Aversill

I think it's 6 for +1 DC (Indirect and 0 End don't count). 5 x 1.25, but it might be 13 to go up by 2. Do you round up or down at .5? In any case, my wife won't do that math. We just go 5 for 1 DC unless the advantages are egregious.

I might also mention that the game gives itself over to bean counters. It's not a serious mystery as to why. I learned to divide fractions in my head playing this game and before Hero Builder, I couldn't have made a character without a calculator. The people who I know who play Champions most often refer to it as Math Club, the Role Playing Game. That doesn't make it a bad game system, but I don't think its valid to be surprised by people being overwhelmed by the amount of math that has to go into any play session. I have a 1d6 HKA with AP and Indirect (+1/4) at 0 End. Quick. How much strength do I need over the weapon's minimum of 11 before it's a 1 1/2d6 HKA?! That's not an art, that's an impediment to the game getting new players.

My game has a 55 AP cap, generally speaking. You can't use armor as it is in the book. It won't work. My AP defense cap is (regular defenses+resistant defenses+Damage Negation+Damage Reduction) maxes at 55, so long as none of those are super provisional (only against fire, for instance). That being said, most of my players have gone the DCV route, which is smart in FH since there aren't as many AoEs generally. In terms of armor, stack or don't stack, it wouldn't really matter to me so long as it fit into the above equation (realizing that Combat Luck has a different AP then what you're seeing and hoaky limitations that were applied post facto to make it cost what it does). The real trick is that you're going to have to adjust mass for real armor if you make full plate 12 or 15 rPD. Otherwise, everyone will have to be 25 strength to wear it (I might be wrong about that, but it's close). I also require players to buy Armor Proficiency (2 points per type, light, chain based, full, or 1 point for a specific). I would encourage you to favor players at high AP. Getting hit with a 6d6 killing attack (if anyone manages to bump a KA up that high) is likely to chop a character with 15 rPD right in half.

In my opinion, complications should enter the game, but don't, because you load up on less problematic complications. Recently my players were fighting a demon and they pulled out a holy symbol and I realized that I'd hit my needed complications before buying susceptibility to holy symbols. I changed it on the spot because it made sense, but during character creation process, it's a problem. And it never comes up for players who stay away from vulnerability like its...a vulnerability. I can hit my points with psych complications and social complications, why would I go to vulnerability. Also, that's another point, who's responsible for the vulnerability. If I buy a magnetic attack, should I buy extra dice against metal or should you buy vulnerability, and what if, by mistake, we do both...or neither. In my mechwarrior games, I finally settled on junkloads of side effects, which makes sense. Shoot off a Long Range Missile Rack in the middle of a city and you're likely to pick up a temporary Social Complication (Starting a War!). Shoot off a bunch of particle cannons and there's a chance that the wires in your other equipment might fuze from the heat. I like the complication system because it lets me know what that should be worth, and it simplifies that process. As for the hunteds, social complications, distinctive features, things like that... enh. They're campaign stuff. It's a way for my players to say, I really want there to be a pirate theme to your adventures every third one. I like the players having that capacity for input. I'm not sure I value it as a balancing system. Even in the old days when it was a roll, I don't think anyone ever did the roll. Can you imagine if everyone's 11 or less hunted showed up at the same time? And why wouldn't they attack each other?

Can you trigger a perception? If so, you make a triggered detect on the room, so you don't have to be there for the spell to go off, and then link that to images (of the room if everything were visible). That wouldn't counteract darkness, but then, I'm not sure how that works. If I'm in an area of inky blackness and I'm holding a magic item, it would shine. Would it dispel the darkness or would other people in the darkness see the object, and if the latter could they see me (would it, in essence, illuminate other stuff). The reason I ask is because of the UOO possibility. I don't particularly like it because, by your description someone a mile away can see the illumined object, and I don't want to have to hit that person with the UOO (it can be done, but it's pricey). If you buy a dispel on the darkness field, you could apply limitations to it; specifically, (only to dispel darkness regarding object that can be seen with sense X). This would give the object immunity. If it illuminates me as well, that gets a bit more complicated. In my opinion, and there are probably a lot of ways to do this, but I don't like Transform for things like this. The problem is that Body factor. So, the dragon can't see the object, but the giant ant can? I think you're better off working through images and dispel if you can swing it, since images works off a sense you know everyone has and dispel works off the one power you know will complicate the system.

Huh. Well, that makes sense about the Multipower. I have Fantasy Hero 5th and 6th. I have Star Hero and some supplements for 5th edition Fantasy Hero. I've looked at the Grimoire and the Bestiary, but I'll be honest, I come from an age long, long ago. We bought Enemies 1, 2, and 3, but mostly because they were somewhat humorous. The general consensus back then was that the game designers were great....at designing games. They couldn't design jack. I've gotten used to just building it myself, and for the most part, I prefer the results to what I've seen in the books. Oh, and I got the Monster Hunter book. In general, I don't think much of the supplements, but I really like the company so I buy stuff that I hope will get me some cool ideas.

That DCV is based on levels and an occasional Aid through magic items. So, if base DCV is 6+martial dodge is 11, and the character has 4 levels with martial arts, that's 15 max. I think the halfling has a base of 7 and adds two to range modifiers because of a persistent Change Environment. Note, if the characters get those DCVs, they aren't putting anything into OCV and probably won't hit. Also, when surprised, that DCV is still 6 (or 3 when halved). I should point out that this falls in line with my general belief that the game uses the characters stats as the norm. Unfortunately, that doesn't work if the stats vary greatly across the characters as they currently do.

In terms of balancing, the problem here is that I have seen versions of this character as high as 6 a day for two weeks straight. To those of you who feel I have not done that preliminary work...yeah. I just keep getting sent new and improved versions of the character that eek out points over and over and over. Often, the new and improved characters highlight places where I've said, in general conversation, that the rules are a bit lacking. So, for instance, we had a long winded conversation about healing. Healing didn't really work in the game, or at least, it seemed hard to figure out. So, in comes a version of Archmage1's character that now has lots of healing. Basically, if I didn't know how to balance that power, he wanted in on the action. Then, here on the forums I had a discussion of healing and I got all the kinks worked out. Healing was now going to be limited and defined. Having read that forum, here comes a version of his character with regeneration. Then I outlaw regeneration as it really doesn't work as I see it now (why would anyone buy healing?), so here comes a version of his character with an Aid to Body with a reduced diminishing rate of once per 5 minutes and a low enough endurance cost that it acts as improved healing. I dare not explain AVLD's that do body. I mentioned in coversation that autofire is really powerful if combined with surprise attacks. Next thing I know the characters main attack is a penetrating, armor piercing autofire. When I rule that that consitutes a non-standard attack power, the power is rolled back to an armor piercing autofire, which he haymakers while invisible. Yay! At one point the character had four multipowers. One for attacks, one for movement, one for strange defenses (including 55 points of Power Defense and 55 points of Mental Defense), and one for resistant defenses. He was hoping that the 55 active could oscillate between PD and ED, depending on the enemy he faced, until I put the keebosh on that, so he took them out of the multipower and bought +12 rPD and +12 rED seperately. This particular character had desolidification (requires End to Activate), Invisibility (ditto), images (on a trigger), autofire AP blast, flight, two kinds of teleport (one megascaled), flight, flash, darkness, and an aid to two characteristics simmultaneously. This was after I scaled this character back, over and over again for two weeks straight. Keep in mind, this may sound excessive, it is, but what can I say. First, other characters have power pools. I mistakenly assumed that since they could summon these powers too, what was the difference (the difference is skill rolls and multiple phase delays). Second, seriously, he wore me down. How many times can you read the same character without finally saying, "fine. Let's see how it plays." This version enraged the rest of the table. Partly because it was overbalanced, but also because the rule lawyering began and so there needed to be a million decisions on rule calls so as to get more power (did you realize that, according to the rules, you can do a flash while invisible without giving away your position. Who allows that?). So, yet another character was produced, this time very apologetically, most of the powers had been sheered of the most egregious of advantages, but lo and behold, suddenly there was Weapon Master to add 3 DCs to all the shadow powers. I mean, seriously, everyone's mad, and now the character is attempting to get 3 DCs over the Active point max. This is really the problem, and the problem that this forum has otherwise not hit upon. It isn't a balance issue, its that the balance issues are consciously inserted. If I were dealing with accidental problems or the mistakes of a neophyte, that's one thing, but when every correction breeds, like a hydra, two more problems that require correcting, and when those problems stem from identified problems with the rules, it stops being explainable as ignorance and looks like willful production of problems. Now, some of you have said that you wouldn't tolerate such a player. I hear that. But at the same time, there's a kind of logic to this kind of character design. You look for the line in the game and you toe it. This is why I asked how you guys define the line so as to deter this kind of play style. Not ejection, but deterrence because, at the end of the day, Archmage1 knows the rules and is a pretty good role player. Moreover, he's not a bad guy...until he opens Hero Builder. That being said, he's now received 8 experience points and the very next day after the end of our last adventure, I had to answer a string of emails in which he asked whether he could buy off all the limitations that his powers had that had kept him from being cheesy the night before, and now he wants to know, generally speaking, how the construction of scrolls will work in my game. I am babysitting a character. I think that the rules should alleviate some of this or at the very least, I think there should be some mechanism by which I can say, here, here is what I don't want to see. I'm still surprised that other people don't have such restrictions, but there you are.

Oh sorry. Let me know what you'd like to see and I'll paste it in. Defenses tend to be around 9 resistant. Basically, if you have a 10 PD, and a 10 Ed, you only have 35 points left over for resistant, and you want to have PD and ED because Stun multiples will screw you up otherwise. That being said, almost every character has gone the DCV or Block route, which is fine. DCV after dodge can get up between 14-18 (yeah I know, but it works out). The highest defenses tend to be with the casters. The 325 reflects the fact that the characters are buying huge perks or a huge equipment pool. Without it, I expect that the characters would be around 250-275. I also make the characters buy 25 points worth of flavor skills or perks. Stuff that doesn't have a combat analog. Finally, the 55 point max was chosen because, lower than that, and I find mental powers have little chance of ever working. In my experience, Hero doesn't work very well below 50 points, and really 60 is probably best, but I don't know, that's just my experience. The power pool the spell caster, not Archmage1 has, is: Wish Pool, 60 base + 55 control cost, (88 Active Points); all slots Extra Time (Extra Segment, -1/2), Side Effects: Character gains Distinctive Features as a Spell Caster (20) and enough complications to make up the difference (half active), Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (-1/2), Banality (-1/2) Where Banality is a limitation that amounts to a power roll, modified by circumstances, and which effects the nature of the side effect (if the distinctive features doesn't matter, it becomes something else, generally damage).

I generally don't do this because I don't want to hear the obligatory...why did you do it that way? You want the guts or the description? The game is Fantasy Hero, but it's pretty close to Champs. There's a 325 point total with a 55 Active Point cap. I have a defense cap of 55 Active divided between regular, resistant, damage reduction, and damage negation, except that on the latter two, I generally don't count it if it's sufficiently limited (fire immunity, for instance). I'm running equipment through power pools because that's what I'm comfortable with: Equipment Pool, X base + 55 control cost, No Skill Roll Required (+1) (Y Active Points); Extra Time (Extra Phase, Delayed Phase, -1), Stocks and Stores (-1/2), Limited Special Effect: Equipment Very Common SFX (-1/4), Equipment has reasonable mass (-1/4); all slots IIF (-1/4) Characters are required to buy armor proficiency as well. The above power pool can actually be bought up to whatever the character wants in Active (after all, as GM I control what the characters get to add, generally, to their stocks and store). If characters want more than this, they have to buy perks to be able to access other powers and etc. Perks range from 1 point (I've got a power) to 16 points (I can basically summon spells at will). There really isn't a limit in terms of what the characters can take as powers so long as it fits the conception and power level of the game. That being said, magic is normally bought through a VPP. The goal here is to have the characters able to play strange and exciting fantasy heroes. One character is a pirate with a scimitar and a belt of giant strength, another character was a halfling with a bunch of poisons, another character is a bard with all kinds of mental abilities. Magic in populated areas requires a power roll. Magic outside those areas does not. Anything that qualifies as "magic" is bought with a 1 segment delay to represent the ability to interrupt spells. Basically, I want spells and spell like abilities to be somewhat consistant with the 1st edition D and D game upon which this Hero game is based. Maxes are 17 for Str, Dex, Con, Int, Ego, and Pre. PD, ED, Rec at 10 (with the above stipulation), 30 for Stun and End, 20 for Body, 6 for the CVs, and 3 for Speed. Everything above these costs double. This is true for Cha bought as powers. It is not true for Aid. Characters may not buy Skill Levels but they may buy CSLs and do. CVs as a result tend to run high, but they run high for everyone. Most everyone has bought their speed above max. I allow people to buy combat luck once, but not twice and it doesn't stack with armor. Because of the 55 Active max, damage from weapons runs a bit high (3d6 for greatswords, but most attacks are between 1 1/2d6 and 2d6). Almost all attacks are killing. Armor itself runs between 3 and 15 Resistant. Solid armors have damage negation. Sharp weapons reduce it. I use knockback, but it's only happened once. I only use hit locations if something would be impaired or disabled by the attack or if someone calls shots. I don't use bleeding. For the most part, if the players get the rules, I'd be willing to use optional rules, and I'm certainly into the swordplay kind of rules for FH, but 4 of the 5 players have never played Hero before and the fifth played Champions 1st printing, 1st edition. I myself played 1st edition Champions from about 85 until 92 a whole bunch. Every game we played was translated into Champions except for Call of Cthulhu and later Vampire: the Masquerade. I have been playing 6th edition for about 2 1/2 years (If you want to know my skill level, I recommend you check out the mechwarrior stuff below). Two of the players are making their own stuff (characters, spells, etc.). Archmage1 is one of those players. Power types are reminiscent of 1st edition dungeons and dragons, but as I'm not playing D and D, I'm not against making the game better by translating it into hero. I've included A spells and spell like equipment to give you a basic feel for what I'm going for. That's the campaign... Power Pool.hdc A spells.hdc

Archmage 1, do you really want to do this on a public forum? I'm asking questions about how to set up mechanical limits to reign in character construction abuses. I'm assuming that you don't know everything about the game. But please don't insinuate that you have no idea about power levels and things. All the other characters are in scope. You have a file with every 1e D&D spell in the Player's Handbook translated into Hero, about fifty different special abilities for magic weapons, hundreds of potions, and all the rules covering armor, including magic armor. You know what the power levels are. Moreover, you and I have gone back and forth talking about your character. Part of the reason I started this thread was because I wanted something concrete to give to you so that you could figure out where the limits of the game are, since, generally, when I say something is too powerful that's your cue to go ahead and add it to your character sheet. At one point, you wanted a character who could blind mega-scale teleport while desolid and invisible. Are you saying you don't know what that would do to a game? Really? If you really want to know, I don't think you're playing the game. I think you're playing me. I'm not sure why you're doing that. Maybe it's the 3.5 background. Maybe it's something else. But it's no fun for me, and it is, quite frankly, no fun for anyone else at the table either. I recommend that you read the comments on this thread that aren't mine. They're very good at explaining a surprising principle in this game: that despite the incredible volume of the rules, the game only works if people aren't trying to abuse the system.

To Steve, No. The other players are generally fine. But for most everyone I've either made their characters or they appreciate a kind of back and forth between players and the GM so they're not trying to push the envelope. I do have limits, but the game seems to have as many ways to get around them as there are rules themselves. So, that's where I'm at. The standard things you'd monitor are not the points of contest. I think you're right when you say, "To that, there is no good answer." To Scott, Yeah, the other players are kind of livid. The rules lawyer is actually ending up keeping himself safe and getting other people killed.

I'm sorry, Vondy, but my beginning players don't have that intuition so your advice isn't very useful for me. I played 1st edition for about 8 years, but haven't played Hero since 91 or 92. I have some of this intuition you're talking about, but its an enormous ruleset and I can't look at a character and immediately know that my game will be ruined if I allow the character to go as is. Glad you can, but that doesn't really help me or my players. The problem is that I'm asking what to do when the player doesn't stick to the agreed upon whatever but is subtly and continuously trying to get around the limits of the game or to stretch the limitations set up at the beginning of the game so as to make a character who is slightly more powerful than everyone else's. I need to either handle the player mechanically, which is why I've posted this question, or I need to eject him from the game. Intuition has already failed. It is not the solution. The player is trying to make a character who stretches the limits of what is wanted. In a way, he probably already has the intuition you're thinking of, he's just trying to go a bit further than that, and being new, he's taking it too far. What I want, but what I don't think can exist, is a simple, 'you may do this and that, but not this or that' set of guidelines. I was hoping to see what you all produce in your games so that I could model mine on that. I have had one person recommend one. Use of such guidelines do not seem to be that common and maybe for good reason, but as I've said, I either need one, or I need to eject the player. I was hoping not to have to do the latter.

I'll say it again: I want to run a game, not spend all my time adjudicating on rule calls. I have a rule lawyer player. Every incarnation of his character is bad. It's just an infinite variety of junk. Do I just keep vetoing his character over and over, five emails a day for weeks on end? And what if asks, "what would I need to do here to make the character fromage-free?" I don't want to have to say: You can have levels, but only 3 and they can max at 5 points, and oh, Desolidification, yes, but it has to cost Endurance to maintain, but invisibility can be Endurance only to activate, Change Environment is fine but max of Active 12, everything else max 45, you may not take knockback modifiers as limitations because we will not be using knockback unless a power has increased knockback in which case we will be using knockback, but then the 'not against knockback' limitation on clinging is worth double. You can put stop powers in your power pool so long as the pool takes at least a day to change, but powers with charges or limited effect cannot be put into the power pool unless it is a common modifier for the pool itself.... I could go on. Who wants to see five pages of that? And if you say, well, just use your intuition, I'll say "when?" Every time the player puts a power into a power pool? Character creation doesn't really end in Hero. And I'll say why? Given that the game has at least four obvious attempts to control this problem (real cost, active cost, DCs, stop and caution signs) and given that the rules are more than 500 pages, why can't I expect some support from the rules about what's fair and what's cheese? If not in the original rules, then at the very least, in the genre books. Why does that have to be me while I'm trying to run a game? Damn, if I'm just going to run the game based on my intuition, why even have rules? And by the way, some players want to know where the limit is, other players want to know that the limit is the same for everyone and not decided on a case by case basis. The Fantasy Hero book is an additional some-odd hundred pages, it clears NONE OF THIS UP. But, as I said, I think I have the answer. GMs have veto power. Seriously, none of you have had a player ask where the line is so that they can make a fair character? How do they react when you tell them that it's more of a feeling than a set of guidelines?

The spirit of this thing, though, is that I want to run a game, not second guess characters all the time. I don't want to have to judge a power's appropriateness over and over again; I don't want to be one step ahead of the kind of rules lawyering that Hero invites; I want to tell a story. Also, I expect that a player who hears no to X is going to try Y, and then Z until they get their character in scope. But scope is a product of (every power x every advantage x every limitation)... that's just too much to have to constantly think about. Sadly, though, I think I've got my answer. GM, do more work! I don't like that answer. I assume, then, that when players test this out, as I'm sure they do from time to time, they can't play? One of the problems I have with this is that I've got new players. They don't know where these lines are. There's 600 pages of rules. Aside from the Stop signs, what do they have? I don't want to make their characters for them, but Hero Builder allows them to get crazy powers really quickly.

...undertake in life?

But what if that player isn't sure what you mean by "unfair for this genre or something." It would seem to me that that would be a good thing for the genre books to do, but they're as open-ended as the 2 volume rule book as far as the rules go. Take, for example, trigger. I have no idea why every character doesn't have 8 active-point-maxed, DC-maxed offensive powers, all with the 1/4 point trigger ("when I say boo"), all ready to go off in a multipower when they enter combat. Boo. You get attacked 8 times. You reply, "that would ruin the game," to which some player is likely to wonder, "well, how close to that line can I get without ruining the game," or worse, they've got a powerpool, but because restrictions aren't laid bare, you have to constantly spend your time adjudicating on the genre/fairness of every creation. Sure, some players will get the picture and join the cause, but what about the other guy, the min/maxer or power-gamer? Do you just tell them that Hero isn't the game for them? Do you encourage everyone to min/max and then go for broke? Because the min/maxer will want a line and if you have to draw it for every power and advantage in the game...

It seems to me that the guy running the game in Hero basically has to constantly lay down the law and that if he or she just says, "make something and we'll play an adventure," the whole thing will turn to chaos before the game even begins. The game gives Stop and Caution signs, but there are so many hidden combinations that are damnably easy to find that if someone wants to exploit the rules, you'll pull your hair out constantly trying to put a stop to their exploitation that you'll have no energy left for designing the adventures (or do you just start a cheese competition). This question is less about how official boundaries work, since I don't think those work very well (I'm thinking of AP limits, DC limits, no Stop powers, etc.), and more about what you do as a GM when players bring you the BS. Do you just say, "no," followed by "because I said so?" Do you have rules in your campaigns that, if followed, will prevent BS, and if so, how did you do it given the labyrinthine ruleset and the nigh infinite ways in which the rules can be exploited.

You lost me. 72 Body an hour sounds like a good reason to house rule healing. One thing that I consider for my games at least is that the monsters often are as powerful as the characters, especially the bosses. How would my players feel about a boss dragon rocking healing without modification? I don't think that they would appreciate it.

I like that Mark. In fact, I'm going to take it one further. Healing works in FH if... 1. The amount a person can be healed (the number to be beat on future heal rolls) is character dependent. I've been healed 7 body, I can't be healed again until someone else gets to 8. 2. My max resets when I get a natural point of body back (day of rest, essentially) 3. Decreased Re-Use Duration only allows people to roll so as to try to get up the to the limit; it does not reset the limit. In my campaign, spells have an AP limit of 55, which is 5d5 healing. That range makes it feasible for people to want to re-roll those healing powers. I have had to outlaw regeneration for rather obvious reasons. By the way, Tasha, I would agree with you if I were going for a less gritty feel, something like D and D 4e, but I'm trying to create a game where the characters have good reason to avoid giant fights.

You've sort of hit the nail on the head here. Either the power is waaaaay too powerful for it be allowed in Fantasy Hero, or it isn't powerful enough. Either the character can get the advantages and heal 100s of body per turn or you limit the advantage and the dying character who was healed an hour ago is SOL.

Okay, if you don't do healing in your games or if you have house ruled healing or you use some really complex way to track healing, I appreciate that that's how you've solved the problem, but... I need to know how it works unmodified in games (see my previous post). I have a character who is literally at -9 Body. He has healing that he can use once every 4 hours. He has used it and maxed it. Someone hands him a healing potion. Can it work? Does it automatically work? If it only works sometimes, what are those conditions? Unable to make hide nor hair of the rules as they stand, and not wanting to add an extra layer of book-keeping to what is, already, a complex game. I think I'm deciding to rule that Maximum effect is for the healed, and not the healer, and that the system cannot work with the Decreased Re-Use duration (or whatever that's called). I say this, but I would really love for someone to explain to me the rules as they are meant to be used. They do not make any sense to me as soon as multiple healers, multiple re-use durations are involved.

I get how healing works, generally. The book's pretty clear about until the point where multiple healing sources are involved. So, let's say I get healed 2d6 by someone who can only use the power once per day. The next person comes up and they can heal you once per day. Can they use their power? Is it commulative or do they suffer from a maximum effect thing? Now let us say that the 2nd character can heal once per turn (I can't remember if that's possible), when does the maximum effect reset. Say the 24 hour healer heals 4 body. The next guy, assuming maximum effect, will have to roll over 4 body to heal anything, but one assumes that, after a turn, the maximum thing starts over for the 2nd guy and he no longer has to worry about the first guy's maximum effect. Does it start over for the first guy since he's now contributing to a new maximum effect? Yeah, see the problem? And what if guy 1 and guy 2 are actually the same guy, but he's got multiple healing powers, or what if he's duplicated?! Essentially, with 2 healing powers with the decreased re-use time can halve re-use time and they can do that with every character in the healer's party. And finally, how do you deal with this in your game... Do you just assume that a healer in the party means that between encounters, a healer with two powers can, with very little rule manipulation, get the party back up to full Body without much effort.

How does healing work in Fantasy Hero if multiple characters have access to healing magic and/or equipment? And, I guess, does that matter? So, scenario. If I am at -9 body, I roll 2d6 healing, and I heal 3 body. Can I turn around and just roll again on my next phase? If so, should I just consider that the power gets its maximum, non-combat, so long as I can spam it like that? It seems like the rules are set up to keep people from spamming healing, but one of my players can heal 2d6 body (halved) per hour, which doesn't seem that out of line for a healer. The end result is that if the players rest for a couple hours, the entire party is back up to full body. Is that right? Does the maximum effect rule cover multiple sources of healing. For instance, if this same character then took a healing potion, would that go against the maximum effect from the other healing or does it work independently? Does it matter if it's his potion of healing, or whether it is, technically, somebody else's? Would that change if it weren't a potion but, say, a character's power?

That's funny. I thought that was a mis-print, since the game clearly gives the stun multiple range of 1-3 and the to-hit location table goes off the old 1d6-1, which by the way they were smart to change because it made KAs way more powerful than normal damage. Who remembers the 4d6 penetrating killing attack that could stun you without getting through your armor? I always liked it best when it was autofire. Probably the subject for another thread, but if you can get a x5 stun multiple by being 8 levels of offsetting a called shot penalty, nobody in your game ought to buy anything but killing attacks. At least they did away with the increased Stun Multiple advantage.