LoneWolf

This is the Red Hand of Death. The Red Hand of Death is a magical entity that possesses innocent children in order to further its mysterious goals. The child shows no sign of being possessed until it encounters its target. Once it finds the target the child will touch its target which causes the target to die, leaving a bloody handprint where it was touched. After the target dies the Red Hand of Death possesses a new host seeking a new target. Many of the targets of the Red Hand of Death are those who have harmed or otherwise abused the innocent especially children. Some suspect that the Red Hand of Death may be an angle that is charged with protecting the innocent. I tried to come up with something less morbid, but the red hand looks to creepy.

I have no problem understanding the rule, but my point is the way it is currently listed someone new to the systems might find it very confusing. They look and see that Radar is listed under the unusual group not the Radio group, this could lead them to believe that darkness vs Radio does not affect radar. To make matters worse radio perception is listed under both groups. Hero System can be confusing enough without things like this making it worse. With Spatial awareness the problem is that if it is kept in the unusual group, it really does not work without purchasing ranged modifier. What good is a targeting sense with no range? And how does a penetrative sense work if you have to touch what you perceive? In all honesty this seems to be more of a bad editing issue than anything else.

I asked a question in the rules forum about why they list almost every sense in the unusual sense group despite many of them obviously belonging in other groups. I am aware you can define a sense as belonging to other groups, but I think that the default sense should be one that makes more sense. For example, Radar is listed in unusual and not in Radio. Radio perception is listed in both the radio and unusual groups. To me this is likely to cause confusion. I checked Hero Designer, and they seem to be assigned the right groups by default. I think this should be changed in the book to avoid confusion. I also noticed that Spatial Awareness lacks range but is fully penetrative and targeting. Spatial Awareness is one that does seem to fit in the unusual group, but without ranged cannot operate. This means that if your special awareness is part of the unusual group you will need to pay for range. This should be noted in the power. I could not post a reply in the rules forum and this post is not really about a rule, so I am posting it here.

I was looking through the section on enhanced senses and noticed something that does not seem right. The unusual group includes a lot of senses that should be in other sense groups. For example, it lists Infrared Perception and Ultra Violet Perception, but the sight group also says that they are usually bought as part of the sight group. Likewise High Range Radio Perception, Radio Perception Radar, and Radio Perception/Transmission are listed there. Looking at the individual senses most of them do not include the sense modifiers of the group, so will not be able to function properly for the listed costs. Not having range on Radar makes it useless. How do sense-affecting powers against these sense groups work? What does darkness vs the Radio Sense group actually cover?

As long as the CV in the game doesn’t get too high the hit locations are usually not a problem. Any hit location that increases damage or has a stun multiple above median (3) has a -7 or -8 penalty. So, unless you are out surprised and out of combat your attacker usually needs a 14 or better OCV. If you are fighting defensively or have a high DCV those values need to be even higher. If you are using called shots without a high enough OCV you increase the chance of doing no damage at all. Due to the bell curve of the 3d6 roll you chance to hit drops significantly when it gets below 11. When rolling hit location 74% of the time you will be doing low to median damage and have a 26% chance of increased damage. As a player in Gauntlets campaign, we tend to avoid combat when possible, and when we are forced into it, we usually are fairly cautious in how we fight. Many of our opponents are using heavy military grade weapons, so we realize combat can be lethal and act accordingly. The characters are well suited to the campaign. Most of the characters seem to have fairly decent defenses and can handle themselves fairly well. My character technically has the lowest defenses, but my main defense is actually DCV. I am running a Precog with a high danger sense and my main power is actually 8d6 of luck. Most of the times, I can reroll 8 rolls per session. Since I have enough luck to affect others, I can usually negate a really bad roll against someone in the party.

This is almost identical to the example in the book on limitation only applying to the reserve. The only difference is the amount of extra time. Take Extra time on the pool itself and not on the slots. Also, there is no need to take activation only if you are doing it this way. On the other hand, you could also take extra time with the only to activate on both the pool and the slots. The limitation not appropriate everywhere is not valid limitation. That is double dipping on the OIF, and no GM I know would allow that.

The original post never specified how long. Personally, I would go for full phase only to activate.

I agree with Hugh on this one. Applying it as a common modifier instead of a multipower or slot only limitation seems to be the cleanest solution. This assumes that the slots are all fixed slots and only a single slot can be used at a time. If the slots are multi slots and you can use a wide variety of powers at once bookkeeping could bog down the game.

There is some slow down, but it is really not that bad. If the campaign has a lot of killing attacks, it is not much different than rolling the stun multiple. If the players know the chart well enough or it is on the character sheet it takes an extra second or two to find the stun multiple. The more you use these rules the less the delay becomes. In 6th edition the big thing about the hit location is that it increases the stun multiple of killing attacks back to what it was in the previous editions. In previous editions outside of called shots using hit locations actually tends to reduce the damage characters take. For killing attacks with hit locations, you have a 26% chance of getting a stun multiple over 3, a 37% chance of getting 3 and a 37% chance of getting lower than 3. Without hit locations you have a 33% chance of getting a stun multiple over 3 a 17% chance of getting 3 and a 50% chance of getting lower than 3. Using the hit locations for a killing attack means you get more damage at or below the median damage. For normal attacks it actually reduces the odds slightly more. You still have a 26% of increased damage, a 44% chance of no modifications and a 30% chance of decreased damage. This is also the chances of the body being increased or decreased.

The purpose of any game system is to have fun, not to create a hyper realistic combat simulator. How things work in the real world are not that important. The idea of complaining about the fact that the game that includes werewolves and fairies is not realistic is kind of silly. Your argument that it takes time to master different martial arts has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the characters are not required to purchase duplicate maneuvers or any other game mechanic. Becoming a doctor in real life takes a long time, but in the game about all I need to do is to buy paramedic and science skill. For 5 points I can have my character be a doctor. That is the same cost as a many martial maneuvers. Becoming a doctor takes about 11-15 years. Does that mean it takes 11 years to learn a single maneuver?

If you look at the section on how talents are constructed you will see that some of them already have modifiers on them. Combat Luck for example has both advantages and limitations on it. But others like Bump of Direction do not have any modifiers on them. Some talents are not intrinsic to the character but others are. Sword master cannot be used unless you have a sword, but Bump of Direction is something the character will usually always have. The label of power or talent is not really important. Talents are really just powers that are common enough that they have been written up to make it easier to create characters.

GDShore your examples are mixing up elements of the game. The example you use of the French style aimed at the heart and lungs are not part of the maneuver, they are functions of hit location and special effect. They could also be the result of allocating skill levels differently. There is no reason that they could not be using the same martial maneuver. The maneuvers in martial arts are fairly generic or there would be hundreds of maneuvers instead of the 40+ listed in the book. How is the Aikido Dodge different from the Escrima Body Shift or the Kenjutsu Evade? All three of them use the same game maneuver (Martial Dodge). What Extra utility does the character gain if they have to spend points to be able to use each? One of the basic premises of the Hero system is that a character does not have to pay points for something that does not affect the game. If the campaign uses the skill analyze style being able to shift to a different style would actually give you a benefit, but in a campaign that does not use that it does not. It also sounds like you are playing in martial arts focused campaign, but not every campaign will be like that.

Makeover already gives you the ability to gain more than 1 level of striking appearance. Why do they need to purchase more striking appearance? Too much striking appearance can unbalance the campaign.

Striking appearance is supposed to boost characters PRE, not totally replace it. A character like Hideous should have a decent PRE in addition to striking appearance. I would be very hesitant to allow a character to purchase 10 levels in striking appearance. When I first started playing Champions a guy I knew created a character called The Ghost. All the character had was desolidification that was always on and a 200+ PRE. He was rolling a base of 40d6 PRE attacks. So, all he had to do was show up and say Boo and the villain was reduced to a quivering heap. That type of character tends to kill a campaign. Shapeshifting with the makeover adder only gets you the striking appearance bonus, not the base PRE.

One thing to keep in mind about the Hero System is that special effect is most important thing in the game. The system gives the building blocks to create any type of character you want. The game mechanics are organized so that they are more easily understood, but any game element can have any special effect. Don’t get hung up on the label of the game mechanic and think it has any real significance. They are just a way of organizing things in a way that makes it easier to build characters with. Talents are usually unusual abilities that most people do not have, but that does not mean they cannot be something else. If your character is a telepath and has eidetic memory because he can use his telepathy on himself to find old memories, eidetic memory would be a power. If character buys telepathy with the special effect that he is so skilled in psychology that he can understand what people are thinking, telepathy becomes a skill. I tend to agree that it might be better to rebuild the talent completely instead of just applying a limitation to the existing talent. In many cases the talents have no modifiers on them so it will not matter. In other cases, they may have modifiers, so it may affect the cost.