Christopher R Taylor

Yeah I fenced a guy at a Ren fair once. I grabbed his foil Rob Roy style and jabbed him in the heart. That was objectively a win, he was completely unprepared for it. But according to the rules, it was a loss; I "cheated." To be fair, I was fighting for a pretty redhead, so it was a win either way in my book.

Honestly the book isn't 100% clear, and Steve isn't here to ask, sadly. It could read either way: either you can buy just 1 point and it covers everything... or you have to buy all your defense impenetrable to get anything.

Well Pittsburgh could surely use a hero

I gotta figure most athletes are speed 2 or 3, max, and those only in sports like Hockey. Speed 4+ is reserved for military types, combatants who learn how to react well and efficiently in combat.

I had a clever player with mental illusions who would always try to find out if a target had special senses, to target them with the illusion. He figured that it would lead them to believe the illusion more and find them more compelling because they picked it up with their unusual senses

I do think its good to have more discussion of the pros and cons of allowing action after an attack, though. It would change some fundamental things about how Hero combat feels and moves, but would it be necessarily bad? It definitely would be a bit more complicated.

But there is an area in which you are not flying, not attacking, and not using your defenses. You cannot fly around shooting targets, or you start to fall out of the air. If you had them outside a multipower, you can fly and attack. You cannot have your defenses up while you attack, leaving you vulnerable to anyone who has held their phase or acts at the same DEX rank as you. It is limited, just not as much as by the rules. Like I said, it never has been a problem in the past, but perhaps nobody took advantage of it. I never insisted anyone should do this or that its by the rules. I just mentioned that in my campaigns over 30 years it never was an issue. I mean, I literally posted that yesterday.

Or as Grailknight pointed out: which means it doesn't matter how you run things, it still poses a concern. Except you can only use them one at a time anyway. You cannot fly and blast, you cannot defend yourself and attack. You can rapidly switch, but you're still vulnerable or not flying or not blasting at the same time.

Well, here's what the rules say: Now, I have never run it that way, I've always allowed changing powers in a multipower at will on your own phase, without any particular negative results, but this would be one way of limiting the problems of being able to act after attacking.

Talk about a literal place to use side effects

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it would force people to hold and attack the enemy when they get an opportunity instead of more like taking turns. But it would require careful watch on how long actions take and so on. And from many a brain-aching night of playing Magic The Gathering on when things take place in what order and in what speed, this can be a bit more of a pain than is worth what you gain from it.

And it is your position that the competition could not be the "combat" portion of a campaign with other stories?

I think that if you have ever played a competitive sport, you have a better grasp on why someone might enjoy this kind of game.

There are Hero-specific issues as well. Say you have a multipower with high defenses and attacks in it. at the beginning of your phase, you turn off your defenses slot and turn on your big attack slot. You attack. Then you turn on your high defenses slot. Like a mask and unmask attack: hiding behind something, popping out and firing, then ducking back. The problem is that you have effectively negated much of the limitations of a multipower, which is why it costs less to have all those powers.

I would sign up for this game at a con in a heartbeat Something worth considering is that you could have two scales of CV: vs other giant robots and vs people. People should have no problem hitting a skyscraper-sized robot. But the robot vs robot combat should be a bit more tricky, as its at their scale

The thing is, history, academia, philosophy, theology all discuss nature vs nurture but in the end it really is both in almost all cases. Some people are more inclined to horrors, and they are directed toward that by how they are raised or their environment. It cannot ONLY be nature, because that doesn't explain how evil people can twist and turn others to their side and to follow their wickedness. It cannot ONLY be nurture or where the heck did the first bad guy come from to create the environment that makes people go bad? Ultimately though, I only bring that up as a thought exercise, because in a game I don't care. None of that applies. The only purpose in a game is entertainment and story. It doesn't matter where the bad came from, unless the entertaining scenario is about that. Bad guys are bad because I need them to be bad for this story and everyone has fun with it. Getting into how the orcs are mean because they were mistreated by hobbits 3000 years ago and have struggled for their homeland blah blah, no. That's neither fun nor an interesting story. Stick with the GAME aspects of the game, remember what we're doing here.

LOL Snopes

Yeah I could enjoy a game of MLB, with the life stuff going on behind the scenes, the training, the games (basically combat), etc. Its a valid form of role playing as any other, just not necessarily for everyone.

In many cases the END Cost for powers will be the same based on Active or Real, since many powers have no advantages at all.

The challenge is really depicting the difference between nightvision and UV vision. UV has to have its strengths and weaknesses, but in literature and games it ends up just being violet-hued night vision. Its said to only work outside where UV light is provided, although the Dark Elves in EverQuest for instance could see clearly underground (it was very superior to IR vision). In game terms I guess you would have to make night vision something that works less well than UV but also works underground, more the "dim outlines" version of 5th edition quoted above, while UV gives clear vision but only with sources of UV light. Anyway that's how I would do it, I think. This is probably the right direction to go in a hypothetical 7th edition.

I think that velocity and movement and other words are being used interchangeably and not strictly to rigorous engineering standards.

I think it would be a fascinating undertaking to build a "combat" system usable to simulate athletic competitions, but I don't actually think its possible, at least not without heinous amounts of math and rules and engineering.

And what happens when you hit the ball? How is it a grounder instead of a fly ball? What direction does it go? All of that is tied into what kind of pitch in what location against what kind of batter with what kind of swing and what kind of contact. Which is why you use something like PS: Baseball Player instead of trying to simulate it with combat.

Almost without exception, it is extremely difficult to model athletic competitions and sports using game rules. Just try to work out how you would handle something as straight forward as pitching a ball to someone trying to hit it. Just batting an object someone throws is not immediately clear in Hero or any other game, but adding in things like change in velocity, direction of throw, spin of the ball creating movement, etc makes it even more complicated. And this is something most people grew up with just doing in their back yard.

IR gives you details and information that night vision would not. I define nightvision in my campaign as "enhances available light" so it doesn't help underground, for instance, without a light source. IR works everywhere, and further, makes hot things (like enemies) stand out against the background.