DepartureDave

Progressing from a "Rolling" gang theme, I want to make a spherical, hamster ball-like force-field that will both protect the occupant, and then roll around quickly to ram into people.  My initial thought is some kind of barrier, combined with maybe a damage shield somehow?  Or maybe some form of move-through?

What say you, folks?

Change Environment is correct.

Great! I wasn't sure but it seemed fitting.

 

There are a lot of ways, as always.

If you want to slow their running, Change Environment is a great effect, just buy the area size you want, and the element "-1 meter of movement" for running.  You're not going to want a huge amount, since they don't stop entirely, but 6 or so meters would half movement speed.  You can even put a limitation of "max effect half movement" so no matter how slow the are, it doesn't reduce them to full stop, I'd say that's worth a -¼ limit.

 

If you want to make the targets actually fall over there are a few ways:

• Entangle with no body and very low defenses, so while in the area anyone below a certain strength (you could buy it to effect dexterity instead with a -½ limitation) will have to make half moves to go anywhere, simulating falling over.
• Telekinesis with a "throw only" limitation (-½ at least, probably -1) that just keeps putting people on the ground over and over while in the radius.  This is going to be somewhat costly with constant, area effect, and enough strength to throw most targets reliably.
• The Cosmetic transform mentioned above, although that's going to be the most expensive one because you'll need a lot of dice and the "variable result" to make them individual humans, not one single specific one.
• Teleport usable as an attack 1m, with the position shift adder, so everyone who goes in the area is forced onto the ground; this is cheap but the GM might balk.

-X Move Change Environment and no-body Entangle seem to fit best (benefit of being simple while everyone's learning the rules), though the other uses are definitely something I'll have to think on some more for future encounters.

Out of curiosity, which edition are you using? 5th, 6th, ​Champions Complete​?

 

Regardless, Change Environment is probably the best choice of base power for this sort of attack. It should have Area of Effect, and Long-Lasting (1 Hour) (because that is how long, on average, it will be before somebody bothers to clean them up, even if they are in the way). If you want to reduce the movement rate of enemies Running through the area buy -Xm Running as a Combat Effect. If you want them to trip the target we get into a grey area of the rules, but buying -X to Dex Rolls allows you to force the target to immediately make a Dex Roll. The grey area is that Change Environment doesn't define what happens when they fail said rolls... I would use the penalties described for being at 0 Dex, or the description of Dex Rolls from the Characteristics section (CC 15) as a guideline for what happens when a character fails a Dex Roll triggered by Change Environment.

I've got the PDFs for 6e1 and 6e2, as well as the hard copy for Champions Complete. I've been flipping through them and trawling the forums as I try to figure things out.

-X Dex, huh? That's an interesting idea.  Lots of good ones in this thread so far. Thanks for the rapid response, guys! =D

Hi there, I'm pretty new to the Hero System and I'm trying to figure something out.  I'm building some minions on a theme of gambling and rolling, and most of their abilities will be dice-related.

The En-four-cers will throw down handfuls of relatively mundane D4s (four sided dice) as they escape in order to trip up/slow the heroes down, but I'm not sure what kind of power that would be. Change Environment, maybe?

Thanks in advance. =)