect of the teleport. Magic? Super tech? Mind Control to get them to take it off? I get the concept — you want to disarm the big power of the target, but that isn’t how Hero “works.” Reasons being, first, they paid for that power suite, unified under a special effect. That’s a critical point, and was mentioned prior: it isn’t a single armor. It’s blast, armor, flight, shields, and sensors. Second, it’s generally accepted that teleport an unwilling target as a movement power is unallowed without violating at least one STOP. Third, and the most critical point in my mind, is that I wouldn’t allow any ‘auto win” ability that would rob a target of its 300 (or less, or more) power set. Can Loki teleport Stark out of an Iron Man suit? Sure, but those are unbuilt plot powers, not in game effects justified via payment. All that said: this is a cumulative dispel, and I would point out that it would be prohibitively expensive and quite noticeable. The effect would need to disable all of the associated powers, not just a power or a multi power, but the entire suite. If done as a transform — Armored Target into Unarmored Target — it would need to be a total of the build or, double the body of the target. I would narrow this down into a cheaper scalpel, rather than attempting to kludge together this bludgeon.

You have to answer a couple of questions here: Does the player get anything out of it? Meaning, are these poor doomed souls macguffins, whose life and guaranteed death are a special effect/style element? Or are these characters who are providing a skill or service to the player and party? The He recommendation to make it a floating DNPC works, so long as a new victim is introduced into each arc AND the pc is sufficiently motivated to rescue them. A mopey hero who can no longer deal with the constant tragedy shouldn’t get points for it. My way of doing this would be more flexible. I’d do it with Rivalry (Player unaware of Rival). This does a number of things: first, it relieves the every episode requirement; if you go the DNPC/NPC route, you create a small group of interchangeable people to secure the points and reward the effort. Second, it saves the trouble of justifying it later (See last Bond film). Third, it layers the story. Even if the death is heroic, accidental, what have you, it’s because at some point the rival stepped in. Lastly, when the player goes looking for a reason, it’s already ready in your mind.

It's not for D&D, it's for Persona, so in the canon of that game, stunning monsters is fairly normal, and having to finish them off equally normal. I'm trying to ensure that the party is awarded for good tactics and strategy, without making them roll dice into oblivion and without hand waving. Some shadows (enemies) have access to really powerful heals that can stand other things back up quickly, so yes, in this setting, killing them all (0 BODY) is important. Bigby: I'm referring to both in this case, since either condition can be remedied and the mobs get REC and will recover from being Stunned.

I specifically locked this out as an option. I'm not asking for a citation, I'm asking if anyone has an opinion on the proposal as written. If you don't, that's cool too.

Rebump. It looks like all of the attached files got yanked. Therein lies your problem.

Most of it should be there, AFAIK. Let me poke around my files. Hooray, cloud storage.

http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/50169-hero-combat-evolved-equipment-posts-comments/?hl=%2Bcombat+%2Bevolved

This has only taken me the better part of ten years to figure out, but I finally got to a point I was happy. I think. So I put it to you for your opinions. The 'mook problem' is what to do in a large combat where monsters (not heroes or key villains, but plain old monsters) have taken plenty of STUN, but insufficient BODY. You don't want people wandering around stabbing everything on the battlefield, but you don't want them getting back up. These may be setting specific, but I'm curious what y'all think. As a note, I already assume that all mobs only go to 0 BODY; my monsters are written as monsters, not heroes, so if they go to 0, they expire. 1) No DEF for Stunned out mobs (CON Stun or 0'd Out); the next attack will do fully rolled BODY. It will hurt. 2) Attacks on Stunned out mobs are auto-crit. This will also really hurt, but may not be as effective. 3) All attacks on Stunned out mobs are counted as killing damage. So while you've been using Blast the whole time, suddenly it flips to counting as Killing instead of Blast, and you deal 2d6 RKA instead of 6d6 Blast, and your chances of dealing more BODY go up dramatically. Now in the most technical sense, mathematically speaking, 2d6 RKA and 6d6 Blast are about the same, although you have a higher average (and mathematically higher top end) on 2d6 RKA for BODY, while both would keep the target in STUN land forever. Now, before we get to the whole who thinks what and why, a few notes: 1) Yep, I know that 0 STUN is often counted as dead. I'm not doing that, already considered it, STUN is too important in its own right 2) Yep, I know that keeping something stunned is often as good as dead, but I'm not worried about that, REC is a thing and monsters have it. They also have access to healing magic and a host of other noise to worry about. 3) Yep, I know that you may see this as 'adding a step,' but I'm not, I'm either changing one or removing another, but nothing is being added. That out of the way, what do y'all think?

So, to clarify: Cost cap is 120 AP, concept: Caster "summons" (note the quotes) an X point value Ice Clone. The Clone enters play: * As an automaton * Under the caster's control * With about 20 BODY, what with to be a shield * With the Block, Counter Strike, and Fast Strike MAs * the Power: Freeze Chance on Critical (15 points) My problem: I can't find the "right" power to do it cleanly. Summon is a giant PIA for something like this, because I don't see it as a summon as much as I see it as ... A walking Barrier that can hit people on its turn, but that makes even less sense and winds up being a super kludgy 3 or 4 step compound power. I thus put it to the Senate: What is the Lord Captain missing?

Two things. New Poster asked the question no one else did: Why? Or said with appropriate accent: 'Whai?' Hugh is correct. That is all. As you were. No smiting here.

This of course doesn't take into account that those are stock builds, and you can design it to do whatever you want. I'm going to build a long sword that does 99d6 RKA to all of the things! FOREVER! My STR is 5, and the min to wield the weapon is 100. How much damage do I deal on a critical hit?

Eh, combat is actually much simpler than most people realize when they start. To do an audit I'd really need to: a) Grasp the campaign Have a character sheet c) Hug Hyperman in the face ...not necessarily in that order.

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG Mother eff. Board ate my reply. Well. Much shorter version. I am familiar with P1 & P2, but I consider them "Gen 1" editions of the game, and using wholly different mechanics and powers. For consistency, I'm limiting my conversion to P3 & P4. Other than minor rebalancing, the powers are the same, the Personae look & feel roughly the same, and the two games talk to each much more synchronously than P1 & P2 can speak "forward." I won't even get into all of the spin offs, because then my mind would utterly explode. Persona behave like equipment (I think I mentioned that some time back) and once equipped, grant their powers to the character who equips them, until removed or changed. This is fairly consistent, although I will likely associate an END cost with everything, even if it's END, Only to Activate (-1/4) for something like Striking Appearance, and have it last a full scene. I want the Personas to have real, non-combat functionality but I also want to illustrate that using a Persona, even invoking a skill that you don't have is difficult and comes with a price (albeit a small, recoverable one). None of the powers to date have been built UBO, because my vision of the Personas is that they are still the same soul. Your soul, in this setting, is like a carousel that, for most people, only has one image in it at any given time. But the light is so bright that if you put another image in front of it, it would project outwards. This is my concept. So you can add additional Persona to the carousel, you can take them out, you can improve them, but there's still only one carousel -- you. At this time, changing a Persona is a 1/2 Phase Action. There is a strategy guide out there in legoland that details how every Persona is forged and I will use a bastardized version of it. One of the keys for the success is having Social Links matter (that's been done) assigning a Persona to each level (10 levels is sufficient, and 1 Persona per level, done) and then the only thing holding me back is the struggle of "Personal Level." I don't want anyone getting Lucifer sick early, that won't work. There will need to be sufficient explanation around those mechanics and why they work the way they do.

Re: Magically Returning Sword - Should this be a Focus or Not I largely agree with IJ3, if you have it defined as "requires a god or similar" you're already talking about crazy high levels of power and artifact style magic. However, this does strike me as an IIF. This is actually an HKA -- HERO doesn't need to define the pendant or how it "reappears," unless you really want to go the extra mile. If you want to represent the limitation as a Focus, it's an IIF (Inobvious, Inaccessible Focus) and given that OIF (-1/2) allows for returnable weaponry (see my sig) that isn't much of a stretch. Also, IIF is the kind of level where it's easy to say "super being removes it."