Fearghus

Re: Mind Control Bug Well the continuous and uncontrolled advantages is what comes to mind for making it more or less permanent... I am not certain any skill roll would be required to implant the bug unless implanting it requires surgery or something.

Re: Mental Powers Contest You hit the nail on the head... He was a few points short of being able to overcome the mind control. It was also that the story depended pretty strongly that the NPC be arrested, so if the PCs could just zap him with a mind control and prevent him from assaulting someone it would kind of have ruined the adventure.

This game is still 5E I have a Player in my group that is playing a mentalist and I have been playing things a certain way but I am thinking that it might not be the appropriate way to play it. I am not going to change it mid game since the character built it at a certain level because of the way were were playing it. Here is the situation... He bought most of his powers at low dice levels but at cumulative x8 effect. the idea is he can't just go BAM and read your mind... it takes him time to build up to it. (I suggested when he first created the character that he take the extra time limitation rather than cumulative advantage... so before I get the chorus of suggestions for that... I already thought of that.) The question is... when does an NPC get a breakout roll? after every attack? or only after the attacks have reached the desired effect? When the character passes a breakout roll does it break out of the WHOLE POWER? or just one attack? I tend to think of cumulative powers as one power (since the effects stack) so I consider that the break out breaks the whole thing... but similarly I have also been not rolling the break out until the character actually uses the power. So for example... The player wants to find out the name of and how to find Thug's boss. I determine that he needs to roll ego +20 to get that effect. So the player makes his telepathy attack rolls his 5d6 and rolls 17 no where near close to ego +20, so phase he rolls the attack again and this time rolls well and rolls 21 so the total effect is 38 which now crosses that ego +20 threshold and now begins trying to probe Thug's thoughts so NOW Thug gets his breakout roll against the TOTAL result. If I were to do it with each attack he'd have gotten a roll after the first attack... probably broken out... and the player would have had to start over. But it occurs to me that strictest interpretation of the rules he should get a break out roll with each attack making cumulative pretty much a useless advantage for mental powers. What does everyone else think?

I had a weird situation come up in a game last weekend and I ruled a certain way that made a player sort of unhappy, but oh well. Below is the situation, and I will explain how I ruled after, and I would like to know what everyone else thinks. At the time I could not find an appropriate rule in the book to cover this situation and while I have not re-read the entire book to find out I think my ruling makes the most sense. So an NPC was being compelled to act a certain way (aggressively) by a drug that was administered by a bad guy. I built the drug as mind control with the set effect that you attack anyone you see with what ever attacks you may have at your disposal. There is a mentalist in the group of players that tried to wrest control of the NPCs mind from the drug by using his own mind control power. I ruled that the player would have to trump (roll higher effect) the existing power before he could get control of the NPC. So say the NPCs ego is 12, the drug in his system had an effect roll of something like 54. So I ruled the PC trying to gain control of the NPC had to achieve an effect roll of at least 55 to control the NPC. So for future reference I want to know if there is already an existing rule in the book for this situation that anyone knows of? If there is not how would you like to see it handled if this situation was in your game? Also BTW we are playing 5th not 6th, but I imagine the same question applies to both. Thanks

Re: Special Effects Interactions: Burden on the defender or the attacker? when it comes to special effects I try not to over think things. Look at what the character spent points for and GM THOSE EFFECTS. To give you a better idea I will answer your questions one by one... No. No vulnerability paid for = No vulnerability No. No Drain paid for = No Drain Only if they are paid for. If Burnerman has flame armor that is vulnerable to water attacks and hydroman has a water jet drain fire power then The both happen, but if they didn't buy the powers that way they don't get any special benefit just because the special effects are water and fire.

Re: (5th Ed) Base Living Quarters Well I can say from experience that when the US military designs living quarters for enlisted personnel in infantry units (barracks style bunks) a each person is alloted approximately 200-300 sqft. in 5th ed that averages to about 6 hexes per person that includes a common bathing facility, a common social room and a sleeping room. in lean times the common social room will be converted to sleep room and the head is designed over sized for that reason. All those numbers are assuming a land base. On Navy ships I know quarters are MUCH tighter probably down to 2-3 hexes per person including common spaces. So... if he wants comfortable happy minions he will give them 6 hexes each if he wants to pack them in like sardines then you could probably get away with 2 hexes each

Re: Vehicle Damage And Body Ya know I have often considered this as well. I am not sure how to fix this though a player of mine suggested just juicing the numbers up to more durable levels. Perhaps splitting the vehicle up into hit locations would be more accurate. after all 13-14 body to a tire should destroy it, or 13-14 body to the engine should destroy it but it would have a much higher DEF than the tires simply because it is contained within the metal body of the car.

Re: "Leadership" multipower That's pretty sick! I think my players just met their next super villain! A guy with this multi power could effectively lead a group of normals against a group of low level supers with all the bonuses he can heap on. It kind of reminds me if Bless or Bardic music from D&D Sorry... that seems to happen every time I mention that game.

Re: DC Guidelines versus DEF Guidelines I don't know about the rest of you but I tend to buy up non-resistant defense as well as resistant defense to soak up the stun. Maybe that average number in the book is only reflecting the resistant defense total not the defense total. If you are fairly certain you won't be facing an attack that is more that 10-12 DC then there is not much point in spending the extra points on resistant defense beyond 12-14. After that I buy normal defense... it's cheaper and I might safe enough points for an extra CSL or two.

Re: 6E Hexmap? Actually the conversion to hexes for D&D is alot simpler than you might think. But this isn't the board for that discussion.

Re: Some newbie rules questions I pretty much agree with what everyone else said. When using a square grid for movement our group always considers the first diagonal move to be 1 and the second to be 2. basically ever other one counts as 2 meters so your character with a running of 20m could move diagonally about 14-15 squares. It works out pretty well. The only time it seems to matter is when you have really fast characters since as Joe pointed out the diagonal measurement of a 1" x 1" square is 1.414" not 1.5" so a fast character might be ale to squeeze an extra inch or two of movement out of a diagonal move, but I don't consider this worth the headache to worry about it. So long as all characters (players and NPCs) are moving using the same rules it won't matter.

Re: 6E Hexmap? I use hexes for ALL games where we play out combat on a map. Even... D&D sorry that seems to have left a bad taste in my mouth. But anyway yes I still use a hex map. It just makes tracking combat much easier.

Re: Random Thought: Splitting Speed Ditto! I have often lamented why my mentalists have to buy extra speed to keep up with other characters number of attacks. But again... the complicated version of separate actions for Mental and Physical is pretty complicated.

Re: Random Thought: Splitting Speed I got to say I am not crazy about this either. First off splitting actions essentially doubles your actions since you can't both defend and attack in the same action normally since Block and Dodge are considered attack actions anyway. So if for every action you would get under the normal rules you get one attack and one defense then you are basically turning combat into a long series of attack and block rolls. An attack connecting will have a much harder time hitting since now you won't loose an attack to dodge or block... more or less this move would just serve to not only make combat take longer but slant every attack in favor of the defender.

Re: Chuck Norris Facts as Powers for HERO?

Re: CON Only to Resist Stunning The only drawback to this is that it reduces versatility. If I want to represent a character that is large (high body) but for what ever reason easily fatigued (low con) I can't do that if there is only one stat. unless I buy a limitation on a portion of the characteristic which makes it MORE complicated not less so. I like the distinction between body and con for that reason.

Re: CON Only to Resist Stunning Con is one of those characteristics that has become less important in 6th ed than in 5th Ed. or I guess a more accurate way of phrasing it it has become more less important. The separation of calculated characteristics has had the most drastic effect on Dex but Con has become useless for almost anything other than resisting stun or the arbitrary Con rolls a GM may require of players. As such I am thinking "Only to resist stun" limitation would be no more than -1/4, and I would likely not allow it to be a limitation at all in my games.

Re: Questioning the Multi-power Framework This is almost exclusively how I use multi-powers when making PCs or NPCs. I think of the multi-power as different attack modes of the same power. So the human torch has one blast that has AOE:cone, one that has autofire, and one that is an HKA. all have the same active points all are attacks made with the same power used in a different way. While it is true you can put movement powers and defense powers into an MP I wouldn't want to make the choice between my armor and attacking.

Re: Telekinetic Body This really sounds like a multi-form to me. Aside from that I like GA's Idea of growth with all the other powers linked to it.

Re: Total NEWB gushing over how amazing this forum is You have hit on not only what is great about this forum but what is great about the HERO system in general. Because the Hero System "rules" aren't so much rules as a tool kit. building a character feels less like "What am I getting for my points" and more like putting something together with an erector set. If you are a min-maxer you will quickly become bored with Hero because there are so many ways to Min-max you don't even have to look for them. On the other hand if you want a framework to tell a STORY... Hero is AWESOME.

Re: Weapons/equipment out of nowhere It sounds like it's just a special effect. It might be a physical manifestation if it can be attacked and destroyed.

Re: Summon and Possession of Summoned Creature Wouldn't this sort of summon be more like a multi-form? You create a new form and then inhabit it.

Re: Really, Hero Games? Two Rulebooks? it's been a while since I bought my 5th ed books but I seem to recall that the 5th Ed. Rev. book was $55 or so. that's $15 more for 6th than for 5th... Yeah more expensive but still way cheaper than many other game systems out there and in my opinion more versatile than all of them. Sure other games systems have their advantages but dollar for dollar I think Hero is still the best game system around simply because of it's ability to run any genre.

Re: Inflicting Drowning... I am not certain how the drowning mechanic works in the game (don't have books here at work) but this sounds about right to me. NND and does body...

Re: Really, Hero Games? Two Rulebooks?