Gnome BODY (important!)

There's only one?

I'm regrettably in a group where we can't have Nazis without two particular people sidetracking into loud anger about current politics.

My group's always felt that punishing somebody for switching characters was silly. - If it's a voluntary change, they're either changing to make themselves have more fun or to make somebody else have more fun. Having more fun should be encouraged, not punished. - If it's a character death, they're already suffering from suddenly losing the character they've been playing for the last however long. Don't force them to play a weaker character on top of that, they'll just wind up having even less fun. - If it's a heroic sacrifice, why in the world are you punishing people for heroic sacrifices? We're not an early edition HERO group, but we've always given XP to players, not characters.

It activates as an action which takes no time, IE whenever, and resets immediately. Put a spammable condition (I know I've seen "Mental Command" as a trigger condition in HERO products before) on and you can make an arbitrary quantity of attacks for non-zero STUN anytime you want, even if it's not your DEX or even Phase. Fight starts. Somebody you don't like gets Line of Effect to you. Spam! Even if you need a 3 to hit, you will KO them before they can do anything. Repeat until fight ends or bans occur.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, mainly because I don't know what "it" is referring to.

To be fair, subscription model software is often both product and service. Your initial purchase is paying for the product, the software. Every dollar after that is paying for the service, the steady flow of updates and patches. The alternatives are rolling versions that require repurchases "FIFA 2020 is out! FIFA 2019 is obsolete! Buy FIFA! Again!", donation funding "Please please please have you considered donating to Wikipedia?", in-software advertisements "Your game will start shortly, after this two minute message from our sponsors.", or discontinued support "Yes, we know the program crashes when you make the right pane blue. We can't do anything about that. We have no money.". Or worse, there's actually some nastier alternatives that I refuse to mention in polite company. Or FOSS. FOSS is pretty great.

Alternatively, buy Shapeshift as a good Disguise roll, then add levels with it that have Limitations like "Only to Disguise Faster" or "Only to cancel bonuses provided by exotic senses".

The way I see it, there's non-abusive Trigger constructs that don't need to (or won't function if they) cost more and there's abusive Trigger constructs that shouldn't be permitted. A "Blaster Mine" built as Blast 8d6, AP, Trigger can damage people meaningfully in a 60AP game. +1ing it shoves it down to 4 1/2d6 and makes it unlikely to be cared about. My above construct, for contrast, doesn't really care about another +1. 25AP instead of 20AP doesn't compensate for it breaking the game.

The flip side to this is that if the Trigger attack doesn't have to deal with defenses (Ego Attack,Transform, NND, Penetrating...) it can easily become hugely effective. Blast 1d6, Trigger +1, 0 END, Penetrating x3 is only 20 AP and will instantly end basically any fight before anyone even gets normal actions.

It's very good at that, but it's horrifyingly binary. If you have enough AP to Summon your hated foe, he's dead. Call him up, a dozen goons pound him from behind for 1/2 DCV and 2x STUN. Call him up, he appears in a room full of poison gas you've taken the antidote to. Call him up, EGO roll, order him to do something spectacularly suicidal. The list goes on. And not in fun entertaining ways, in "Jim, make a new PC because" ways. It's a degenerate power. But if you don't have enough AP to Summon somebody, it's completely impotent. It's the sort of thing that gets tables flipped or characters banned. Instantly bringing somebody to you with no roll (except the Mind Control Plus roll) is just not healthy for the game. And why should you have to pay +1 for roleplaying?

It's a custom Limitation, [interval] can be whatever the maker wants it to be. One minute. One Turn. A number of Segments equal to the STUN dealt by the source. A number of Phases equal to the BODY dealt by the source. 1d6 minutes, rolled by the GM and kept secret. 2d10 uses, rolled publicly. Etc.

You've laid out five different SFX for this and I'm going to address each one in turn. Priest calling [god]: Does the Priest actually have the points invested needed to summon [god]? If he does and something not-a-god comes through, he's getting screwed on points. If he doesn't, how can he give [god] an opportunity to be Summon'd? Isn't this just Expanded Class? "Summon ### point Servant of [god], Expanded Class any servant of [god]" seems to be the game effect, the god choosing what to send is just SFX. Mage calling demon: Same as above. Summoner calling pegasus: Why is "sometimes you don't get your pegasus in particular" an Advantage? What benefit does sometimes but not always getting Mister Flaptrot provide? You're getting a ### point pegasus to ride either way, right? Warrior challenging demon: This one really feels like a Limitation. I'd expect the warrior's hated foe to try to screw the guy at every opportunity. I also don't see the point of having a power that lets you fight a demon any time you want, unless your aim is to be dishonorable and mind-control the demon or use it as a distraction instead of fighting it. Rider summoning hoverbike: I don't even get this one. How does the hoverbike make any sort of decision? What subordinate would a hoverbike have that it could send instead? Overall I agree with the first response in the thread: It feels like you're reinventing something that exists already under current rules.

Trigger is an Advantage, but you're describing a Limitation. You shouldn't have to pay more to get less. I'd probably build it as [whatever damage shield you feel fits], 0 END, Persistent, Always On, Only For [some fitting interval] After Being Hit by Fire/Lightning Attack. When he gets zapped, the Limitation keeping it turned off disengages and it becomes active.

Another concern with using haymaker to model "sneak attack" is that it means everyone has "sneak attack". Out of combat Surprise Attacks already get a damage multiplier. In combat, I don't see why an unsuspecting target would be hit harder instead of just more easily.

The special effect of just "Magic" is, to me, incomplete information, a "mechanical handwave". It fails to engage with the definition of SFX, which to me includes all perceivable effects and world-logic.

I in turn disagree. FRED says "The special effects of a Power define how it works, what it looks like, and any other incidental effects associated with it.". Your description of "it just does" doesn't do that in my eyes. It defines what the power does, yes, but not how. It's a perfect black box labeled "Magic". To me that's not elegant, that's just a fancy way to leave the field blank. It also doesn't tell me anything about the power. I have no clue what this looks like, sounds like, etc. "Magic" doesn't tell me any of that. I can't even see any possible incidental effects because the spell has been purely defined in terms of game mechanics. As far as I'm concerned, you're trying to not have SFX for the power. Compare that to the lockpicking ghost (Looks like spectral fog, probably makes the lock feel chilly without being physically cold, might sound like distant whispers or lamentations, the ghost's behavior can be used to indicate the nature of the area or lock, etc).

For me it's the opposite. If I want to tinker with d20, I don't have the slightest clue what the underlying structure is or why things are the way they are. I'm going in pretty much blind. And at that point, why bother trying to drag a giant blackbox over to where I want my game to be? Might as well rip out a few good ideas and make a fresh start. But HERO is easy to modify. The covers pop right off and there's labels everywhere. There's far less incentive for me to abscond with good ideas.

As one of those game-designy world-buildy folk: Why in the world would I reinvent the wheel? I could certainly start from scratch and make something. It'd probably take a while and need playtesting and revisions and be a lot of work, and in the end it'd be a pretty neat thing that was all mine. Or I could take something somebody else did, and rip out the parts I don't like while adding parts I want. Way less work, way less time, way more fun for the playtesters since we skip the alpha, and I still get a pretty neat thing in the end. And it's mineish, which is nice too.

Well, the bigger problems are that real-neutronium is probably a fluid and that real-neutronium would explode very very violently outside a neutron star's massive gravitational field. Compared to that, a bit of weight is no big deal!

I find that making a character to fit the campaign works far better than presenting a character in the hopes they'll work in the campaign. If I were your GM and found during the character vetting process that you'd made the guy before knowing my guidelines, I'd be much more critical of the character. If it got vetoed, I'd also be likely to force you through a group character brain-storming session so whatever replacement concept you brought had enough chefs stirring the pot that you couldn't be bringing another prefab. I'll also point out that it's a VPP, so: - You can put down "Spell of Unlocking: Not sure how to build this, please help!" and use it as a get-to-know-the-gm conversation. - A number of GMs are very leery of letting fresh faces use VPPs because they've got an awful tendency to stall games in the hands of people not ready to whip something up by the time they need to show the write-up. - A 120+ AP VPP is going to be sending warning bells left and right, you really might want to be more conservative if you intend to submit this character before getting to know the GM.

But it won't get your friends through. Unlocking a door will get your friends through.

Being "physics based" doesn't make something "more random" unless it's using a better source of randomness than a PRNG. It might make it less random, if players have tight control over how they throw the dice. If you want really random you need a TRNG, like random.org.

1: I tend towards whatever looks best on the map. I'll generally default to 1":2m but I'll happily disregard that to get a better battlemap with neither too many nor too few hexes in it. 2: I make characters with motives and events with causes. Baron Burgle wants to rob the bank. Mechanon wants to kill Baron Burgle. At midnight, a freak thunderstorm will make lightning strike the bank, and if nothing diverts the bolt it will disable the bank security. At midnight, Baron Burgle will just happen to be near the bank unless criminal opportunity strikes elsewhere. At midnight, Mechanon will be sending scout drones to look for Baron Burgle, and have found him unless Baron Burgle is indoors. So unless the PCs do something crazy earlier in the session, Baron Burgle will be robbing the bank, the heroes will arrive to stop him, then suddenly Mechanon. If the PCs do do something crazy earlier in the session, I know who's doing what and can quickly figure out what happens.

You're forgetting why we were complaining and calling it a concept tax.

Equate X Continuing Charges to Y normal Charges. If 4 Continuing Charges is the same - as 8 Charges, then a Continuing Charge is "worth" two charges. If you have different values of Continuing, do this multiple times. Fractions are likely to get involved, meaning you'll need to inflate numbers or suffer rounding losses. Alternatively, buy an END Reserve. You are seriously in the territory where it's easier to say "This END Reserve is 'charges'. Every # END is a 'charge'. These powers cost #, #, #, and # 'charges' each.".