LoneWolf

Just make it a low dice area of effect, constant NND. Animals in the game should react to things the way they do in the real world. Most animals with sensitive hearing are going to run away from something like this that is causing them pain. Wolves are fairly smart so will not want to stay in an area that they are constantly taking damage. If you want to make it so it does not do any damage, you could also use Mind Control. Animals have very low EGO so it would not take many dice to get them to run away. 6dd mind control will usually get EGO +10, 8d6 will get EGO +20. This would probably be more appropriate to that does not actually cause pain but causes some sort of emotional reaction.

Sounds like crests are simply a variable aid. Buy an appropriate number of dice of aid and apply the variable effect to allow it to aid any one power of the specific element at a time. Apply whatever limitations you want to the aid including recoverable charges.

Absorption is an adjustment power, and you can buy it with the delayed return rate advantage so it last longer. How long it last will depend on how much of an advantage you purchase for it. Absorption is applied after your normal defenses. So, if you took 25 BODY and had 10 point of resistant defense you would take 5 BODY and have absorbed 10 BODY. Absorption only works vs BODY but will reduce the STUN you take if purchased as defense. Basically, if you buy it as acting as a defense it adds to your existing PD or ED for the attack you just absorbed.

The impairing and disabling rules already cover what happens when a character is wounded. They give specific penalties based on the location of the wound which makes a lot more sense than simply being harder to stun. While these rules may not be appropriate for all campaigns, they work very well for someone who is looking to run a gritty campaign where combat is dangerous. This also prevents certain concepts. Not all characters with high body are super healthy. How do you build the character who has a tremendous will to live, but who’s body is frail?

Both CON and BODY serve a purpose and in reality, they are completely different. Merging them into a single stat does not add clarity or simplify the game. What it does is abstract the character more. If we are doing this for CON and BODY why not merge EGO and PRE, after that we can move to merging END and STUN. Next thing you know we are down to 6 stats and are playing something resembling the d20 system instead of Hero System. The granularity of the Hero System is one of its best features. It is the reason you can write up pretty close to exactly the character you want.

First thing to do is to make sure you players are onboard. If that is not the type of campaign the players want to play in it will not work out well. Talk it over with your players and get their input. They may actually have some ideas on the setting and that could make it easier and have a better chance of them buying into the concept. Look for something to tie the characters together before the game starts. You could have all the characters belong to an organization of some sort. The type of organization will put some limits on what type of characters are needed. If the players are all agents of the crown working for the spy master the characters are going to be different than if they were knights defending the land from its enemies.

The thing you are forgetting is that there are a lot of things that don’t have a CON score. Barriers, entangles, vehicles, walls, and pretty much every other object lacks a CON score. How do you handle those? If you just give them a CON score equal to their body that makes them vulnerable things like CON drains and other things, they should not be vulnerable to. A brick wall should not take damage from a disease or poison. Having only some things have BODY is going to be confusing especially for new players. This does nothing to simplify the game and in fact adds a pointless layer of complication.

The change environment looks like the best way. The only thing I would add would be a small NND for the pain.

I don’t see why this could not work. A fully stocked torture chamber would work well for a “Lab” for interrogation. Most of the other interaction skill could also have similar explanations. One thing to keep in mind though is that you only get the benefit of the lab when you actually make the skill roll in the lab. Since many interaction skills are not made at the characters base this may not get you as a lot of benefits. As a GM I would want a reason why it is giving a bonus. That would be true of any skill not just interaction skills.

One thing to keep in mind is that vs the type of foes that were actually encountered in the real world the weapons did a lot less damage than in the game. Unlike in a game, historically the only real opponents people in the Middle Ages faced were other humans. Humans during that time period where actually smaller than they are today, and in the game, characters are even larger. That means the average sword was not doing anywhere near max damage. A person attacking you with a sword was probably doing 1d6 +1. That means the maximum damage they can do is 7 BODY. DEF 8 armor means they cannot actually do any BODY. Even a critical hit to the head (assuming hit locations are being used) only does 19 STUN to a character with wearing full plate and PD of 8. The average damage from a long sword is 4.5 Body and 11.25 STUN. This means the knight in full plate takes no damage form the average sword hitting him. It seems to me that the Hero System is actually fairly accurate as far as armor goes. The average knight in full plate is probably going to ignore somewhere around 90% of the attacks coming from a historically accurate opponent. If he is facing something like Roland or Lancelot he is probably going to take more, but vs the ordinary foot soldier not much. When you start throwing in 7-foot orcs with body like an Olympic weightlifter then they start taking more. If you want armor to be as effective as historically was don’t throw opponents that are 4 times as strong.

Usually, the reason the lack of something is inappropriate is because it leaves the character vulnerable. Having the lack of resistant DEF, or mental DEF means the target has no DEF against those attacks. If I have a character that has NND (Defense is lack of Resistant DEF) and a killing attack, he always has at least one attack that any character cannot defend against. In older versions there used to be a rule that a character could only have one NND, this was to prevent this type of abuse. The book actually gives an example of an NND where one defense is the lack of something. In the chart it lists being deaf as a defense against a sonic attack. Being deaf by definition means you lack the ability to hear. You can also reword a defense to avoid specifying the lacks of something as a defense. In this case I could simply state the defense is being vulnerable to poison. That would exclude things like robots and other nonliving creatures. Most of those will either not have to worry about NND because they don’t have stun or have life support anyways. Hero System is a more complex system and requires more thinking that other games. The RAW excuses for disallowing this type of thing, is something I would expect on the Pathfinder forums. Hero Gamers should be better than that type of nonsense.

It would have to be defined a bit more. Some immunities are simply developing a tolerance to the poison. You don’t actually have an immune system to that it is the fact that your body is used to the poison. I could see the defense being not having the full 5-point immunity to all terrestrial poisons. Someone with that level of immunity would have an immune system vs poison. But I don’t see it working on a person who doses themselves with arsenic to develop a resistance to arsenic.

Is the campaign you are running a Superhero, or Heroic? Normally in a heroic campaign the characters don’t pay points for gear which would include bases and vehicles. Capitan Kirk does not have to pay for the Enterprise, but Batman needs to shell out points for the batmobile. The other thing to consider is does the base have any special abilities. If all the characters get is an office that has no supercomputer, labs, and is not difficult to find I would not bother charging them for it or even writing it up. So, an office in a building in the middle of town that anyone can find would be free. A hidden base in a cave under the sea is going to cost point.

I am still not sure what the proposed skill is even supposed to do. Since a character can already use an object as a weapon what exactly does it do? If all it is doing is removing the penalty for using an improvised weapon that is better done with a WF. Not only does it cost less, it fits better. If it is increasing the damage, that would be better of being done some other way. I mentioned martial arts as one way, but there are also other ways to do it. You could use something like deadly blow to increase the damage. Just convert the damage from killing damage to normal damage Also why is it limited to one handed weapons? Using a chair or a barstool is a classic. If you are proposing a new skill at least specify what it does. Using something as a weapon is too vague to really give any kind of feedback.

The new skill does not make since especially a DEX based skill. What exactly does making the skill roll do that a character cannot do already? The WF is a much better idea. If you want to go beyond the WF you could always buy a martial art or even a WE improvised weapon. Sticking within the rules is generally a better than trying to invent something new.

I think that you are confusing taking Body with killing damage. A killing attack is a type of damage that you only get resistant DEF against the body of the attack. It is usually for things like guns, swords or claws that are designed to kill someone. A normal attack is another type of attack that are less lethal and usually do a lot more stun than body. You get your total DEF vs the stun and body of a normal attack.

The chances of rolling 11 or less on 3d6 is about 57.87%, it is 48.15% for 10 or less. So that means you have 9.72% less by reducing the target number to 10. Many of the rolls in the Hero System are actually calculated. Most skill rolls are based of the formula of 9 + STAT/5. That works out to an 11 or less for a STAT within the 8-12 range. You have a 25.47% chance to make an 8 or less roll. Your chance to roll a 7 or less drops to 15.74% and quickly gets worse as you go down the chart. When you get to the point you need a 3 to succeed you are down to a .046% chance of pulling it off. What is going to happen if you change the base to 10 is that you are going to see a lot more failures. With the way things stand you succeed slightly more than half the time. Dropping that to 10 is going to mean you fail more often than you succeed. An 11 or less roll is supposed to be something that is not that hard to achieve. Most people under normal circumstances should be able to make the roll. When you reduce the base chance, you probably need to reduce all the rolls by the same amount. That gives you very little leeway for having things that are moderately difficult. Personally, I think this is a bad idea and will make the game a lot tougher and less enjoyable.

As uncleavlad suggested the ranged marital arts may be a better solution instead of raw skill levels. Not only can they adjust the OCV, DCV RNG Modifier and damage, but they can also allow you to do things like disarms and trips. Distance Shot gives you +0 OCV, -2 DCV, +6 Rng that takes an extra segment for 5 points. Throw in a ranged disarm for 4 points and Quick shot for another 4 points and you have the basis for decent ranged combatant. Add a few normal skill levels and you should be fairly well set.

Sound what you want would be an extra phase. That would mean you take a full phase and on your next phase you get the benefit of the skill levels. You could also do it as an extra segment for a -1/2. That would mean you would be able to attack at the end on the next segment. So, if you acted in 3 you could attack at the end of 4 after everyone had gone. Since the skill levels are not an attack you can do “other things” while it activates. In this case you delay your attack until the skill levels activate and take the attack at that point. You may not even need to purchase anything. A character can already combine the maneuvers Set and Brace for a +1 OCV and +2 OCV to offset ranged modifiers without spending any points. This takes a full phase and put the character at ½ DCV.

Using tunneling from the outside is only at the GM’s option. This is clearly stated on page 310 of volume 1. When you are entangled, you cannot use any form of movement except teleportation. One justification would be that in order to tunnel you have to be able to move at least a small amount. When you are outside the entangle your movement is not restricted so you can at least push against the entangle, but if you are inside, it you cannot.

Since Thor only did that once that could be considered a power stunt. The Marvel universe probably has the power skill as an everyman skill for superheroes.

It depends on the campaign and the nature of the aliens. In a lot of campaigns humanity has already established relations with many different aliens. In those cases, there is some way to communicate with alien species. Some aliens may be incapable of understanding or using human languages, but even in those cases there is some way of communicating with them. This is probably the most common SF campaign as it would allow player to play an alien. In some campaigns the premises may be that you are establishing first contact. That would usually mean that at the beginning of the campaign the different species are not able to understand each other and other coming that is probably a high priority. This assumes that the alien race is interested in more than just slaughtering humans. This type of campaign is probably the least common. There are also campaigns where the aliens are incapable or unwilling to communicate with humans. Usually in these cases the aliens have no interest in interacting with humans and either actively goes out of their way slaughter humans. or for one reason or another wish to be left alone and kill any humans they encounter but don’t otherwise interact with humans. This is probably less common than the first scenario, but more common than the second. In any a lot of cases there will be a mixture of situations. Even in a campaign with well-established aliens a new race could show up.

Lingering is from 5th edition Fantasy Hero. In 6th edition it is under Time Limit in the main rule book.

Lingering allows you to cast a spell and have its effect stay around for a specific duration. After the spell is cast you can use the power anytime as long as the duration is still in effect. By default, you pay the END for the spell when you cast it and every time you use it. You don’t have to pay the end when you are not using the power. This advantage only applies to instant powers. The only thing lingering does is allow you to use the power without having to cast it every phase. It does not change any other aspect of the power including how a multipower works, or things like if a spell is persistent or uncontrollable. Nothing else besides the casting of the spell is altered in any way shape or form.

One warning about converting Pathfinder spells. The game systems are very different so often when you do this the cost of the resulting spell is often way out of line for the level of the spell. Something that is a low-level spell in Pathfinder may end up costing a lot of points. Just as often the reverse is also true. Some Pathfinder cantrips cost more than higher level spells.