LoneWolf

Diamonds are harder than steel, but are very brittle. I am not sure they would actually have more defense than steel. You can cut a diamond with a blow from steel. Diamond should probably not have more defense than steel and might have the ablative limitation. Don’t forget that it is not that hard to make artificial diamonds. Despite that they are not used in modern armor. If they were effective armor the military would use artificial diamonds for protection.

I think that not using figured stats are better. Figured stats lead to cookie cutter characters where the majority of characters have similar stats. With figured stats buying up your primary stats is the most cost-effective way to build a character, this leads to less variation in all stats. With figured stats almost all characters are going to boost up DEX and CON. CON actually gives you more in figured stats than the cost of the CON. Under 5th edition rules the only way to increase your base CV is to buy up your DEX. You can use skill levels to boost the ending CV but there are times when you cannot use skill levels. DEX is also more efficient at increasing your CV than skill levels. For 26 points I can get a 23 DEX which gives me an 8 OCV and DCV. That works out to 5.2 point per point of both OCV and DCV. Add in DEX also giving you SPD and it becomes too good to pass up. Even STR gets you more figured stats than it costs. Most experienced players ended up boosting the primary stats more than they needed to be. Not having figured stats leads to characters purchasing stats that are actually more in line with their concepts instead of boosting stats to get what they want for less. Almost every Fantasy Hero game that lasted ended up with all the characters having maxed out DEX. The supposedly heavy fighter having the reflexes of an Olympic gymnast seems to be a little farfetched. By not having figured stats it seems to lead to more nuanced and interesting characters. Now if I have a character that is supposed to be incredibly hard to hit but is not equally accurate, I can buy up my DCV higher than my OCV. Or I can have a character that is good with almost any weapon but does not fight like Spiderman.

AI is simply a new tool. It has the potential to allow people to easily create things that previously took much more effort. In some cases that will mean that people are going to lose their jobs. But it also means that new jobs are going to open up. The new jobs will require a different skill set; so many people may not be able to transition to the new jobs. It is also will probably mean there are not as many jobs in those fields as their use to be. This has been happening for centuries. The luddites of 19th century England had a similar fear of sewing machines. The same panic I am seeing here occurred then.

If the reflection is just the normal being able to see things reflected in the mirror you may not even need to buy anything. Common items normally do not need to be defined or purchased with points. You only need to define or purchase things that will have a real impact on the game. A key that unlocks a door does not need to be written up or paid for with points. If you can use the mirror to project images or otherwise have an impact on combat you will need to purchase the effect, but just using a mirror to see your reflection or similar purposes does not need to be paid for. Focusing the light to melt things on the other hand will require you to pay for it.

That sounds like three separate effects. Reflecting light-based attacks would be reflection, the reflection effect would be images, and the melt lead would be a blast or RKA. To do all three you would need to purchase three separate effects. If frameworks are allowed, you might be able to use a multipower.

A parabolic mirror could be the used to create numerous powers. They would be more of a special effect than something that needs to be defined. For the most part each parabolic mirror is going to be useful for what it was designed for. The parabolic mirror to create a laser is probably not going to be able to be used as a telescope without serious modification. If the character has the ability to modify equipment that drastically and quickly, they really should have gadget based VPP.

The problem for me is that the character is spending points on something that is rarely going to be used and when it is used is not going to allow them to do something they could not already do. As a GM I try to be fair with my players. Too me this seems to be a bit unfair to the player. He is paying points for something that does not do what he wants it to, and that in all honesty is going to cause him problems. Allowing a player to spend points that makes their character weaker and causes problems just seem wrong. To me this is like stealing candy from a baby. Characters should pay for what they can do, they should not pay for stuff that does not work.

As a GM I would highly encourage a player to avoid conditional SPD because of all the headaches it creates. Not only does this create a lot of bookkeeping nightmares it often ends up not working as well as the player thinks it will. For example, let’s say a character has 3 + 3 SPD. The player acts in phase 4 and does not need to deflect until 7. By then phase 6 has come and gone so if the character wants to protect the innocent, he needs to cancel his phase 8. In 10 he can only deflect so gets no action until phase 12 unless he is deflecting. If he deflects it resets his penalty to 0, but he still cannot attack. The character could have deflected in 2, Attack in 4 deflect in 7, reset the penalty in 10 and attack in 12. The character still only attacked twice and spent the rest of the time deflecting. A character with a SPD of 3 will be able to attack the same number of times and still deflect anything the other character can if he can make the roll. If the character simply bought a 4 SPD he would be able to attack in 3 and 5, cancel his 9 in 7 to deflect and be able to attack in 12. The above case is pretty specific but illustrates the point that conditional SPD does not always deliver what the character expects. Factor in the increase END and other problems and it makes the idea of conditional SPD a real pain. To me a better way would be to simply buy more SPD and lower the characters movement.

The same thing could be achieved by buying extra SPD equal to the characters own as long as your SPD is 6 or under. At 7 and above you would need to purchase SPD high enough to bring you to 12. In all honesty a character with a high SPD probably does not need this as they will usually have enough phases, they go in to be able to protect those that need it. Something like this is more useful for a character with a low SPD. The thing to keep I n mind is that buying extra SPD is going to affect your character in other ways. You still need to pay END for ongoing powers on those phases. This can easily cause character to run out of END way sooner than they normally do. Now in addition to purchasing the extra SPD you need more END and probably REC. Don’t forget that deflection also cost END which means you have an extra 2 END per phase in addition to all the other END you normally spend. The character with 5 SPD who usually spends 3 END per phase will have spent 15 END at the end of the turn. That same character with an extra 7 SPD will have spent 47. Assuming a 10 REC and 50 END the first character can fight for 10 turns. With the extra SPD the character is run out of END in phase 2 of his second turn. That means he needs to start burning STUN to act. If the character uses more than 3 END per phase, he will probably not even last a turn. Even if the character does not have anything else that costs END he still needs to pay for the deflection. That means the 5 SPD character with an extra 7 SPD that normally uses 3 END per phase is spending 29 END instead of 15. Playing an effective character with a high SPD is more than simply purchasing more SPD. Taking a recovery in combat is dangerous and not always possible anyways. All it takes is a single agent with a held phase to prevent that.

There is long history of characters having a single dehabilitating weakness. Bram Stokers Dracula had multiple weakness including being destroyed by sunlight. Werewolves being harmed by silver and the fey being harmed by iron also predate the appearance of superman. Then there is the most famous disadvantage in history. The term Achilles Heel comes from the Greek mythology that is thousands of years old. Giving superman credit for the idea a character having a weakness is ignoring a long history of other characters having weaknesses. Even in gaming there are numerous examples of this. When AD&D first came out Magic Users could not use armor and clerics were limited to specific weapons. Champions might have been the first that gave players the choice of what their weakness was but is not the first to build weaknesses into characters.

There are two ways you can limit how a power works. The first way is to create a power that prevents the power from working. The second is to put limitations on the power. Transformation would be how you accomplish the first case. The second case could be done by requiring all necromantic powers to be built that they do not affect all bodies. Depending on how the necromantic power is build this could be an additional limitation. If the necromantic power uses an expendable focus, you could increase the value of that to account for the fact that not all bodies can be raised. I would say that a character with the perk priest and PS priest would be all that is needed for the second case. For most religions this is going to be part of their normal duties and not really require any special training. Cemeteries are usually consecrated and considered holy grounds. That might create problems with creating undead in them. When I am creating a campaign like this, I spend some time on figuring out how I want things to work. If there is going to be magic involved I lay out some ground rules for how things should work.

The reason that defensive powers are not supposed to take the area of effect advantage is that they normally only apply to the character that purchased them. To use a defensive power on someone else you should be using the Usable on Others advantage instead. That power includes a usable nearby option that allows it to be used on all characters within 4 meters. With the GM’s permission that area can be larger. As it stands Area of Effect on absorption would not give others the defense even if the acts as a defense is taken.

As @Ninja-Bear said you can have a single maneuver represent multiple real-world maneuvers. You can also use skill level to further define those maneuvers. Skill levels can be used to increase your OCV, DCV and even damage. It does take 2 skill levels to increase damage. This allows a martial artist incredible flexibility. Take whatever Kung Fu maneuvers you want and use the skill level to represent specific stances or maneuvers. For a defensive stance put most or all the levels to DCV, for a more offensive stance they go to OCV or maybe damage. Mix them up as needed with the special effect of taking whatever stance you want. If you are running a martial arts focus campaign, you really should pick up the Hero System martial arts. The book has a lot of useful advice and examples. They even have a way to build a martial artist without using the martial arts maneuvers. Basically, you simply buy a huge amount of skill levels with a few maneuvers and use skill levels to simulate the maneuvers. For example, if you had 8 skill levels you could use 4 for +2 OCV, +2 DCV and the remaining 6 to get +2d6 damage, or you could go use all 8 to get +4d6 damage. This is what gave me the idea to use skill levels for the stances. This gives you the best of both worlds. The maneuvers can get you things the skill levels cannot, but you still have some of the flexibility of the skill levels.

My advice was based on the OP stating his player wanted to be able to use deflection to save more people. I was pointing out that deflection can already be used in the manner the player seems to want to use it. There is no reason for the character to have extra phases that can only be used to deflect when he can already deflect every phase until his next phase. A character with a 5 SPD who acted in 3 can on phase 4 cancel to deflection and continue deflecting thorough phase 7 without needing to buy anything. The cumulative penalty starts to add up so I had suggested purchasing skill levels to allow the character to deflect despite the penalties for deflecting multiple attacks. If a character wants to act more often in a turn, they should simply increase their SPD. Don’t put limitations on it as that complicates things and actually ends up giving them less flexibility. Part of building an effective character is recognizing what the character will need to function. A big part of it is giving the character adequate stats. If you have a defensive ability that requires you to spend time for it to work your character should think of purchasing more SPD. Don’t assume that you are going to be able to attack in ever phase your character goes in. A character with a power like deflection should factor in the fact that using it will reduce his ability to attack. If you want to be able to deflect without spending a phase build your deflection with a trigger that automatically resets immediately after use. You are probably going to need a variable trigger, so it is going to be expensive. This is likely to get vetoed by a lot of GMs.

As I said before deflection is based on the block maneuver so it sounds like they can already do what they want to. Once you start blocking you can continue blocking additional attacks until your next turn comes up. The rules specifically state you do not need to abort to do this. Each block after the first takes a -2 penalty. Once you miss a block you cannot make further blocks. I have a character that does this. The deflection is in a multipower which he has 4 skill levels with, and he has an additional 6 skill levels with deflection for a total of 10 skill levels. He actually has a low SPD compared to the rest of the characters so spends a lot of time deflecting. He has been very successful in protecting others including saving a lot of innocents. Purchase the deflection with the advantage No Range Modifier and the character will be very effective at stopping attacks. Since deflection’s base cost is only 20 points it only costs 30 points to buy it with No Range Modifier. If the character has a high OCV in addition, they have a good chance of completely shutting down an energy blaster or other ranged combatant. Part of being heroic is making the choice to protect others even if it costs you something you want. Being able to save someone and still attack is in my opinion less heroic than having to decide between saving the innocent or taking out your opponent.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If all you want is to be able to use deflection multiple times you don’t need to do anything except take a -2 penalty to the roll for each additional use as long as you did not miss the prior roll. To counter the penalties simply purchase one or more 2-point skill levels with deflection. This not only counters the penalty it also increases the chance of deflecting in the first place. A naked advantage on a specific power is by definition not a naked advantage. Putting a trigger on deflection turns this into a power that can always be used. If the trigger automatically resets as a 0-phase action you are essentially doubling the characters SPD, by allowing them to attack and use a defensive action in the same phase. One thing to really keep in mind is that anything your character can do the GM can also use against you. Do you really want to have to deal with this type of thing from the other end? How are you going to feel when your opponent's start pulling this? I would rather face a character with skill levels in deflection than one that can always deflect while attacking and that resets the penalty every phase.

A lot of powers provide ongoing benefits so you don’t actually need to purchase extra SPD. This is particularly common for defensive powers that you can abort to. Deflection is based on blocking which you can continue to do after the first try even in phases you do not go on. When you continue blocking you take a -2 penalty for each additional attack after the first. A better way to do this would be to simply buy a bonus to the deflection and not worry about SPD at all. If you want to abort to different defensive actions after already having aborted a phase that is essentially being able to act in more phases in which case you should buy up your SPD. The only other possible reason for this would be to somehow be able to abort to an action after you have already gone in a phase, this should not be allowed. If you want to be able to do a specific action buy that with the advantage trigger with an automatic reset. The ability to automatically be able to perform any defensive action without losing any of your normal phases is not balanced and should not be allowed. To me this whole concept is kind of a red flag. How would you describe this without using game terms? For me anytime a player wants a power that they cannot describe without using game terms that is often a red flag. If it is something obvious like wanting to be able to defend against the body of killing damage that is one thing, but other than those types of things I want my players to be able to describe what they are doing without using game terms. Using game terms to define the game mechanics is fine, but they should be able to define the power without doing so.

I can see allowing a character to put limitations on their SPD but only if the lower SPD is able to go in every phase the faster SPD can. This is going to mean that you have to buy double your slower SPD. This avoids the character needing to change SPD during a turn. The character actual has the higher SPD even if they cannot always act in all their phases. Otherwise, you would need to wait until both SPDs can act to change SPD which kind of defeats the purpose. Even doing this is likely to cause problems with END. The character will need to spend END for powers that cost END for all their phases even those they cannot act on. The way around this would buy up their recovery and put a limitation on it that it only works for END for the extra phases. So, you will need to calculate the END cost for any ongoing powers and by enough recovery to cover them. Since this is actually very limiting it should not cost that much. For the most part I usually recommend that characters don’t change their SPD during combat and will look carefully at any character that does so. If I think it is going to be too much trouble don’t allow it. These types of characters have the potential to really complicate the game and if they do so should not be vetoed by the GM. In some cases, like what Christopher is talking about they don’t cause problems and should be fine, but other can create a lot of problems.

That is correct.

Really not much has changed about disadvantages except the number of complications you need to take. Every of matching complications you do not take reduces the points you get. The standard superhero is 400 points and needs 75 points in matching complications. So, if you only take 50 points of complications for your standard superhero you get 375 points to build the character. If you take more than the required amount you don’t get any extra points. All they really did is change it from adding points for disadvantages, to subtracting points for not having complications. The end result is identical. What they did was recognize that almost all starting characters took the maximum allowed disadvantages. Complications under 6th edition are not worth more points than the disadvantages of the earlier editions. A Psychological complication/disadvantage that occurs very frequently with a total commitment is worth 25 points in both systems. They actually cut the number of points of complications you need to take in 6th edition but left the point values basically the same. They did actually increase the value starting characters get. In 5th edition the standard superhero was 350 points, in 6th edition it is 400. The extra 50 points was likely to cover the increased cost of the figured stats.

When you grab something, you have to have a limb to maintain the grab, so grabbing them is going to be a problem. Aside from maintaining the grab all of this could easily be done with a blast instead of STR. If all you want to do is to hit and damage all targets in an area simply buy that. Use a blast and apply the area of effect selective. When you attack something use the knockback rules to determine if they are knocked to the ground or thrown. If you want to increase the chance of knocking the target down, take the advantage double knockback. The special effect is you stop time and attack everyone in the area. If the character is knocked back your character grabbed them and threw them, if they are knocked down, they could have been pushed down. Special effect is important but what is really important for building a power is to define what happens in game terms. Looking at what the OP wants I see they want to be able to stop time and attack everyone in the area. When you attack something, it takes damage and might be knocked back or down. Allowing a character to decide on a case-by-case basis on what maneuver to do against dozens of opponents is going to be a huge time sink. As a GM I would veto it on the basis that the power is going to be a major slowdown in combat. This way I simply make the attack and roll damage. If there are only a few opponents I might allow the character to roll the knockback on each individually, but if there are too many opponents one roll will be used. No character should be allowed a power that is going to bog down the game and erode the enjoyment of the rest of the players.

This has been my point all along. If the complications actually reduced the cost of the template, I could see them not counting, but that is not how complications work. Forcing a character to take extra complications is unfair.

The way I see it templates are to make it easier for a player to create their character. It gives everyone a common reference point on what it means to be a particular race or profession. If elves are immortal in a campaign put that in the template and all elves will be immortal. For professional templates it gives the minimum for a character to function. It’s kind of difficult to be a swashbuckler if you don’t know how to use swords. What templates really are is a way for the GM to establish how things work in their campaign. Complications are supposed to be used against the character. That is why in previous editions they were called disadvantages. A character with an extra 45 points in complications is at a disadvantage compared to someone with fewer complications. This is penalizing someone for taking the template, and that is unfair to the character.

There is nothing that says a character cannot take more complications than what is required. The book even encourages this. The example they give is a vampire character taking all the traditional vampire weaknesses. The idea of matching complications is so that the character has something that the GM can work with. Since template complications don’t reduce the cost of the template not counting them as part of the matching complications penalizes characters taking the template. That is going to mean that no one will take a template if they do not have to. The only reason to take a template is if the abilities can only be acquired from a template. In a typical champion campaign, there will be no one taking a template. If you are running a heroic campaign and limit what powers a character can purchase to racial templates, some characters may take those. But any other template will be ignored. What is going to happen is the player will simply buy what they want from the template and what complications they want. Ignoring templates can have a negative impact on the game especially for heroic campaigns. Many templates have things in them that characters may not want to bother with, but that are something the concept should actually have. This is especially true with knowledge and background skills. The GM could of course require you to take templates, but that seems to go against the spirit of the Hero System. At that point your game is closer to D&D than Fantasy Hero. Templates should be considered guidelines on how to build a character, not something that is required or that penalizes the character. Requiring a character to take more complication than another character but not gaining any benefit is unfair.

There is no need for a perk less complications because you can already do this. The 6th edition rule book states that you can choose to take fewer than the matching complications, but doing so reduces your points by one for every point you are short. The fact that characters have less complications/disadvantages in 6th edition is probably one of the most overlooked improvements in the game. The reality is that 6th edition characters are actually much better built than in the previous editions. Every character having 150 points meant that about half of them unusually ended up being ignored. If a GM actually used all the disadvantages of all the characters, they would be in a lot of trouble. 6th edition recognized this was happening and fixed the problem. Even if you don’t want to use 6th edition adopting this may be worthwhile. For a 5th edition game you could use a 350 point with 75 points in matching disadvantages. This is also a reason to allow package complications to count towards your matching complications. Requiring a character to take extra complications beyond what is required for the campaign brings back the issue of too many complications. In 5th edition and earlier the GM would often just have you pay the points for the package deal. By subtracting the cost of the disadvantage from the cost of the package deal you are actually increasing the points of the character above the campaigns normal base. For Example, if a knight package gave you 30 points in skills and abilities but came with a 20-point disadvantage your character would simply pay 10 points for the package. This means if your character took the maximum required disadvantages, they had an extra 20 points that a character who did not take the package deal.