Kdansky

Re: Mnemonic aid If usable on others: Aid Int, since succor is just plain and utter broken cheap. Anything else is way too complicated (again). If you only use it yourself: Eidetic memory with some limitations.

Re: Avoiding The Blow/Artful Dodging Way too complicated. Armor 10/10, Activation Roll 11-, 30 AP, 15 real. Sometimes you dodge, sometimes you don't. Might want to add the stuff from Combat Luck (only when aware of attack) and so on if you want.

Re: Multiple Power Attacks: How much is too much? Why should it be unreasonable? If you buy two powers, you get to use two powers. You get Flight and EB, I get EB and another EB. That is not inherently broken. Basically, all powers which are not in a multipower (or VPP) and don't have Lockout are by definition usable at the same time. Defenses, Movement, Attacks, and all other things. If you have to pay for the right to MPA and you get a limitation if you can't do it, then what is the default where you don't do either?

Re: Vertigo Immunity But there are not too many vertigo-inducing Attacks anyway, and I'm pretty sure they might be NND if there were. Which would fit the bill perfectly.

Re: Vertigo Immunity Life Support: Immune to Vertigo: 1cp That's how I would build it. Does not come up often, does not cost much.

Re: Multiple Power Attacks: How much is too much? From a theoretical standpoint, I see the "Use STR twice" problem. But then, I highly disagree on how strength stacks with damage in the first place. If you use STR twice, that's called "Sweep" and fine with me. OTOH: If you buy two attack powers and want to use both in the same phase? Go ahead, you may even roll twice and attack two targets if the SFX makes sense. After all, you just spent twice the points on attacks. You could have bought +6 Speed for those 60 points and essentially attack twice as often instead. From a practical standpoint: No player has ever tried to MPA in my games. And on another note: My new game has finally launched, we've survived the first two sessions (although one battle got a bit short after realizing just how utterly broken suppress STUN is... basically 12d6 AVLD).

Re: Elemental Control Vs. Multipower It might actually be amusing to build a couple utterly broken characters where everyone tries as hard as possible to abuse the system and then see who wins My megascaled teleport + Uncontrolled Continuous Ego Attack Does Body vs your Density Increase STR Growth 25d6 attacks. Sounds amusing

Re: Elemental Control Vs. Multipower Your characters are all speed 3 I guess, since you don't usually buy figureds? And they have very low PD/ED too? All characters except possibly high-end bricks need to buy figureds at some point. That's fine. The guidelines often are not correct either. If you have low strength, STUN will usually not be above 30, which is quite a bit too less for a 60-AP game. The last 10 characters I build bought: PD/ED, Speed and Stun. Some also bought END. If it's a guideline, then it's a bad one. My first characters were utterly ridiculous anyway. Figureds made them about 10% less broken, out of 200% brokenness. They were UTTER FAIL anyway. No amount of polish on the outermost walls will save a reactor from a nuclear meltdown.

Re: Elemental Control Vs. Multipower There should be no figureds. Far cleaner and waaaayyyy easier to balance. Also makes Adjustment powers a breeze. Putting them on BODY instead of STR is like building cars that run on petroleum gas instead of petrol because petrol is bad for the environment: Pointless. But we're drifting off topic. It also gets rid of Mega Strong Energy Lad being cheaper than Super Weak Energy Lad. Of course you are allowed to play a certain concept, but do you really want to pay 5 points extra to have 50 strength less? If you are better, you pay more points (no matter the concept). In case of strength, that obviously does not work (+50 Strength costs less than a single skill on most characters). Therefore it needs fixing.

Re: How do you guys deal with WoTC drones? The things that don't work well in Hero often involve DEX and STR, for the obvious reasons that those stats are so horribly badly balanced. Also see the bazillions of threads on the subject. I hope 6th will rectify this. If that is the case, D20 will stand no chance against our superiority! We will reign supreme!! ALL HAIL HERO!!!

Re: A different way of doing Disads I'm totally for removing disads from character points too. Heroic Points (or luck dice if you want) should work well. Everytime you succumb to a disad, you get some HPs, everytime you strain to ignore it, you have to pay some (probably less than you would get, I propose 1:3). Mainly carrot, very little stick. And yeah, I would sooooo drown in HPs, I would not need more than 3 OCV ever

Re: How do you guys deal with WoTC drones? I am mostly annoyed that nearly any ressource on RPG, be it about story, GMing, advice or whatever is written for Fantasy D20, usually (still) 3.5. I've had enough of barbarians and sorcerers, I've played that genre for 12 years now! Can we get other examples please? (I'm looking at you, John's Roleplaying Tips) And I also have two players in my group who are utterly mezmerized by DSA and wouldn't ever consider running anything else. Because you know, it might actually be fun too... They went as far as threatening to (not explicitly, but "I might sit out this one if we play it" is a threat to me) and then actually leaving the group over this because I did not want to GM their game (take the seat yourself if you want something so badly, yes?!). Took us like 5 seconds to find replacements, so no harm done (to me).

Re: Elemental Control Vs. Multipower I recommend using VPPs and MPs, but utterly ignoring ECs. They are cumbersome and weirdly priced and generally only work in Champions as a setting. If you want to use their concept, use Unified Power (-1/4) on all powers that are Drained As One and have the same SFX. Not only does it make calculations a lot easier, it doesn't bother about end costs or AP costs and so on. And in the end, it actually saves a comparable amount of points (a bit less, which is usually justified since EC isn't very limiting to the character). Why do we have ECs? Because it's a relic from older editions. That does not make them any good though, only old. Figureds? Yeah, those are unbalanced too and nobody can stop a character from having figureds AND an EC. As I demonstrated countless times, you can usually rebuild any blaster with AP-capped strength instead of whatever he had to begin with without losing anything important (you might have 18" flight instead of 20" in the end, but you gain 60 strength vs 10, hardly a difficult comparison in utility, since str is incredibly useful at all times for all characters).

Re: Doesn't anyone like low-powered campaigns? Oh! Thread necromancy! *starts to chant*

Re: Rolling lots of D6s I use the "roll some amount of dice and add +3.5 * rest of dice" for very large amounts of dice, usually in 10's (10d6 is 35, very easy for calculations). 25d6? 5d6 + 70, but this is an extreme example. I'd probably rather do 15d6 + 35 to preserve the bell curve as close as possible. Since I have about 15d6 equal d6, everything above that becomes fixed. Standard Effect rules with 1d6 = 3 are just messed up. I houserule those as 1d6 = 3.5 usually, might depend on the power and number of dice. I would like to be able to do things like Energy Blasts using d8's or d10's (for more spread), or d4's for less. Or declare: "My EB is always 5d6 + 21 instead of 11d6", but then, that probably should be reflected in cost somehow. After all, I'd highly prefer (munchkin-wise) 1d90 instead of 15d6, since that gives me a 30% or so chance of instagibbing anyone.

Re: Utsusemi aka Blink? Actually, yes, I would allow a "Instant" Limitation on top of that, because it does not last a full phase, and not even a full segment (which is default for charges). Also, the wished for quote does not exist, I mistakenly "quoted" Delayed, not Trigger. I mix those up regularily.

Re: Learning from the mistakes of others Of course these words were chosen for a reason. But MTG is the first thing I remember which heavily used names for something you could also write out, therefore I used it as an example. For example the old difference of "Destroy" vs "Bury". Bury meant you could not regenerate, but you could against Destroy. WoW (the best MMO example) does it too, excessively even (Stun, Daze, Root, Fear, Terror, DoT, Armor Penetration, etc). And there comes D4, with it's "shift 4 squares" and so on. That is something that reminds people of MMOs. It's also very different from DnD, especially first and second edition. The descriptions in D4 are also more "Rules-Lawyering". If you read a couple hundred MTG cards, you will realize that they always use the same formulaeic sentences, and so does WoW. There was a game industry before CCGs? How did they make money back then? Now if you want to see me sprout hate, talk about D3.5. I have not even played it and I cannot stand it's messed-up-ness.

Re: Utsusemi aka Blink? Pf, my build was a lot cheaper But yours is very clean. And yes, Ichi 一, Ni 二, San 三, Shi/Yon 四 are japanese numbers and Shi 死 means death. I love being a smartass. Look at my location, will you I would replace "Limited Power Power loses about a third of its effectiveness (Only works 4 times then needs re-casting; -1/2)" with Charges: 4. Charges can be used in multiple ways. And it is completely legal to set up multiple triggered charges at the same time (see book).

Re: Cleanse the Planet Change Environment, Megascale (lots). It even has a "cleaning" example right there on the page!

Re: Utsusemi aka Blink? Again, this is an Absolute Effect and as such, hard to model. The best Idea I can come up with: Summon Shadow. Dex: As high as possible. Slavishly loyal, Damn Stupid. They only do one thing: They Dive For Cover in front of you and take the blow in your stead. This is a valid maneuver. Give them low defenses and low body (1 body, 0 def), and they will die in a single hit. Summoning covers the 4 at a time, charges covers the items you need. They could technically be targetted, but that does not make much sense, since their dex is probably higher than yours anyway. AoE will take them out, so might sweeping or autofire against you. If you don't want them to fail their DFC roll, add some luck to reroll the dice. A 17- with two tries should be enough in most cases. Works pretty well I think. Oh yeah, I forgot: FFXI is a mediocre game

Re: Dual Strike By the way I write up Deadly Blow as "RKA (adds to HKA), No Range (-1/2) etc" No doubling danger Also, another stylish build I recently found which you could use as a build for the Dual Strike SFX too: I Just Stabbed You In The Really Soft Spots: +2d6 RKA, no Range (-1/2) or +2d6 HKA, STR does not add (-1/2) identical anyway. No End (+1/2), 45 AP Activation Roll 6- (-4) OAF (-1) No Stun (-1) real cost: 6 Gives you +2d6 of body damage (but no stun, just because it's cooler this way, Rule Of Cool is important) if you roll a 6 or lower on your attack roll (this is the neat thing: The activation roll is defined as your attack roll). Also, you never bother with it except if you really roll low (means you don't pay end for it). Only problem: Works really badly if you have NPAs on your attack (like Autofire 3 hits). You would have to buy the NPA for another 45 AP (this construct) and slap all the same -6 Limitations on it. True, that's not very expensive, but it's complicated. You can substitute Armorpiercing in that case.

Re: Characteristic inflation I basically tell my players: AP cap is roughly 60, so up to that point, you can have nearly anything. I will very rarely object to such constructs. If you want to go above that, you certainly may for some things. Examples include Area of Effect, or IPE, especially if heavily limited. DC cap is 10 to 12, depending on your overall powers, speed and dex. CVs are between 7 and 10, mainly depending on your Damage per hit and on speed. If you have speed 4, you may have a very high CV. If you have speed 7, not so much. In the end, I eyeball everything That is not a clean solution, but it's not a bad one either. I do things like: "Ok, you bought your attack as a power OAF, everyone else uses equipment or MPs, which is far cheaper for the same damage. You may ask me for some other crazy construct somewhere else (in this case, a 10 AP MP including KBresistance, Powerdef, Flashdef, Resistance, Mental Def and so on, all ultraslots) in exchange :)"

Re: core "modes" of gameplay Certainly.

Re: Characteristic inflation NCM isn't such a great idea to begin with, especially if you take it for 20 points (or you don't). I agree that it works on a "Everyone has to have it"-basis. But then, it just produces even stronger Soft Spots (Dex 20, str 20, con 20) which everyone wants. I know, most of the forums here will tell me "No, your mage cannot have 20 dex!", even though that would fit his concept. Why? Because it's game balance spilling over. If STR, DEX and CON would cost double to begin with, that would work a lot better. Or rather, get rid of figureds (I am repeating myself, but for a good reason). So you are playing a game with strict classes, congratulations, you have just castrated HERO. This is the wrong approach (well, currently it's the only band-aid that exists), and you know it. In my games, there is no such thing as a "Brick" and "Speedster" and "Martial Artist". Dawkins calls this the "Discontinous Mind". We (humans) try to put categories on everything. But in a freeform system (or real life) everything is on a sliding scale. Is Colin Powell black? No, his skin colour is about as white as mine. Shades of grey everywhere. If I want to play a game with classes, I'd play DnD 4th.

Re: Characteristic inflation Levels with all combat are particularily pointless. 8 points: +1 OCV or DCV (or ECV) 6 points: 3 dex: +1 OCV plus + 1 DCV. By selling back speed, which you *always* can do, since you never have a character who does not buy speed. The levels that make sense: +1 to OCV for a single Attack for 2 points is decent. +1 to OCV for a MP for 3 points is ok at best. You could also spend 6 points and instead of getting +2, you get +1/+1 and other stuff. But it has it's uses. +1 DCV for 5 points is useless. You can also have +1 DCV for 6 points, which comes with a ludicrous amount of free stuff. I use 3 cp levels as "all DCV" to prevent DEX inflation for defensive purposes. 8 point levels are horrible for anyone except possibly mentalists. But then, they are usually better off buying EGO directly, since that only costs 6 points per +1 ECV and gives bonuses to ego rolls, skills (not many) and Mental Def. 10 points levels are again quite good, because they have got so many other uses. Still, you could buy (dex) +1OCV and +1DCV and have got 4 points left. Enough for a Skill Level, but not a really broad one. Or a slightly limited broad one. And don't get me started on "+1 to all int skills" for 5 points... Characteristics are too cheap due to figureds. I'm putting my faith in 6th. Actually, there was a great article on that in one of the last Digital Heros.