DrFurious

Re: Changing the way END works In your situation, I'd dispense with regular END tracking at all. For magic powers you could use other mechanics to track the cost such as Side Effects or a custom limitation such as 'Costs LTE rather than END'. My favored approach is to purchase an END Reserve exclusively for magical powers - a 'Gift' perk.

Re: Mental Powers: Classes of Mind Question Just to explore the second interpretation, plants in general are not able to act in the manner suggested. I personally don't know of any vines that wrap themselves around a target. Even if this differs in a campaign, you could apply the same idea toward a standard version of Mind Control. You could MC a group of normals to entangle an opponent. That said, what about controlling supers to attack your target with either powers? It can be argued that this use allows for "a wider variety of actions that typically one requires more powers for"? IMO, requiring the player to pay more because there are instances where the target will have more exotic varieties of interaction is already taken care of in the original cost of the power.

Re: Mental Powers: Classes of Mind Question You're right. The class of minds thing could be considered a required -0 limitation - except for the fact that in the circumstances you've mentioned they would be higher value limitations. In fact, I'd probably just chuck it out altogther and say that if it's got anything that qualifies as a mind, you can affect it - with a proviso on the power's special effect. Anything that the special effect wouldn't be likely to cover would require a Power skill roll (as a power stunt) to use (IMO, this skill doesn't nearly see enough use in most games). Does this reward sfx that are broad? Sure, but not every restriction on a power needs to be written out and deliminated beforehand.

Re: Hunted Questions No, that would be a Rivalry - just not a mutual one.

Re: body shield If the guy was deliberately using the body as a shield, I'd say that he'd need a held action and perform a block maneuver. Otherwise, define what percentage cover the body will give - a miss due to the cover penalty is a hit on the body. 'nuff said. [edit] Just in case I'm misreading the question, the body should provide DEF equivalent to a similar soft-like object. The Body characteristic is obviously the BODY to use.

Re: Lots of questions from a lost gamer... Since no one seems to have addressed this point, I thought it might warrant a comment. While it seems that Hero is going strong, we can't really make a solid judgment without some insider business info. Suffice it to say, it looks like it's in good hands and will be around for a while yet. I'm not sure what support you are looking for in a game company. Hero has good support in a wide range of supplements but across a range of genres and game mechanics (i.e. the Ultimate ??? series). If you are looking for supplements for Space Opera, I dont' foresee DOJ putting out a great deal more. Realistically, you have a few space-oriented supplements already out: Star Hero Terran Empire Alien Wars Spacer's Toolkit Some of the other supplements may be applicable (such as The Ultimate Vehicle and Galactic Champions) to a space game but the only other item on the release schedule is 'Worlds Of Empire' in 2005. I don't know if you'll see anything past that. It seems that Space Hero isn't a great seller (anyone confirm that?) so development efforts will focus on more profitable areas - Fantasy Hero, Dark Champions, the Ultimate Books, etc. You may not ever see additional supplement like 'Sector X of the Terran Empire' or 'Merchant Traders of the Terran Empire'. Supplements detailing areas of a setting seem targeted toward Fantasy, and Dark Champions/Champions lines. Again, my impression is that you're looking for a company to develop the setting material for you - a reasonable requirement for a busy individual. I don't think that Hero will be putting out a lot of support past what there already is for the Space genre - at least in the near future. There may be a trickle of supplements in the upcoming years but nothing like a White Wolf support of WOD. The Space genre doesn't seem as popular as the others and will receive less attention.

Re: Interaction Skills That is it exactly. If a character is absolutely inclined against another character's influence, then he's not going to be swayed no matter what the roll. For PC to PC use, a good roll would prompt "he sounds very convincing" but the PC has the option to refuse. If he is a good roleplayer, he will take into account that statement as an accurate description of the situation and react accordingly and with his character in mind. For a PC to NPC interaction, if the NPC could go either way, then there is no reason to not let the roll determine the outcome. If the NPC is dead set against the influence, then no roll will sway him. If the PC roleplays out an argument that presents a possibility that the NPC will be swayed, then the die roll makes the call.

Re: Interaction Skills No and no. I don't allow the use of an interaction skill to force a character to do something they are set against doing. This applies to both PCs and NPCs. A good use of the skill may heavily suggest an alteration but in the end, it is the controller of the character that decides - whether that is the player or the GM.

Re: Continuous power which is faster than me

Re: Affects Solid World Putting aside all the (good) game-balance reasons to have ARW on other powers when you're desolid; is requiring this advantage breaking a design principle in Hero? Maybe not an existing design principle but one what arguably should be in Hero? Should buying a power intrinsically affect the usability or cost of other powers? With ARW and Desolid as an example, you could argue that a player who purchases a large amount of defenses (making him basically immune to most attacks) should be required to pay more for attack powers. Conversely, you could argue that your other powers should qualify for a limitation "not when desolid" (a variant of "not when using power X"). Desolid is already a stop power and the ARW requirement basically means that you need to spnd more points. Does this mean that Desolid is under-costed? Comments? Flames?

Re: A look at Damage Reduction Care to provide an example?

Re: A look at Damage Reduction Just thinking off the wall here but... is there any really compelling reason to have Damage Reduction as a power or game mechanic rather than a form of Armor with appropriate limitations?

Re: Speed Rebate Oh, I'm not arguing that buying Dex is less efficient (it is more), but you also get other factors coming in. In addition to the speed increase, Dex-based skills (could) also go up. Is there any real reason to ever buy an 8pt skill level? Maybe if you want to add DCs to an attack...

Re: Speed Rebate Since the player want is to hit more often and be hit less often, that seems like an obvious case of using CSLs. Right?

Re: Waterspout Spell: -21 to Water Magic Roll? IMO, the RSR mechanic is somewhat flawed in that the active points impose penalties to the skill roll. For this reason, you have a "skill" that needs to be at outrageously high levels for a reasonable chance of sucess. At these high levels, it becomes relatively meaningless in judging the proficiency of two spellcasters. To judge accurately, you'd need to have an idea of what the active point penalties for all spells in the campaign - meaning how good you are at magic depends heavily on the specific campaign. Contrast that with two campaigns where characters have 18- stealth rolls. Both characters would be considered masters at stealth. I'd rather replace the RSR limitations with something like the following: requires an easy skill test requires a difficult skill test requires a challenging skill test and reqires a skill vs skill test on target where the limitation values would be related to how often the skill test would fail. This would be different than an activation roll in that situational modifiers would come into play. For example, the alignment of the planets and stars, enhancing materials, the skill of an opposing wizard.

Re: 11- or better 10+ Hero could also take a page out of the v3.0 book and standardize the mechanics for both ocv/dcv and skills. Personally, I'd like to see OCV and DCV officially become (everyman) skills.

Re: Cost of Armor vs PD/ED+Damage Resistance Dry and tasteless? I don't see how that follows. It's not really that different from having a generic Energy Blast. I do agree that an EB construct is a good shortcut over a Damage power with range, end, etc modifiers but that is no real reason not to have that underlying structure. You could have a meta-power system with more abstract concepts and then a refined base-powers list defined from that. I think that such an idea should be considered but for obvious reasons, not for the current incarnation (5th) of the game. IMO, Hero is getting to a point where it is about due for a good cleanup and simplification. With the release of 5th and all the support supplements, it doesn't make good business sense for the company to revise until a (far) future date. I suspect that we'd see a simplification once the tastes of the developer(s) lean toward less crunch. I used to be into the heavy crunch style but much less so nowadays - it seems like a natural progression.

Re: 11- or better 10+ Personally, I prefer the 10+DCV method and have used it for ages. The number of calculations are the same (unless you precalculate DCV+10, in which case you save 1 calculation) but my players find it much easier to add 10 to a number than to subtract.

Re: I thought this was in Dark Champions

Re: Bullets in vacuum? Just to point out some physics clarifications...

Re: What the heck is BODY anyways? The very same can be said for the other figured characteristics like PD, ED, REC, STUN, SPD. Following from the above argument, you could say that these characteristics are being tied (in part) to a sfx. But, the Hero system has already introduced using qualities like health (CON) influencing others like endurance and recovery. Does tying these stats to other stats (or qualities if you will) impose a specific sfx? I don't think so. I agree with you in that the stats define the game effect and the interpretation is your sfx. Just because you have poor coordination (low DEX) doesn't mean you can't react more often (high SPD). You just start off with a different baseline. Note that we are not explicitly tying a mass/size definition to the BODY characteristic if we have BODY as a primary OR a figured characteristic. You are free to adjust BODY after the base characteristic and define the sfx as you see fit. Moving BODY to a figured statistic will not change this. We already have other stats being based on physical qualities so moving BODY to a figured stat will not introduce an element of inconsistency. The inconsistency (if you consider it as such) is already there.

Re: What the heck is BODY anyways? Well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. You see some compelling points to leave BODY as a primary characteristic while I see some compelling points to move BODY as a figured characteristic. Lets just leave it at that.

Re: What the heck is BODY anyways? How not so? From a game mechanic standpoint where would you put a will to live characteristic? Alternatively, you could have an objective BODY characteristic (about the same for both examples), and use EGO-rolls to have the guy keep on going despite massive wounds. Sure, EGO may not be a precise fit here but it's a logical application IMO. The situations you've described seems to be more of a "death shock roll" rather than a function of BODY numerically being wittled away. At a certain point of physical damage, you're dead no matter what your "will to live". Since much of Hero and Champions takes it's inspiration from comics and fiction, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a wiry guy situation who doesn't have a level of toughness manifesting in CON or STR. Often in this material you have a big, bad, tough guy taking punishment and not staying down. While you'd probably disagree with me, I'd say that such a character would not be true to concept? IMO, a strong healthy character in most cases should be hard to put down. If you don't agree with me there, then none of my argument would sway you. In some recent games with newbie players, I've found that most almost always almost ignore BODY purchases. If they don't neglect it, they are uncertain as to what level is a "good" value. This actually got them into trouble in combat where they were expecting to play a big, strong (high STR), healthy (high CON) character and got blasted to near death. It was very much counter to their expectations - and expectations are what is important here. While you may disagree with the expectation (and you may be right), I think it's more useful for the game to have the expectation "build in" to the game mechanics. A player won't be surprised if his character goes down easily if he had made the choice of buying his character's BODY down.

Re: What the heck is BODY anyways? Or low rolls on the damage dice; maybe coupled with defenses defined as "combat luck". At some point tho, the game needs to be grounded on some basic physical assumptions. We see this in the other figured statistics like PD, ED, REC, etc. BODY is basically measuring your hit points and I see no real reason to have it as a primary characteristic. Compared to the other primary characteristics, it's out of place - no figured characteristic is based on it with the exception of Stun (which is also another form of hit points). Can you see a character making a BODY characteristic roll that wouldnt' be handled as a CON or STR roll? I dont' think so. Is it reasonable to have BODY independent from other physical characteristics like STR and CON? For the vast majority of games and concepts I'd say no. Any exceptions from this standard can easily be handled by buying a figured BODY characteristic up or down, or with an appropriate disadvantage. I'm not so much disagreeing with your statements here on what BODY stands for but making a case for having BODY as a derived quality.

Re: Realistic Accelleration... Well if you are going with a more "realistic model" then your calculated distances are off. Some formulas: d(t) = d0 + v0 * t + 0.5 * a * t^2 v(t) = v0 + a * t a : acceleration is 1 G (a constant) d0 : initial distance (assume it is zero here) v0 : initial velocity (assume it is zero here) so we get the following: d(t) = 0.5 * G * t^2 v(t) = G * t (as you have above) d(1) = 0.5 * 5" * 1*1 = 2.5 " d(2) = 0.5 * 5" * 2*2 = 10 " d(3) = 0.5 * 5" * 3*3 = 22.5" etc.. So you're a bit off but the curves remain close. At this point, I'm losing interest so I'll let someone else take over.