pawsplay

Let's say you're running a Heroic campaign. You wish to create a spell, power, or device that tends to knock people over. In a superheroic campaign, this would be Double Knockback. I don't see anything equivalent for Knockdown attacks. Am I missing something?

Re: How To Build: Jedi Force Slam Bah!! When I was ten years old, it used to bother me that a supposedly mystical life force could somehow run in a family, when its use seemed to depend on enlightenment and training. The midiclorian explanation actually satisfies me immensely in that regard. EDIT: Also, the Jedi are not celibate. They are simply as a general rule not permitted to marry.

Re: How To Build: Jedi Force Slam I don't think what we see on screen agrees with your interpretation. Darth Maul uses a force slam against Kenobi basically as a surprise move. Sidious manages to hit Yoda with both lightning and a force slam. Dooku manages to both slam Anakin and force grip Kenobi. It would appear to me that force slam and Sith lightning pretty much always work unless the target deflects with a lightsaber or uses the Force for defense. In my conversion notes, I've built a Missile Reflection, only for deflecting Force powers.

Re: Kvetching about range Ads/Disads Previously, this was done with negative range skill levels, but I guess Steve decided that just didn't seem kosher somehow.

Re: How To Build: Jedi Force Slam That still leaves Yoda. Is Yoda a Dark Side user?

Re: Missed me, hit him!

Re: How To Build: Jedi Force Slam We see Darth Maul knock the snot out of Kenobi. We also see Anakin smack around some Geonosians that way. Finally, Yoda, clobbers Sidious's guards in their final confrontation. It's also possible to classify the Yoda-Sidious pushing contest and the Kenobi-Skywalker fight as force slams.

Re: Duplication... but different Ok, if each one has a defined appearance, and the duplicates are mortal, that's just SFX.

Re: Duplication... but different But you do change. As you duplicate, you change, with No Conscious Control, to look like your Duplicate. That's one way to look at it. Alternately, you could define exactly how many Duplicates there are, but I don't think the original conception was that there would be, say, a gang of eight duplicates who were always the same. If they look different each time, the effect is of changing appearance.

Re: How To Build: Jedi Force Slam The core issue isn't whether Maul should have done something or the other, but rather that he did use force slam, and it did not generate a lot of distance. For that matter, the droids affected by Qui Gon ended up in a heap. I just don't see this as being consistent with a telekinetic grab and throw. The force slam should do damage, possibly knock down the foe... not grab the foe, toss him, then do damage by him hitting a wall. That's just not how the power works. If you're using TK to actually "punch" someone, then you need to raise the OCV to insanely high levels, and do at least 7-8 BODY in one hit to impair and Knockdown. That would give most of the Jedi in the arena a TK STR of around 50 (or 40 if you add AP to this monstrosity). Incidentally, 40 TK STR with AP and Area of Effect (one hex) is 120 Active Points. It's a pretty cool move, but you know what? I'm not really seeing 120 Active Points there. TK with Ranged Martial Arts is a possibility, but doesn't address the very high OCV you would need to simulate the effect, at least not that I'm seeing. And I don't think building a lot of combat skill levels into TK really reflects the Jedi we see on screen very well.

Re: Discussion on costs of Characteristics A point of REC is 40% of 5 points of STR alone. The answer to Bricks would be simple: a lot of STR, No Figured Characters, for those don't have all the side benefits. And for those who do, they should probably pay for them.

Re: Everything's a Power This sounds like the child of HERO and Fudge. I am afeared.

Re: How To Build: Jedi Force Slam Except we do see Jedi using Telekinesis in combat. Dooku does it in RotS against Kenobi, and Kenobi and Anakin try it in their final battle. In this case, the canon provides sufficient evidence of what is possible. Another issue with using Grapple is the difficulty of making the attack roll. A force slam, while simple, is brutal and seemingly impossible to simply dodge or avoid. It never misses in the entire prequel trilogy that I can detect. Hence, AoE (one hex). If AoE (one hex) is applied to Telekinesis, without Affects Whole Object so it can "punch" an opponent as Maul does to Kenobi, then we are still left with trying to explain the knockdown. If it does a grab and throw, we have to explain the damage of the attack (particularly if they don't seem to get knocked very far) as well as the STR involved. It also raises questions like, "Why didn't Kenobi just lift and squeeze the guards instead of dropping a huge object on them?" It appears to me that the effect of the power is to strike a target with enough power to knock them off their feet.

Re: Missed me, hit him! Multipower, No Conscious Control (-1), Trigger. Two slots, EB and RKA, only up to amount of attack (-0), no range. Variable special effects. Effect: When attacked, you spend END, and the same attack (up to the limit of your dice) is launched against an adjacent foe.

Re: Missed me, hit him!

Re: Kvetching about range Ads/Disads It normally doesn't bother me, but it kind of stared me in the face while I was converting a Blastech blaster pistol (from Star Wars), which is less then stellar at ranges, but also has a stun setting with a range of about 4" or so.

Re: Susano's Guide to Adapting Fictional Characters to HERO I have a golden rule for conversions: always award the least amount of poitns or characteristic needed to do what they are shown doing. I think it's kind of implicit in the guide, but your viewpoint might be slightly different. Very nice work, btw.

Just a quick overview: No Range, -1/2 Reduced by Range, -1/4 Limited Range, -1/4 Side Effect, -1 RMod (as a weapon), always on, -1/2 Ok, being a non-ranged weapon probably allows you to use some melee options, so that one gets a pass. But it's hard to justify -1/4 for losing damage every 4" or only having a range of 4" compared to -1/2 for taking a -1 to hit past 4". Unfortunately, No Range -1/2 is kind of our limit for comparison. Thoughts?

Re: Duplication... but different Shapeshifting, sight, hearing, touch, smell, only duplicates (-1/2), linked to Duplication (-1/2), Uncontrolled (-1 version). Total cost: 10 points. A bargain for a potentially countless number of disguised "you"'s.

Re: How To Build: Jedi Force Slam It just seems that the Star Wars movies are in some ways more realistic than the core Hero system as far as how much power it takes to fling someone versus knock the wind out of them; the damage we see is far disproportionate to the lifting STR we see, in Hero terms. I mean, if he had 35 STR to work with, why wouldn't Darth Maul just pitch Kenobi into the shaft? He might survive a slam and a fall, but he's not going to survive being flung around like a rag doll.

Re: Stealing Powers Since his total power level would be kind of nebulous anyway, I think VPP covers this well. Alternately, you could buy several linked Transfers, buying down the recovery to last years. Although still potentially a campaign breaker if the GM isn't thoughtful, there would at least be some finite limits, and an in-game explanation of why he doesn't achieve superheroic singularity: the stolen powers eventually wear off. You could apply a special -0 Disadvantage; affects the dead instead of the living. I think the ability to leisurely take the powers of your foe is balanced by the need to kill them first. Finally, and this I think is an inspired suggestion, you could combine the approaches; use a very long duration Transfer to maintain his accumulation of powers within the story, then a VPP on top of that to fudge when you need to use a stolen power from last year's miniseries.

Re: How To Build: Jedi Force Slam 30 STR is enough to lift several people, far more power than is demonstrated by anyone other than Yoda, the Skywalkers, Sidious, and Dooku. I'm not sure Indirect applies; can it bypass barriers? It certainly always comes from a single direction.

Okay, I've gotten as far as figuring out it should be a physical Energy Blast, Area of Effect (one hex) (+1/2), Armor Piercing (+1/2) because it rips up droids and seems difficult to resist, Reduced Range (4") (-1/4), and Can Be Missile Deflected (as seen in RotS in the final battle) (-1/4). What I can't figure out is how to actually make people fall down. To deliver Knockdown requires an impairing wound, and I don't see it breaking a lot of bones, at least on human targets. I thought about applying Does Knockback to knock down a Heroic Genre wall, but that leaves the situation where opponents go down, but they don't stay down (as, for instance, battle droids do). 6d6 EB is enough to Disable a battle droid, but rather punishing on a human. Should I just assume Kenobi has at least 16 BODY and 6 PD (and got lucky), and that a force slam will maim most non-Jedi? Maybe he just rolled with the punch? Thoughts?

Re: New Advangtage: Always Hits I think almost any attack that "always hits" can simply be described as "hitting really well." Let's say you want to define a laser as always hitting. Make it a huge area of effect, selective, then say it only hits one target. Now, you have to Dive for Cover basically out of point blank range of the laser to avoid getting hit. Same for homing missiles... give them a radius as to how far they can go. Dieities? They just have a really high CV.

Re: Immune to Magic Desolidification and invisibility only versus magic might be an interesting take on a more absolute immunity.