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Aversill

HERO Member
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Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Cleveland, Ohio
  • Interests
    making 3d scenery, role playing games, Mostly I'm playing Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, and Hero right now. I like video games, books.
  • Biography
    Ph.D. in English. Wife, 2 kids. I've been playing Champions since I was 10, but I took a big break in 1993. I'm trying to get back in but I think I skipped a few editions. I make and sell 3d scenery on ebay.
  • Occupation
    English Professor

Aversill's Achievements

  1. Mark, Talked it over with my players and we decided that's the way I think we're going to go. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm fairly sure it's going to solve a significant problem I'm having in my game.
  2. Yes, it follows the characters around...and then it summons a creature that can't read OP but knows how to use Ctrl-F. This post is already over. CE--> Suffocation--> Trigger on an entangle that has the Extra Time Limitation for setup. I think Sir Viss's answer is probably what I want.
  3. I buy the water pit for the same reason I would buy explosive runes or a sword falling from the ceiling; if it's a trap that I can trigger in combat then it's one of my powers and I should pay for it. Moreover, moving the floor to get someone to land in the pit is just a special effect for the trigger part of the change environment.
  4. ...which you can buy in hero builder under CE. Sir Viss, for the win!
  5. I like your answer Lucius. What's the defense to CE damage? Power Defense? That would seem inappropriate.
  6. If it helps, the spell power pools are included in the following file. Also included is the equipment pool I use. Different pool levels cost perks (the wish pool is, for instance, a 12 point perk). Also, cleric spells 1-7 (not quite sure why I did the others by alphabet and these by levels, but heh, what the heck..). Next up, the Monster Manual. Power Pool.hdc 1st Level Cleric Spells.hdc 2nd Level Cleric Spells.hdc 3rd Level Cleric Spells.hdc 4th Level Cleric Spells.hdc 5th level Cleric Spells.hdc 6th level Cleric Spells.hdc 7th level Cleric Spells.hdc
  7. You can adjust power levels as needed. Obviously, hero builder makes most everything fairly easy to scale. The 55 point value stays stable with non-caster DCs in my game, which is what all of this is built for. The Side Effect is, generally, Distinctive Features: Spell Caster. In my games, at least, intelligent creatures recognize the potential threats of the spell caster fairly early on and will do a pretty good job of changing their tactics to account for the potential threat of a guy with a power pool (that's how I run magic). The items don't have the side effect because they don't necessarily call the character out as a caster.
  8. A while back I started translating the 1st edition PH's wizard spells into hero. My assumptions are based around 1st level spells being equal to 55 points. Each additional level adds 5 points. In multiple part spells, I chose to break them up and link them through triggers. I probably could have also done "linked power" and in some cases I did. Obviously, you can do whatever you want with them. Since, I had the spells, I decided also to include stats for Scrolls, Rings, Potions, Wands, and Staves. I'm not sure that everyone would agree with my build on these items, but they are, at the very least consistent. Enjoy. Oh, two more things. I submit this to the community at large, so if you have suggestions, feel free to make them. I do this kind of thing a lot but I generally put it up on my obsidian portal game. So, if you like tables and updates and big hero builder files, you can...I don't know...check in there, drop my a line, favorite the campaign (Aversill, I'm monstro95968 over there). Second, I started playing Champs when it first came out so some of my design stuff might be a bit old school (read "dated"). If so, that's fine. That's just how I'd buy the power. A spells.hdc B spells.hdc C spells.hdc D spells.hdc E Spells.hdc F spells.hdc G spells.hdc H spells.hdc I Spells.hdc J Spells.hdc K Spells.hdc L Spells.hdc M Spells.hdc N Spell.hdc O Spells.hdc P Spells.hdc R Spells.hdc S Spell.hdc T Spells.hdc U Spells.hdc V Spells.hdc W Spells.hdc
  9. I'm designing traps as if they were powers so that people with traps/inventor can make them. The current trap I'm working on is a pit trap that is filled with water. When people fall in, the lid shuts behind them and, wallah, they're at risk of drowning. I've got part of the pit worked out. It's an entangle that only takes damage from successful security systems rolls. The offensive power that simulates whatever it is that the pit does to people who are trapped within it should trigger on successfully entangling people. My question is how to simulate the drowning part. Suggestions?
  10. Yeah, spamming non-combat. So, the characters recently faced a flock of stirges. The wizard who has a power pool that is difficult to change figures out, rightfully, that it is only difficult to change when you're going phase-by-phase. Making the 8 or less Power Roll to change a slot out of combat means that it really only takes 12 seconds to pull up a new power. He creates an image of a giant bleeding dinosaur (smell and sight)... Stirges taken care of. It costs Endurance, so long term End is a problem, but I've read that thing (the section on LTE) a bunch and it doesn't make that much sense. The power cost 4 End. He has a 10 Recovery. So, yeah, I think it takes up some LTE. This isn't a huge problem in my game, generally, but it does come to the point where a power pool wizard has a pretty good skeleton key going that I'd like to apply restrictions to. I've read some of the official FH stuff and I realize that this doesn't come up if you restrict spells in the way they suggest...but I'm not doing that. So, the question I'm asking is probably kind of complicated. Basically, the magic system in my game has power pools. So, the question becomes, 'how do you keep a character with a power pool from doing whatever they want outside of combat?" What systems do you put in place to restrict non-combat power usage since End really only restricts in combat usage and LTE isn't much of a restriction if a character's Recovery is high enough?
  11. Aversill

    Spamalot

    Aside from charges, let me get that out of the way, how do you keep players from spamming non-combat powers. First, I have this question generally. Simply, what do you do in your games, aside from charges, to keep players from utilizing non-combat powers non-stop. Second, I use power pools to handle magic which makes my spam problem even worse. Some powers, like healing, take care of themselves, but in order for my magic system to worse, I have to pretty much let things into power pools. This isn't a problem in combat (all spells cost End to keep up and carry , but in non-combat, it's a bit more complicated. One of my players cast a "Find the Path" spell with 45 active and...well...non-targeting, non-sense detect with 45 active points. But Endurance costs and side effects really aren't going to stop that character from casting that spell all the time, and I don't want to do the whole 1x/day thing from D and D. Any thoughts?
  12. Thanks. I'm an idiot. I see the part about the focus now. So, if I have a power that is, say, Gremlin: Dispel against Variable Effect (foci), I can just destroy foci. That seems really powerful and fairly out of scope with the power's cost. Don't most games rely on foci? Is that because someone felt that the focus limitation wasn't limiting enough? I don't get it.
  13. Also, it seems like we're just arguing the part where a persistent power either auto restarts or takes a 0 phase to restart. Assuming I'm wrong, and it's a 0 phase action, how does that equal a broken object since you can just...spend the 0 phase and restart the power through the focus. I'm confused.
  14. Tasha, under your description, is dispel more powerful than drain? It sounds like you're saying that a drain will fade, but a dispel requires serious fixing of a foci, even though dispel costs half as much as the drain. Chris, you seem to be concentrating on the limitation thing, which is fine. Can you, however, show me where the opposite is said. The implication is that persistent powers turn themselves back on unless you yourself turn them off. You're suggesting that they also don't turn back on if dispelled. Where do you see that? I cannot find that in the power's description. I see the focus thing. That's... odd. It seems like dispel is two different powers. One shuts powers off, the other actually breaks the thing.
  15. I can special effect anything; what are the rules? Line and verse: "A character doesn’t have to turn on a Persistent Power; it’s assumed to be on at all times, even when the character is unconscious. A character can turn off a Persistent Power if he chooses; the Power remains off until he turns it back on [it doesn't say, but I assume this is a 0 phase action]. Inherently Persistent Powers never cost END. If a Persistent Power has a Limitation that prevents it from working under certain conditions, when that condition ends or goes away the Power automatically “restarts,” unless (a) the Power has its own specific rules governing such situations (in which case apply those rules), or ( events during the period of non-functionality would prohibit automatic restart." Persistant Powers auto-restart. You can't buy a killing attack for 1d6 per 3 points. Also: Line and Verse: "The victim of a Dispel may “restart” the Dispelled power, but he has to start from scratch— he must perform any preparations again." (193) That's what the power does. The person whose power is dispelled need only start it up. Rusty Doom? RAW, it doesn't work. It wouldn't be the first time I've seen a bad build come from a game designer, Maybe its a holdover from an earlier edition, I don't know. But according to the rules, someone dispels your power, you need to start it up again, unless the power is persistent, in which case, it starts up as soon as the dispel ends. In later parts of the description, it clearly talks about dispelling CHA (especially defenses), which earlier it says you cannot do. Moreover, if you could, it would break the game. Who would buy a blast when you could get a 1d6 AVLD (Power Defense) for 6 points, which is what a Stun Dispel would become? Who would buy a Killing Attack when for 6 points you could get a 1d6 killing attack AVLD, Does Body (Body Dispel). You can dispel resistant defenses, but if you do, you need to make the dispel constant, or persistent. Note: dispelling non-persistant powers on things like robots WILL technically destroy those powers if (and only if) the robot doesn't have a program to restart the powers. The same is probably true for any automated function (traps in FH, for instance). I'm surprised there isn't a "keep paying End to keep the power dispelled" but I don't see that option. If there were, Rusty Doom would work. I don't have the Champions supplements you're talking about so I couldn't say.
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