kirakane

Do oppoents in hexes or hex lines directly targed by suppression fire have attacks made against them if they don't move? For example, Agent A stands in the middle of an empty parking lot and Agent B uses suppression fire on the hex Agent A is standing in. If Agent A does not move into or out of his hex does Agent B who has fill the area with bullets get an attack on Agent A using suppression fire?

I would like to see options and guidlines to try to make agent fights more streamlined and faster to run. And religating agents back to the support role that comic books give agents. Every time I see an agent fight these days in Champions I know its going to be long and tedious and boring on several levels as the heros try to wade through 5 times their number in agents. All mainly because agents become one Giant Killer Amoeba with 100+ actions per turn and 75% damage reduction and 1/2 your DCV with an RSR:Teamwork. Agents from Hydra or UNIGang don't dominate the battle field in comics. Thier supervillians (the people with personality) do, but the "agent battle" often only takes only a panel or two to resolve. And in general you have think poorly of heroes that are removed by the nameless, faceless, horde of goons.

Shadow Dragon - Waits for Destroyer's Orbital Death Ray to turn the whole city, heroes, and army into ash, so Millenium City 2 can be build upon our graves. Who says history doesn't repeat itself.

Just as a side note unless this continuous entagle also has the limitation "cannot be used to create barriers" it will create a barrier with +1 body per phase of the druid so what was a low 2 def 1 body entable will quickly becomes a 2 body X "number of phases the druid has taken" barrier. The monster in this case will have to break through 5 hexes of wall with 2 def and X number of body.

Lesser beings having a powerful artifact is a classic fantasy situation though. Frodo for instance does not know all the true powers of the One Ring and it would be folly for him to try to find out. So having an item and using to its full potential could be quite diffrent things. Perhaps a quest is necessary to unlock the full potential of an ancestral sword. Or that staff of power's other fucntions. Powerful artifacts can be a powerful a metaphor for self discovery and internal growth rather than the trite "lighning bolt on a stick."

Well since Bloodstone recently came up in a supers fight. Our GM chose the harshest possible interpretation which was only the entangled character could use their own strength to break free. We were giving our GM greif during and after the fight because he said the entagle "wore off" later on. "Nope sorry can't talk to you right now Mr. NPC I've been PERMANENTLY paralyzed." So for all intents an purposes it might as well have been Extradimentional Movement Usable against others send strait to Hell. Or NND Entangle based on Time Stop. Or a 30d6 energy blast. And any other nasty power that requires nothing more than a to hit roll to eliminate someone. If the GM chooses to play it out where only the characters own strength can be used to break free there had better be at least a commonly defined way to get out of the entangle. Game mechanics wise this is no diffrence between Bloodstone's "freeze blood' and "handcuffs". Treat it like any other entangle that has takes no damage from attacks. The person trying to help out takes a -3 penalty to hit and targets the enangle. In the case of "frozen blood" the helper uses his strength to wiggle the persons limbs and get blood flowing again. The EB user shoots the person a glancing blow and shocks thier system into moving and so on ... At worst I would treat it as "entangle does not act as a defense" and still make the helper take the -3 penalty to hit and if they missed by the 3 pt spread they hit the entangled person squarely and the entagle takes no damage.

That is true but the way I've mentioned to simulate spells with varriable powers has shown up in peoples FH campaign write ups for a very long time. The most used example is the Magic VPP used to summon a magic bow (Multipower) that shoot's multiple types of arrows which I believe Steve Peterson had answered that he didn't particulary see anything wrong with making an exception for that construct under 4th edition and 4th edition still had the same rules of not buying frameworks in frameworks. One more way I was pondering was to buy off the "only changes under given circumstance" limiter from the control cost of the primary pool for that one slot. So for instance. 1) A spell (27 base): Custom Power , Buy off: Changes only under given circumstance (+1/2) (40 Active Points) -1/2 only spells of certain type This for all intents and purposes is still like the VPP in a VPP solution which is a place holder for a lower powered spell of varrying power type. In all the forms the player doesn't get anything for "free" buying items with VPP pool points. The pool points themselves are never discounted in any way so an exception might be inorder here to easy your design along.

There are a small minority of spells from the FH books that used frameworks to reprsent varriable effects. Since the magic system you've designed uses VPP's I assume you could have a slot of another VPP only to cast evocation or conjuration spells appropriately. 54 Shadow X: Variable Power Pool (Magic Pool), 40 base + 14 control cost, Powers Can Be Changed As A Half-Phase Action (+1/2), No Skill Roll Required (+1) (90 Active Points); 1 Charges (-2), Limited Class Of Powers Available Limited (-1/2) plus Primary pool disads. This costly but flexible Another idea is to use a one charge multipower with a representative set of powers in the spell grouping. 12 Shadow X: Multipower, 40-point reserve, all slots: (40 Active Points); 1 Charges (-2), 1/2 phase to change slots (-1/4) 1u 1) A spell: Custom Power (40 Active Points) 1u 1) A spell: Custom Power (40 Active Points) 1u 1) A spell: Custom Power (40 Active Points) 1u 1) A spell: Custom Power (40 Active Points) 1u 1) A spell: Custom Power (40 Active Points) This is cheaper and probably flexible enough.

Often balance among players only becomes major issue if they replicate each others role in the party or there is truely only one way to progress or seek reward. Otherwise it's really not an issue that Race A can shoot laser beams from it's eyes and Race B can't because they are all in the same party and complement each other's abilities and are working twards the same goal. There is that detant between GM to Player and Player to Player that everyone get's there moment to shine. Those people seeking the Min_Maxed character will take races to maximize stats and abilites outside of the NCM (therefor should pay for any "fluff" skill and abilties) and those that are looking for flavor it won't matter too. I would strongly encourage players not to just look at each other's combat potential but what role do they fullfil in a party. It's certainly ok to have a party full of mages for instance if you have the battle-mage, healer-mage, and the stealth-mage for instance.

I'm personally still divided on this issue (both as a GM and a player). So I'm looking for opinions to help me make up my mind. I've seen even innocuous amounts of healing drag fights out into that should have ended much sooner and at times I've seen healing be a boon so the GM doesn’t have to re-arrange an encounter on the fly due to some difficulty problems. Does in combat healing belong in a superheroes game or is it one of those abilities that by mutual agreement GM's and players should avoid? What's your thoughts on the subject?

Keep in mind that things that work well in the source material (comic books, novels, movies) don't always work well in role playing games. For example: The Avengers vs dozens of AIM agents works well in a comic book because 1 page later all the agents are laid low and the heroes move on the the real super villians. However in Hero system the same fight will take hours and hours of game play to resolve to the point no one is having fun anymore.

I currently use max damage or half defenses for criticals on a 3. But now especially in a 350 point campaign criticals are a one shot kill rather than enhancing game play. And I do literally mean "kill" low defense characters like martial artists who you need low rolls to begin with to hit often get killed in this critical scheme. One system I'm going to try out is just adding 4 damage classes just like haymaker and expanding the critical range from just 3 to 3-4. The damage of a haymaker is well balanced in the campaign and avoids problems like instant kills that applying max damage or halving defenses does.

Just speaking of game balance in general there are a couple of good articals at RPG.net. You could balance along other lines. Light tanks do more damage per hit. They get to buy more DCs in martial arts for example. Light tanks can buy force field or damage resistance based on the special effect of dodging. So light tanks rather than relying on gear rely on skilled combat. Light tanks are the only ones with access to fencing martial arts. Armor may need to be maintained so it costs money for upkeep.

Well an alternate plan is if you have fixed active point attacks is instead to match the special effect of the desolid character and become desol yourself since people with the same desolid special effect can effect each other just fine. Desolid with varriable special effect only to match desolid effect of villians (-1/4), cannont go through walls (-1/2), cannot be used as a defense (-1). Would probably be pretty cheap and would fit in power structures well. Also, an often overlooked part of the desolid power is that you have to choose something that can still effect you while desolid. So as a role playing point go find that out.

I often find myself wishing for some sort of hero point system in 5th edition especially when playing grenes like pulp or golden age supers where a daring do attitude quickly turns into daring don't because the safe route is far more practical and likely to succeed. There's often the need to fudge rolls or do tasks that must succeed or even just tempering bad dice rolls. Does anyone have a house rule hero point system where people can spend some limited pool of hero points to help the outcome of actions?