bjbrown

That sounds like a Side Effect to me. Purchase an RKA that yields an average BODY result roughly equal to, or slightly less, than the BODY on an average Healing roll (5 pts. of RKA per 1d6 of Healing), and compare that to the active points chart for the value of the limitation (a -½ limitation, unless you come up with less than a 2d6K RKA). Then you could apply the x2 limitation doubler for a Side Effect that always occurs. Add a note to the limitation that, instead of rolling the RKA, you just use the BODY of the Healing to determine the damage from the Side Effect. I would be inclined to be a little more stingy on the limitation cost if the Healing was often used out of combat (because the damage isn't as limiting if you just regenerate it back up), but if the Healing is often used in combat, then I think the Side Effect is worth full value.

The points for the disadvantages seem rather high, for a couple of reasons. One, even for a mage, spell casting is not something the mage does all the time. He has other skills, movement powers, weapons, and probably magical items that he can use when not casting spells. Second, a mage probably doesn't need armor usually- he probably has a spell or magic item that gives him armor. I just don't see the limitation of not being able to cast spells in armor being as limiting as, for example, being unable to walk (another 20-pt. physical limitation). My preferred method, like many, is to put it as a standard limitation on the spell. Our rule is that any spell with gestures (and almost all have gestures) receives penalties to the magic skill roll based both on encumbrance and armor type. The latter rule is a house rule I made up to compensate for the fact that encumbrance is less limiting in 5th Ed. than 4th Ed. (Extra -1 for DEF 2-4, -2 for DEF 4-7, in addition to applicable encumbrance penalties.) Of course, if you're talking about an NPC-only rule, then you don't have to worry about disadvantage costs really. I only give NPCs disadvantages that I think are interesting, rather than worrying about filling up all the points.

Buy all spells that can be "woven" with a Variable Limitation (-¼): Either Gestures and Incantations, or Requires Skill Roll: Spell Weaving. When the character is trying to weave the two spells, he gets to skip any rule prohibiting the casting of two spells with gestures and incantations, as long as the skill roll is made. Further, the character should follow all the rules of multiple power attacks. Also, I think technically, the rule on gestures and incantations is that a character cannot use a second power with gestures or incantations while maintaining a power with constant incantations (or extra time). I don't think it would prevent the use of two instant powers, unless they required extra time.

Along the lines of "it's more trouble than it's worth," neighboring human nations might prefer to have one strong goblin king keeping the goblins in check and in one place, rather than breaking up that kingdom to have the goblins scatter out for their normal parasitic random harassment of human lands. If the goblins have a high birth rate, then it seems they have a second exportable good- catapult fodder. The goblin king could pledge goblin "soldiers" to neighboring lands to serve as expendable scouts and front-line buffers, in exchange for the goblin kingdom being left alone. The goblin king could even sell goblins as slaves- after all, he only needs enough goblins to keep his wine operation going. Excess goblins are just a drain.

In combat situations, spacial awareness is often going to be far more useful than normal sight. A character with spacial awareness will be immune to the most common Flashes and Invisibility effects. The disadvantage of spacial awareness vs. normal sight is the inability to sense fine details, and how often is that going to be important for this particular summoned creature? It's hard to say without reviewing the creature as a whole, but I would be careful about just swapping normal sight with spacial awareness and calling it even.

Look up an html guide on the web to figure out how to do these things (or download a web designer program). A place to find the former is the Webmonkey HTML cheatsheet, and a place for the latter is Stroud's CWSApps.

You could define this power as a Find Weakness, put on a limitation that they only work against mental defense (-1). Buy up your Find Weakness roll to be equal to your seduction roll, and seduction is your special effect. Then buy CSLs for your mental attacks, and add the limitation that you may only use them against targets against whom you have already successfully used Find Weakness (value depending on how high your Find Weakness roll is, roughly equivalent to an activation roll).

I can only imagine now that there's a new Hero genre based on Model's Inc., or that Stripperella has truly left its mark on in the comic book industry.

I am unable to detect a situation in which ultravision might be more advantageous than night vision. Both seem to have the same effects (allowing a character to see in normal darkness). However, ultravision is limited or useless when no ultraviolet light is available (underground, cloudy night), while night vision does not seem to have any corresponding limitation. Is this a correct interpretation?

If a character pays 5 points to double the amount of a particular piece of equipment he has, should he be required to still buy the Usable By Others Advantage on the particular power if the extra equipment is likely to be loaned to other characters frequently? Alternately, if he is required to buy Usable By Others, should he ever have to pay the 5 points to double the amount of equipment? Example 1: Gadget Man has a VPP to represent standard items of equipment that he has collected and hoarded over the years. Some of the potential items that he can put into the VPP are multiple radio headsets or multipe night vision goggles. He's never going to carry an extra radio headset or night vision goggle merely as a backup; he will only carry extras with the intent to loan any extras to his Super Companions. Example 2: Survival Guy has an extensive collection of guns and military surplus. He has two FN-FAL assault rifles, because you never know when you'll need another. Sneak Freak dumped all of his character points into Sensory and Movement powers, leaving him with only relatively weak attacks. Even if Survival Guy, at the time of character creation, doesn't intend to loan out his backup FN-FAL, it's reasonably foreseeable that Sneak Freak is going to start asking to borrow it a lot when the fighting breaks out.

Designing a good magic system isn't easy. The only way to really tell if it will work is to playtest it. Staying simple at first is probably the best way to approach it. Let your players use and abuse it, and tweak as necessary.

I've considered the idea of an equipment pool too. Utilmately, though, I decided that I didn't want to do the extra bookkeeping, and if I ever do another fantasy game, I'll just use low-powered super rules, so that the fighters have to pay points for their swords, armor, horses, even magic items. (You can use the magic item in the session when you find it, but if you don't pay points for it, you won't have it next session.) I don't think there's a lot of power-level difference between a 150-pt. Heroic level character who doesn't have to pay for equipment, mounts, and magic items, and a 250-pt. super who does have to pay for all of those things. Even your example is for 150 pt. characters and 50 pts. in equipment, or 200 pts. Why not throw in the extra 50 for a super game and let the players decide how much equipment they need or don't need? The kinds of things that FH mages can do though more than make up for non-use of equipment. Your warrior or rogue can't pull off a Flash, Drain, Ego Attack, Illusion, Mind Control, or the dreaded BOECV Entangle. I played one FH game in which I played the only warrior in a group full of mages. My warrior decked himself out fully with with chainmail, military pick (for the STUNx +1 or AP, and 23 STR for the extra DC), and shield. And yet the mages were far more combat effective, often taking down monsters with their Ego Attacks long before my warrior could connect with a hit. In the game of which I am currently GM, there is one dedicated mage among the five player characters. The mage is even about 20 points behind the other characters because he hasn't spent all his xp, and yet he's always saving the day in combat with either an Ego Attack or a Flash. Those spells are so much more meaningful than a great sword. I just don't see anything about FH that makes mages inherently weak.

From an entirely number-crunching perspective, the 2d6 RKA does waste some points, as compared to picking up a very heavy long bow. However, you're not really talking about the entire 20 points being wasted on something he could get for free with equipment, because to use the very heavy long bow (the Fantasy Hero version), he'd need to spend 9 points on STR to meet the STR Min, 1 point on the Weapon Familiarity, and at least a few extra points of END to make up for the extra 1 END per shot he'd be using with very heavy long bow. So on that kind of comparison, you're talking less than 10 pts. "wasted" because the player wants the character to do what he thinks a mage should do. Though I can't find the rule off-hand, I seem to remember that a firing a bow puts the attacker at half DCV, whereas the mage bolt would not have this problem. That's a very significant advantage for the points.

The FAQ (under Power Limitations - Focus, first question ) suggests it would be appropriate to require Usable By Others on a power bought on a focus, if the character lends that focus out to other characters more than occasionally.

This looks like a serviceable battle mage for a Heroic game. One very good attack that is superior to just about everything but a very heavy long bow (and even then, mage bolt is saving 1 END per shot). The defense is equivalent to chain mail but without the endurance problems. Invisibility gives you some defense when the going gets rough in combat and you need to avoid being hit, plus it has utility uses as well. A useful movement spell, a sensory-helping spell, and the standard detect and dispel magic. Because you chose not to save points on spells through multiple limitations, you don't have any points for some more exotic things (flashes, drains, the dreaded BOECV Entangle). But if easy, reliable magic is the most important thing to you, that's fine. This character has all the major bases covered. If you're adhering to the character ability guidelines table on pg. 15, the cap on rPD is 5, so I'd reduce the 6/6 Force Field to 5/5. I can't see a reason to go with 15 Ego rather than 14 Ego (which still gets you ECV 5). I feel like you're a little low on skills for a Heroic character. One idea to add limitations and save points is to use variable limitations. All your spells could have material components (OAF), but if you find yourself without the material components for whatever reason, you can still cast your spell but it's more taxing (x3 Increased END). A variable limitation of either OAF or x3 END will get you -½ extra to each spell. Decent point savings, and you've spread your risk out.

I've been playing Hero System games for something like ten or twelve years now. And I still don't have a handle on all of the rules. So don't worry about taking forever to learn them. It's still my favorite game system, though. I don't have Star Hero, but I'm guessing that your problem with weapons and armor are based on the following confusions: Make sure, when calculating damage, you're keeping track of what damage is BODY damage and what damage is STUN damage. When looking at the armor, make sure that you are keeping track of normal defenses and resistant defenses. Let's say the attacker has a 2d6 RKA. He attacks a character with 6 PD (Physical Defense) and body armor of 3 rPD (resistant Physical Defense). Thus, the defender has a total of 9 Physical Defense, of which only 3 are resistant. The amount rolled on a killing attack is body damage. So say the attacker rolls 7 on that 2d6. That's 7 Killing Damage, against which only resistant defenses apply. Since only the armor provides rPD, and the armor is only giving 3 rPD, 4 Killing Damage goes through the armor. The character loses 4 BODY. That's a big ouch. A killing attack also does STUN damage, based on hit location. If the hit was in the chest, for example, the amount of STUN damage is equal to x3 the Killing Damage. So 7x3=21 STUN damage. However, against STUN damage, the character gets his full defenses, both resistant and normal. He's got 6 PD plus 3 rPD, 9 total. 21-9=12 STUN taken from the attack. Whenever you get to a point where something happens in the game that doesn't make sense to you, re-read the rules. That happens to me every game. You probably need to go over the combat section several times again. Mental attacks work very similar to other attacks. The biggest difference is that ECV takes the place of OCV for the attacker, and ECV also takes the place of DCV for the defender. Also, mental attacks generally can be used at range but take no range penalties, and the attacker needs only line of sight to the defender. Finally, the damage of an attack like Ego Attack is not reduced by regular armor (PD or ED), but only by Mental Defense. Finally, mental attacks almost never do BODY damage, only STUN. (With the caveat that all these things are usually the case- in Hero, there's always a way to modify the way a power works. But that's an advanced topic.)

My answers would be: The delay before explosion would depend on dramatic effect. Is it going to explode right when the bad guy takes the wheel? Or does he know it's going to explode, and he just needs a few seconds to drive the van into the player characters? I don't you want to delay too long (more than a turn is too much probably), but I would delay the explosion until the most opportune time for dramatic effect. I suppose that the damage done by the explosion would be related in part to how much gas was left in the van? How much gas is left is probably something the player characters don't know. Therefore, the damage done by the explosion depends upon the state in which I want the bad buy to be after the explosion. If he is to survive, then roll a number of dice that gives him a decent chance of living. If he is to die, then add a few dice on to that. If you want the player characters to be caught in the explosion, pick up a good handfull of dice.

In a high-magic game, I don't think that creating semi-permanent, low-powered magic items is really a problem. That a super-mage could whip up a bunch of water-breathing talismans for his pals isn't something that that would concern me much. In a low-magic game, I would consider that problematic and start imposing additional limits on the power to enforce the genre. such as no continuing charge lasting more than a few hours or such. But if you were in a low-magic game, you probably wouldn't be using power frameworks for magic anyway. For some reason I'm assuming this is a Fantasy Hero type game. Even in a super game, I'm not sure that it would overly bother me. As has already been stated, there are ways of turning off the charges. Usable by others could be required of anything that might routinely be given out to buddies. Making little magic items just seems to me to be something that super-magi do. I remember the headache I had in the D&D game I used to DM. Two characters started using Continual Light and Continual Darkness to make permanent magic items every day, and when they had more than they could use, they passed them out like candy. Ugh.

I think you're talking about a genre convention that is not anticipated in the basic Hero System rules. If it were a standard Hero game, I would say stick to the active points on Summon. For a 250-pt. super to be able to summon 4 slavishly devoted 100-pt. creatures is a huge boost. Why would you want the 250-pt. character to summon four creatures that are way stronger than the summoner and pose no control difficulties for the summoner? Summon gives a lot of power for the points ,and in a regular game I would see no reason to unlimit it. However, maybe your game has a genre requirement that does require reconsidering the guidelines. I'm not terribly familiar with what you would want in a Yugioh (?) game, but if the convention is that all character and all villains are going to have these deuling decks, then what you should do is put the standard campaign guidelines aside and develop special rules concerning the decks. Figure out what common decks should look like, create some sample decks, and examine what patterns or limits you can from those. From that, develop the rules on what deck creation would look like for your game.

A power with Inherent can be turned off by paying END (as an optional rule). "At the GM's option, a character with an Inherent Power might be able to turn the Power 'off' temporarily by paying END."

Look up Inherent on pg. 165 of 5th Edition. I think you'd buy it with Reduced END: Zero (+½), Persistent (+½), Inherent (+¼), Always On (-¼).

I would think that Mimicry or Acting could be used in conjunction with Universal Translator to allow a character to effectively speak in an accent that the character hears. If the GM likes the idea of translation that never fails, the GM allow Universal Translator be bought at 21- to be automatically successful. (At 21-, Universal Translator could take up to a -3 penalty for a difficult to translate language and still need an 18 or less on 3d6, and in that case the GM could waive the roll.)

I f I understand MegaScale correctly, if you apply it to a power, it will not let you use that power on short range. So, if you buy +¼ MegaScale to detect animals, you would be able to detect animals 1 km away from you, but not animals closer than 1 km to you. I agree that buying your detect with telescopic seems to better simulate the effect that you want.

This thread reminds me of a section of The Ultimate Super-Mage (page 34). The author challenged his playtesters to make the most abusive possible attack based on 60 active points. The players tried the most abusive combinations of powers of which they could think. However, no combination of powers and advantages proved more effective than the simple 4d6 RKA. Over the course of playing, the author describes that powers without advantages were generally more effective than any combination of powers and advantages. Character creation guidelines that limit characteristics, active points of powers, defenses, etc. are going to level out balance problems between characters in a game. At best, creative use of limitations may allow points saving that allow one character to have more depth in skills and powers, but not necessarily more combat effectiveness. So, you have two characters who want the biggest possible energy blast the campaign allows. It's a superheroic game that allows up to 14 DC, so they both buy 14d6 E-Blasts for 70 points each. They both buy DEX 39 (40 is max) so they can hit as accurately as possible with the E-Blast, spending 87 pts. each, and 10 SPD to shoot them as fast as possible, 51 pts. each. Now, the second character puts the full phase limitation on his E-Blast. That saves him 23 points. Can he use this 23 points to make the attack more effective than the first character? Well, he can't buy skill levels for the E-Blast (or at least, he can't expect to use them). He is already at his maximum allowed CV and DC with the E-Blast. He can't buy more speed to shoot them faster, since he is already at maximum speed. He can't even add any sort of advantage, since even a +¼ Advantage would bring the E-Blast to 87 active points, which exceeds the 80 active point limit for powers. Thus, because of character creation limits, both characters can have the best possible attack. As a result of that full phase limitation, the second character has 165 character points left to spend, and the first character has 142 character points left to spend. Both are kind of thin, and even though the second character does have more character points, that 165 as opposed to 142 to buy the rest of his characteristics, skills, etc. isn't that great. Thus, I don't find the current way that advantages and limitations are figured to be terribly problematic. Reasonable character creation guidelines should even out balance problems.

Re: HEEEEEEEELPPPPPPP! It's interesting that you equate limitations on spells with wizards being less powerful. My first Fantasy Hero game-master looked at creative application of limitations as the ultimate power-gamer number crunching. In his game, I played the only fighter. Everyone else had a wizard, with their spells with -3 to -4 in limitations on each. Even though my fighter accumulated more experience points than most of the others over the course of playing, my tank-style fighter was by far the weakest character of the group (and there are many humorous stories that go along with that ...). If you use Dungeons and Dragons as your baseline, almost all spells have Gestures (-¼) (somatic components), Incantations (-¼) (verbal components), OAF (-1) (material components), Charges (-0 to -2 depending on how many times per day and duration (continuing charges)), and Limited Power: Does Not Work While Wearing Armor (-¼). Then studying the spell book every night is probably another limitation. I'm not sure what you mean by "buggy." If you mean complication, then the limitations described above aren't too complicated. The complicated limitations come from Requires Skill Roll or Activation, and Side Effects. These limitations add extra die rolls. Just ignore them if you don't like them. If you want to go the route of truly powerful wizards, along the lines of games like Mage or Ars Magica, then do a game on a Super-Heroic level rather than a Heroic level. Going from Heroic to Super-Heroic will give your wizards a relative power gain over fighters. In a Heroic game, wizards are often paying character points for attacks and defenses (magic missile or armor spell) which your fighters get for no character points (bows and plate mail). In a Super-Heroic game, the wizards get to use the extra points for better spells, while fighters are spending some of their extra character points on their plate mail, large shields, and bastard swords. Of course, as has been pointed out, if you make wizards more powerful as compared to other character archetypes, then everyone will want to play a wizard. All power frameworks are designed to save points for characters, and if you have some characters who can use multipowers (like wizards), and other characters without access to them (fighters), you're going to find a bias toward the wizards. I think it will be hard to balance characters with multipowers vs. characters without, but if you're successful with it, please share. You might consider letting other characters purchase powers to represent skills (like letting a fighter buy Missile Deflection to represent skill with the shield, or a rogue buying Desolidification to represent skill breaking into homes). In the Heroic level game of which I am currently game-master, there are two dedicated wizard types of five characters. One of those wizards is a battle-mage type who is always saving the day. The other has magic that is not combat oriented. The spells usually have -2 to -4 in limitations each on them, and I don't think there are any balance problems. If anything, the wizard is slightly favored.