PhilFleischmann

That would make sense, and the implication of the text then means that these boats can't sail west from the Ettinstone, upriver on the Ordring from that point (except possibly for much smaller boats). The next question is, what causes the Ordring to become wider and deeper from that point, given that a narrower, shallower river is splitting into two? A small river does not split into two big rivers. The simplest answer is that there are additional tributary streams coming down from the Nagyrian Mountains. These are not navigable and are too small to bother showing on the map. Perhaps they might even form a small lake around (or near) the Ettinstone. This lake is filled with rocks, so that ships must sail along a particular path around the west side of the Ettinstone to avoid the rocks. This might also explain why there's no city there. The terrain is too rough near the Ettinstone, and the area where you could build a city is inconveniently far from the path the trade ships would have to sail. Considering the proximity of the Nagyrian Mountains, the tributaries could be steeply-flowing rapids, possibly complete with waterfalls, which would prevent a city from being built on the north side of the river as well. And maybe there's a cliff or a very steep bank on the west side of the Loskell, meaning that there'd be no place for ships to dock. And the bank/cliff wouldn't even have to be that high to make it sufficiently inconvenient. So no city around the Ettinstone because: High cliff on the west side, Rock-filled lake on the south-east side, and Rapids coming in from the mountains on the north side. But enough room to sail around the Ettinstone, against the current coming up the Loskell/Ordring, carefully avoiding crashing into the stone, and then with the current down the Ordring/Loskell. Seems like a tricky maneuver for the sailors, but certainly one they can learn to do. Adventure plot idea: Some entrepreneurial wizards from Aarn want to build a city on the southwest side of the Ettinstone, and create some magical means of allowing ships to dock there. Maybe they think they can magically carve out a harbor there, or let the ships drop anchor and load and unload cargo and passengers via permanent levitation magic placed in the area. Business opportunities abound - if you could make such a system work. The Verlichteners might see this as a way to gain power and eventually independence from Thurgandia. And Thurgandia might also have opinions on the matter.

It's perfectly OK, IMO to "hard-wire" in a critical hit system, either for specific weapons/powers or for specific characters - the PCs and significant NPCs, or whoever. It could allow for some interesting builds. It would be a bit strange for one of these hard-wired-crits to do something completely different from the base attack power, but HERO allows it. The justification for it might be a bit tricky, but that depends on the genre and style you're going for. Magic can pretty much justify anything. An exaggerated anime-style, perhaps. The main thing to keep in mind is that making the roll by half is a very rare phenomenon. So it's worth a pretty big limitation. Without having to do all the math yourself, you can test it by rolling 3d6 several times. How many times do you roll 11 or less? How many times do you roll 5 or less? etc.

I've always assumed that the Ordring flows into Beralka. I'm not saying you're wrong, but is there anywhere in the text that makes this clear? The Ordring leaves Lake Beralka, but never makes it to the Sea of Storms, because it is a tributary to the Bernina. So the river flows west from the Nagyrian Mountains, past the Ettinstone (p 71), and continuing west where it is now navigable to many vessels, to join with the Bernina coming out of the Thurisian Mountains, which then flows south to the sea. Which seems to imply that these many vessels have to stop at the Ettinstone, and can't proceed any further toward Lake Beralka. The way I read it is that vessels can sail east from the Ettinstone and all the way into Lake Beralka. That the river flowing out of the Thurisian Mountains is the Ordring,not the Bernina.

I'd call it a -2 at least. The 7- roll is based on the best-case-scenario: a low-level mook that you can hit on a 14-. Which is also the case in which the power will be the least useful. How much extra damage do you need to do to a mook? In the "average" case, you hit on 11-, which means the power works on 5-. 11- is 62.5%. 5- is 4,6%. This means the power works once for every 13.5 normal hits. That could be about a -12 limitation. The power loses about 92.6% of its effectiveness in this average case. If the normal to hit roll is even lower, then the power activates even less often. Assuming a correlation between how hard an enemy is to hit and how hard an enemy is to put down, then this power becomes more likely to work, the less it is needed, and less likely to work the more it is needed.

Speaking of the Shaanda River, one thing that bugged me about The Turakian Age was the lack of indication on the maps as to which way the rivers flow. This is not always obvious from the maps. After much careful examination and reading of the text, and re-reading of the text, and re-re-reading of the text, I have come to the conclusion that the Shaanda flows east, out of Lake Beralka, into the Sea of Mhorec. But I wish they had just put a few arrows on the maps to indicate this. And also for the Ordnung/Tarnwater/Bernina/Loskell/Erasarth/Hreshule/Whitsuth river system - which has sources in the Thurisian Mountains, the Hangclaw Mountains, the northern Drakine Mountains, in two different places, and the southern Drakine Mountains, and flows through the Nagyrian Mountains; and then flows into the Sea of Storms in two places, and also into (or out of?) Lake Beralka. I'm certainly no expert in geography, but as I understand it, lakes and inland seas, usually only have one river flowing out of them. but Lake Kalkana seems to have two.

Speaking of editions, there is one specific question I really want to have answered: If the price of Normal Sight has gone up from 25 points in 5e to 35 points in 6e, has the point value of Blindness gone up as well?

I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not unintelligent. After all, you play HERO. And we seem to be in agreement on most things. It is your continuous posting of things that are irrelevant and the failure to answer any of my questions that I find frustrating. And a simple failure of logic: My claim is (and I'm pretty sure I've said this multiple times by now) that you can't become intelligent without knowledge. You turned that around and acted as if I said that you can't have knowledge without being intelligent. In the HERO System, knowledge and intelligence can be purchased a-la-carte. But in the real world, intelligence requires effort and study. And you seem to have gotten the logic mixed up again, by implying that I said that if you study and acquire knowledge, that is guaranteed to make you intelligent. (I assume that's what the politician thing was about.) I said no such thing. We seem to be in agreement that IQ really doesn't mean very much - especially considering the ways in which it is determined. Are we in agreement that, in HERO, selling your INT down to 5 and then buying a bunch of INT-based skills up to a very high level is a stupidly inefficient thing to do? Are we in agreement that intelligence does relate to perception? Are we in agreement that it's a lot easier to see something 20 m away in broad daylight than it is to see something 2 m away in a "dark night", even though the RAW give both of these a -4 modifier? Are we in agreement that "Active Sight" gives off light detectable by those with passive sight, the same way Active Sonar gives of sonar pings detectable by those with passive sonar? Do you agree (or have any feedback at all) about my ideas for how to cost Active Sight? What do you think the point value of Normal Sight should be? In 5e, it was 25 points. Apparently in 6e, it's 35 points. Are we in agreement that Normal Sight should have exactly the same point value as the Physical Complication: Blindness? Anything else?

Rainman, you say? Let me present this bit of knowledge: Rainman is a fictitious character. And here's another bit of knowledge about his character: He isn't particularly intelligent at all. He has no ability to cope in society. He can memorize numbers and count very quickly. So yes, no one has refuted the claim. I already acknowledged that a character created with the HERO System could be very intelligent with no knowledge, and the same holds true with a character in a movie.

Indeed, and no one has come anywhere close to refuting that claim. Someone else asked, "What knowledge does intelligence provide?" But we have no idea what he meant by that. And he seems utterly incapable of answering any questions as to what he meant.

Well, it's been about 35 years since I last took an IQ test, but as I recall, they asked me many knowledge-based questions. Questions about vocabulary, and math, and various kinds of problem-solving. I was able to answer these questions correctly (and thus get a high score) because I studied these things. Presumably, I would have had a lower score if I was unable to answer these questions correctly. How do you even measure intelligence separately from knowledge? If you have two identical twins with the exact same diet and physical living conditions, but you have one go through an intensive education, and have the other one watch daytime TV all day, do you think they'll score the same on IQ tests? I do not grant that IQ is the same as intelligence, nor the equivalent of the INT characteristic in HERO.

What in the world does this have to do with anything? You're the one who asked, "What knowledge does intelligence provide?" Are you simply repeating my point that a person with a 30- KS: Star Wars Trivia is not necessarily intelligent? Then, yeah, I already agreed with that. If your knowledge isn't applicable to the real world, then it might not count toward intelligence. And likewise, a really high intelligence or knowledge of real-world science doesn't mean that the person will be a good politician, or have knowledge in some other field. No one ever argued otherwise. I don't know what "evidence available in the world" you're looking at, but the evidence that I see is that people who study become smarter, and people who don't, don't. And yes, they only get smarter in the field(s) which they study, not necessarily in any other field. And in the case of politicians (and indeed all people), there is very little correlation between intelligence and ethics. But again, this has nothing to do with the discussion as I've understood it.

None. It's the other way around. Knowledge provides intelligence. Just like exercise provides strength. At least in real life. In the HERO System, all abilities are bought a-la-carte. So you can be bit by a radioactive frog and gain super-strength, without having engaged in any physical exercise or having developed any physical skills. In real life, you don't become intelligent without studying something - without exercising your brain against the acquisition of knowledge. But of course, you could still be bitten by a radioactive pigeon and gain super-intelligence, without having any intelligence-based skills, if you want. I am operating under the assumption that real-life is relevant. It's not required for everything to be realistic, but it is one principle to take into consideration. And if you're building a HERO character that has KS's, SS's, and Intellect Skills, all bought up to 20-, but you've only got an 8 INT, then you're building your character very inefficiently, and there's really no need for you to do that. I suppose it's fine for an NPC, but assuming you want this character to be successful at whatever the adventure requires, this is not the way to go. I assume this is a change in 6e. In 5e, it was 25 points (p228). Not that it's a big deal, but it should be noted. And INT - through whatever skills are relevant to the situation - also has a very important effect on perception. It let's you focus on what's important, and filter out what's not. It's not just attention to detail, but the selection of the details to pay attention to. A highly skilled martial artist, for example, isn't necessarily paying attention to his opponent's hairstyle or clothes, but his stance - where he's placing his feet, which way he's leaning, etc., so he can correctly predict what move he's going to make. This seems to me to be a function of both Intelligence and Perception, working so closely together, that it's hard to separate them.

I don't really see what the difference is. You can't process information if you don't have any. It's possible someone could have a 20- roll in "KS: Soft Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature" without having any knowledge whatsoever about how real science works, or real history, or any other useful information about the real world. But even that knowledge of literature is something, and it indicates some level of intelligence. Which to me, would indicate that the person who constructed the character has a low INT. 100% of everyone I've ever played HERO games with uses INT to mean intelligence, regardless of whatever vague and confused explanation the rulebooks might give. Completely agreed.

I am only sad, not angry, that HERO doesn't have the budget to make books like WotC does. I remember the old 1st ed, deendee books, that were also all black & white, and a lot of the art was primitive, and didn't relate to the text on the page. I fully recognize that it takes a significant amount of talent to draw a good picture. And it takes even more to draw a picture of a specific person, creature, or place and give it the right feel and personality. And it takes yet more talent to draw all this from pure imagination, based on a writer's text description. You can go to Mount Rushmore and draw what you see, but you can't go to Aarn to draw the colossus.

Thread Drift! I generally would expect a Super-Scientist to have a high INT, because that's what studying science does. Just like I would expect a super-fighter to have high STR. If you spend years of your life in physical combat training exercises, your muscles are going to get stronger. Likewise, if you spend years studying science, your brain is going to get stronger.

Fine, but I don't see what that has to do with the quote of mine that you quoted. I was talking about when you *can* see - when, even after all negative circumstantial modifiers, your PER roll is still 11- (or better), just like normal. And again, under otherwise normal circumstances, where you aren't being distracted, and the thing you're trying to see isn't hidden, etc. Even if the light is just slightly dim, reducing your roll from 11- to only 10-, then yes, you need to make the roll.

For anyone who doesn't want to make that big of a change, there is a reasonable compromise: Let the rMods for attacks remain the same: -2 for each doubling. and let rMods for perception be -1 per doubling of distance. And Re: the super-smart person having better perception, I think the model for this is Sherlock Holmes. I don't think his eyes (or any other sensory organs) were any better than any other normal human, but he observed a lot more and took in more details because of his high INT. Yes, there is the "absent-minded professor" type, that walks down the street thinking about theoretical physics problems and falls into an open manhole because he's not paying attention to where he's going. I'd say that's a Psychological Limitation.

Turakian Age is a very rich setting with so much good stuff in it, that you could take out 75% of it and still have enough to run a fully-immersive, and long-lasting, and far-reaching campaign. You could probably run a good long campaign without ever going more than 100 miles from Aarn. But setting books don't sell well, and books providing more details of settings sell even worse. Oh, well. But the main thing that is needed, IMO, is art. Granted, art is expensive, even if it's only black & white. More illustrations might have helped TTA sell better (or maybe not). But regardless of the marketing decisions, art can really help bring a fantasy setting (or character or monster or whatever) to life. I think even more than a book of additional details, a source of good illustrations of the Turakian Age would be helpful. And some captions would help too, so we know what we're looking at. I want to see a picture of Kal-Turak's Wall. I want to see the Colossus of Aarn. Or a city-scape of Aarn - maybe a view of King's Hill from The Processional. A picture of Ildra Borala, Cyradon, Odellia, Dyvnar/Voitaigne, etc. Pictures of the Valley of the Sixteen Stones, the Stone Tree, the Tower of Bone, the Thaleran Wall, the Living Statues, etc. And no, I don't want to see a picture of a generic castle or a generic mountain or a generic city - I want to know what *this* specific castle/city looks like, and how it differs from *that* castle/city. In the entire 114-page Realms of Ambrethel section, there is not a single illustration. Maps are great, but it's like trying to get a feel for the culture and flavor of a place by flying over it in an airplane. Mardi Gras from six miles in the air is not as much fun as Mardi Gras on the streets of New Orleans. Mount Rushmore doesn't look as impressive from out the window of a plane as it does from the ground. You can't put your feet in the footprints of the stars in front of Mann's Chinese Theater unless you actually walk down Hollywood Boulevard. Meanwhile, there are illustrations that don't seem to connect to anything. For most of them, the reader has no idea what or who they're looking at. Page 10: Who are these people? Where are they going? And why are they wearing their goggles on their foreheads instead of over their eyes? Page 13: OK, a small skirmish between Men and Sharthak in a coastal town. But which coastal town? When did this happen? And how often does this happen? Page 14: The Lord of the Graven Spear, looking like a generic fantasy warrior. Why not show him actually doing something, instead of posing for a portrait? Show him leading an army, holding court on his throne, striking down his enemies - anything! The guy on the facing page has more personality and we don't even know who he is! Page 18: What's going on here? Holding a meeting is already boring - but it would be less so if we actually knew who was meeting and why. Page 23: An impressive-looking guy, but who is he? etc., throughout the entire book. Oh, and pages 205 and 209, I assume these are gods, but which ones? A picture is worth a thousand words. Unfortunately, the thousand words usually cost less than the picture. OK, I know I'm being harsh. TTA really is an excellent book. If I had the talent, I'd illustrate these things myself and post them here. And yes, I'm fully aware that everything I'm suggesting is easier said than done.

Upon further reflection (pun not intended, but intentionally not avoided) there's a mistaken assumption in my Active Sight idea: It shouldn't give the equivalent of full daylight. After all, the bat's active sonar is still limited by the bat's normal hearing perception range. It can't "sonar-see" things miles away. Likewise, Active Sight would only illuminate in accordance with the character's normal visual acuity. Reasonably, it would only reach the limit of where his PER roll range penalties would become large enough to be beyond what he would normally be expected to perceive. So if the "Dark Night" modifier is -4, beyond which sight is essentially useless, then a range modifier of -4 would also be a reasonable limit to active sight's illumination. This would be 32 meters (at least that's what it was in 5e, and I assume that hasn't changed*). This can be increased with the Telescopic adder to the sense (or possibly by other modifiers, even just plain enhanced vision). And the Active option for Sight could almost be thought of as a Naked Advantage - except for the fact that it isn't an Advantage. But I thought of another way to cost it, which seems reasonable to me: Since normal Sight costs 25 points (and you get it for free), and Active Sight costs the same, you could have these two senses in a Multipower for which you've already "paid" the 25-point pool cost. Then each slot costs 2.5 points to switch back and forth between Passive and Active. Thus a total of only 5 points** before we've even applied limitations such as Focus (though it should be noted that such limitations would be applied only to the second slot, so for example, a -1 limitation would make this cost 2.5 + (2.5/2) = 2.5 + 1.25 = 3.75 points**). Another limitation to consider is Costs END, to make it run off your power armor's END Reserve, for example. * However, this does imply that trying to see something 32 meters away in broad daylight is equivalent to trying to see something right in front of you in a dark night. Does that seem reasonable? ** Depending on how you want to round those fractions. I don't think I'd have a problem if you wanted to round them down so that it only costs 4 points, and the -1 limitation (such as OAF) version would only cost 3 points.

I'm an incorrigible punster, so don't incorrige me.

I'm reminded of the "Building a Toilet" thread from many years ago. What do you think of my Active Sight idea? If you're Batman (bitten by a radioactive bat at a science demonstration, and given the powers of a bat), your Active Sonar pings can be used by anyone around you who has a Passive Sonar. If you emit light (by yourself, or through a Focus), anyone else with Passive Sight (such as a normal, non-blind human) can use that emitted light to see. So if Normal Sight costs 25 points (the points that you'd get from blindness), that's the base cost for the equivalent of daylight. Then you can limit it to make it reasonably priced, as well as realistic. How much of a limitation should it be to only light up an area the size of a football stadium, as opposed to an entire planetary hemisphere? How much more of a limitation for a few meter circle, like a campfire? Or a narrow cone, like a flashlight? And of course, you also get the Focus limitation as appropriate.

No, it does not. If this is what you've taken from this discussion, then you haven't understood anything I've said.

I had a player many editions ago, that would calculate all his power limitations so that the point cost would always end in .5, or as close as possible to that, so it would round down. Then he would put powers in a Multipower, so the cost of the fixed slots would also end in .5 or close to it, so they round down again. He was not so brazen as to give himself an extra point of END or COM for free, by rounding down the half-point. This same player would also buy his Disadvantages (Complications) in ways that were the least likely to affect him. He would buy defenses against his Vulnerabilities and Susceptibilities, for example.

No, I am not. I'm saying that the utility diminishes so rapidly that it's not worth buying variable slots at 20%. I don't know how many more ways I can say this. Which is the main reason why hardly anyone buys a Starburst-style multipower, with attacks, defenses, and movement all drawing from the same pool (along with campaign limits), I'd be willing to compromise and say that flexible slots in a Starburst-style multipower can remain at 20%. 60 MP pool 6 f 60 points of Power A 6 f 60 points of Power B 6 f 60 points of Power C 3 f 30 points of Power A (or whatever other amount seems most likely to be useful). 3 f 30 points of Power B (or whatever other amount seems most likely to be useful) 3 f 30 points of Power C (or whatever other amount seems most likely to be useful). 87 points - the same as the 15% cost would be.

Indeed all those things are valuable. So you can use the 20 points you saved buying Fixed slots instead of Variable slots to buy that +5 m of Flight outside of the Multipower, and still have 15 points left over. you could buy some PSLs vs Range to hit your opponent accurately while staying out of his reach. Or you could buy some PD/ED outside of the MP. Or you could spend 4 of those points on an additional slot with +10 PD and +10 ED. And another one with +5 PD/+5 ED and +10 m of Flight. No micro-slots necessary. Here's a justification of the 15% figure you might like: 60 MP pool 6 f 60 points of Power A 6 f 60 points of Power B 6 f 30 points of Power A, and 30 points of Power B (or whatever other distribution seems most likely to be useful). Here, for 50% more slot cost than the cost of just two fixed slots, you can have the most likely split distribution between the two powers. Granted, it doesn't have all the granularity in flexibility of the variable slots, but it gives you the ways you' would have used them most of the time anyway, if you had variable slots. How much granularity do you need here? How much extra utility does it give you to be able to use 23 points of Power A and 37 points of Power B? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it was viable. But the question is, did it have a cost appropriate to its utility? Now since there were only two out of four variable slots, it probably didn't make as much of a difference as it would have if all four slots had been variable.