zornwil

I thought it was in reference to Gary's dislike of ECs, I didn't think it had anything to do with you.

Great point.

Re: re: the small slot Personally I don't require that if you drain one power in an EC it drains all, it's just SFX to me either way, although if oyu have the right SFX drain you should be able to drain an entire EC. It just shouldn't be automatic if you drain, say, "energy blast" that you drain an entire EC tha tha sone, that doesn't make sense to me and flies in the face of SFX - what if (for example, yes it's cheesy) the drain is based on an SFX of "drains powers that can be morally abused" - the Force Field shouldn't be touched in that case (other than making osme bold logical leaps about how you can use an FF to ram into someone, but as that has no such game mechanic it wouldn't be valid anyway). Also, I ignore the END>0 rule as well in my game. Personally, I don't think ECs are underpriced - or overpriced - I just don't like how it doesn't work with smaller powers. I just wanted the UF to match the current rules, then it's easy after that to tweak to taste.

Re: Rethink Elemental Control The core would be 100, the max AP. So that's 100 points. Then you'd pay for the 100 point slots 100-(100/5) = 80, divided by 2 = 40. There's 4 slots, so that's 160, totaling 260 with the core. The 5th power, at 50, is 50-(50/5) = 40, divided by 2 = 20. Total = 280. But yes that's still smaller. Will think about it, it's the effect of the small slot essentially as you said. If the core is 50, then you have to buy all 5 slots at 50-(50/5) = 40, then divided by 2 = 20 apiece. So that's 150 total. Then you have to buy for the other 4 an additional 50 points each outside the UF, so that's 350 total. I didn't put it down, but you don't get a limitation for a linked power to something linked inside the UF as that's double-dipping in my view. However, the 280 vs 350 is an issue, I need to review as you suggested. I like what you wrote in how you are controlling it. I'll get back to you after a bit when I have more time, this is a rushed response.

The problem with that is scalability - having 3 powers linked may be less limiting than 6 powers linked, or more accurately 100 AP linked is worth less than 200 AP linked (just throwing out numbers), although at some point it's a VPP masquerading as an EC and the reverse happens, 300 AP linked is just a benefit basically. However, scalability is a problem with ECs in general. One option for ECs is to make the control cost the max AP of any power in the EC, and costs are reduced for each slot by 1/2 or 2/5 or "flavor to taste". If you want a power to have greater AP than the EC allows, you have to link it to an outside power that also has to meet all EC requirements, sort of like MP, with no "linked" limitation. Or some-such thing. It still gets cost effective as you get too many EC slots, BUT I would argue no worse than MPs. However, at the end of the day, I don't have a problem with #1 as in the quote above. I think all of the frameworks reward characters for tighter concepts as much as they do grant points for limitation. An MP can be (not saying it is innately) way more abusive than an EC, particularly with ultra slots. And so long as it's not abused, ECs seem to work cost-wise okay to me.

Q: I heard Disney white-washed Animal Farm - how does it end? A: The day the music died.

It seems okay, but I wonder if both this and the original one shouldn't be offered? They do slightly different things, and I think neither/either would be preferable. It makes me think that maybe it could be broken down into 2-4 different subsets which you could purchase together or separately. Theoretically that's how it's built anyway, but I don't feel like tracing back the components which made it in the book - isn't that info somewhere in HERO's downloads or such? Anyway, yeah, seems valid.

There's a good reason for people to think that: "Basically, Elemental Controls provide a cost savings to a character in exchange for (1) buying related Powers which fit his conception well and (2) accepting certain restrictions on those Powers." #1 pretty much says it. #2 though does mean something in my view. I believe you don't see it that way though (re #2) - which pretty much leaves only #1!

I've only GMed with 1 PC with Duplication, and he only split into 2 people. The balancing factor was that Dup was so costly you really were weak in other areas (in his case, his CVs were substantially sub-par compared to all others and he was slower). But that was back in the days when Dup costed a lot more. So it wasn't an issue. However, between Followers and Summons and Dups, there's lots of potential for way too many characters running around and way too powerful PCs. Here's a few thoughts on the matter: - Summons - they must make them as well-defined as PCs, even if under GM control; there's no confusion, and besides, the more work the PC has to do, the more likely that although it may be very effective, he's limited by how much he can get done - if he dumps on you "build me 2 vampires, 3 werewolves, an agent who does this, an agent who does that, etc." then an expectations gap occurs - you can't do it all without fudging and he may be unhappy at the results. Now, of course, you can tweak the Summoned characters in ways the PC might not know (so long as it's reasonable/within the context of the game and character and Summoned things). - Dups - Pay careful attention to the limitations in the book built into Dups. Ensure the PC understands that these Dups do not have any innate link (if he wants it, he has to build it), and they are SEPARATE versions of him. If he can't handle that, you, GM, take half. - Any of these - I wouldn't let a player have too many dups or summons or followers at one time unless there was not merely a good rationale but ALSO some built-in modifiers to ensure that they act quickly. I'm not sure what "too many" is, but 8 definitely is a lot. A whole lot. So they should have something that would make their phases go quickly ("follows leader" (especially interesting if it's the team lead and not the player), "takes hasty actions", "does the opposite of the last guy to do something", etc.) - do NOT apply this as a limitation on the DUP power; if you want to give any points for it, give them as a disad. Yes, this impinges on the concept - but having a player with 8 characters impinges on the game. That's like my time traveling guy - I made him take a disad of "always upholds 'true' time stream" so he wouldn't competely muck things up. - I don't do this, but again, for any combo of many players, enforce some limits on powers and such, much more scrupulously than with regular PCs. Maybe even make more stringent limits and consider the cumulative effect. That's a few thoughts for now, may have more later.

If your players know HERO pretty well and have some likelihood of having genre books, it will save you some grief if you're familiar with them. Of course in that event you could just borrow them. If you really are into world-building then you could forego the genre books, but they're good enough to have for reference/ideas in my opinion regardless of how much you like to tweak on your own. If you're into world-building and rules-tweaking both, you should enjoy the perspectives of the genre books whether you implement anything from them. As stated earlier, yes you have to have the 5th edition rulesbook.

3 frameworks can be okay but deserves attention. More than that deserves a fine-footh comb (though by all means might be fine).

Yeah, I figured as much, and I agree it's not about the better designer. FWIW, I agree with you on this one AgentX.

I'd like to see you guys build a Brick and a Martial Artist (or Blaster) with 350 points with all standard HERO rules, no optional rules, but with "stop" powers. Let someone on the board be the arbiter of any funkiness in the stop powers (whoever you both agree on). Basically you could agree on a time to post at, that way there'd be no advantage in seeing the other guy ahead of time. Ideally PBEM 3 combats, whoever wins 2 is the winner. Then repeat for a contest of best out of 7 rounds total - that way if one of you happens to come out of the gate with a better design, you should learn enough about each other's designs to make it more competitive each round. 7 rounds (one Brick vs a Martial Artist or one Brick vs a Blaster each time) should give enough opportunity to see if there's a big difference. A 4-3 split should certainly indicate there's not a big difference. However, that's an awful lot of work...still, it would be a good study.

Good point, thanks. Our group used to play more on weekends, this summer really knocked things out of kilter for some reason. I'm itching to get back to more playing. I'm sure the reason I fiddled with this so much was a lack of game time.

Q: I heard the Hilton Sisters are going on one of the raunchier talk shows, which is it? A: It was found on Google, I was very surprised.

That bad, eh? Totally useless? Go ahead and say so. Bumping just to see if there's any feedback. I know it's not good, given the silence...but maybe it'll be interesting. PS EDIT - at the least, I'm thinking of using the Elemental Slots as the basic method within an Elemental Control. I think this might work well for putting small powers into it without getting them too cheaply (as in the various half price options).

Oh but that was just WAY too funny, and I never anticipated that reaction to the situation. You gotta admit, it's not like someone wouldn't have done something similar to that NPC eventually. Besides, you know how far that went to show that Spectrum just "wasn't right" anymore without actually stating it? Perfect moment! (I know you weren't seriously criticizing, it's just one of those great moments worth dwelling on, even publicly). Also, it'll be interesting to see how the NPC will react when rescued. Can you say potential enemy in your midst?

Just curious - as a GM, how lenient or how strict are you? I admit, I'm really lenient typically. There's no right style of course, so this isn't intended to trigger any debate on a "better" style, just wondering what people have to say. Yeah, I'm sure this has been on the boards before. Anyway, when I say lenient, in my case, I mean that character concepts may be pretty far-out, stop powers are usually allowed, that sort of thing. In-play I'll give consdierable flex for cool ideas and interesting tangents. I don't stick to the preordained notes/script much at all. However, my boundaries come up not just where the fun might be hampered (I'm sure everyone has that boundary), but also where I think it will have too destabilizing an affect on the game world or where it seems to make one character just way outstanding above the others. That's probably really where it lies.

Thanks, I'm always worried about it, but have allowed the can of worms to be opened. I think you put it well though and hit the nail on the head - a really high INT is a curse, and objectively speaking, Laughton and Sihn (the two characters in question) really aren't dealing with the real world in fundamental ways. Lemming's note reminded me, too - I don't let (or I try not to let) the high INT characters tromp on the other one's areas of intellectual expertise. My feeling is that while those super-super-INT ones may academically know a lot about the law or medicine or whatever, they don't have the talent or skill in the real-world unless they not only have the PS but ALSO are willing to have their characters put their time and energy into it. So the PS is a bit wasted comparatively, though it still opens the doors for them to do things they couldn't otherwise (practice law, practice surgery when needed). For example, in this campaign lemming's character is a legal specialist. One of the other characters with much higher INT is also a lawyer technically (passed the bar, can practice), but he didn't spend his background focusing on it and still doesn't really focus on it. So he doesn't get the real benefits that Spectrum (lemming's) gets when in court. Besides, I do treat the high INT as a curse - sometimes he talks way over the heads of the jury, that kind of thing. Of course when a high INT character does focus on something, such as Sihn who studied medicine and still practices, the other high-INT one mentioned above, they are fabulous at it. I do allow incredible results - for example, Sihn has treated alien bodies and he can clone with relative ease (the player is mature enough not to abuse it, and I'm willing to tell him the boundaries, as lax as they are, when he gets over those boundaries).

Re: What would your character do VII? This one I can answer with ease. He'd consult the spirits for guidance. If he felt based on their feedback that she had a good reason to be a villain, he'd discuss it with her, probably leave her alone - heck, maybe help her out. If he felt based on their feedback this was a lesson he was supposed to learn and she was bad, he'd give her his infamous chop to the throat. If they didn't give any feedback, he'd try to talk with her, but if she wasn't talking, hed' go into combat mode.

I've been looking through, and I don't see how to scale up the page setup. I can zoom in, but that doesn't carry through to the printing. And I can't find a setting anywhere to make the print bigger. Thoughts? I know you're not Adobe tech support, but since HERO put out the game and given your note above, thought you might be able to lend a hand. Thanks.

I'm probably the only GM in the world with 2 players in an INT war that has them up somewhere near 100 points now (high-growth game), though that includes some Aid. As such...maybe you shouldn't listen to me! The two PCs though are pretty interesting in their application of it. To oversimplify, one sees every nuance in everything and chases every sort of detail, including many red herrings although of course he's so smart he can follow those SOMEWHERE exciting; he basically doesn't see the forest for the trees - and the rocks, and the grass, and the insects, and that little thing over there that I THINK means something... The other PC doesn't see the trees through the forest. People are insects (not that he treats them that way), everything is a grand sweep. He's started exploring deep magic (which of course to him is science), sort of Lovecraft (that's the player's inspiration in many regards), and doesn't really take note of the consequences since they're "irrelevent" - he's so smart he understands them but doesn't feel the "need" to worry about them. As far as how I deal with it, it's pretty simplistic. I don't let ridiculous INTs destroy PER rolls and such. There's realisms and effectively the GM cap on such things. However, the high INTs (if not at the insane level I have, setting that aside) are GREAT for skill-vs-skill rolls against master villains. Remember, when the team is going through the master villain's base, the security systems and the computers should be a duel of wits between the master villains (if brainy) and the super-INT PC. So have skill-vs-skill rolls wherever there's appropriate locks and security codes and such. Re sleuthing, I ask for some sort of details as to the APPROACH - I understand players aren't going to be real-life sleuths, but they can indicate "I interview people" or "I use the computer" or the like. If they're really stuck, especially with a high INT, I gladly give them OPTIONS which I would not describe to lesser INT PCs, and that seems to work okay. With high INTs AND appropriate skills you can give opportunities you might not otherwise give so long as they feel "realistic" (per the campaign world of course), and it becomes a great opportunity for obscure skills. For example, one character with high INT and Tactics was asking whether an opponents was near enough to ensnare or if it was too risky. Certainly his character had a number of applicable skills. However, given the character's brilliance and the fact that he did buy Tactics (and that rarely gets used), I did roll a secret roll and determined to give him a pretty strong but realistic clue about what could reach the opponent. Given that they had really already beaten the opponent and it was a matter of escape along with their inevitable pursuit, I felt this worked.

Re: Re: Transform Power Question Lots of stuff snipped. Basically, I really liked your take. I don't even try to get into Phys/Spirit/Mental in Transforms, I pretty much ignored that, even though I DO like them as general ideas to wrap your head around and inform the Transform you build. But I don't use them as "rules". Anyway...regarding the above... I would only add, and this is nitpicky but perhaps of interest, that telepaths who work on "hearing" thoughts (including background ones or "signature" sorts of thoughts) would work as you described above - as would "magical" telepaths. However, if you have telepaths who are built around the whole brain-wave theory and they're picking up electrical currents basically and interpreting those, then I'd say they'd "see"/"hear" mentally the being as the person they knew, as in mind scanning, but as soon as they reached in at all and got thoughts they'd almost surely know it wasn't whom they used to know.

On a related note, an interesting character entered my game a while back. We didn't have time to really flesh it out as he was just visiting, but it was a neat take on luck. Basically, he set up an MP with some 8 powers IIRC. They included the basics - Energy Blast, some defense thing (Armor I think) - and some oddball things like Summon and a power I can't exactly recall but basically it was sort of a blurred PRE attack. Here's the drill - he could trigger the MP at will but he could NOT choose which one - whichever one went off was random. Furthermore, each one he had no real control over other than naturally they'd be beneficial to him. So here's some examples of play: - when the team he met up with faced Magneto vs X-Men, and joined in with the X-Men vs Magneto, he rolled up the PRE attack-type thing (I'm sorry, I just can't recall what the basis of the power was now exactly); I ruled he was lucky enough to know someone who knew Magneto - and do what he wanted with it! He called to Magneto in that guy's voice (being lucky and having rolled the power, I let that happen, and did a secret roll which indicated a degree to which it was believable - i think I used his luck dice, it's been a while so I don't recall) and Magneto, just having been blinded by Storm, swallowed it hook line and sinker. He encompassed Dice (the lucky character) IN WITH HIM IN A FORCE WALL and helped him "escape"! Then Dice rolled up his EB; he previously had rolled it up and therefore "discovered" an energy blast rifle in the X-Men's vehicle (which he had been in rescueing Xavier). So he took his "lucky shot" and it bounced around the Force Wall, gathering force, and hit Magneto, jarring him somewhat. Of course that ended the ruse, but that had all bought some time and put some damage on Magneto he was completely surprised by (damage bonus). The match ended a draw as Magneto decided to withdraw for a couple reasons. - in the other of 2 sessions the PC played, he was accompanying the team going after Kingpin; unknown to anyone, they were being followed by a brutal vigilante, Wrath, determined to kill Kingpin (though with really good reasons, most people in his circumstance would have wanted to kill Kingpin). He rolled up his Summon or EB (can't recall which) so he got a hefty weapon from Wrath (who was a weapons expert already). This was instrumental in getting one extra hit on Kingpin - he missed once but hit another time. It was really fun, both to observe and GM.

The only particularly troubling thing is the 2d6 delay after the events thing, as it's a bit of a penalty to the point that those characters who deliberately have high REC or some reduction in knockback are getting into more trouble than they bargained for and in particular REC is devalued somewhat. However, I can see this in the attempt you're taking at increasing realism, and I think therefore it wouldn't be too provocative in a heroic setting, but I think it's going too far in a super-heroic setting. Just my initial thoughts.