Klaus Mogensen

Re: Question about Combat skill levels and damage

Re: Question about Combat skill levels and damage These are truly great benefits, which you pay 30 points for on a 60-base power. However, if you instead use, say, 26 points to buy +40 END, +36 REC (END only, -1)), you get these benefits: - You save 4 character points for other stuff, like extra CON, DEF or STUN (making you harder to stun and knock out) or extra Multipower slots (making more powers available) - The power has only two-thirds the Active Points compared to buying 0 END - The power can be put into a smaller Multipower, with a reduced slot cost, saving 6 character points on each normal slot (that's 24 points saved on a four-power Multipower) - At SPD 6 or less, you can use the power indefinitely unless you get knocked out or END-Drained and still have 4 END left over for other uses. - At SPD 5 or less, you have left-over END and REC for other uses - If you don't use the power every single phase, you save END and REC for other uses - The power is unaffected by drains of "Reduced END" advantages - You have the option of spending STUN to fuel the power - If you spend a recovery action, you get lots of extra END, which e.g. can be used to push powers Another option for 30 points is to buy +90 END, +12 REC (non-limited). This provides the following benefits: - You can use the power at least 17 times (even at SPD 12) before having to worry about running out of END - At SPD 6, you can use the power every phase for 3½ turns before running out of END - The extra REC means you recover faster from being KO'd and generally wake with more STUN - You recover faster from BODY damage and many other effects - You are able to push a lot at the beginning of an encounter - Plus many of the benefits listed for the first option I can see a case for 0 END Cost for very high-SPD characters that want to have e.g. Force Fields running full time, but for most powers and characters, buying more END and REC makes a lot more sense. That was the case before the reduced costs of END and REC, and much more now. - Klaus

Re: Question about Combat skill levels and damage

Re: Question about Combat skill levels and damage That's madness! The cost of Reduced END (provided no other advantages) is 5 points per 1 END less (60 points active, Half END Cost: +15 points for reducing END Cost by 3; 60 points active, 0 END Cost: +30 points for reducing END Cost by 6). END is now only 0.2 points. For 5 points you can get 25 END, which is good for 25 uses - and the END can be used for other powers as well. - Klaus

Re: For you mathematically able out there The obvious thing is to change the range iincrements rather than the modifiers. Since 16*6/10 = 9.6 ~ 10, we get a new range chart: Range Mod Adjacent 0 2-5m 0 6-7m -1 7-10m -2 11-14m -3 15-20m -4 21-28m -5 29-40m -6 41-56m -7 57-80m -8 and so forth... You could round the numbers a bit, so you get 15m, 30m, and 60m instead of 14m, 28m, and 56m - Klaus

Re: Question about Combat skill levels and damage While we're on that topic, what are the rules for exchanging CSLs for damage in 6e? In earlier editions, being able to exchange two 3-point levels for damage was a too-good deal: 6 points for +1d6, 0 END Cost with a selection of attacks, compared to +1d6, 0 END bought normally at 7.5 points - with no option for exchanging this for OCV bonuses. Of course, with END being repriced at 0.2, I expect that "O END Cost" has been changed to a +1/4 advantage. Or has "Reduced END Cost" been reworked as an adder, as was suggested in the 6e forum? - Klaus

Re: Reading the blurry handout.... Would be interesting if it were 24 (cost 14), since that would mean there's no doubling for going past 20. That suggests base 3, cost 5 per +1 - not too surprising. If REC is base 2, cost has been dropped to 1. If END is base 20, and you read the numbers correctly, END cost has been dropped to 5 END for 1 point. If STUN is base 20, cost has been dropped to ½. These are significant reductions, particularly for END. - Klaus

Re: 4th-5th edition differences? Cosmetic or dramatic? I would stick with 4th or change to 6th. I never bought 5th (though I've read it) because it mainly had cosmetic changes and didn't address what I consider the real issues with 4th, and because it was much too wordy for my taste. Powers, even when essentially unchanged, are generally explained in two or three times the amount of text as in 4th. 5th Revised is supposedly far worse in this respect. Of course, if you need rulings for every imaginable combination of powers and advantages/limitations, a lot of text is good. For me, it is faster and more fun to just make on-the-spot rulings in such cases, as long as the general rules are clear. There are powers that take up three pages in 5e that are explained in five lines in Mutants & Masterminds 2, without being much more clear or flexible. - Klaus

Re: VPP: Skill roll to allocate w/o changing? Yeah, I think it is still required. However, the skill roll will be easier if you only shift 10 points rather than 40. - Klaus

Re: New Mechanic: Movement I like the general idea, but there should be modifiers for how common the medium of travel is. For instance, Flight and Swimming are both 3-dimensional, but Flight generally has far wider use. "Predefined space" is a bit vague. Will general Flight allow you to travel both in air and in vacuum, or should these be bought as separate 'spaces'? Will different planets count as different 'spaces'? I would like to see Movement as a single power where you pay full cost for the most versatile mode and then can add other modes very cheaply. For instance, if you have Flight, is should only cost a few points (perhaps a 5-point adder) to add Running or Swimming at the same speed. You can do something similar now with Multipower, but that has the odd result that you can swim twice as fast as you can fly, which seems counter-intuitive. (I know, I don't have to buy the Swim slot at full power, but it seems a waste not to). - Klaus

Re: AP-limit idea

Re: AP-limit idea

Re: AP-limit idea The problem with doing it with an advantage is that it can stack with other advantages. Say that a +½ advantage allows you to go to 120 points. Then you could either make (as Ghost Angel suggests) a 16D6 Energy Blast (80 Active Points); Active Point Exceeder Level 1 (+1/2) = 120 Active Points, where 40 of these points are from the Exceeder level. Or you could make a 8d6 EB, AoE (+1), 0 END Cost (+½), Active Point Exceeder Level 1 (+1/2) = 120 points, where only 20 points are from the Exceeder level. I would rather have something like Fuzion's "Rule of X", where the campaign limit is a sum of attacks, defenses, OCV and DCV (and perhaps SPD, STUN, CON and BODY), which means that you could have a character that is a heavy hitter, but has a glass jaw. - Klaus

Re: Hero System from the scratch.. I usually don't worry too much about conversion. As long as the characters are interesting and reasonably balanced, they don't have to be very much like in the original product. A useful shortcut for NPCs is to ignore END and REC - just assume that they have END enough for what they do, and don't let them recover any STUN during combat (unless it is dramatically interesting). - Klaus

Re: Power "Cooldown": how to write up What I meant is that by spending a few points extra on END, you could use the power several times before having to worry about recovery. There is a difference between having low recovery and having slow recovery. Recovering 100 END every hour is slower than recovering 1 END every turn, yet currently the former is vastly more expensive in an END Reserve. I did argue for that repeatedly in the 6e forum, and I hope Steve has rewritten it. As I see it, the main problems with the current version are: The END is much too cheap. There is no real reason it should be any cheaper than normal END, since the utility is more or less the same. You can't get it back through Recovery actions, but in return, you don't lose it when knocked out. The limitation for slow recovery isn't worth anything. It is always better to spend X points on REC/Turn than spending the same points on slower, limited REC. The slowest REC worth buying is 1/Turn, and that will recharge even a 100 END Reserve in 20 minutes. I outlined one solution above: limit powers according to how slowly the reserve recovers. Another, simpler solution is to not have a REC per se in a Reserve, but let all the END (at a cost of 1 per) recover every Turn. Then limitations can be applied to this cost for slower recovery. Having a 50 END Reserve that recovers every 5 minutes (-1) would hence cost 25 points. This corresponds reasonably to having 50 regular END (25 points) and 2 REC. - Klaus