Parallaxus

Thanks much, guys! Didn't expect several people to know that answer or have the book. It's been so long. I played back then, but I was a young teen at the time.

I have a related question. I didn't expect anyone to be old enough to remember the old piercing advantage, but since someone mentioned it, I will ask. I can't remember how it worked in terms of points piercing = point cost. Was it a flat point cost, or was it an advantage/adder like stuff is now where it added a fraction of the overall active points on? I tried googling the old rules on it, but can't find them anywhere.

We had some smart creative people in our group, a handful of which liked to try to be overpowered or unbalanced (game breaking) in some way. When we got one guy building a 1d6 hand attack with knockback and an extremely high amount of autofire, the way the rules worked allowed him to smush anything he punched down into the ground, and we had another guy wanting to use his version of "real life" rapid fire smart bombs, but he made the character speed 11 with the bombs being autofire x25, (and those were the two tamest things on the team, I won't even say what I did with my character), I decided to put caps on advantages when I ran. Even something as simple as a "special" sword, 1d6 or 2d6 killing with 3+ levels of penetrating is potentially unbalancing. So there's why. Going over them on a case by case basis is a better option, but my group would have just gone back to the drawing board to build something else to try to make combat ridiculous and impress the rest of the group. I saved myself a lot of trouble by just setting a 2 and a half maximum total advantage on any power in a 375 pt game.

It's really up to you, as GM, whether to put this inclusive limit. For me, it depends on the type of game I'm running. I've ran a few games where I set an active point limit on powers only, and one where I actually set different max limits on individual characteristics. I also am a fan of setting a max amount of total advantage modifier for any given power, Usually +2 or +2 and a half. If you want to keep your game manageable for a long time, I'd put more limits on things. The Hero system is a lot of mental work on remembering a ton of stuff simultaneously, the less work you have to do, the more you will enjoy running, and so, the longer you are likely to continue running. 50-90 points max, depending on overall character points, for everything is a good range of maximum for low to mid powered games.

I need to add on to what I just wrote. I didn't notice what else Armitage wrote and that solves my problem by confirming that what Hugh Neilson and Massey said are actual game rule as well. Thanks a ton guys, especially Armitage for those quotes. That means I can do what I was intending, since those examples are parallels to my issue.

My reason I ask the question in the form of Transform, is that some of the uses of this power WILL take the form of healing, and could also be used to summon, change environment, and also to damage/kill, so those powers will be bought as well to simulate those aspects of this ability. For the purposes of replacing objects, including plant life that may be completely annihilated, possibly even gone for hundreds or thousands of years, there is the very valid argument that I am creating something out of nothing, or in the case of making new flora, or building new buildings, which the character could also do, would require transform. So thus the question remains, however, after these answers, I'm getting the feeling of an overall consensus that ignoring the rules or making up the interpretation (which I don't like doing btw) that it's transforming one big object, is how to approach it. I also asked this question in the Steve Long answers section, but since he hasn't answered yet, I'm not expecting a response.

I was in the process of making a cosmic level powered hero, similar to Silver Surfer, when I hit a snag. I am making a transform power with very little limit on what it can do, and one of the most common uses for it is to be able to, in a huge area, undo damage to structures and flora in that area. To be able to avoid micromanaging the knowledge skills of how all of these things work and their molecular make-ups, I base it as a time reversal on a various area size depending on what objects need time reversal to restore them to a certain point in time, without affecting much space around the desired targets. Now the snag. Transform specifically says the player can NOT use area of effect to transform things into different things. All things in the area of effect would be transformed into the same thing. This essentially nullifies my original intent to buy it with area of effect to affect, for example, several buildings that have been destroyed/damaged back to their original state, since each is an individual, different object that would have to be restored to its original individual state. All buildings are different, so I could not transform them all into their respective forms before damage was done with one use of Transform, which is the power the character would have. So now my question: How do I achieve this with this rule blocking me? I've seen Silver Surfer effectively restore the beginnings of life on a planet by replacing its atmosphere and instantly creating various flora across the surface. These were basically done in one action each, not a septillion different uses of Transform. I know this power, the way I want it to work shouldn't be that troublesome, it's pretty simple and straight forward, despite being extremely powerful. I am certain the rules weren't intended to block this kind of use of the power. I would have used AoE selective, but this won't allow me to go around that rule either. So do I just get to disregard the rule for this particular power or is there a way within the constraints of the written rules to buy it?