Willpower

Re: Bow & Arrows separately. This is a bit complex, though not overly so. It may aso seem a bit useless to some people, but I think I get some of the ideas involved. The way I have done something like this in the past is to build a multipower for the arrows, and it had the limitations OAF: arrows (-1) and No Range (-1/2). Then you purchase the naked advantage Ranged (+1/2) for up to the active points in the multipower. It also gets the limitation OAF: Bow (-1). Some of the basic things this allows, that isn't allowed with a straight Multipower with the limitation OAF: Bow and Arrows (-1) is that if you don't have your bow with you for some reason, say it is broke, you can pull out an arrow and use it in hand to hand. Bullseye did this trick a couple of times in the Avengers. The GM may even allow the archer to throw the arrowheads if needed at particular penalties.

On a different board I saw a guideline for dealing with dice and speed that I really liked. It was very simple. Dice of damage for a character plus the characters speed could be no greater than 20. I really liked this conept, though it appeared not completely finished to me. It seemed a lot like the Fuzion system's Rule of X which I liked. It too, was not completely finished for me. The Rule of X was missing a Speed element offensively at least, where as this rule is missing an offensive skill element. The rule of X worked great as it was, but if 2 people had the same offensive X, and one operated at 3 points greater Speed, it was no mystery as to who was more powerful. (I know, Fuzion didn't include Speed at first, though we incorporated it.) This rule doesn't incorporate offensive skill, and two people both operate at 12d6 damage, and have an 8 Speed, than it is also not a mystery to know that the one with a 12 OCV is more powerful than the one with an 8. As it is, I like basing the power element off of Speed, though either way this will work. What I am thinking might work best is to work the rules based off damage and speed, and then add in the skill element based off a deviation for the campaign norm. So for instance if the campaign normal for CV is 6-8, and you have a CV of 10, then those extra 2 points come off either the damage or the speed the character can have. As I said this can work in reverse too, making the number based off CV + damage dice, may work better in some cases, as their is less deviation among Spd than their is among CV. So if someone had 8 CV and 12D6 damage, they could have the campaign average of 6 for speed if the number used was 20. OR they could have a CV of 10, and do 10d6 damage. Or they could have a 9 OCV, do 9d6 damage, and have an 8 Spd. Both work similar, though with the second things could develop how I saw them do in Fuzion, where people have one attack at one power level, and another at a lesser level with a couple of skill levels to offset the damage difference, in order to keep the same offensive rule of X. I just don't like that manipulation aspect to this house rule, so I will probably prefer the first option rather than the second. First off, I want to know what everyone thinks of this, and then I also like to come up with a way of regulating the other side of this, the way the rule of X did. Maybe something like DCV plus 1/5th defenses +1/5th stun, or something like that. Any ideas to help expand on this basic idea?

Re: City of Heroes to HERO conversion? I agree, that is the perfect way to do this type of convertion. Forget power levels, but ideas on how to build the powers how they appear in the game is great. For instance, EB = EB is easy. Lightning Blast (or whatever it is called), would be built slightly differently, as it doesn't do Knock Back, but i believe it drains End. So it might be EB with does no KB limitation, and an added End Drain power.

Re: Delaying an opponent You could always go with some form of entangle. Maybe a mental entangle would work, or just one bought with Invisible power effects and transparent to attack. That doesn't fully work for the effects in CoH, but Hero doesn't do those types of effects so hot. Even something with added dice only to Stun, will only get rid of one action, IF you stun them. Where as in CoH a stunning attack can take someone out for a bit of time. Particularly with adders that increase the stun time. Something like what you are talking about really requires some sort of D20-like Save system, and Hero isn't built that way. Though one could be jury rigged though. You could work up something like Dimensional travel usable as an attack to send someone for a different dimension. Say the dimension is lose to ours, and so you can still see the person, (though you wouldn't really be able to affect them) and returned them to our dimension several rounds later. Slap on a Ego, or a Con roll, and attach an effect to that, like if they miss they are in the other dimension for 1full phase, if they miss by more than 2, they are there for 2 phases, and if they succeed they don't go. That same thing could also be done with Mind Control, one telepathic command, only to stand perectly still. Or even a Transform. These two give the added benefit of allowing you to interac with the person too. Don't know if this helps or not, but those are my ideas on it.

Hello all, I am building another villain for my Champions game, and this one I am trying to base off a character I have in City of Villains. Basically, I have a Mastermind Villain in City of villains, that I am looking to build in Champions with as little change from the way the character works as possible. He is a Force Field/Robots MM. I am sure most of you will probably not know anything about that, but for those that do, have any of you thought of ways to build some of their powers so they work at least somewhat the way they do in the game? Here are some of the basics. He has 3 different types of robots he can "summon" 3 battle bots, 2 protector bots, and an assault bot. All in that order of power level. The way the powers work in the game, is that they are 3 seperate powers, one summons the first 3 bots, the second summons the second 2 bots, and the third summons the third bot. He then has to upgrade them to provide them with additional weaponry. I am thinking that would be different multipowers on the base character that would be usable by others (the bots) and specified as to only work for them. All of this, I do not have too much problem with. I could work it either with duplication, or summoning, or even followers. Followers is the route I was thinking of using, but I don't want him teleporting more than those 6 followers at a time. Duplication also works for this, but if one bot goes down, I want him to be able to summon another to replace it. Then he would also have to outfit it to make it tougher and what not. I don't think duplication works well for this. Summoning might, though I am not positive if it would. If you summon something and it dies,, can you summon another right away? Right now, I am thinking of just using followers, and then making it to where the powers he has that upgrades them will only work on those six. That way, I can have situations where the players fight hordes of robots that aren't as powerful, and then get to him. There are a few powers that I will have work differently at least. I am combining a few, that really should work as one. For instance his FF that blocks physical objects, and his seperate FF that blocks energy and other effects, I will just make 1 FF instead of 2, that I have to apply seperately. The character in COV has Leadership and such to help the bots, but I don't think I am going to worry about that level of a convertion. The dispertion Field, I have worked out as a 5/5 FF wih a selection area effect radius. Any other ideas as to how to build some of the more common powers that seem to work differently than they regularly do in Hero? For the most part, I don't expect to get many replies from those that don't know anything about Masterminds or City of Villains, cause those that don't won't uderstand many of the differences I am talking about. I tried to explain a few, about the powers I talked about, but there are more.

Re: Move-Through Broken?

Re: Move-Through Broken?

Re: Move-Through Broken? They don't slow down that much. Though, Dogfighting is almost a thing of the past anyway. Pretty much they just lock on and shoot missiles. The computer's OCV is what hits, and it isn't necessarily reduced to 0 OCV anyway, since that is what it was meant to do, fire at these speeds.

Re: Move-Through Broken? Oh, Oh... That means if we could do mental move throughs they wouldn't be that hard. 0 OECV - (atypical) 3 DECV + 11 = 8- to hit. Just make your Strength based on Ego Combat Value.

Re: Move-Through Broken? deleted

Re: Move-Through Broken? Hehe, That brings up something I had to do once. I made a move Through based Character named Silver bullet, who used Powered Armor for his powers. With him I had to significantly limit his strength and his flight, so that I would NOT have a munchkin-type character.

Re: Move-Through Broken? I never, ever said I won't accept a house rule fix. In fact, I have accepted one that was proposed, and I have said as much. Though, that doesn't make the thread or the conversation magically disappear, which is why we are all still here. I said I accepted having people figure their movement per Turn, and then dividing by a standardized SPD, so that all velocity works equally.

Re: Move-Through Broken?

Re: How to kill characters? I wholeheartedly agree. I do not kill PC's regularly either. Though I do prefer some danger of death in the game, so I do put into the game attacks capable of doing Body damage. I dislike trying to kill PC's though, which ends up meaning that if one gets close to death I switch to more non-lethal attacks. Which again, takes the danger of death out of the game, since the Villain probably would go for the kill, but I don't. This is why I invented my Trauma Rules, which we are still playtesting. They appear to work rather well though. The reason I started this thread though, was because two players have indicated that if they were to have to make new characters they would rather have their characters killed in game than have to make new ones for what they conceive as no reason. And apparently a campaign ending, and starting a new one isn't reason enough for them. To avoid problems I have been exploring ways to purposefully kill those two, and those two alone, without looking like it was purposeful, at the end of the campaign. Normally, I would never go out of my way to kill a PC. For me though, if I made an adventure such as your GM did, it would be to inject danger into the game, maybe to kill a PC that asked to be killed to make a new character, or what not. But I would be pleased when the players defeated the bad guy. That is the intention of the game for me. Once I even planned a campaign alterring story that would unleash 7 extra dimensional armies on Earth, forever changing the game. I fully planned on the game changing this way, and put up significant defenses to ensure the PC's failed in stopping the bad guys this one time. Usually, I make my adventures hard, but the PC's are still supposed to win. This one they were supposed to lose. But they pulled out some interesting tactics, one player in particular, and stopped the change from occuring.

Re: Move-Through Broken? Yes. I missed it. I don't go through and read every persons links and signatures all the time, as it is usually a wast of time, not laziness. BTW, thanks for showing me that I was right to just ignore posts that I know will get me in trouble. Allow me to return the favor.

Re: Move-Through Broken? Yes, I know. That is what I am saying needs to be fixed, and I am including it as a house rule as I stated previously. As for your second paragraph, I didn't fully comprehend where you were going with it, nor do I agree that it is more accurate than my hypethetical situation. (At least based off what of it I could understand of it.)

Re: Move-Through Broken? Yes, I have seen your previous posts, though I do not have 5ER, so I cannot do as you suggest. I actually ignore 5ER, as I believe it is a complete rip off. I paid $50 for a ruleset that they revised a year later, and then want everyone that supported them a year previously to shell out $50 bucks for the same rulebook with some revised changes. I do not go by 5ER in my game. A friend has it, and I told him to take everything in there with a grain of salt, as if it conflicts with what 5E (The orginal FREd) says, in my game 5E wins. However, everytime I state my viewpoint on these forums lemmings try to tear me to shreds, so typically I ignore replies that refer me to 5ER rules. Nothing personal against you. It is just a habit I picked up for survivability. Now if you excuse me I think I hear about 5 million lemmings coming at me.

Re: Move-Through Broken? OK, you brought in the rubber nature of the game, and the genre of the game. The genre is comic books, (which on the surface Champions does not really mimic very well anymore, but can be fixed. But that is a topic for another day) I know not this rubber nature of the game people refer to at times, but in the comic books, and in cartoons and the like how many times have you seen someone like the Flash decide a situation is just too nasty to mess around with. He decides I need to end this quick and so he runs around the world to pick up speed. Once twice whatever. Picking up speed in this case translates directly to building up to his non-combat velocity. Then after a few times around, SMASH he hits Brainiac or someone else doing massive damage, once, twice, however many times he needs to, to take them out. I have seen him do just this sort of thing many times. Now probably for him it was a Passing Strike as he doesn't appear to take much damage from it, but I do not allow those in my game. Though it still could have been a move-by or a move through, as several times I have seen him do this sort of thing, he nearly lost himself to the speed force.

Re: Move-Through Broken? Ok, as soon as you cite me where it says that is an absurdly impossible task. This sort of thing happens all the time. The task at hand, say at 20" X4 NCM for a 5 SPD character is only 75 MPH roughly. Cars hit people all the time at speeds such as this. Purposefully, or unintentionally. Now before you go saying, OK, but a car is an AE attack, motorcycles do it too. Something that happens every day hardly seems obsurd to me.

Re: Move-Through Broken? Ok, fine... What if there was some obscure rule somewhere that meant a person with a higher strength would actually do less damage with a haymaker than characters with lower strength. (This is a what if mind you, to illustrate a point. I am not saying that is the case.) And someone complained, "Why do I get less of a bonus to my Haymaker than the person with 15 Str? I have a 60 Str, I should get just as much if not more bonus for my haymaker." Would your answer simply be, "Well, thats how it works. You can always buy extra Hand Attack dice usable only with Haymaker."? Probably not. That would be a broken rule, and should be fixed. This is why I don't buy the buy extra dice answer for saying that MT is not broken. If it wasn't broken, as a maneuver, it should provide an equal bonus, for equal velocity. The same way Martial Strike does equal bonus damage for whoever purchases it. (Unless they BUY extra dice) The same way Haymaker does equal bonus damage for whoever purchases it. Someone should not have to buy extra dice to get a bonus equal to what they should have had in the first place.

Re: Move-Through Broken?

Re: Move-Through Broken? Your right. It is virtually the same. The only point I am trying to make is if the same two characters both hit a tough opponent the one with a 6 SPD may not have a chance of hurting him, while the 3 SPD character might, because he gets more velocity damage, even though their velocity is the same. Thats all I am saying, and that I think for such maneuvers it might be better to figure out the characters velocity per turn and then assign a SPD value to divide it by universally for all characters. This was someone elses suggestion, and it was a good one.

Re: Move-Through Broken? I suppose I should add to this conversation that one of my favorite characters was Move Through based. A character named Silver Bullet, who could shrink to a few inches in height. He had strength that only activated when shruck (making himself more dense in the process.), and could only fly when shrunk. He had special braces he built that would protect him a bit more as he flew through people. Hehe. He was a killing attack too. (Though not always.)

Re: Move-Through Broken? Though you are right, personally I don't worry about the cost of movement, as the damage from them is subsidiary to the ability to move. The penalties to Move Through, and Move By are significant enough for me. I just think it means the person who spent more points on SPD gets hosed. Though even then it is not that big a deal. Though, also personally, I NEVER allow Passing strike or any combat maneuver like it into my superhero games. I am also very leary about them in other hero games. Particularly Superheroes though, move much faster than those in other games. Adding a velocity damage type attack with a standard penalty, instead of a velocity based penalty is asking for unbalance.

Re: Flying out of a moving vehicle Normally I wouldn't either, but there were about several hundred reasons to keep track of it. Being chased by half of Viper, (not a base, HALF of Viper) a jet crashing in front of them filled with master villains who took the crash and kept chasing them, and the fact that they were still on a crash course as well.