zslane

I'm sort of the opposite, I guess. My brain internalized the "fast counting" of STUN and BODY long ago. The basic action resolution mechanic I find to be quite straightforward, and calculating "how much you need to make the roll by" was also internalized a couple of decades ago. However, trying to figure out the cost of some of my power concepts makes my head swim with the interaction of advantages, limitations, adders, framework mods, etc. Even with Hero Designer (which I don't own, to my discredit I suppose), you trade scratching one's head figuring out the math yourself with scratching one's head figuring out how to structure a complex power so that HD accepts it and calculates the cost properly. None of which is insurmountable, just occasionally annoying.

Perhaps it would help to imagine we're comparing a hex to an immobilized gelatinous cube in the exact shape of a hex. The gelatinous cube would have a DCV of 0 (like any other character or monster in its position) and so should a hex, which is exactly the same size and shape. And neither are moving or capable of moving.

Actually, that is incorrect on two counts. First of all, I am talking exclusively about non-moving, immobilized targets (which I've said so repeatedly in my posts I am starting to feel self-conscious about it), so starting a counter-argument with "Say the target your character wants to hit is moving." is already talking entirely about the wrong thing. Secondly, I am not talking about hitting a character, but a hex. Actually, I am comparing hitting a hex to hitting a non-moving, immobilized character. The non-moving, immobilized character has a DCV of 0. A hex, which also does not move and is 70x larger by volume, should not have a DCV higher than a non-moving, immobilized character. It makes no sense to rule otherwise. Moreover, when targeting a hex, how a character moves into it is immaterial because the character is not the target. That is the whole point of AoE attacks. Instead of having to hit a high-DCV character, one merely needs to hit the volume the character occupies. If you hit the hex, you hit everything in that hex. The only way a fast, high-DEX character can avoid getting hit is to Dive For Cover (i.e., get themselves out of the hex). I'm not sure what I find more surprising: the tortured lengths folks are going to to make sense out of something that intrinsically doesn't, or the fact that this has never come up before (and given a satisfactory answer by Steve or George) in the 30+ year history of the game. Obviously the game "works" with hexes at DCV 3, but nobody can really suss out a logical reason for it, and all fears that setting it to DCV 0 would break game balance are purely speculative and unconvincing.

I'm not sure anyone who is setting the DCV of a hex to 0 in their campaign(s) is seeing any game balance issues. But I'm sure everyone sees the illogic in setting it to 3 (once they think about for even a moment).

In the Hero System, a target's DCV has nothing to do with the form of attack directed against it. A hex is just another target with a DCV. The 5th edition rules give adjacent hexes a DCV of 0. Well all hexes should have the same DCV, and it should be 0. We already have range mod penalties to OCV to reflect the difficulty of hitting targets at a distance, we don't need to make a special case for hexes.

Heh. I always figured hexes had a DEX of 0, so their DCV should also be 0... ;-)

I could also just write them up as two entirely separate powers, one with the "IIF Psionic Amplifier" Focus (-1/4) limitation, and the other with an "Only when Focus not in use" (-1/4) limitation.

Yeah, this concept gets a bit complicated if taken too far. That's why I was thinking of the No Range, Only with Focus as a single Limited Power limitation that is an aggregate of the two. Maybe we call it "Anchored by Focus" which imposes the No Range effect, but only when the Focus is worn, and isn't valued at the full -1/2, but only -1/4 because the No Range effect doesn't apply in all situations. This way, we aren't putting a limitation on a limitation, per se, but instead we're inventing a new limitation that is applied to the base power, but the definition of this new limitation is that it only "kicks in" under certain circumstances.

The way I think about it, and please correct me if this is totally wrong-headed, is that I calculate how many extra points a set of advantages is adding to the base cost of the power, and then the limitations applied to that set of advantages merely reduces the amount of that increase. So, to take a simplified scenario, a 40 point power with a set of advantages that add up to +1 would normally cost 80 points, with 40 of those points coming from the extra cost added by the advantages. If those advantages are limited by a set of limitations that add up to +1, then those advantages only add 20 to the cost of the power, for a total cost of 60. Does that sound right?

So basically we're putting limitations on advantages. And I suppose we can think of a limitation that is itself limited (No Range, but only when Focus is worn) as just a single Limited Power limitation that aggregates them. I think I got it. I just wasn't sure how kosher it was to put limitations on advantages these days. And you're right, since it's a villain we're talking about here, precise point costs aren't critical. But it's still nice to know whether this power makes him a 400-point-ish villain, a 600-point-ish villain, or a 1000-point-ish villain.

Would someone be willing to demonstrate how I should write up the naked advantage method, maybe using the example from post #1? I'm just not sure how to make the two sets of advantages and limitations mutually exclusive, based on whether or not the Focus is being worn. Much appreciated!

I don't think the math used by the Hero System--which is just elementary arithmetic--is "hard". But it can certainly be annoying at times.

Well, there's normal and then there's Normal. In the Hero System, a Normal is a character that doesn't have superpowers. They might have Talents, but not Powers in the superhero idiom (they could be used to emulate a new Talent perhaps). So when we speak of the limits of a Normal in this game, we mean characters without superpowers, and in terms of characteristics that means under 30. Anything above that is, by default, not considered Normal but Superpowered.

Suppose I have a villain with an innate power of 6D6 EGO Drain. Let's also suppose that normally this power has the Attack vs. ECV (or MCV) advantage, and maybe the Reduced Endurance advantage. But when this villain dons a special costume piece (the Focus), this power changes such that it has a completely different set of power modifiers (e.g., Area of Effect, No Range, etc.). The base power remains the same, only the power modifiers change. What is the best way to write up this sort of thing? A two-slot Multipower?

That's the job of the GM, not the base system. Curbing the (unwanted) behavior of powergamers and min-maxers in a particular group in a particular campaign isn't a system responsibility, and forcing the system to solve that problem internally only compromises the system for everyone else who doesn't have the "incentive" problem you describe.

A perfectly reasonable approach, IMO. Right, well, that's when you come up with your own take on the Traveller professions rather than referring readers to a book that you can't quote and which they may not have. Wait, what? Marc Miller doesn't own the rights to the alien races in his own game's universe? For what it's worth, I think you made the right choice there. You are absolutely right, it was Traveller Hero, where the only thing really being borrowed from Traveller was the setting, not the mechanics. Agreed!

My thoughts exactly.

Yes, but a hex is a much larger target overall, and if you hit any part of it you've covered all of it (with an AoE attack). Moreover, attacks can come from all kinds of angles (from the side, from above, etc.), so vertical length is not necessarily the best dimension for comparison, is it? A hex is, after all, a volume, and so is a character, coincidentally. BTW, I was off by a factor of 2 before. A 2m hex measured side-to-side has a volume of about 10.4 m3, which is more than 100x the volume of the average male human with a body mass of 100kg.

I can't recall ever reading an explanation for why a (non-adjacent) hex is given a DCV of 3 despite being around 50x larger by volume than a default human character standing within it (who would have a DCV of 0 if immobile, you know, like a hex). The notion that a normal human body "fills" a 2m hexagonal volume isn't a horrible simplification, but it is inaccurate enough that giving hexes a DCV of 0 certainly feels to me like reasonable compensation. Is "Hex has DCV of 0" a common house rule? If not, why not?

Yes, absolutely. The game system itself doesn't need to change just because the presentation style does. The more I think about it though, the less I find myself invested in discussing the idea any further. Only because I know there will never be a re-envisioning of the brand like I would want, and even if there was a serious effort to try, I'm not even sure what version of the system I'd want to see become the foundation of the new standard. It most certainly would not be 6e. But that's just my personal preference, which I'm sure isn't shared by many today.

The notion that a streamlined presentation and a rich toolbox are mutually exclusive is a false dichotomy. It is an alarming dichotomy only if the entire brand is expressed in a single book. That shouldn't be the case. There should always be the equivalent to 6E1/6E2 or the BBB for the grognards. I even like the idea of an entire core library like the 6e one, even though the marketplace seems to have convinced Hero Games that it isn't a worthwhile product scheme. But once the core system document is birthed, there ought to be product lines built upon it that provide newcomer-friendly entry points into the system, as well as rich campaign settings that appeal to the vast ocean of non-hardcore-DIY roleplayers out there.

I'm not sure it is quite fair to label it spoon-feeding. I don't think what I have in mind would be that simplified. I'm really not a fan of over-simplification. I hate it when I see pages in a rulebook that talk about what an RPG is and how it is "just like Let's Pretend, but with dice", as if the reader doesn't even know what the fundamental activity is they are buying the book for. I believe there are ways to jumpstart readers into playing a complex game without making them feel like toddlers. In fact, I'm not the least bit opposed to writing with the assumption that the reader is new to the Hero System, but not new to the hobby. But let's be honest here, the way the system has been presented for the last dozen years is simply not newcomer-friendly. A drastically different approach needs to be explored because the existing approach doesn't appear to be bringing in much in the way of new blood (or revenue).

Back when you had 100 fewer points to spend on a character, those minute differences between 2/+1 and 3/+2 cost schedules felt excruciatingly important and necessary. But with the enormous hike in starting point totals for all genres/power levels, all those skill point discount schema seem rather unnecessary, and almost woefully anachronistic.

If you had the time, you could write and publish them yourself. I am led to understand that Hero System licenses are easy to acquire and very reasonable.

It can be challenging making a product line that maximizes its value to beginners and newcomers to the system while also appealing to veterans of the game. I think the best that a "Starter" Read & Play line of books can hope to do is have enough good setting content that experienced Hero System players can extract what they find compelling from it, while discarding the stuff they don't need (like adventures, which they are accustomed to making up all on their own). It would be impossible to be all things to all players, and any new product line has to decide who it is meant for and commit to that. If the product line is serious about drawing in newcomers to the system, then it can't be afraid to alienate, to an extent, veterans (who are into building their own stuff from get go). Sorry, but that means all of us, more or less. As such, I would aim the presentation of a 7th edition squarely at newcomers, while filling the books with enough rich setting material that veterans would still find something of value in them. What I would probably do is provide a free "Advanced Appendix" PDF online for each book that supplies full point breakdowns of each spell, item, power, etc. for those veterans who want to pick things apart and rebuild them in their own image. But for the kind of player these books would be designed to attract, all that stuff would be so much pointless--if not off-putting--noise, and I wouldn't even stick it in the back of the books.