Jhamin

"Can only change between scenarios" is a pretty standard VPP limit

I want to renew my statement that Dependence doesn't work as written (mostly because of the time intervals), as evidenced by the fact that everyone either dies without something in an hour and it's a 0-5 point dependency or people end up just taking physical limits instead. As the rules currently work an as-powerful hunted that shows up on an 8- is usually worth more than dying if you dont get exposed to rare forms of radiation every 30 min.

You generally don't limit powers in Hero with out of game meta restrictions. Killing Attack, not when Bob the player is being a jerk (-1/2) isn't a valid limit IMHO. By the same logic, "only if it's already written on a notecard (-1/4) is not a limit I'd allow. The problem is that the limit rewards bookkeeping from the player and doesn't really limit someone willing to fill a notebook with powers. In universe there isn't any real difference between a Dr Manhattan that wrote out all his powers and one that makes them up on the fly, it only affects how much time between phases the player is using. If you wanted to be rules lawyery about it, a variable power pool, must make powers ahead of time -1/4 could be a hacky way to get a multipower with lots of slots cheaper by not having to pay for the slots individually.

Can you re-post the output instead of the .hdc file? It would make it easier for folks to comment

True enough, if you take this sort of discussion far enough the entire Hero System turns into 4 powers: Make, Break, Change, Move. (and people would argue that change and move should have been combined) Which I don't think we actually want. I do stand by the idea that mind control/telepathy/Mental Illusions are short-term powers for tactical effects. They should let you do something *right now*, their effects should wear off quickly, and the target may or may not realize anything odd happened depending on how skillfully the powers were used. "These aren't the Droids you are looking for" style effects don't need to last longer than the interaction, and I think the existing rules are basically fine for that. "Punch your Friend" style attacks, as I've mentioned, are harder to do but end up really inconveniencing multiple targets if they work, so maybe it's OK that they are harder? On the other hand I used to have a mentalist PC that loved running into those seething "everyone hates everyone" villain teams held together by a powerful leader *because* it was so easy to get them to attack each other. It was kind of what they wanted to do anyway. "Jump off this building" for non-flying guys *should* be hard, but then again doing the right kind of knockback with a blast has the same basic effect, so maybe it shouldn't be *too* hard. "I Mind Control you so well you are now my slave" type powers In my opinion are really more Transforms than Mind Control rolls with a lot of dice. Hero tends to shove everything that imposes long term changes other than death into the Transform power, so I'm thinking that is where adding a new mental complication "Totally Loyal to MindGuy: Very Common, Total" should also be. As I think about this more, it may come down to campaign limits. If we wanted to make bullets deadlier in a specific game, we would do so by limiting Resistant Def, not by making Killing Attacks cheaper or having them inflict more damage. I wonder if we are unintentionally heading that way in this discussion? If you want mental attacks to be powerful, is the solution to limit how much Ego everyone has and maybe shift what you can do with an Ego+10 or an Ego+20 result?

I would argue that "If you can kill someone you can make them into something else for that cost" is only sort of on-point. Making someone stand still? Probably. Making someone attack an ally? Well, now you are tying up two people for the price of killing one. I see this discussion as a mechanical attempt to fix a problem we haven't actually defined. The problem: What does a mental attack *do*? Does it make the target stop fighting? For how long? Does it make the target do what you want them to? For how long? Are they a slave for weeks and months now now or does it last for an action or two? Does it make the target spill their secrets? How closely guarded can those secrets be? Can you get everything they know or pull one fact at a time out of them? etc I also think that lots of "big" mental power effects are actually Transforms but people keep trying to stretch mind control or telepathy to simulate them. I would argue that part of the issue is that most of the classic mentalists in fiction had multipowers to do all the stuff they can do, but we tend to confuse the slots with each other when writing them up In my mind, the Shadow had a Mental Transform to wipe his face (or some other event) from a target's memory & was not using mind control (the Hero System Power) to create that permanent effect. He had other powers in his "Cloud Men's Minds" multipower to do the other stuff he is famous for.

Schultz was the owner of the largest toy company in Germany, which had been commandeered for the German war effort. At several points he mentions not liking the Nazis, both for what they do in general but also for how his family was treated when their company was seized. I always took his "I Know NOTHING!" announcements to mean he saw a lot more than he reported because he was hoping the Allies would win the war and he was just trying to keep his head down until that day came. There is a theory that Klink put up with him because he knew that Schultz was going to be a good person to know when the war ended.

I would *really* not add 100 pages to an intro book. Hero already has a reputation for being overly hard to get into, a 160 page "basics" book will not help things. I'm still not sure why each character needs 6 write-ups though?

Mine made it 25 before I retired it But I'm now 2 years into a new game with several of the same players set in the same game world after an absence of 8 years. So how does that count?

This was my thought as well. I had a PC in a Pulp Hero game who played a big Prussian with this power bought as a combat luck style "too tough to care" type power. He was supposed to be the guy who was so burly he could get shot & only notice later. His normal defenses applied, then his combat luck applied, then if any body got through his "too tough to care" power let one body through then stopped the next 4.

I think in an intro "quickstart" points are entirely beside the point and advancement is handled by the additional rules you are introducing in each section. As long as the various characters can do what they need to at each section of the adventure it doesn't really matter if one is built on more points or not. Grey out the sections of the character sheets you aren't using yet, and then bold them when you add them in later sections along with the explanation of what they do. (Or swap a blast for a Multipower as you explain what they do) By the time you get to the end you can get 300 point characters with full writeups.

Im very interested in the Patreon concept for Sectional Books. I like the concept a lot but my initial thought would be that if I have a choice between buying the individual sections and a complete product with art (even b&w art) I would generally wait for the "complete" product. I'd hate to see this idea fail because people are holding out for the final book. If there was a Patreon structure that would let us pay as we go for sections and then reward backers with the complete version later (or let us "upgrade" our digital versions for a nominal fee) that would be ideal. At this point in my life I'm more interested in the digital versions than physical ones anyway.

Even though he was left behind in the edition switch from 4th to 5th, I think that Captain Future from the 4th edition Golden Age Champions is another interesting take on time travel in Hero. TLDR: He doesn't have time powers at all and just knows about time. Being from the future is his origin. His backstory is that he is a time cop from the future who was assigned to "walk the beat" in the US of the 30s and 40s as that was a period of intense temporal interest. His job is to 1) Protect the time stream (It isn't mentioned specifically, but all the people who time travel back to stop WWII come to mind) and 2) Maintain his cover as a crimefighter of the era. The thing of it is, other than some future history skills and a Sense: Temporal Anomalies gadget in his costume, his powers aren't time related at all. He has some futuristic technology like his ray gun and fish bowl helmet life support as he needs to seem "futuristic" to the natives but beyond that he is expected to figure it out on his own. Actual Time Travel seems to be limited to GM Fiat. For a golden age hero, that isn't too unreasonable. He mostly fights Nazis. Where it gets weird is *why* he was assigned the Captain Future identity. He was made Captain Future because history said that there has always been a Captain Future fighting crime throughout history, so impersonating him won't disrupt time. There is a mention that it's possible all the Time Cops posing as Captain Future are the reason there has always *been* a Captain Future, but its played more for jokes than taken seriously. It is ambiguous if all Time Cops are as confused as he is or if he just flunked Temporal Physics at the academy.

They are a bit inconsistent on that front. Or at least its more complex than we usually think of it as being. There was an episode where Teal'c was caught mid-transport and got stuck "in the buffer" and they had a limited time to get him out and couldn't let anyone else use the gate lest they overwrite him. They made it sound like he had arrived but not materialized and was stuck in the gate ring somehow until they tricked the gate into forming an event horizon without a wormhold behind it to reintegrate him. So the gates apparently disassemble you, space fold you, then reassemble you. This isn't how they talked about the gate working anywhere else, but it *was* the main plot of a 5th season episode so it is as canon as it gets. It also follows the visuals we get when we follow someones POV through the gate so maybe?

I'd say leave him out. He was my favorite as a kid too, but if you cover the other archetypes you should be good.

At the risk of rewarding thead necromancy or reiterating a point already made: Regarding why they are there: Long ago I got a reproduction series bible for season 2. It said that given the years long missions and the months away from port, Starfleet had recognized that the mental welfare of the crew was really important and should be managed the same way their health was, which is why the ship's psychiatrist was a senior officer. They had also decided that mental & emotional welfare was improved by having their families there so people got to bring their families with them. As for what they do? As others have said there are bartenders, barbers, botanists (who are probably enjoying all the new science being done) school teachers and similar functionaries. I'm also wondering how many 24th century humans actually have what we would consider jobs anyway? Federation society is post scarcity, heavily automated, and with basically free energy. It is implied repeatedly that members of Starfleet are pretty exceptional, driven people who chose to go to Starfleet Academy & then risk their lives on spaceships rather than just hanging out on earth enjoying "Paradise". (Which is what Earth is repeatedly referred too as). I'm betting lots of those civilians are doing jobs that we can't conceive of for 15 hours a week (which is full time in the 24th century) and doing whatever they want with the rest of their life I know my job as a Systems Engineer would be incomprehensible to 90% of the people living in 1721. No reason we should understand what they do.

Likely, also a martial arts style with slaps, eye gouges, and a surprisingly effective Martial Block.

It depends on how independent that limb is. If it is basically you and can make decisions, it's a duplicate with a lot of physical complications (There is a Toy Story Short where Mr. Potato head has to go on a date with Mrs Potato Head but wants to play Poker with some other toys. He leaves an eye and a arm behind and tells them to "deal him in". The implication is the arm/eye will be a long way away from Mr. P but he will be able to both play Poker normally & tend to his wife) This feels like a duplicate with a mindlink back to Mr. P If you can throw you arm across the room, but it can't act on it's own and you have to see it to have it do anything, I like Chris Goodwin's answer. This seems to be what Olaf is doing.

This is my thoughts on Rogue as well. She can ko *anyone* vulnerable to her powers for as long as she copies them, and she can copy any set of powers at it's full power. Magneto? One of the most powerful mutants in the setting? She can ko him in one hit & use all his powers at full effect. That is *expensive*. In Hero terms it is *more* expensive than Magneto. She is not a balanced character.

You aren't wrong. Back in Fourth there was a "Transfer" power that worked the way you describe. It was removed because it was basically Drain and Aid mushed together and Steve Long felt it was cleaner just to have the two powers each do their thing rather than have a 3rd one to worry about. I miss the simplicity of Transfer, but the new way works fine.

I'm also enjoying Wanda Vision, but I'm hoping to get out of TV Land sooner rather than later. They are doing a "the world you know isn't real" plot that folks are clearly supposed to be trying to "figure out", but I'm ready for them to move on to the next phase of the story. I *am* really enjoying Elizabeth Olson and Paul Bettany. We didn't see nearly enough of them in the Avengers movies and it is really nice to see them getting this screen time.

I remember a long-ago discussion right here on the boards about what Caps shield can and can't do that got hung up on a comic where he jumped out of a 10 story building and curled up on the shield when he landed, then ran off like nothing had happened (I noted with some amusement that he does this *exact* thing in Winter Soldier). Some folks were fine with it because he was just soaking the falling damage & his shield can do that. Others were not buying it because momentum doesn't work that way. This turned into (as internet discussions do) a discussion of "can Cap stop a bus by standing in front of it and blocking with his shield?" It was agreed Hulk could probably punch the bus to a stop from the front, and Cap holding the Shield can take a Hulk punch so can Cap holding the shield take a hit from a bus and stop it? My takeaway was that this is all rubber physics and it's mostly a question of when does your suspension of disbelief start to fray. We are more aware of how bad falling is and how massive a bus is, but we have a fuzzy idea of how much pressure a Hulk fist applies on a Newtons per square inch level so somehow falling onto the shield bothers people in a way that withstanding a Hulk fist doesn't. The MCU just make that even more visible.

Thinking about how easy Hero is to start up, I think one of the problems is that there aren't enough examples of how to use the toolkit to make the setting you want. In the Supers books there is usually somewhere that says "A strong guy should have these stats, a fast guy should have these. buy about this many active points of powers". The published characters then generally follow that. When you get to some of the Genre books it gets murkier. I feel like I have seen a zillion threads that boil down to "how much armor should my dungeoncrawl paladin have? and how should he compare to the thief?" Some theoretical "how to play hero" web supplement should have a 4 person party & 2-3 standard enemies for them in as many genres as feasible. Both to help new GMs pick which they like but also to give them a starting point. Your Conan Expy will be built a lot differently than your Robin Hood Expy.

There is no mechanical way to do that other than the usual Dispels and when you have as many active points & as much power defense as he does I'm not sure it's a realistic way of dealing with him. If anything, the multiple attack multipowers make it *less* viable to deal with him this way. You are better off going after his Stats. I do agree that the duplication of modifiers over and over add a lot to the "chatter" on his writeup, but on the other hand I don't want to return to the days of power writeups that you have to interpret. (Why does Anklasaur have a RKA Explosion? Oh, his tail launches grenades!) There is probably a middle ground that would balance the two.

Your arguments make sense for a PC that has to balance his points and keep within campaign limits. Mechanon is an uber-villain who gets to ignore all that. Mechanon's got a zillion powers now and as an uber villain his point totals and active point limits and END totals are ridiculous anyway. Built in weapons multipower: 150 active points 1) Pulson Beam Array: 15d6Blast variable advantage +1/2 (+1) 2) Disintigrator Array: 5d6 RKA, variable advantage +1/2 (+1) This does leave him without his 22d6 main blast, but you could replace that with a 3rd slot if you wanted. Otherwise, this gives him 90% of what he can do now with his main multipower and actually increases his flexibility while making his sheet a lot easier to read. I'm not arguing this is how he should have been written. I'm not sure Mechanon needs an affects desolid Pulson Beam or a Megascale Disintegrator beam. I am arguing that at some point his three offensive multipowers with a bunch of slightly different slots crosses over from a lot of utility into "too much to keep track of". I miss 4th edition Mechanon that could still take on a whole PC team but whose writup fit on half a page.