dsatow

You could also use flight usable against others AoE personal immunity.

OK, I can understand that. Most other powers, could be done by technology or effort. Maybe not as fast or as agile, but it can be done by other means just as successfully. As for weather control, assuming there is not just one person who controls the weather (Marvel also has Thor(s), Weather Witch, Brother Voodoo (probably most spell casters), Nathaniel Grey (X-Man), etc.), you only need one or two people controlling the weather for the world to be safe. Most weather events could be controlled enough to prevent category 5 events by one or maybe two people, because in general category 5 weather events are rare. And even if these heroes could quell such events frequently, there is bound to be some repercussion environmentally, which is why the existing characters don't do it that often or do so with a light touch. This is why I got confused by Storm as an example. The reason wasn't the power, its that the she isn't alone in the world in her ability to control the weather and there aren't that many category 5 level events for her to have to handle. With a healer, there are people dying every day (about 1 every 3 minutes due to just accidents in the US). The initial viewpoint of my friends is that healers in specific do not make sense. They aren't advocating playing a character stuck in the hospital, ambulance, etc. Just that certain types of characters wouldn't be playable in a game setting because of the definition of the superhero's motivations. In other words, they are saying their view on the gaming world is that unless there is some type restriction, there should be no altruistic healer going out adventuring. If the healer has some reason why they wouldn't be going the traditional routes of medicine, that would be fine. Its like being a telepath where your mental attack is to bring up people's darkest fears/secrets while also espousing everyone's right to privacy. It doesn't make sense. So THEY AGREE WITH YOU. Playing a character who goes in for a 9-5 day is not a character any one wants to play in an adventure game. But they want to make sure, a character has a reasonable motive to be a healer in an adventuring party. The original question is about how do you feel about that view point. Can you see a hero with no limitations on their healing and with an altruistic motivation to save people have a logical reason to go out adventuring over staying within the medical system?

OK, I might be missing the point. Are you saying Storm is a good example because like the weather, wherever a healer goes, there are people who need immediate medical attention or they will die? A healer stereotypically needs to be near a person to heal them and not like a 50 miles away. Or are you saying Storm is a good example, because she wants to be a hero and save everyone because she is clearly defined by that motivation (like a Silver Age Superman)? I've always seen the X-Men as morally gray. Or are you saying even though she has these weather abilities, she doesn't go to the deep freezes or hailstorms or tornado alley to stop these effects but she is still a hero? If its this reason, it could be because she can't predict the weather only sense its current state and motion. And she also has the ability to sense the "life force" of things including the planet and she might know that certain weather events are best allowed to play out for the health of the planet and possibly the people who live there. For example, say in an area there are heavy snows but because she is there, it only lightly and slowly snows. People get accustomed to that weather and then she leaves the area or dies. All of a sudden people are freezing to death in their homes because the houses aren't insulated as well, the power grid can't handle the sub zero temperatures for that long, etc. If you're saying that it doesn't make a good story in a comic or a game to have a player be Joe the Healer at County Medical, I agree with you. My friends would agree with you too, which is why they would mostly say no to healing characters in their campaigns.

Actually, in the comics she does and she only moderates it to a certain extent. In her background, she used to make it rain more in the Serengeti but decided to travel with the X-Men to understand her powers and self more. In a side story while the X-Men were in London, someone asks her if she loses her power would she stop being a hero(late 80s early 90s). She said no but she says in her explanation, she tempers the weather where she's at. In this story, she makes sure that London doesn't get hit with a massive storm and instead just has heavy rain.

I think there is a misunderstanding. It's not must do, it's why would they not do this instead of this. Say you have a deep desire to stop Martians from taking over the Earth. You have a rather unique ability, say 1 in 10,000,000 of being able to see these aliens. No one else can see the aliens. Specialized machines can target these aliens, but the machines only takes photos and the photos take an hour or two to process. Like humans, the aliens tend to move around and can be killed with conventional weaponry if they are detected. You say you want to fight aliens by driving trucks for soldiers to areas where the Martians are but NOT get involved in the actual spotting or fighting of the aliens. You are not a pacifist or have any moral ground against killing the aliens. Aliens can be bombed by the air force so long as they stay in a general area they have been detected. Is this the correct action of a character who wants to fight aliens?

One solution to the problem, is magical healing. If you go to hospital, you might have problems with magical healing. Here are some issues: 1) Magic is believed not to exist. Hospitals are all about repeatable proven scientific results, which is why most do not go in for homeopathic or hearsay cures. 2) Magic is the work of the devil. If a born again Christian was healed by the power of "Azarath Metrion Zinthos", a law suit again as well as protests and boycotting. 3) Magic is dangerous. If a hospital used "magical" healing and things didn't turn out right, they'd be in for a law suit. So even if it does work, the plantiff can say that the magic also made them impotent and are suing for damages and emotional distress.

Yup, this was asked of Steve a while back. The flying dodge martial maneuver allows you to do a full move and dodge. If you held a half phase, then you can move the rest of your movement along with dodging. So yes, its seems to be designed that way on purpose (i.e. its not "broken" but maybe abusive). It gets worse. It was also asked if you abort to flying dodge after using your full movement on the prior segment, do you get to use your full movement? The answer was again yes, you get your full movement and the dodge for the aborted phase.

The funny thing, it reminds me of a time I played a martial artist and an explosion targeting a nearby hex was happening. So I aborted my phase to be 4" farther away figuring losing the top 6 dice would let it bounce off me. The GM rolls to hit and bungles it badly. He randomly rolls direction and guess what, it lands on top of me. Top 4 dice were all 6s, though damage was average. If I had just stayed still I would have been unharmed.

To figure out LTE costs for overland travel, this is how I would do it. Figure out the shortest distance moved by all the player characters in a single turn. Then determine how much endurance is spent by each player going that distance. This gives you LTE end loss. For most players this will be about 3 LTE per turn since the minimum burn is 1 LTE per 20 minutes. Most normals will last 5-7 hours. Normal Heroes (not super) will probably last about 11-16 hours. This is not modified for rules regard sleep or food, so you might want to look that up as well. If you have a character that is burning more than 1 LTE per 20 minutes, most travelers would probably slow down to accommodate a rate of speed for them that would be 1 LTE/20 minutes. In 5e, multiple this distance by 0.6 to get kph travel. In 6e, multiple this distance by 0.3 to get kph travel. Multiply kph by 0.621371 or .62 to get mph. This will give you distance travelled. Approximate movement modifiers to shorten the distance travelled due to "road conditions" in your campaign.

My answer: It depends. Crappy answer but here's why. When grabbing, you get the choice to grab two limbs. This doesn't take into account Extra Limbs, so people with Extra Limbs might be able to grab more limbs. A limb in HERO is either arms, legs, or neck(s). On a normal human, grabbing both legs means they won't be able to move via running or leaping as the limb is immobilized by the grabber. But then, the grabbed has their arms free to use Accessible focii. Grabbing their arms, the grabbed has the option to use their legs to kick or move. The next thing the GM needs to consider is whether the grabbed can lift the character. In Champions, it doesn't matter too much as most superheroes can lift 200-400kg (15-20Str) quite easily using casual strength. If they don't have the strength to casually lift, they might be dragging the attacker if they have enough strength to only dead lift them (full strength). If the attacker doesn't want to move, they can either release their grab or do a strength vs. strength to prevent being moved. The GM might assign a penalty if the grabbed is dragging the attacker on the grabbed's strength roll. Or the attacker can just release the hold at any point while being dragged. If the grabbed wins, generally the grabbed can move up to their normal movement but the GM might limit this if they thing this is reasonable (to say half or even quarter or possibly by an amount won by a strength roll). Note the grabber has the option at any time to release their grab. They do not have to abort or ready a save to do it. Grabbing someone is advantageous to the grabber not the grabbed. In any case, it's seldom done in Hero, as the strength roll necessary to drag the attacker is usually the same one to break free of a grab.

A few questions 1) When hit with the attack, do you immediately(same segment) launch the attack? Or do you have to initiate the attack? 2) What if you are hit multiple times in a segment, does this attack defense always work? 3) What if someone punches you? Do you absorb the attack and reflect it back on the person? 4) Does the attack always go off? For example, a rookie soldier get presence attack and accidentally fires on the character. Does the character absorb the attack and immediately fires back at the soldier who might not be bulletproof enough? 5) If the attack would miss, do you absorb and reflect it anyways? (i.e. does the attack just need to be near you?) 6) If you are caught in an Area of Effect, what happens then?

I hope to see friends there too. Dundracon has become as much of a meet up as a gaming convention. A lot of friends have moved so are no longer within gaming/socializing distance. We are all vaxxed and boosted but some have more reason for concern than others. For them, it will depend on the infection rates as to whether they will go or not.

Interesting takes by people. I was only thinking about the philosophical implications. If a hero wanted to help others (i.e. a Superman style of motivation), would they really reach as many people to help going out and stopping crime. To be honest, my answer to this after some thought was that many physical traumas can be serviced by normal medical professionals. But its hard to help people whose skin can bounce bullets. The superhero with healing is there for those heroes and may help the normals in hospitals when not doing superhero duty.

Does it make sense for superheroes to be out about fighting as superheroes if they have healing? A long time ago, friends I gamed with in a modern superhero game basically said, if you think about it, if you can heal and wanted to be a superhero, you'd do work in a hospital emergency center or a clinic. What do you think about this comment?

#1 I have no issue with any of the solutions presented thus far and I think everything is well discussed. I have nothing against creating two new stats or not creating two new stats. The specific GM knows how much those stats will be applicable and used. I am only suggesting an alternate solution. #2 If the you want to reduce the stat's effect on perception (since by design you can't generally lower the perception below 9+ unless you allow negative stat effects), you could always use a physical limitation. I would guess at least a -2 PER per 5 point limitation. To be honest, I would make it -2 @ 5pts, -5 @ 10pts, and -8 @ 15 pts. Similarly, you could use buy it as a limitation on special senses too: -2 @ 1/4, -5 @ 1/2, and -8 @ -1. Note different GMs would weigh these differently, but I would not go below -2 per 5 pts of physical disadvantage as it becomes less disadvantage and more of a cheap way to buy INT.

If you have a little computer savvy, you can use this: https://www.nomic.net/~uckelman/mkhexgrid/ There is also this from Dr. Phillippe Marquis: https://graph-paper-printer.en.softonic.com/ https://m.majorgeeks.com/files/details/graph_paper_printer.html I use Dr. Marquis' program for a lot of things, though I got it as a direct download from his site a long time ago. The mkhexgrid program I have been using lately to create poster sized prints and print them out at Kinkos. A bit expensive but kind of cool.

Let me clarify number three. Any game can have poignant, emotionally driven stories. All I am saying is that there is a difference between saving a city or planet vs. a home or a homeless person's encampment. Both can be emotionally well driven stories but they are driven from different perspectives. Also, some players and GMs may not want to play games in that small scale. That's just fine. In a similar vein, too small a scale, say a street level campaign, would have issues on a galactic level threat. Batman stories are a good example of this. A common complaint with Batman is he's fighting with Superman against the forces of Apokolips where one parademon fights with power of 3 squads. And then has problems with the Penguin. Apples and oranges can both be sweet, but they are still apples and oranges.

Sorry, very late to this thread. Been concentrating on other things, like getting a job. 1) I think a lot of official villains which hit a defense wall are designed like that because they are designed to be challenging to the 12d6/60 act heroes. They can be taken out by these heroes but are very dangerous to the same heroes due to the high amount of damage they throw. 2) Having been in several very high damage limit campaigns (over 15d6), the defenses generally goes up as damage goes up. So if your dice start at 12d6 and 27 def, it goes up as your dice goes up: e.g.: 14d6 and 35 def, 16d6 and 40 def, 18d6 and 48 def, 20d6 and 55 def, etc. CVs are also similar, going up at a similar rate. 3) One of the biggest problems with getting to the high levels of powers is that you can never do a story with them at the lower scale again. From 12-15d6, you can still have police, robbers, and governments step in and still be a bother. But at some point, usually after 15d6, these things are quite silly. It ain't like the comics where you can have a human interest story where the Justice League solves Santa's murder or where the Avengers takes on the Kingpin or the Circus of Crime. It seems like the OP is fine with this, but it can be limiting.

I plan on going. I get my booster on Wednesday. My wife is scheduled for it in early January. I figure masks at a masked superhero game? Makes sense to me. Figure I'd bring some markers and allow decorating the masks some.

Being vaccinated drops the chance of death due to catching COVID from about 1% to about .01%. Of the .01% of deaths, almost all of them were due to comprised immunity situations. COVID vaccine life is not 20 years. at least not the two shot or one shot dosage so far. This is why the companies are recommending booster shots as the effectiveness rates are dropping over time.

So I had a villain like this all the way back to Champions 3. The villain was based on Marvel's Diamond Lil. In a 10-12 DC game she had a 1d6 AP HKA which she could pump to 1 1/2d6 AP HKA. She was mostly annoying, so one of the brick players grabbed her and threw her up in the air (she had no flight or gliding). When she came back down, he would catch her and throw her up again. This would keep her in the air for about 2-3 segments. Then one of the martial artists sync'd with the brick, getting the brick to do a pushed throw up in the air. At which point the martial artist delayed until she was next to him and he martial threw her into the ground. The result damage got past her impressive defenses and knocked her out.

With Omicron on the horizon, I figure I'd ask another pandemic question about gaming online. We all know the benefits of gaming online but what do you hate most about it? Personally for me, the most aggravating aspect (though I have problems with most of the items noted in the poll) is when we get to the plot twist/surprise and everyone begins talking at once. IRL, even if you can't understand everyone talking at once, you know they are talking. But the conferencing software doesn't handle this well, usually muting people silent. I also hate that sometimes, conference calls will drop parts of the conversation making it unhearable, making you ask them to repeat the last thing they spoke. What about you?

PLEASE NOTE: This topic isn't whether you support vaccination, masks, etc. Its just about how the current environment is affecting your HERO gaming. Please refrain from such conversations pro or con. My game kind of fizzled as one of the core players moved back to the east coast and kind of isolated himself for various reasons (not all reasons due to the pandemic).

I used to run Teen Champions at Cons. I did a lot of summer movie style games. The kaiju game with Sharkoctopus. The Jason Vorhees game. The Christmas theme game with Krampus. A lot of teen horror movies turn into great combat fodder, especially when mixed together (imagine fighting Jason, Freddy, Leatherface, deadites/zombies, and Edward Cullen! XD )

How would you describe your last major story arc in your Champions campaigns? Rules: Minimum of 100 characters. That's about 20 5 letters words. So "police procedural" doesn't cut it as a description. More description helps. Maximum of about 300 characters. That's about 60 words. This isn't a hard limit but try to keep your description to only a paragraph or two. More description is good, but we aren't looking for a novel. Try to describe it in a way that a new GM might take inspiration from it. Example: Last year I completed two story arcs. One was fairly long. #1(2014-2020) The PCs are involved where the failure of established units and super powered military of the government (PRIMUS) kept failing to stop large scale supervillain attacks. Several political figures decided to use a civilian contracting unit to replace Primus. This turned out to be Viper who with the politicians started a long story arc where they took over the government in the name of law and order. #2(2020) This Legion of Superheroes style game had a story arc where communication was lost on a mining colony. The mining colony used biosynthetic humans (replicants effectively) to do all the menial labor. The governor of the colony goes mad and begins to think himself a god and bioengineers himself and several others with powers stolen from genetic material of aliens.