Arc Esu

For Adjustment powers, you can have the points added/drained split among multiple characteristics at a pre-defined ratio for no extra cost (i.e. Aid to Strength and Con, 50% of the points to each). You can also buy the Expanded Effect advantage to add the full value of the points rolled to multiple Characteristics (i.e. Aid to Strength and Con, 100% of the points rolled to each, for a +1 Advantage). Can you combine both of these options, so that you get multiple "stacks" of Adjusted points, then split some or all of the stacks amongst different characteristics? A sample build: Drain 7d6, Standard Effect 21 points, Expanded Effect (2 Characteristics; Speed/OCV 50% to each AND DCV, +1) In theory, the above build would lower Speed by 1 (10 points, which is 50% of first "stack" of 21), OCV by 2 (10 points, which is the other 50% of first "stack" of 21), and DCV by 2 (20 points, which is 100% of the second "stack" of 21). But is the build legal?

Re: Megascale costs At least in 5e, there was a suggested rule about "minimum Active Point costs" for powers. The player had to buy a minimum number of active points in a power before any advantages were applied. This prevented characters from buying 1" of teleport just to escape from entangles for the low cost of 2 character points, or from buying 1" of Flight just so they could hover. I recall that the suggested minimum was 10 Active points. I don't recall if this rule made it into 6e. Even if it did, it is campaign/GM specific. Nevertheless, the existence of this rule does explain why one might buy Teleport 10m of megascaled 1m=10Km rather than Teleport 1m megascaled 1m=100Km; you simply wouldn't be allowed to buy the second power.

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First There's a problem with that: it screws up the risk/reward dynamic. Imagine a similar house rule with weapons, which states that rather than rolling for a hit location, or making a "called shot" at a hit location, instead you make you attack roll, we see how much you beat the target's DCV by, and then you can chose to target any hit location that has a lower or equal OCV penalty than the amount that you hit by. As you can see, with this system any time a PC gets a great roll (beating the target DCV by 8 or more), they'll always go for a headshot. Why wouldn't they? It will do double damage. But they get that double damage at no risk, because a miss would still have been a miss, and a lesser hit would still have done something. Therefore, you might as well just make a normal attack every round and just hope you roll really well. That's not an interesting choice. In the normal system, if you want the double damage from a headshot, the trade-off is that you have a much lower chance of hitting. That makes for an interesting tactical choice because of the risk/reward dynamic. Now apply that same logic to mental powers as per the house rule you mention. Every time I use telepathy or mind control, I might as well go for the biggest effect I can. There's no interesting tactical choice of "Do I go for an Ego+30 effect that would end the fight, or an Ego+20 effect that would just help us out, but is more likely to work?" Whenever I roll well on the effect roll, I'll go for a big effect, otherwise I'll go for a lesser one. Now if this is a feel you want for your game (perhaps with non-tactical players), then fine. But know in advance what you're getting into.

Re: Pulp Era City Guides I agree. What a great way to present things the way they were seen in that era. Repped! And I vote for a sticky, or at least addition to some kind of "Pulp Hero Resource" thread.

Re: The Random Gizmo Generator Well, I got the recyclable structural dust disc. At least I'm saving the Earth... by recycling!

After looking over the VPP rules last night, I realized there is a slight gap (in my opinion) in the rules for them. By default, if you want to change a VPP in combat, it takes a full phase and a Power skill roll at -1 per 10 Active Points. You can reduce the time to half phase (for +1/2) or 0 phase (for +1). But your only option for modifying the skill roll is No Skill Roll Required (+1). There is no option for making the roll be at, say, -1 per 20 Active Points, or -1 per 5 Active points, like there is for the Requires a Roll Limitation. So I was thinking that you can make the skill roll be -1 per 20 Active Points for a +1/2 Advantage, and make the skill roll -1 per 5 Active points as a -1/4 Limitation on the VPP itself. Has anyone tried something like this as a house rule? Are there any potential balance problems that I'm not seeing?

Re: Limitations on Combat Skill Levels - same as the attack itself? As a GM, I would be very careful with limitations on CSLs. If you allow CSLs to take the same limitations as the powers they apply to, they become very cheap and potentially abusive. I mean, suppose you had a Fantasy Hero mage who took 5 point levels with "All Magic Attacks," then applied a -1/4 limitation "Doesn't work in anti-magic field," or even "Unifed Power: Magic." I can think of zero situations in which those limitations would restrict the CSLs any more than the mage would otherwise be restricted, and I doubt most GMs would allow it. Yet in spirit, it is no different than the Lightbeam example that has been thrown around.

Re: How compatable is GURPS to Hero? The first superhero game that I ran in college originally started as a GURPS game, but once I was told about Hero I quickly fell in love with Hero and converted over (making the game much better in the process). At the time, the points for character were 2 to 1; that is, a standard starting GURPS super was 500 points, and a standard starting Hero super was 250 (plus disadvantages), so it was pretty simple to convert things over. Just take a given ability, cut the points spent on it in half, and spend that many points on a similar ability in Hero. However, I have not played GURPS in years, so I don't know if this is still the case. And certain things (like death checks) don't convert over, but for a superhero game, it was a good thing not to roll to see if you die after taking a few shots.

Re: Help with Transform Rhonin- Yes, all the birds you mentioned are statted out in the Hero System Bestiary (I'm at work so I can't give you a page number). To reflect that it's a human mind in a bird body, you may need to change the write-up slightly (higher Int, Ego, and Pre to match the human's stats, no "Animal Intelligence" limitation, higher OMCV and DMCV, etc).

Re: A Newbie's first power Keep in mind that the Beam limitation also means you can't reduce the damage of the attack (the classic example being a gun - you can't have a 3d6 RKA assault rifle only do 1d6 RKA). So every light dagger the character throws will be a base 2d6 RKA, barring Drains, Aids, CSLs, and the like.

Re: How to Build a Grappling Hook tcabil- Normally, grappling hooks like Batman uses are built in the Hero System using the power Swinging, not Clinging. Clinging in and of itself does not let you move; it simply lets you use your Running on non-horizontal surfaces. I'm not even sure if Ranged is a legal Advantage on Clinging. As Kraven Kor says, a more realistic Grappling Hook would probably just be a bonus to Climbing, or possibly Clinging with "Extra Time Full Phase Only to Activate" (-1/4), "Requires an Climbing Roll" (-1/2), OAF (-1), "Can't Resist KB" (-1/4) and a custom limitation "Restricted Movement Based On The Rope" (I'd peg that at -1, personally). This gives you a final cost of 10 Active, 2 Real. You could arguably give it one continuing recoverable charge, or require an attack roll in addition to the Climbing roll, but I think that's splitting hairs. A more cinematic Grappling Hook like Batman uses would just be Swinging (the number of meters would depend on how fast you wanted the character using it to go) with OAF (-1). Again, you could give it Continuing Charges, possibly Recoverable, but how often does Batman run out of swinglines? Not often enough to merit a limitation, I feel. In addition, if you wanted the Grappling Hook to be used for other things (like grabbing distant objects or wrapping around someone), you could build a small Multipower with a slot for Swinging, one with Stretching (to grab on to distant things), and one with an Entangle. Hope this helps!

Re: Damage Negation behind Barrier I was considering this very question last night while calculating if Dr. Destroyer could survive a point blank nuke. I think we need an official ruling from Steve on this. All of the above suggestions seem reasonable to me, but I always like to have the official ruling. Ethernaut, would you like to post the question in the rules question forum? If not, I'd be happy to.

While waiting for the Golden Age Champions playtest to begin last night, I decided to try to calculate which Master Villains would survive a point blank 1 Megaton nuclear blast (as built in the Hero System Equipment Guide) assuming they were not specifically prepared for it and assuming the nuke rolls average damage. I certainly didn't get through all of them, and I'm at work so I can't post my exact math, but here's what I figured: Anyone without Life Support: Immune to radiation is almost certainly dead. The initial radiation damage of Drain 20d6 Body and Drain 10d6 Con is just brutal. This means the first guy I tried to calculate, Holocaust, is dead. It's a shame given his name, but he isn't actually immune to radiation. So next I only looked for the super tough guys that were immune to radiation. I was able to get through Doctor Destroyer, Mechanon, and Takofanes before the game started. Destroyer: I assumed he would have his Barrier power active (either by aborting or just having it up as a default), but had no VPP points in any defensive gadgets. The brilliant flash of light half-blinds him. The initial wave of heat does no Body to him, but destroys his Barrier. The pressure wave, which lasts for 6 segments, does an average of 11 Body a Segment to him. This would kill him since he has 30 Body, but if the Stun doesn't Stun him or KO him, he could activate his Tactical Adaptation during this time, increasing his damage reduction from 50% to 75%, which would be enough to save him. Result: A high damage roll for the nuke on an unprepared Destroyer MIGHT kill him; in any case, it will almost certainly at least significantly injure him. Takofanes: I assumed his VPP was allocated to non-defense powers when the nuke first goes off. He has lower Resistant defenses than Destroyer, but he always has 75% Damage Reduction. He is also about half-blinded by the flash, but unlike Destroyer does take some Body from the initial heat (about 5 or 6 as I recall). Each Segment of the Pressure wave he would take more Body, which after the 6 Segments would kill him if I remember correctly. However, if the initial blast doesn't Stun or KO him, he'll just change his Cosmic Power pool to something appropriate (Megascale Teleport, Healing, massive Barrier, etc) and escape or survive the rest without further harm. Result: Unlike Destroyer, Takofanes is hit or miss with a nuke. If the initial damage rolls are high enough to Stun or KO him, he will likely be destroyed. If not, he'll take a small amount of damage and just negate the rest with magic. Mechanon: Mechanon has higher resistant defenses than Takofanes and has 75% Damage reduction. He was the last calculation I did, and thus was a bit rushed, but as I recall he was pretty much ok. He would take some Body, but not enough to destroy him. And in any case, even if one robot body was destroyed, he has plenty of others. So if anyone else who owns both Hero System Equipment Guide and the Master Villains book and wants to take a crack at calculating the survival rate for a nuke, go nuts! And once I get home tonight I'll try to post my actual math.

Re: Link from the Legend of Zelda A few random thoughts on how to build a superheroic Link: The Boomerang should be a Blast with AoE: Line (in most games the boomerang hits everything in its path, and usually it just goes out and comes back in a line). You could make it Nonselective, since in the more modern 3D Zelda games the Boomerang tended to be a bit harder to aim. Another option would be to make it an "Any Area" AoE, with a Limitation reflecting that it only traces a path to return to return to Link. I wouldn't give it a the Focus or Physical Manifestation Limitation, as in the games nothing could stop it returning to you (except a plot point like getting jailed or the like). I wouldn't build the potions into the sheet, as I could see them getting abusive, and they weren't really inherent to Link - he had to keep buying them from stores or finding them, whereas with something like the Boomerang or Hook Shot, once he found it, it kept it for the duration. Bombs are the exception - although Link could run out of them, once he found them he always had a slot for them, even if at the moment he was out of them (plus, bombs are cooler than potions). I would build the sword as a small Multipower with a basic HKA for the normal slash, a Hole in the Middle AoE Radius HKA for the spinning slash that he has in many games, and a Blast with the Limitation "Only at Full Body" (-1/4) for the energy blast he could fire from the sword at full health in the early games. The game-specific items like the Ocarina or the Masks I wouldn't include - I'd stick to the classic items and abilities that are in almost every game. I think a well-built Link could work quite well in a Superhero game, so long as the player realizes that he'll be more like Batman than Superman - Very flexible, with a lot of tricks up his sleeve, but not as much raw power.

Re: Best way to self destruct a vehicle. Personally, I feel that a Self Destruct shouldn't have to overcome Defenses (as presumably the self-destruct explosives would be placed in such a way to bypass the vehicle's armor). You could do this by either a -0 Limitation on the Vehicle's Defenses ("Does not apply against Self-Destruct"), or just by GM fiat. In that case, you could do: 14d6 Ranged Killing Attack (Standard Effect: 42 Body) for 210 Active Points. Then apply 1 Charge, Never Recovers (-4), Self Only (-2), No Range (-1/2), No Knockback (-1/4) for 27 Real Points. Add Time Delay if needed. However, this won't fit in your Multipower. If you're using Hit Locations and the Vehicle has a hit location that has a x2 Body damage multiplier (the power core or whatnot), then you could assume that the Self-Destruct hits there (and maybe buy some PSLs to offset the targeting to represent this). Then you could cut the size of the Killing Attack in half.

Re: How does flash work. AKA I am an idiot. Flash works based on the Normal Dice Body rolled, so in your example, the target would be Flashed for 5 Segments (not 18). Flash defense reduces on a 1 for 1 basis, so in your example, if the the target has 4 Flash Defense (Sight), the target would only be blinded for 1 Segment. Flash would be WAY too powerful if it blinded for the total of the dice. In a 60 active point campaign, a single Flash would blind someone for 42 Segments on average, which is 3.5 Turns (so basically, take someone out of an entire fight with one attack). As for resistant Flash defense, you're right in that 9 times out of 10 (if not 99 times out of 100) you won't need it. In fact, no "standard" Attack power works against Resistant Flash defense. The only way you'd have an attack work against Resistant Flash Defense would be if the advantage Attack Versus Alternate Defense (Attack Versus Limited Defense in 5e) was applied to an attack power and Resistant Flash Defense was specified as the defense. I suppose you could also have a No Normal Defense attack where the defense was "any resistant Flash Defense." But both of those things are very rare, or should be, anyway.

Re: "Your Most Embarassing Game Mastering Moment" In high school I was running a 2nd ed D&D game on the floor of my bedroom (we didn't have any good-sized tables back then). The PCs seem to be doing unusually well in the adventure, but I figured it was just luck. However, when I was awarding them some gems as treasure, one PC immediately piped up with the gold piece value of one of the gems, even though they hadn't appraised it yet. I was stunned at his lucky guess until it hit me; I had set myself up in front of my floor-length mirror. The PCs could look in the mirror and see behind my DM screen, and had been doing so all night! I immediately relocated, but I didn't end up punishing them in-game, although maybe I should have!

Re: Left 4 Dead Hero Play Notes The only things I notice are "Vale" software (should be Valve), and that Crouching gives you +1 OCV (presumably it should be +1 OCV only with ranged weapons, as I don't see why crouching should improve a melee weapon). Also, do you even need STUN in a game like this? I haven't seen your zombie builds, but I usually picture zombies as having no Stun. But otherwise, it looks like a great way to take LFD fans and turn them into Hero fans! Appropriately, it's like spreading an infection...

Re: Making Screaming Skulls Why not just use a Multipower with the Sonic Blast and NND with OAF or Physical Manifestation and Fully Indirect? There was an example of this kind of personal floating weapons platform in the main 5e book, as I recall (don't remember if they kept that example in 6e). The only tricky thing is the senses. If the intention was for these to primarily be combat units, not scouts, I say just forget the mind link/Radar from the original build. If you did want them to be used as scouts, then Clarsentience with OAF or Physical Manifestation, plus Radar bought with "Only through Clarsentience," should do the trick.

In 6E2 it says that a Vehicle that loses all its Body falls apart or blows up at the GM's discretion. Does this mean when a Vehicle loses Body equal to its total (if it has 10 Body, once it takes 10 Body and is reduced to 0 Body it's destroyed) or when it goes to negative its starting Body like a character (if it has 10 Body, it's destroyed once it takes 20 Body, thus being reduced to -10 Body)?

Re: How to build: melting a bank vault Another option would be a Drain ED with the Fade time bought down (to once a minute, perhaps) linked to a small (maybe 1 to 2 dice Killing, or 3 to 6 dice Normal) RKA/Blast, and use them together as a combined attack. For the first several attacks, the linked Blast/RKA will bounce off of the vault, but eventually it will melt through as the ED decreases. This also works against PCs, as they'll see the effect of the attack, as well as their lowered ED, and can do the rough mental math of how long they have before they're in trouble.

Re: Proper Whip Build in 6e Thanks for the responses guys. I've PMed Steve to let him know that the Active and Real points may be errata; I'll post if he confirms or denies it. That all being said, the ideas of how a whip should be built in this thread have been very interesting, and regardless of the "official" build, I may build it differently. I particularly like Mattingly's suggestion of Reduced Penetration and Increased Stun Multiplier. I agree with Prestidigitator that Indirect isn't really appropriate (unless you're building a very cinematic whip, perhaps). I think I'll go with: Killing Attack - Hand-To-Hand 1d6, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), +1 Stun Multiplier (+1/4) (26 Active Points); OAF (-1), STR Minimum 5 (STR Min. Cannot Add/Subtract Damage; -3/4), Real Weapon (-1/4), Reduced Penetration (-1/4), Required Hands One-Handed (-0), Real Cost 8 PLUS 6 meters of reach (without the "Only To Do Damage" limitation) for a total of 32 Active, 14 Real Perhaps a purely "realistic" whip should instead be Hand to Hand attack, perhaps also with Reduced Penetration although I think technically you're not supposed to apply it to Normal Damage attacks. [/url]

I cannot figure out how the Whip is built in 6e, particularly how the "can Grab" note is factored in. So far I have: Killing Attack - Hand-To-Hand 1/2d6, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (15 Active Points); OAF (-1), STR Minimum 5 (STR Min. Cannot Add/Subtract Damage; -3/4), Real Weapon (-1/4), Required Hands One-Handed (-0) So this covers 15 Active, 5 real. But the whip is 27 Active, 11 Real according to 6e. +6 meters of reach would be 21 Active, 11 Real, so I don't see how it's possible to get to 27 Active, 11 Real. Is this errata, or is it some kind of complex multipower build that I haven't considered?

Re: Now taking suggestions - HERO System Combat in Two Pages Maybe split it into 2 documents - one for Heroic and one for Superheroic? The two styles often use different parts of the combat rules, and I doubt you could squeeze all of the combat rules down to two pages otherwise.

If you take the No Range limitation on Mind Link, does this mean that you can only establish the Link with those in HtH Range, but after the link is established it can be maintained at a distance? Or does it mean the link can only be established and maintained in HtH range, in which case it makes the power mostly useless?