Robyn

Re: Is Find Weakness mispriced?

doubling the damage is functionally equivalent to halving the defense.

Even though I haven't read the combat chapter, I still can't imagine any way this could work that would function as you describe.

For example: 20 damage, 8 defenses. 12 damage gets through. Double the damage (40) and 32 damage gets through. Halve the defenses (4) and 16 damage gets through.

Double the damage after defenses (12) and 24 gets through (more than was dealt in the first place, which makes this a pretty neat trick if you can pull it off ).

Re: Thread Linkage: New Power Ideas

Damage Conversion thread was already added.

Oh. Missed that one. I only stumbled across it by accident, looking for another Killing Advantage thread because I recalled there being one but the first one I found was new to me.

Re: Thread Linkage: New Power Ideas

Feel free to post any threads you feel is worthy to be added to the list.

I actually went here to find it, since it had been bumped near the top of the forum.

A few minutes searching the forums uncovered how to build Killing as an Advantage on attacks, thread started by someone who takes this "GM is God" stuff way too seriously

A few more minutes of searching just located a pre-existing build that obviates my need to look for the thread about Killing as an Advantage; a defensive power specifically for removing the Killing part of an attack

Re: I finished reading 5th Edition, Revised

In other words' date=' you don't want to leave the GM room to do his job or you fear contentious players.[/quote']

 

Those are actually the opposite of my way of playing (and GM'ing), but given past criticisms, I find that catering to people who are afraid of exactly that is a more conciliatory approach

 

Only the GM knowing how the attack was built will be out the window the second the dice hit the table in combat

 

Unless they're being rolled behind the GM screen

 

and whether that attack should have been a Killing or Normal attack will also be subject to debate.

 

If a consistent method is followed to determine whether attacks are Normal or Killing, and that method is openly shared with the players (which, IMO, it should be, if they are to use it), revealing an attack as Normal/Killing will give an insight into the character wielding that attack.

 

I was trying to find a nice way to say that the way you are insisting on is not logical and doesn't flow naturally from the game mechanics.

 

Well, we may have a different understanding of the game mechanics, then. I see the purpose of a Normal/Killing separation to be for, as the text informs us, attacks meant to "kill or maim". In the closest thing I've seen to a contradiction of HERO's "toolkit" approach, the text explicitly directs away from a Killing Attack characters who do not want to seriously injure or incapacitate their opponents. This specifically invokes the intent of a character when determining how to design their powers.

 

To me, extending this definition through the rest of the game is not only logical but natural to HERO.

Re: I finished reading 5th Edition, Revised

I will place a question in the 5ER Rules FAQ for Steve to give us an explicit answer on.

An explicit answer has been provided:

The rules for the BODY of a Focus are on 5ER 294' date=' bottom left and top right. Since a Physical Manifestation is typically only going to involve one power, a single point of BODY damage past defenses is usually enough to destroy it.[/quote']

 

I will mark the section as having been addressed

Re: Frameworks Simplified

That sounds more like a modified END Pool than a Active Point one.

Well, as you said:

Instead of having an END Pool' date=' you have an AP Pool. Just like a Multipower Pool, but there are no slots. You link powers to it at different levels.[/quote']

 

That's where the Active Pont Reserve (as opposed to an END Reserve) would come into play as a separate power that other powers link to.

 

So, instead of deriving END from AP with modifiers for Extra/Reduced Endurance modifiers, charging END per Phase or Turn or less often depending on power, and recovering END irregularly depending on whether, when, and how often you took a Recovery - you would avoid all of this up-and-down bookkeeping by simply stating that every power you potentially could use had to draw on your Active Point pool, a reserve of energy that powered your powers.

 

The difference would be that, with an END pool, you could run out and burn into STUN (anaerobic capacity). With an AP pool, you couldn't do that (it only measures your aerobic capacity).

Re: I finished reading 5th Edition, Revised

Robyn doesn't understand reasoning from effect.

That used to be the case, but after ghost-angel's explanation, I started to get a better grasp on it.

ALL attacks can cause death. The situations cited can be handled with an additional modifier of "Only to prevent unheroic death"

Which, and I should not have to mention this, is a subjective measurement. Disagreement can arise over what constitutes a "heroic death", because that is solely in the minds of the players (and GM). Game mechanics are not subject to such interpretation.

The modifier you suggest leaves all death open to debate; "if we can talk the GM into it". A resistance to Killing Attacks does not necessarily confer advance knowledge of whether a given attack has a chance of killing, though, because only the GM knows how that attack was built.

I think the game mechanics dictate the special defense be on both resistant and non-resistant levels to get the desired result.

The game mechanics don't "dictate" anything about my "desired result".

Re: On the Use and Abuse of Character Weaknesses....

"should hunteds be a disadvantage at all' date=' giving you "bonus points", or should they be perhaps a normal element of "being a superhero" or whetever genre term you prefer?[/quote']

 

Good question, and perhaps tying in with the "campaign baseline" (not to be confused with the system's baseline).

 

On the one hand, characters receiving additional points should be additionally impacted by enemies.

 

On the other hand, characters that are part of a group don't always handle things alone; that's part of what it means to be on a team. The characters who didn't take Hunted are going to be engaging with the enemy, even though they didn't receive any extra points for it.

 

But the Hunted might focus on whoever they were Hunting, so it should be possible to maintain that extra pressure even during a group fight.

Re: Corruption of power

And I agree with you both. It's the difference between rising as far as your natural talent and ambition can take you' date=' and faking evidence of your boss breaking the law so you can blackmail him into givign you a position you couldn't fairly earn.[/quote']

 

The difference I had in mind is more of an inferiority-complex mental defensive maneveur which goes "I'm not worse than anybody else, none of them are better than anyone else, how dare they pretend to be, I'll drag them down to my level and have the government pass laws to make them stay that way".

Re: The Munchkin Build Contest

Just a quick question' date=' since this is a munchkin thread. If you apply the -1/4 to your STR or DEX for not being able to use all of its value to an extra limb (e.g. a tail), do you apply the cost to the points you paid for the characteristic or to the active points in the characteristic? (i.e. do you include the +10 free points of STR for this limitation?), I generally just base it on the points that I pay just for politeness, but I think that technically you would use the total value.[/quote']

 

This could result in saving more points than you paid. No, you don't.

Re: The Munchkin Build Contest

I think I'm getting it.

 

Among other things, you're saying that you can't use a Spiritual Transform to give a Physical Body to something that didn't have one.

Yes. Among the other things is that, if you could, it would open the floodgates to using Physical Transform to give a soul to something that didn't have one

And Metaphysician has already made the point

Yes, but you asked what I meant, and I wasn't going to leave you in the dark (and out of the discussion) by saying "Never mind, Metaphysician has already answered part of my question."

Re: Frameworks Simplified

Well' date=' it wouldn't have to be -1/2, but the idea is each individual power would get a limitation based on the restrictive the linkage to the AP Pool would be. This would add flexiblity in that you could then have small powers that get larger limitations due to eating up all the available APs in the Pool.[/quote']

 

I was basically thinking (and I didn't express this very well, since I forgot what the rest of the theory was partway into my reply ) that the AP Pool was a measurement of your Recovery, and it assumed that you could only use powers simultaneously whose total END cost was equal to or less than your REC.

 

In other words, the AP pool measured your aerobic capacity, not your anaerobic capacity.

Re: Acronym Refresher

'Cuz 5ER is a lot more like a brick than a pebble.

I don't know, brick implies you can't even fit it into your mouth before you crunch down

Re: Wizard's immunity to the magical SFX they use

It helps to have it explicit in the power' date=' especially if they ever want to port the character to a different game three years later, and seemed to remember being immune to fireballs for some reason.[/quote']

 

I can list it just once on the character sheet, and note "for all spells". It's not as bad as the "account for every possible contingency, even those that aren't readily conceivable" list which would be different for each power depending on SFX.

Re: Build challenge: stasis fields

It is kind of an assumption' date=' on my part , that time outside the field continues normally.[/quote']

 

Yes. This is where attacks on those outside the field can originate; but an arrow, for example, would fly within and then hang there in midair, suspended in flight.

 

It would resume motion the moment that field switched off, though, which would be a nasty way to go (unexpectedly caught in stasis field, assassin takes a few hours carefully lining up shots from every conceivable direction, leaves them hanging in the air a few feet away from you, then leaves to wait for the field to shut off).

Re: Frameworks Simplified

That's where the Active Pont Reserve (as opposed to an END Reserve) would come into play as a separate power that other powers link to.

I think I understand what you're describing here. Would it be possible to model it by putting every power in a special "other frameworks can exist inside this" Multipower the size of however much XP they spent on powers, and eliminating the Endurance rules from the campaign?

Re: Acronym Refresher

I like FRED Jr. or ReFred for that' date=' but that doesn't seem to be too popular.[/quote']

 

I do recall seeing ReFred used though, now that you mention it.

Re: Corruption of power

Though I feel that someone who would abuse superpowers (in a taking every unfair advantage that can way' date=' not in a I'm gonna hurt you way) would probably abuse every advantage they could get regardless. Someone who would act selfish and self-serving with superpowers would be just as bad without. They just have less ability to get away with it.[/quote']

 

An important point, and one that should not be lost amidst this thread's focus on superpowers, is that - even without superpowers - not all people are equal.

 

Most people have no compunctions whatsoever about using whatever natural advantages they have - and anything they can get ahold of through improving themselves - to do better in life.

Re: Corruption of power

That would be based on the position that theft of illegal profits or tax monies does no concrete harm to perceived group members. Some would take that path' date=' most wouldn't.[/quote']

 

Then eliminate the most literal interpretation and have heroes beating up drug lords and taking their stuff

 

It worked for the Reapers in Dead Like Me

Re: The Munchkin Build Contest

Colors have been used in my post below to, hopefully, make reading easier in sentences that use closely related terms several times in a row. Nothing is implied about the "color" of various Transform sequences

Want to run this by me again?

Past threads have asked what a Spiritual Transform would do that Physical or Mental would not. One possibility offered was "State of Grace", for confessins to sins. That's just what comes to mind, I'm sure there were more. It is a category in itself though, not just a "meta-element" to unify the other two.

My guess is' date=' certain types of undead may qualify as no spiritual component. Basically, they don't have souls or free will, they just have an automaton like behavior setup.[/quote']

 

The potential I see here is for a vampire; assume a Buffy-verse build, where vampires have no souls. But they do have a mind. They are not golems, or skeletons; they think.

 

But what if you wanted to give one a soul? (You would use a Gypsy curse, obviously. But how is that curse built?)

 

If you want to use a Mental or Physical Transform to build it, you run into the little problem that those separations exist for a reason, and you should no more be able to use Mental to affect Spiritual or Physical to affect Spiritual than you would use Mental to affect Physical - or vice versa.

 

If, on the other hand, you wanted to use Spiritual Transform, you would run into the problem that the vampire doesn't have a spiritual component.

 

This isn't, by itself, problematic, though. Let's use an example: you could have a ghost with spiritual and mental components. No body, though. So you use Physical Transform to create one. But all you've done is create an empty shell. Unless the ghost has a possession power, it's useless. You can create anything physical but you can't associate it with the ghost.

 

To get a ghost, you can destroy their body or just disassociate the Mind and Spirit from it (by making the body stop working). And, logically, this process would take place through Physical effects only.

 

This raises a whole host of fascinating questions. Do entities forever keep track of which components they were ever made of, even if changes cause them to temporarily not include that component? (Astral Projection, however it is built, seems an excellent case for testing that theory.) Is a Transform capable of altering which components they can be made of, or just which components they currently are made of?

 

My original point, though, to answer your question, was that if we can use Spiritual to add a soul to some undead with Physical and Mental components, we can use Physical to add a body to some undead with Mental and Spiritual components. Since the Spiritual Transforms have already been assigned some capabilities that cannot be achieved through Physical or Mental equivalents, and likewise Physical is appropriate for achieving what Mental cannot, and vice versa; it is a category of Transform just like any other, and we cannot assign it some special "meta-Transform" status on the basis of it not being either of the other two without those others, by the same logic, being useful in similar cases.

Re: Corruption of power

My favourite supers character started out as a stereotypical ex-athlete popular type' date=' who became bitter when he found out that the real world didn't work the same way after school. And a (good) higher dimensional being fleeing persecution from their (evil) civilization. Said being discovers the only way it can continue to exist on this plane is to merge itself with a human 'host', who then gained absorber/blaster type abilities.[/quote']

 

Of course, over time he became more and more heroic due to the unconscious effect of the merged being.

 

So, he wasn't consciously aware of the merged being? It's not that he was the higher dimensional being, in a sense?

 

I see excellent potential for WWYCD-like "corruption of power" scenarios here. Imagine that, during his heroic endeavors, he travels to a higher plane. Suddenly, the higher being separates and resumes its independent existence! It had to bond with him for survival, but now it is glad to get back to its own life.

 

And, as a consequence, the hero is now deprived of his powers. How will he react to discovering how his powers came to him? Will he accept his new status as an ordinary person? And how far will he go to regain his powers?

Re: Corruption of power

Of course people will find profitable ways to use their powers' date=' just as they do with their abilities in the real world.[/quote']

 

Or, if they really want to be a hero, might find themselves suited to life as a modern-day Robin Hood, arranging for illegal/immoral profits to find their way into a bank account. Staying up all night to battle evildoers leaves one sleepy-eyed in the morning, and not able to work through the day. So why work? They're doing a public service. The public owes you money. So what if they don't see it that way? You're not asking them. They pay their taxes whether they like it or not. You just make sure those taxes go to you instead of the big bad IRS

Re: Cylon Resurrection

Sleeper agents would probably also have a Mental-based Multiform' date=' maybe with No Conscious Control? Come to think of it, can you put Trigger on Multiform?[/quote']

 

Just define the conditions of your Accidental Change.

Re: The Munchkin Build Contest

Because a Mental Transform can't have a physical effect like granting a physical form' date=' but without such a form to begin with, a Physical Transform has nothing to target.[/quote']

 

That's what I was thinking of, but with the additional confusion of treating Spiritual as its own category of Transform, not a binding element of Mental and Physical (though, explaining it that way would clear up a lot of the previous questions about how to treat it). I mean, if it has its own areas just like Mental and Physical, Spiritual is to Mental as Mental is to Physical and as Physical is to Mental, they're all categories and if one of them can be special than each of them can be special (binding the others together) under some circumstances.

 

The palindromedary wants to try building Transfer Wealth.....

 

SFX of Theft, or perhaps Embezzling?

Re: Acronym Refresher

I'd guess that once it is released TUM = The Ultimate Mentalist

Until then, TUM stands for Tumbling ammunition

FREd never has' date=' and likely never will, stand for anything as an acronym. It's just a short hand name dervied from and off hand comment.[/quote']

 

Which makes me wonder what sort of acronym people would have come up with had Steve Long said "You can call it GEORGE for all I care"