Gnome BODY (important!)

@Duke Bushido @Killer Shrike Consider the following alternative to a movement MP: Running n", Variable Advantages +1/4 (+1/2). This allows the Running to be Usable [As Second Mode of Movement] for any mode of movement, or to be half endurance, or any other desirable +1/4 advantage. Is this "free points"? Would you disallow this? Why? I feel it's only fair to demand a player buy their movement modes "raw" if the GM is also willing to let a player use both to full potential in the same half-phase move action. Otherwise there's cost overlap and that leads down the road of "I only have one movement power ever because more is far too expensive".

Sure, but doubling the KB makes the distribution almost an exact match for a 50 AP power with Does Knockback that/s 5AP/DC. See https://anydice.com/program/13bc2 which will provide graphs, including of the silliness of Dispel, Does Knockback. A -1 result means neither knockback nor knockdown occurred, a 0 result means knockdown.

That's +2 or more worth of advantages, he's looking at 1d6 per 45AP. He'll basically always inflict his 2-4 points of BODY and anyone with Power Defense will ignore it. If this is a fantasy game where BODY is the go-to damage, I can't imagine that the fighting man won't match that.

I think the problem is more the interaction between Mental Paralysis and Hit Locations than Mental Paralysis being blank-room OP. Unless it's an extremely powerful Mental Paralysis, it'll only be 2d6, 3d6 maybe. A character with 15-20 EGO should blow out of that pretty easily, and is explicitly allowed to push their roll which gives a decent shot at doing so using casual EGO.

So a character in a 60 AP cap game can't have a 9d6 Blast because Haymaker exists? A character in a 10 DCV cap game can't have 8 DCV because Dodge exists? A character in a 15- skill cap game can't have a 14- Seduction because COM and Persuasion might be complementary? It's also rather pointless to argue based on "But caps mean this" when there are no rules for caps so you're just claiming your houserule solves everything which means there was a problem that needed solving QED.

I'd suggest basing it on DC, and applying the appropriate multiplier as a correcting factor. 1d6 Drain is 2 DC, so the correcting factor is 2. 5d6 Drain is 10 DC Drain is 5d{0,1,1,1,1,2)*2 Knockback.

The PARANOIA GM in my says that sounds like the most wonderful mistake a player could put on their character sheet. I'd warn them that it's a lot of information and most of it won't be helpful. I'd tell them that they mostly tune it out, but they should give me a list of people they pay attention to danger to and other circumstances like sudden "danger clusters" that will make them pay attention so I can know what to tell them about. Then start handing them sticky notes with dangers on them. During downtime, their DNPC is about to drop their phone on their toe. During a fight with Doctor Defenestration, Doctor Defenestration is about to throw their buddy out a window. As they run after Baron Barren's smog-o-car, their Contact is about to burn their tongue on hot coffee. As they're tracking down the mafia, a bus two blocks over is about to crash. As they're fighting their way out of the sub-subterranean mazes of the sub-molemen, their Contact is about to get in a fistfight with a drunk. As they're responding to the scene of a bank robbery in progress, their DNPC is about to be kidnapped by Doctor Defenestration and this is the thing they wanted to know. So if they're willing to slog through the tiring humdrum of reading every expletive sticky note, they'll be able to intercept Doctor Defenestration. When If they tune it out, then I get to be a smug bodypart and point out that the sticky note said exactly what was happening why didn't you read it? Doesn't your hero care, citizen? Doesn't he want everyclone to be happy? You answered yes? Explain why you think they're not happy, and enumerate any other failings in Alpha Complex you believe Friend Computer has failed to correct. And if they're perversely clever enough to tune their Danger Sense to their enemies, then they deserve a reward for their cleverness. And to wander into a six-supervillain free-for-all once they're complacent about their "perfect plan". But hey, noclone's perfect. If they were, they'd be me Friend Computer of course! The rest of me says they've just handed me the holy mother of plot hooks because I can encourage the party to go anywhere at the drop of a hat with no explanation needed beyond "IGUANA SENSE TINGLING HAWAII HAWAII!"

1: Given that Mind Link explicitly only cuts out when "hung up", RAW the link persists until the linker cuts it off. It is entirely more interesting to me to have the linker know that the linkee isn't linked anymore. Did they hang up? Did they get Dispel Mental'd? Are they dead? The suspense! 2: I'd let the character buying it choose if all their linkees had links to each other or if the links only connected to him. The upside of everyone linking to everyone else is that it means the linker isn't actually a critical component of their own Mind Link. The downside is that they can't control, restrict, or filter. Conversely, having to constantly play messenger and having the network go down when you do is enough of a downside to make free secret conversations a gimme. 3. I'd charge a +5 adder to freely swap modes, otherwise no cost for picking one and sticking to it.

I've been pondering something similar for once I have enough free time to run a HERO game. Tell the players it's 350 points base, everyone has Code of the Hero, CvK, etc and needs another 50 points of psylims, soclims, physlims on top of that. Then say you can add another 5 disads and each one you add is 5 CP for things from a short list of flavor abilities. With regards to the setting shift cough sudden ruining of backstories and plot hooks cough I'd have just told the players to take half as many disads but not to take dfs, soclims, hunteds, or DNPCs.

One obvious solution to me would be to declare OCV and DC maxima for both guns and martial arts. Give martial arts a higher OCV maxima and lower DC maxima, give guns a higher DC maxima and lower OCV maxima. This would mean that both are viable choices, the question is just if the player wants to hit harder or more often.

My opinion is that a player should ask the GM "Hey, I want [thing] but doubt it'll matter. Should I pay for it?". And if the GM says "Yes" and [thing] never seems to come up, the player should raise the point again with the GM, saying "Hey, remember when I asked about [thing]? It hasn't seemed to come up, can I get a discount since I'm not getting what I paid for?". And from there it'll go the way of the lazy player, the arse GM, the friendly GM, or the reactive GM.

Mostly agreed, but I think that unless you're taking Presence Attacks away from PRE you need to leave init with DEX and PER with INT. I also believe that Presence Attacks need to be gutted and reworked, but that's a topic for another thread. I'd also worry that the 3pt group you define is too cheap and will discourage buying characteristics. The 1-at-once clause on skill levels doesn't feel like it comes up enough to be a -1/2 limitation.

You're pushing this Luck angle pretty hard, and I have to say it's starting to wear pretty thin. I'd never suggest replacing Combat Luck with Luck, for a few reasons. A - People want and need consistency in their RDEF. One botched roll meaning days of bedrest is simply unacceptable for the tone of many (I want to use "heroic" as an adjective with different meaning) high-flying low-lethality games. One botched roll meaning you lose a giant chunk of BODY and STUN if you don't have other RDEF makes combat too swingy. Telling a player their Combat Luck can't be reliable will be met with characters suddenly deciding to wear armored costumes or get force-belts or mutate to be bulletproof. B - Rolling dice every time you get attacked pushes the rolls-per-attack even higher, and it's already at least three for most games. HERO gets slow enough with newbies and won't-memorize-rulesbies already. It'd work for an experienced group, maybe. C - Combat Luck doesn't have to be actual Luck despite the name. Reference the first paragraph of its description in FRED. D - Luck itself is a clusterexpletive because it includes no useful guidelines on when to actually roll or what each success on the dice actually means. It's great at one table and trash at another. Combat Luck fills a rather definite niche that is highly distinct from the one filled by Luck, and the two should never be merged. I will gladly say that Combat Luck is badly named though.

This really really depends on the GM. Some are overly sensitive about players questioning rulings and/or house rules, and will react poorly. Some will take it in stride but bluntly refuse to consider a change. Some will hear out the player's arguments and make an impartial decision. Some will bend over backwards. The correct approach depends on the GM, and only MechaniCat can know what his GM is like. Since I don't know MechaniCat's GM, my advice earlier to the thread was for MechaniCat to talk things over with his GM about this and make sure to phrase it as "I'm not sure if my concept fits" instead of "Your rules are crippling my character".

By reading of the rules in FRED, Danger Sense seems to be an additional perception roll to detect a danger. It also (if you pay even more) can detect things your other senses can't. It's also omnidirectional, an unusual sense so rarely subject to Flash, Images, or Invisibility, and has a GM's option for noticing things your other senses don't cover. The downside is that as you mentioned, it still has to make rolls to oppose Stealth et al. I personally don't think it's worth it in comparison to the utility of things like Spatial Awareness or Radar, but I've had really good results with Spatial Awareness so I'm biased.

I would be intensely suspicious of this, mainly because resource points include loss-of-item in their cost savings. I don't want a GM having to decide between enforcing Zinc Man's limitations or not taking Zinc Man totally out of the next couple sessions. I'm really leery of focuses in general for that reason, though. This does offer an interesting solution to the aforementioned problem, though. If I were GMing, I'd be down with that idea as long as it were strictly "back-up" equipment. I'd have no issue with Become-Metal-Man wearing a bulletproof vest so he didn't die horribly to surprise attacks as long as it didn't stack, or The Point carrying a 8d6 energy pistol just in case his 12d6 superbow was OAF'd away. I'd be quick to veto anyone who tried to take +4 DCs of combat skill for that 8d6 popgun to shave down points, though.

Builds characters which way? I don't obsessively powergame for maximum impact within a set of constraints (at least if I'm submitting the character for a game, theoretical optimization isn't practical optimization) if that's what you're asking. I do spend all my points, take all my disads, and ask the GM for a rough idea of how combat capable a character should be. My GM doesn't do hard caps, so I can't say I buy up to them but I can say I don't leave gaping weaknesses or seriously underbuy anything. I've had a few games where someone brought a complete mechanical trainwreck to a 4-man game where the GM was running a module intended for 4 PCs. The result of the party effectively being down a man was generally a ruined game, anger, and accusations of incompetence and/or powergaming. This has utterly soured me on the idea of deliberate under-performance. A character who's too bad can be as disruptive as a character who's too good.

Really bad hilt ergonomics?

Let d be the distribution of defenses in the campaign. Let x(d) be the mean damage of a successful attack by character A's attack. For a Blast or similar power, this would be (X/5)*3.5-DEF where DEF is whatever defense applies against this attack. So long as (X/5)*3.5-DEF >> 0, this is a good approximation. Let var(x(d)) be the variance in x(d), which in turn is just the variance in DEF. Let y1(d), y2(d), y3(d) be the mean damages of B's attacks. Let y(d) be the maximum of y1(d), y2(d), y3(d). Let var(y(d)) be the variance in y(d), which will be lower than var(x(d)). Computing this is a bit harder, but still doable. Let W be the value given to mean damage-per-phase and V be the value, likely negative, given to variance. The relative value of A's powers and B's powers can be expressed as W*(mean(x(d))-mean(y(d))) + V*(var(x(d))-var(y(d))). If this has a positive result, character A is optimal for this distribution of d and choice of W and V. If this has a negative result, character B is optimal. This is a bit unsatisfying to me since it's admittedly just a fancy way to say "depends on the campaign and how much you want stable damage output", but it's a fancy mathematical way that could be made into a computer program to very decisively answer the question for a given d X Y W and V.

I think I got sloppy about clarity somewhere in the reply chain. Let me be more formal. Assume: Defenses are generally bought relative to attacks such that a NND attack against a "normal" opponent and a blast of the same AP have roughly equal STUN output. Based on the guidelines in FRED and the characters I have seen made by my group, posted on the forum, and in published materials, I believe this to be a reasonable assumption for superheroic play. Let character A have a pair of N point attack powers that are able to be used in a multiple power attack. Let character B have a single N point reserve multipower with N points spent on ultra slots containing attacks. Omit consideration of other powers A or B may have. Observation: A can multiple power attack, B cannot. Observation: B can flexibly change the defense they are targeting, A cannot. Conclusion: A will have greater raw output, but be highly susceptible to variation caused by their target's characteristics. B will experience the inverse, with a stable but lower output.

It certainly is, but I was speaking to your point about well-rounded opposition. It took me quite a while into my HERO career to sit down and run the numbers and realize that in fact, 60 AP against 20 DEF was a fairly flat result. The breadth a multipower offers is a marginal improvement against well-rounded foes, and only becomes a significant advantage against an enemy with significant investment in certain defenses or with significant failings in certain defenses. How useful this is depends, of course, on the campaign. It's nowhere near the advantage that a two-power multiple power attack affords. Is that not what using two powers at once in a multiple power attack achieves?

@Killer Shrike: It's worth noting that 60AP of attack against 20 DEF, 12 RDEF, no other defenses results in roughly 20 STUN for most forms of offense. All having a massive spread lets you do is ignore uneven increases in defense and exploit weaknesses. @Toxxus: If A buys two attacks while B buys an attack MP, A can multiple attack and throw twice the offensive weight compared to B. That's a pretty huge advantage.

It's more to do with the constraints on offense, in my mind. If you have a Multipower with 5 attacks each 60 AP, you could instead have afforded a Multipower with a 15d6 Blast and a 10d6 AOE Blast. I'd imagine the latter to be more useful, just due to larger numbers. But you're commonly forbidden to exceed certain offensive caps to keep offense balanced between characters in the same campaign. So people who want more offensive power have to go broad.

I think he was being a bit unclear by referring to vectors of attack instead of methods of defense. As I understand it, he was getting at what you mention here: Where the character has a way to threaten many defenses and some AOEs or mental attacks to ignore DCV, so they're always threatening a weakness.

Yep. The purge ate it.