TheDarkness

I think the question is, if it is legal, then why not always put them in there for the discount? And I'm assuming the answer would be the pool cost would negate the savings unless there were more that could be fit in the multipower. And if there are, then you run into figuring out if they are always going to be on, or if it's like Ultra Boy, and you have to choose to turn on your defenses and use the pool for it.

Two things: Continuity of memory Continuity of consciousness The clone and the original have the first in common, but do not have the second in any way in relation to one another. They are two sets of identical consciousnesses at a specific point, not one. The original, upon death, does not, no matter what, continue on because there is a clone. The memories are all that still exists, not the consciousness of the original. And actually, there is no reason to believe that, given the exact same experiences, the clone would find all the choices he made in his false memories consistent with what he would do. I find it highly likely that he would look on some memories as totally against his own tendencies or preferences. Interesting topic.

That portion of the discussion actually ties in well with Buddhist and Taoist views on the self. Namely, they conclude that there is no discrete self. We have far more in common with some other adults than the children we once were, yet we never call those other adults 'me' due to a trick of perception. Among adults we are most similar to, we are no closer to assigning them a 'me' status, despite not a single atom from childhood likely still being in our bodies and the difference between the memories of what happened to a past me not matching what actually happened to that past me. Today's me is a result of a yesterday 'me' as today's me is a result of something someone who I do not recognize as me saying something that I now think of as me.

Actually, I know exactly where the viruses came from. There are two programs that are on virtually every computer I ever see here, one is ostensibly a firewall, the other is a search engine. On my previous computer, I accidentally forgot to uncheck boxes when I downloaded something, and those two programs ended up being downloaded. Immediately, same popups as I constantly see on every computer in China, huge issues with a lot of things that normally were no problem. When I finally got them and their junk off my computer, back to normal. This computer, those were apparently standard issue, which makes me not want to use any computers I haven't personally sanitized in China anymore. And yeah, I do need to get a second program and do a thorough search. I'm just glad I knew better than to check emails or my bank account before cleaning it all up.

Actually, I recently had to replace my laptop. I'm in China, I was hoping to wait until I was back in the states to buy a new one. I took the pc out of the box, downloaded the vpn I've used for some years now to get past The Great Firewall, downloaded firefox, downloaded my preferred anti-virus, and ran it. That is literally all I did before running anti-virus, I did not use a Chinese search engine to find the website of the VPN, I went directly to their website, have never gotten any malware from that site or their products. Six, count them, six trojans on the computer. All Chinese. The computer came with them. Free of charge.

I've been meaning to upgrade to POS, but I was afraid it might affect my ability to do text adventures. I don't know how I'd fill my time without finding just the right combination of 'pick up' and 'the book' to move on in such games.

Already did this, but just realized I never filled out my profile. Just fixed it, maybe someday I'll add a pic. And E Nymtom, this forum is really quite pleasant. In fact, it has quickly turned into one of my favorites. I tire nowadays at the idea that freedom of discourse requires utter ruthlessness or that there is some victory to be won by making some people you like on the internet feel proud at whatever clever but jerky things you said today to a stranger. I'm starting to find that self moderation appears to actually be a bad thing to too many people on too many forums. People here seem to be themselves, not some role they made up. Which is hugely ironic, given that this is a role playing game forum. Whereas out in the wild web, people seem to be taking roles in order to fulfill some wish fulfillment in a game no one else agreed to play. The worst part of it all? Their builds are never balanced and their alter egos always have the worst names. What, you are a blue collar worker posting all day against the evils of X under the indefatigable guise of TwinkleDank_23? But, what blue collar job do you have again, that lets you post all day? It's like middle school has been extended for everyone. Here, it's like hanging out with your old gaming buds. As adults. Occasionally immature adults, but not at the expense of anyone else. Of course, some members get along better with certain members than others, but everyone seems to get that it's a place for everyone.

There's a point at which they should have recognized that, hey, this seems nothing like a jedi. Players might want to play a jedi that feels like a jedi in a Star Wars game.

I think one thing is, the no absolutes have the effect of not bypassing other character's expenditures as a handout, and create a fairness. Magic Missile is, in effect, bypassing all the things a player might do to make them hard to hit by missiles. This SHOULD cost more, as those defenses cost and should not be bypassed by a special rule that invalidates them, like autohit.

Womble, all good points. I think that one of my points and one of yours dovetail a bit, so I'm gonna comment on that a bit. I don't think it contains any points of disagreement, to be clear. That is, the difficulty of a player, let's say playing their first detective in a game, in their first sessions. They very well may not know how to go about it, and should not be punished for this. This is the heart of what I was getting at in relating skill situations to combat situations. In fairness, which you tactfully pointed out, I overplayed the nuances of many combats and underplayed the nuances of many detective scenarios. However, I would say the combat monster who normally does not have to apply much in the way of nuances because their defenses and strengths in that realm are so good usually, at some point, face someone who could potentially overcome them, and, at that point, should and often are cognizant of dodges and blocks and these various choices, even if they only suddenly decide to play them because 'holy crap, if he hits me again I'm toast.' Or because they know the fight is a misunderstanding, and aren't wanting to even KO the opponent, You get the idea. They know what they can do with the combat skills, because it's obviously presented to them. I think it is important, for games with more skill interactions, to go half way that direction, more systematized, but absolutely, the players need to know how to work that system just like players need to know that if their character is lower speed, block may be a useful move for them against some higher speed people, or holding actions, or what have you. As a simple example, one of the problems with PRE attacks as they occasionally are played is the timing. An example I've used before from a game: a group of street thugs is confronted by our hero, an unknown super who looks like a street kid with his hoodie up and his face obscured. They don't know he is a super. The group balks for a second, but they have two guns, and their leader fires a round in the air and makes his own presence attack with marginal success to motivate his men. The hero makes a PRE attack and tells them to go home. The thug with the gun wins, because the advantage of knowing the thug leader has a gun and there will be repercussions on his guys if they don't do what he says is so much more threatening than a street kid saying anything. Now, this is not a critique on the player's action in that case, his PRE attack didn't work, action then began, and he later ended up scaring off the bruised and beaten thugs with a new PRE attack. But there was a moment where the player was really visibly bothered by the failure of the first PRE attack. Later, he got that timing can introduce new factors. I think that it's important for players to understand what a PRE attack is. A PRE attack might be: Saying something Saying nothing Totally changing the topic when there is an expectation that there is no way any sane person would pull that on the person being spoken to Standing in just the right place to force the other person to have to skirt around or push through Saying something kind Saying something cruel and, concluding bullet point Further, the player needs to understand that the result of a PRE attack might be that the target(s): run stop doing what they were doing simply agree with what was said when before they might not have switch sides cry gratuitous bullet point Further, they need to understand that sometimes, it can even be fairly passive, or the effect desired might be quite small. The mobster's muscle standing guard in front of his door are a PRE attack, all the normals DON'T want to mess with them. The mobster's muscle standing behind our hero as he goes to determine the mobster's role in a recent event ARE a PRE attack. Our hero is simply statted well enough to not have to worry about that PRE attack. Further, for my games, I would try to make clear that the more people there are involved or the more extreme the response the person making the PRE attack wants, the less likely that one PRE attack on its own is going to achieve it. Meaning, if the situation as it stands gives no or little tendency for that result, then more may be needed. If it is an argument, for example, in which the master villain who only the heroes know is the master villain, but everyone else thinks is the populist politician calling for 'reform' and the heroes are vying to influence a crowd to their way of thinking, I would not tend to have whole crowds won with one roll. A successful roll might sway more, which would then lend a bonus to their roll for a followup PRE roll as members of the crowd start seeing more people agreeing. I wouldn't force a ton of rolls in that situation, but two or three alongside a little role play(and, if we're really lucky, good role play) adds tension, especially since those are being contested by the rolls of the villain. Certainty is no longer the result of one roll. So, PRE attacks might be modest moves to open the way for more decisive PRE attacks. The character should know, hey, in my game, sometimes if you want a big effect on a PRE attack, you will need lay down some ground work that favors it, maybe even an initial modest PRE attack, acting calm in the face of the thugs hoping merely to make them uncomfortable(simple PRE roll) before melting one of their guns with heat vision while yelling(followup presence roll with maybe some bonus from the first, and a lot of bonus from the gun melting), "Flee, flee for your lives, the demons in my head, they are coming free, I cannot stop them for long." Yes, silly, yes, probably not clever role playing, but alongside the rolls, the mediocre role player has a part in the narrative larger than just rolling, the mediocre role playing is not penalized, and the player does this because they have the knowledge that, hey, my skills and such play out in more than one roll in this campaign, they've thought of how to do that, and soon, that other player steals all their good ideas and everyone is more likely to do it. Likewise, the detective. It's important for the detective to know how they may be contested. That time, weather, and things that change the conditions of what they are looking into may make results more difficult. That a villain's master criminal skill may affect the difficulty of knowing what happened, and that, if the villain did really well on their assumed roll, that the margin for success for the detective might be smaller, and the likelihood of detecting exactly what the villain wanted you to detect might be higher. Can you trust this one clue? Or should you interrogate this person as well, knowing that no matter how much control the villain may have had over the placing of clues, people might crack under the right pressure? Further, as GM, I should do the same. Every crime scene, I should have an idea of what clues the Master Villain wanted left behind, and which ones he or she wouldn't have wanted to leave behind. Which of those were left behind by the henchmen, which were the rare error made by the master criminal? For the master strategist, I agree, one can model one that is largely powers based, and I think that has been well covered in this thread, though I'm sure others will add more to it. As far as skills, I see the master strategist's player as really having a lot of opportunities to create and/or catch plot hooks. Not having info about the inside of the villain's jungle fortress should bother the master strategist, knowing that people actually leave the base occasionally should be something that he might regularly recognize as a bread and butter part of having such skills, is there a group that leaves that we can capture or trick into giving us information should be something he considers as being as routine as knowing that blocking allows some people to deal with some kinds of other fighters. Give the players a baseline of skill 'maneuvers', and they will use them and find more.

I'll be honest, I found Gurps to be very tedious for character generation. I would not want to have to do that again. Hero is sometimes painful in character generation, but I had more a feeling of, ah ha, this is how this power will be modelled, and you feel like an evil genius until gameplay reveals that no matter how great the cool power, you are going to roll badly today. Somehow, making characters in Gurps just felt like Palm Sunday mass had been turned into a movie by Ang Lee, and Peter Jackson convinced him to make a trilogy out of it. It's been a looong time since I did any Gurps, so I can't even remember why it felt that way, I just came away from Gurps with an aversion to character generation. I imagine you could model a lot of the same things. It's weird, I like making Hero characters, I can't for the life of me pin down why I hated making Gurps characters so much.

I was meaning all the D&D books.

I actually think both sides are making really salient points on this issue. This is sort of getting into one of my pet topics(which basically means, I'm going to monologue). What defines a good combatant? Session after session, tons of rolls, lots of subtle choices in which maneuver to make, over and over, game after game. What defines a good detective? Often, a five rolls over many sessions that reveal a lot. What defines an epic fight? A lot of actions that went crazy but cinematic, perhaps. What defines many solutions to mysteries. Same five rolls as before. Often not contested in any way by the skill of the criminal covering their tracks. If the player is capable of role playing it, it can be just fine. If not, there is something inherently horrible about giving away huge hints for one roll. I really think, to have the non-social player play the socialite, for example, the GM really needs to make a go at being more systematic about it all. Imagine if you treated other skills in as detailed a fashion as you treat combat, that's not quite necessary, but I really think there's a value in goiing part way there. Okay, you're a detective. You have these knowledge skills, great. I refuse to give you story for mere rolls if you don't meet me half way is my view, perhaps I'm too severe, but it seems to me that the character is bordering on a macguffin detector more than a character, they could mount them on a volkswagen and drive around the city every week, looking for the plot hook. This doesn't mean that they need to be able to act out the skill they don't have. But they could establish that, when investigating, they always check the map of the area they are in, dust for prints, have a host of things upon which to HINGE SOME ROLLS, and that more than one or two rolls and noting of excuses to make those rolls should be required to lead anywhere useful. I know a lot of us have talked about this before. It's become almost painful to me after all these years to say, "You walk into the room, where blah blah blah, Tom, make a perception roll". It's just not fun. If Sam can learn to choose when to dodge versus strike, Tom can choose the best times to use his detective roll to minimize how often it is just a passive thing that the GM does. And he should not learn everything from one clue, anymore than all the fights should be summed up by one move. In relation to the master strategist, some setup is required. The master strategist who only does it on the fly seems like probably not a master strategist. The master strategist needs info to make his or her power work. He needs secret info. He needs maps of what he's to deal with. These are his bread and butter, regardless of how we define the game effect of the actual combat. Getting him his bread and butter is likely to involve sessions of their own, because the bad guys do not want their base surveilled, they do not want information leaked that the master strategist needs to enact the perfect plan. On the fly, the problem is, he's only as good as the teamwork of whoever is enacting his plans, and his ability will be limited. But sometimes, for a particular character type, I might focus less on the build than the feel. And a master strategist plans, and uses sources of info, and plots, and, whenever possible, knows his opponents better than a French chef knows butter long before he strikes. For cinematic game purposes, the feel of this is more important than the actual soundness of the strategy, and it all gives opportunities for the strategy to require more than roll once or twice, and then forget the skill.

PDF? Is this available in Windows 1.2? I've been meaning to update, but I ended up spending all my cash on Y2K related necessities.

I just don't know how you guys find the rules so fast. I'm apparently a luddite.

Can the barrier be permanent?

This points out another issue. To build anything Hero can build in the game is to work on the assumption that the group uses every book available. Which is not most groups playing. It's not a huge issue to me, mind you. I prefer less ad hoc systems, but that's me.

I won't lie. I would have kept the dice, too.

I'm not sure where I got that. I was sure of it when I wrote it, which, on the internet, means it must be 100% true. Internet protocol requires that I now nebulously accuse you of 'cultural marxism'. Take no offense, this is merely the language of my people. [i was wrong, please don't tell anyone... ]

Totally unrelated, but the first time I ran DC Heroes, back when it first came out, saw the luckiest string of rolls of my career. I don't remember the dice conventions of that game, but there was some rule where, if you rolled a certain thing(doubles, maybe) you got to roll again for a higher value effect. The player had wanted to do the classic sort of Hulk vs. Superman(he was playing The Hulk, and was a huge hulk fan). Anyway, let's assume it was doubles. Hulk hits supes, we must have been determining knockback, because after set after set of doubles, Superman has been punched into space. I'm not sure I've ever seen a player so pleased. One of the most likable people I know to game with, who is always playing the sort of utility member that the party needs, but often won't be the most visible, but who always role plays that character, had a five year almost entirely unbroken bad luck on rolls effect. His character survived on pure good role playing. Then, one day, he jumps into the fray when the whole party is in trouble, everybody is like, no, don't, you'll die. Three rounds of fantastic rolls later, he's standing above the powerful baddie, the only one conscious for the last two rounds. We're all like, the curse has ended, and he's like, "What curse, this is just how I role play. You guys don't understand how to build some suspense with your consistently hitting and damaging things." The next game, his rolls returned to their previous dismal level. We began to joke that he's probably some powerful interdimensional being studying us, and we got in the habit of referring to him as 'the grey'.

Seems a sensible route. Man, that vitality rule is terrible. Yeesh.

Actually, an idea just struck me that kills two birds with one stone. The jedi are not just force users without sith powers. Sith power is constantly at their beck and call, if they want it. So require the purchase of what would essentially be a very tempting 'push' of various powers. A power they must buy, but never use. The use of it leads to a complication, lured by the dark side, that, if the dark side is used enough, then leads to the complication becoming more powerful, which leads to more use of the dark side power, which leads to NPC land. Implement a reasonable power level for them. Light sabres SHOULD be deadly, but I really think allowing things like light saber blocks to be modelled as largely all purpose armor works better for supers games than non-supers. It seems just like a deflection to me, not sure why this isn't how it should be modelled. Again, the only people in all six movies who have anything that one could equate to much in the way of combat level telekinesis are the most powerful and most experienced: every one else seems to have a shove power at slightly further than arm's length. Besides that, they mostly use it to reclaim their lightsabers. Force choke also has extremely limited range, Vader does do a mega-scale one, but he's kind of the king of the force choke, and much more experienced than anyone else we see do it. Leaping, simple enough. It's not a massive leap in many cases. As far as their actual powers, the normal jedi really aren't that powerful, if they are modelled as they are shown in most of the movies. Too many are modelled like the best, most powerful, or most experienced jedi. This is why I see the deflection as more fair to the other characters than blanket pd/ed or other ways of modelling it, but I may not be following the reasons for that type of modelling. It seems like literally a deflection with the limitation requires the light sabre.

In theory, what game I will have fun playing has close ties to the system choice, perhaps genre choice at the time. In practice, it ties more closely to who I'm at the table with than anything else.

In conclusion, constructs for D&D are highly referential to D&D. Constructs in Hero are highly referential to whatever outside source it came from, and can be precisely referential to them, and so D&D is not designed to model as much as give bells and whistles that give the feel of a thing in a purely D&D context. I hope you appreciate my thesis and look forward to hearing your decision on whether to fund my further research. And please let me know if you wish to see my previous work, 'Lobbying for Weapon Additions for Merchandising Purposes: Game Theory as Applied to the Events of D12-gate,' as well as my Master's Thesis, ‘For Every Skaven, A Sling: The Fine Line Between Munchkinism and Just Being a Prat.'

A little more on why the combat round in D & D makes it really hard to model something well from a different system and have it feel right in play. In D & D, the to-hit roll is a catchall. It involves armor and Dex and things like this. Now, the reason for this is, if the armor is good, then there's less likelihood of taking damage, if the Dex is high, there's more chance to avoid or hit. This fits the generalized nature of the round. It's a fairly long round, it assumes more than one attempt at an attack, and only the most notable results. However, people like choices. They like to dodge, parry, etc. Now, all these are already figured into the roll, if you aren't hit because of Dex, we would usually assume that you either dodged or parried. But it's so general, and people want choice. And damage. We can assume that if a sword does just one point of damage, then it probably hit a hand. If it kills, we'll assume it hit elsewhere. We probably won't assume we killed the baddie with the most epic strike to the finger. But people want targetting. And we have things like daggers, which are deadly weapons that can barely hope to render unconscious a starting mage. Well, obviously we need criticals. So we get talents and such to model things, but those things are already modelled into the initial roll, so obviously this will make this character more powerful, and so other characters need options to make them more powerful. And we have cleric-fighters, but who wants to split their experience? So we get paladins, who have to behave in the limits of the character they chose and get more power for it. If my fighter has a code restrictive in other ways, he will not get added power. So we need to monkey with experience thresholds. This makes any comparison of types of characters and how they feel to play from D&D to a system that is not it apples and oranges. Most possible combat maneuvers are add ons that were originally figured into the to-hit roll, are still figured into it, and so add power that either is taken away somewhere else, or offset by bells and whistles for someone else or altering level requirements. The backbone of D&D, or backbones, are something one has to work against to model something else. Vancian magic, generalized combat rounds, there is no ignoring their role in everything. Even things like talents, these are set items. There is a very definite way to try to model a character type from Hero into D&D, but there are a million ways to nuance the Hero version that D&D cannot do very well. Oh, you made this just slightly less good on the Hero version, I'm sorry, the talent is very specific on what bonus it gives, it no longer is a suitable way to do it. And even if one finds a different way, the play of that character will be so different, the very story of the character will likely have to be different in order to explain the difference in level required to have those talents and such, and how they play out will feel entirely different in both combat and the role play as to effectively say they are not at all the same. Now, you could make a Hero Ranger with a sort of druidic magic that had the same sort of Vancian backbone. I'm not sure why. I don't know where these rangers with spells came from, or why those spells. But, you could. And the system would not be working against you. But, D&D simply does not, never has, and never really claimed to have the kind of balance to be able to build anything with it, one is always working against the basis of the spells, the basis of combat rounds, etc. At some point, you always run into, 'yeah, well, this isn't really that great a thing, but you can't have it until THIS level, and you, over there, you can't have it at all, because.' D&D can be fun, but using experience level for game balance is iffy. It means that at any one point in time, there is no balance between characters, and so it is usually rewarding one player's choice in class at the time by greater survivability with another player hoping against hope to live to the later levels. Making equivalents between that and Hero is not really possible, it simply changes both the build and the narrative too much. Now, as far has having fun, it doesn't matter. The reason it doesn't matter is as follows: once your 4 hit point magic user looking forward to making it to powerful levels dies a horrible death and your friends level up, you can jump in as an 8 hit point character looking forward to his bright future.