Starlight

Re: Dream Park Hero? This is slightly off the main topic but still relating to Dream Park. One of the features of Dream Park I've thought about trying to implement, but never done so as yet, is having the other players play NPC's in those scenes where one or more characters has the spotlight. While the idea is highly appealing the downside that's discouraged me is the sheer amount of work required in fleshing out all those NPC's to the point a player can pick up the NPC and play the NPC in a manner consistent with the underlying game logic. Has anyone tried this? If so, how did it work?

One of the players in a Supers game (6th edition) I'm helping to run wants to build the following power - a megascale teleport from a deployed teleport pad to any other already deployed teleport pad. He intends his character to have four such pads available, able to deploy a pad in his character's current location while the character has any left. The teleport pads have the capability to teleport his character and another character. Now this seems simple enough; until we add in the fact that this is wanted in a gadget VPP. The teleport pads being foci in the gadget variable power pool. I'm trying to help the player, who isn't all that familiar with the Hero system. I started out with fixed locations, one for each teleport pad, and the megascaled teleport limited to fixed locations only. Although this works as such, for purely aesthetic preference, I'd like to create the power as a self-contained VPP slot without needing fixed locations bought outside the VPP. However I'm coming up short on ideas how to achieve this. Short version: build a teleport in a VPP that allows going from one location to a limited set of other locations, each location needing a 'teleport pad' to be previously deployed, the power to be contained entirely within a VPP slot without needing fixed locations bought outside the VPP. Can it be done this way?

Re: Cannot Combine Duplication The limitation specifically excludes giving Innate, so it can be Drained or Dispelled. However the Mind Control point is valid. Congratulations. You win the prize. That's an actual genuine benefit. Repped.

Re: Cannot Combine Duplication There's no doubt about the benefits of Duplication. But that's not the issue I raised in my original comment. The Cannot Recombine limitation for Duplication states that it's a -0 value because the benefits of not being able to recombine and the drawbacks of not being able to recombine cancel out. Now I could agree with a ruling that the drawbacks of not being able to recombine aren't significant enough to be worth anything more than a -0. But the book text specifically mentions benefits of not being able to recombine and I can't actually think of a single benefit. So what are they?

Re: Working Notes for my Campaign Conversion to 6E Greywind, thanks for the heads up on Repping. If it works you just got Repped.

Re: Easiest way to... emulate 5th negative skill levels in 6th It's not entirely obvious, as in there's nothing that specifically addresses the question either for or against, but the impression I got after reading fairly carefully through the 6th edition Change Environment is that OCV and DCV penalties have been dropped from the range of possible effects. The 5th edition CE distinguished between CV penalties and Characteristic Roll penalties. In 6th edition there's no mention of CV penalties. But OCV and DCV are now listed under characteristics, so can they still be affected? If the answer was yes I'd have expected one of the sidebar examples to illustrate that. None do however. If this has been answered in a previous post, such a post has escaped my poor search-fu skills.

Re: Working Notes for my Campaign Conversion to 6E Fascinating reading. Repped, provided I worked out how to do that on the new forum software. It's an insight into the problems that anyone converting an existing campaign will face. Especially the manner in which characters are going to be impacted in differing degrees by the conversion process. Character teams that were well balanced are going to encounter the same issues you've described so clearly. I hope you'll post again to relate how your group eventually resolves those issues. I suspect the same issues will loom even more significantly with a full blooded superhero campaign. Would anyone who's already done that conversion job care to comment?

So I'm reading through the 6th pdf and get to Duplication. There's this, unchanged from 5th edition as I recall This Limitation represents a form of Duplication that doesn’t allow the Duplicates to recombine. Typically this is a -0 Limitation, since the benefits and drawbacks to this situation balance out, but the GM may alter the value as he sees fit. As I'm skimming past it suddenly occurs to me... what benefits? And you know, I can't think of any benefits for not being able to recombine. The limitation does not confer Innate, so a Drain or Suppress can still force recombination. Without this limitation the duplicates can recombine, but do not have to. I'm playing a 5th edition character with duplication (that's why I was reading up on 6th edition duplication) where the duplicates don't know they can recombine. They duplicated at birth and have been bought up believing they are twins. There's been occasions during the years of play this character as seen when recombining, if only they knew it was possible, would have been very useful. But the converse isn't true because recombining is a voluntary action and the character doesn't have to do it. So there's no benefit to not recombining that a character without the limitation can't get by simply deciding not to recombine. I throw this open to the floor. What benefits are there? What am I missing?

Re: Barrier

Re: Negatory Applying the mathematical definition of floor as that which you cannot go below, since you can self-evidently go below 9- that is clearly not the floor. As to whether 9- is a good choice of lower limit? Your opinion is as valid as mine. It's purely a matter of personal preference. A character with 0 DEX has a 9- base chance of success in a DEX based skill roll. A lump of rock has no chance of making such a DEX based skill roll. So the character with 0 DEX is still getting a benefit from having a DEX characteristic. The characteristic is obviously not gone as the character is able to use mere possession of the characteristic as a reason to be allowed to make a skill roll. (As a GM I'd never prohibit a player from trying to make a skill roll even if their character's relevant characteristic had been drained to zero. I would probably pick something less than 9- for the chance though. (And then add back in situational modifiers if it was a suitably heroic and needed action to give the player a good chance of making it. Rules take second place to group enjoyment in my games. That I personally would ignore the analysis given above doesn't make it any less accurate however.)

Re: Negatory Sean, correct me if I'm missing your main point but it seems that your concern is that it's not possible with a fixed floor for a characteristic value of zero (0) to completely nullify the benefits of the affected characteristic. The point was mentioned that draining EGO to 0 only reduced the base EGO breakout roll to 9-. Unlike an Energy Blast drained away to 0pts when the power is totally useless, in the case of EGO, and some additional characteristics, you haven't reached a true floor. There are still residual benefits; 9- base rolls for skills is one such benefit. Alternatives which have been suggested, the Transform to mindless state, for example, are not solutions to the basic issue. In the case of the Transform it is perfectly suitable for some special effects - but fails to provide a valid means of steadily draining away a target's EGO until they reach the point of mindlessness. Modelling, as a counter example, a surgical procedure where a person's brain is 'switched off' by an implanted device would be a suitable case for the Transform rather than an EGO drain. EGO drain and Transform are different powers for a good reason. It seems to be, in my view, that the true floor for many characteristic values is actually -27. What I mean by this is that we can rewrite the classic skill roll formula as 0 + (CHA+27)/3 Resetting the 0 value for characteristics to what is now the -27 value would allow a smooth reduction of base skill and EGO breakout rolls all the way down to 0. I'm not in any way suggesting this. It would wreak utter havoc in many other aspects of the rules. But as an academic exercise it gives a fresh viewpoint from which to look at this issue. As a quick and dirty solution within the 6th edition rules regarding characteristics, a house rule that a characteristic value of zero (0) means that characteristic provides NO benefits. Skills based on the characteristic are not useable at all. Characters with an EGO value of zero (0) do not get a breakout roll. If you want to be a little less harsh, pick an arbitrary base for a zero valued characteristic, 3- or 5- or whatever.

Re: Champions 6th version

Re: Champions 6th version I'm thinking it's not a matter of how many Champions (Hero) players also started to play CoH when it began, but rather how many CoH players subsequently took up playing Hero? The former is not too surprising to me. Champions players obviously like superhero games and CoH hardly strained their brains. Reflexes possibly. Brains no. CoH players clearly like superhero games too, but the mental challenge of Hero System is an order of magnitude greater than CoH.

Re: Cage Barrier ghost-angel is correct. This is an advantage on Barrier. The modified power in question isn't providing a reduced utility from the basic Barrier power. It's providing reduced utility on a Barrier bought with the One Way Transparent advantage. I'd already given this some thought, see the last paragraph of my post in the initial Barrier thread, and decided that for my house rules halving the advantage value of One Way Transparent for a Barrier that is transparent in both directions probably seems reasonable. Comments welcome. So transparent in both directions to a limited class of attacks is +1/4 and transparent to all attacks (except a limited class) is +1/2. e.g. Barrier (Cage) - 10 PD/6 ED, 10 Body, 5m wide and 3m high, Transparent to all attacks (Solid objects larger than the space between the bars of the cage cannot pass through) +1/2 You can fire an energy blast through it in either direction. Shoot at and damage the bars. Shoot a bullet through in either direction. But not pass through it unless you had shrinking or were naturally small enough or had a malleable body. A Brick could not throw a truck through at someone on the other side. It's a pretty accurate representation of a barred barrier.

Re: 6E Cool Stuff Shout-Outs Rearranging the basic to-hit formula. Probably the smallest change between 5th and 6th. But an improvement that will only increase in value as the continuous hours of playing mount up and a few beers are consumed. Anyone who's see a game grind to a halt at 3am in the morning as the group, which includes several maths graduates, struggle to figure out what's needed to hit DCV 9 will know exactly what I mean.