TheDarkness

Wouldn't it be more precise to use phases or segments?

I forgot to mention that I have never used an actual PC as an NPC/GNPC. For some reason, I just dislike the idea of doing it. For me, the GNPC is just an NPC I like.

He is in the Quoteforce. Expect massive changes to the timeline at 3...2...7

You will never destroy the forces of Unimeter! You guys knock down our one meter hex, and eight 1 meter hexes will rise to take their place. Granted, it was probably unfortunate that our agents' uniforms are unitards, but sometimes one can take a theme too far.

Boat

Wasn't that just a self contained movement?

Well, Steve knows way better than I. So it's totally doable. And, if you want it to affect people irrespective of their density, Strength, or other factors, it will do the trick. This actually gives me an idea for clinging as the classic UAA- 'away crew of the enterprise gets immobilized by the alien and can only debate the situation while threat assesments are made based on their actions as humans- failure results in a giant weaponized cone going to earth and destroying the planet for the safety of races who leave holographic judge-jury-executioners with control over antimatter-powered death cornucopias and who are blissfully unaware that their creators went extinct centuries before laying around'.

Yes, BUT, the grantor has to choose the config where he or she controls the power, and since giving the attack power is an attack action, wouldn't they have to wait for their next phase to actually use it? Wouldn't the attack of granting the power mean their phase was over, and they couldn't then activate the power(s) granted. As it stands, the power would be more like a leaping virus, he passes through a group, and then, the next time he has an action, they leap. Further, if he controls the power, and everyone in a group of ten gets the power, and he uses it, is making all ten of them jump one activation, or ten? And further, is THAT an attack action, or is granting the power, or both? For the effect he's wanting, it seems more like the power would need a trigger, the trigger being 'being within 10m of the hero' to have it occur the way described. At which point the cost goes up even more. Otherwise, the earliest it could go off would be his next phase, unless I'm mistaken about activating a granted power. Though, frankly, it is an interesting way to do a repelling force that is not limited by mass.

I actually don't really mind the GMPC, as long as it is done reasonably. As GM, if the campaign I'm planning needs to have someone in the group who deals with mentallism, but the players all have different concepts, then I'll make a member to cover that base, but I tend to follow certain practices: No munchkining their powers No trying to avoid things that would be bad for the GNPC, but are common things that would happen to the players themselves No using him or her to railroad the story, at best occasional "hey, what about..." where there is a thing so obvious that it hadn't occured to me that the players wouldn't notice it Like PCs, the GNPC must have weak areas THAT WOULD COME UP IN GAME PLAY No using him or her to present plans(see 3 above) BUT, he could take a particular player's side in planning, saying, 'hey, that's a good idea, I'm with him' with the explicit understanding among the group that when he does so, this does not mean the GM thinks it's a good idea, the GM might know it's a horrible idea He must have characterization that contributes to the story as a supporting character, and his actions ALWAYS must come from that characterization I had one, for a few games I ran for a single player while I was relearning the system. Brother Black, a street level detective, had some body armor, night clubs, smoke grenades, he had a lot of skills, which meant he was spread thin, but I intended to play him as tactically smart. The player's first meeting with him was when three thugs, two with guns, were trying to trap the player. The player was a sort of low powered spiderman type character, humorous, low level superhuman in hth, but with teleportation powers for quick movement instead of web slinging. Brother Black stepped in to help, but the player thought he might be part of the group, so the player teleported to the top of a building and watched the ensuing combat. This was also a bit tricksterish, in the player's conception of the character. Brother Black had to toss out smoke grenades to obscure himself from gunfire, the player saw Brother Black pull out his night sticks and go into the smoke, heard a set of thunks(as did the other thugs), then heard gunshots. The thug with the gun rolled obscenely well, so the player heard Brother Black grunt(his body armor absorbed most of it, fortunately), then a struggle, followed by two more thunks. At the end, the player teleported in, seized the one remaining thug, and teleported back to the rooftop, as I recall. Brother Black's function was, since he had a lot of area knowledge, he would be a means to learn about the game world, while the player actually had his own knowledge that Brother Black didn't(knowledge from the background the player made for the character), and provided a friend in arms so that I wouldn't have to do rather unbelievable things if the player got stunned or KOed in a situation. In that scenario, he took a bullet, he dealt with two thugs but not without hitch, while still showing his tactical sense. And the player got to play out his characterization, and actually come out of the situation in the best position. I find player spotlight to be more a factor of whether I have put opportunities in the game for them to use the character they have built than by leaving the world bereft of anything or anyone they cannot concievably take out, but the GMPC should be no more powerful than they are, and should have no more opportunities to shine than they, and those opportunities should be concurrent with the players shining as much as possible. That's in my game of course, everyone has their own approach and preference. That said, there will also be NPCs in the world that, compared to what the PCs can currently do, appear to effectively be Mary Sues, and the players should have the good sense to know that if they choose combat as their default solution to all problems, and ignore the evidence that there are people that they are seeking to one day be on a par with, but aren't as of yet, they are going to lose sometimes. BUT, and this is a big thing for me, such NPCs will not be GNPCs, because why would the gajillion point character be teaming up with the low point ones? There have been a few occasions where players attacked people that they really should have known better than to have attacked where I did use more powerful NPCs to save them. In one case, they also sent them to a far off city on a ship, and, in that fantasy game, I had to quickly switch gears to a 'lost ship on a haunted sea' game story, only long after, when the characters were on a higher power level, having the story return to the city that was initially where I planned the whole game to be before the previously low-powered characters made high powered, highly connected and numerous enemies. I think key is avoiding thinking of anything an NPC manages as some sort of reward for me, and in making the character spotlight be based on the actions they make, for good or ill, not making the spotlight a reward for playing that is automatic and involves them always being on top. Sometimes, fleeing the fruits of their actions makes fun opportunities for further adventures that my original plan as GM had not included, and other times, their cleverness will resolve my bigger story arc much sooner than I intended. The GNPC should not get in the way of either. If the whole party is KOed, the GNPC is likely KOed with them, unless it was all bad rolls on an epic scale, then I might use the GNPC to get them out, but not completely out, and the act would leave the GNPC largely exhausted and useless for the next phase, so that the players themselves have to plan out their next epic move and figure out how to drag the GNPC with them in heroic fashion.

I actually know a family who had been Ringling Brothers clowns for several generations. You're inclusion of three stooges and such actually has a lot of what I'd think of as his skill base. The youngest son in that family actually does a lot of stunt work. A lot. There is a tendency to have to learn a broad range of skillsets. So, breakfall at a high level. tightrope walking is not uncommon, high athleticism for some could equate to a lot of defensive abilities in combat. Juggling and knife throwing, escape artist, these are all not uncommon skills for him to have picked up. He could have bowling pins to throw and stun people when necessary. Acrobatics. Pretty much every skillset you can equate with circus performers is a skill he might have. Contortionist would allow him to fold himself up into a box that is delivered into the target bank, or enable him to slip through small enclosures to escape. And, of course, the clown car. (If you said he had super powers, I would have made him have duplication, only starting from his clown car!) On the escape artist front, it would not be unusual for him to have lockpicking skills. Escape from a straight jacket(I was actually taught how to do this when I was seventeen by my friend). Unicycle riding. I don't know what they call it, when they walk on a big ball, but he could have one that's actually quite heavy and use it to knock over people. Stilt walking.

It seems to me that skills, in general, unless one uses mainly general categories, have a cost that in not commensurate with their value, and almost no way to defray that cost. The problem with only using the general categories is that it sort of flies in the face of Heroe's 'build what you imagine' premise, but it's at least manageable, as long as the GM is providing the opportunities for using the general skill as the player imagines. But, again, it's a bit at odds with what is best about Hero, imo.

I hadn't even heard of triangular map setups, interesting. I actually favor not seeing the hexes as discreet, and merely as a means to measure, especially since the means obviously is at odds with how much movement one might buy. Then again, enough of the gamers I play with are also wargamers AND contractors, so a day without a tape measure is like youtube without crazy people, it's inconcievable. As such, it is not too hard to see whether two figs are in, essentially, base to base contact. It's funny, aside from the overall pleasantness of the Hero forum, I find, since I'm designing my own game system, that Hero gamers really think a lot in a lot of really interesting ways about things that are really game designing in nature. This week alone, I was putting a lot of thought on how experience and maps work out in my system, and lo and behold, here the hero gamers are both talking about their ways of dealing with both on the forum. As far as what one measures one hex to be, there clearly can be issues if the map surface is not, in reality, quite huge. Knockback alone could be a big problem, as could large moves, as the table edge could create issues. When I get back to the states, my stepson and I are planning on designing our own game table for just such issues. I wonder if I will be carving a lot of hexes into a large surface just because I don't understand time management. As far as whether hex distances are RAW, I would say one could argue that both ways. The movement and powers and rules, by default, could support arguments that say they are not, as you can and do buy in quantities that 1"=2m does not model(assuming one can ONLY move and attack in distances measured as whole hexes), and, if not using hex maps, would simply measure and get exactly what you payed for. Conversely, as others have stated, the hex measurement given as RAW do allow for dealing with some of the limitations of using hex maps.

There was a Moorcock series whose name I forget, that was a blend. They had lances that shot energy, I don't recall a lot. Ah, Google can be my friend. The History of the Runestaff, whose hero was Dorian Hawkmoon. Could actually see that being a good setting for it. Set in a post-apocalyptic Earth, techno-sorcerors, that sort of business. That said, Shadowrun is the closest I've come to running the mix.

Actually, for the game I'm designing, I was a bit influenced by the idea of Traveller development for skills, if not the execution. Basically, if you can spend X amount of time working on a specific skill, you can buy X points in that skill, provided you have some source of knowledge, otherwise expenditures are worth half. Additionally, in game occurences of something that could be related to a skill would count on a one per encounter basis for buying that skill, free of the limitation that you need a teacher(in essence, experience is that teacher). For example, say it's fantasy, and your character fights with a sword and shield. You have an enemy you've run into three times who fights with spear and shield. You pretty much automatically can take three points in "Reading an Opponent- Spear and Shield". This way, there is really no stockpiling, skill development is either a logical result of what has occured, which the player may argue for, but in which there is a means for measuring that is clear(hey, I have fought against people with spears exactly seven times, I should get seven points), as opposed to GM's discretion, plus the ability to get free points for a measurable amount of time training(let's say two weeks of consistent practice being worth a point). Of course, this is just skills, but in the game, powers are not bought except at the start. Not going to get into how that works, but it's not an experience set up, but often related to a skill and built almost like building a gadget. However, I'm not sure how well this would carryover to Hero. The system I'm designing is kind of built around the idea that any expertise spiders out into so many branches that it would be really difficult to become overpowering, because your ability to fight against a particulary weapon, for example, is partially tied to your knowledge of that weapon, not just the skill in the weapon you're using. So it's prohibitively expensive to, at the start, try to buy knowledge of all weapons. The way this plays out is that it should be more difficult to munchkin, because there is absolutely no way not to have vulnerabilities and many of them. We'll see how that goes in playtesting.

And my stepson and I decided that somewhere, Howard Dean and Dan Quayle are just sitting, drunk on scotch and muttering, "What the heck?"

I just got back to China, my one trip back to America in a year coinciding with the first weeks of the Trump presidency. Did I actually witness, after all that talk about it only being the illegal immigrants being the focus, and that democrats were being unfair in characterizing it otherwise, that the first move was to ban a bunch of legal immigrants? Is he actually going to tweet about most every episode of SNL? I was actually baffled for the whole time.

Bazza has woken every night for six months from a nightmare whose details he cannot recall, only knowing that he will wake once more shouting, "Death Tribble has your back scratcher and I want it back." And yet, when he checks his trophy room, there is no missing back scratcher.

Yeah, the nice thing about Hero is the lack of classes. And that, if you want a ranger, there's absolutely no reason in creation it would ever be like a D&D ranger. So, for example, the ranger could have healing by way of elven lore on herbs. Or an elf mage could. Or various members of the party could have some healing abilities for different reasons.(Elven herbal lore, spells, prayers, minor items). For me, the original Conan movie is a great example of a party that Hero is well designed to make. They all have some thieving ability, but they are all also competent at fighting in different ways.

True, but their statutes are often found to be unconstitutional and subsequently struck down.

Pariah's favorite metal band is Jethro Tull.

I especially like point 5. I'm not averse to a skill roll, but for ease of play, point 5 is a good compromise.

Kaeto vacillates decisively.

Totally stealing this. Nice!

What do you call a deer with no eyes? No-eyed dear. What do you call a deer with no legs and no eyes? Still no-eyed dear.

Lawnmower Boy for the win.