Doc Democracy

6 hours ago, DShomshak said:

They are all, by their own standards, righteous. But their absolutism also makes them implacably hostile to everyone else. They must be fought.

Have you just created an axiom that proves every other RPG is evil, as HERO does not embrace the absolutist ideas of other systems. 😁

32 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Yeah, by that definition you'd kind of have to characterize hurricanes, plagues, or an asteroid impact as "evil" too.

I don't think so, they are not sentient beings.  Of course, in a theistic world with active gods, it is probably rare for many of those things not to be the result of an evil act.  It would not be a stochastic universe.

Greyhawk exists in a humanistic universe.  The Old Ones, Deep One's and mildly twisted one's exist within that reference and are evil, because they are bringing human existence to an end.

That doesn't mean every universe is so deterministic but it does mean you cannot use "common sense" words like good and evil and expect everyone to be on the same page.

26 minutes ago, Gauntlet said:

One way you could do it is state that there are no female orcs. Orcs reproduce through rape, then keeping the mothers until birth and then killing them then utilizing a demonic ritual to change the baby to complete orc.

Oof, that is dark and doesn't help with all of other evil races.  Would also mean an orc horde was a sign of a LOT of extreme horridness.

Demographics would be skewed too.

I think the planes of elemental good and elemental evil remove any relativity in the idea of good and evil.  It also makes it difficult to define.

Good enhances the universe, helps it to develop while evil works to rip things up and makes life worse.

5 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

To answer the unquoted question first (for logic reasons):  kind of.  You were buying a _ratio_ though:  the ability to move X inches through Y BODY in a Phase.  Thus, if you bought the ability to move 10" through 10" BODY in a Phase, you could move 20" through 5 BODY or 1" through 100 BODY.

I had 100% forgotten this was how Desolid worked.

5 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

Not because they are inherently evil

Ach, tripped myself up.  I meant not because they are evil and act evil.  I think inherently evil might have a different terminology in my Greyhawk. 

Inherently evil would mean you have a link to the Plane of Elemental Evil.   Some races are born with such a link but it does not dictate their alignment and the various detect spells are sensitive enough to differentiate between evil and "inherent" evil.

I think any D&D campaign has that planar theology built in.  I think the mortal races should be equivalent in that they can choose how they want to behave and have a behavioural alignment.  Similarly, elves are inherently good, that link works when they watch to leave the mortal realm and "travel" to whatever end place their theology determines for them.

I am inclined to treat drow and duergar like orcs and goblins, twisted races that have had that link to the plane of Elemental Evil added to their essence by some god or another.  I am also inclined to give those races the ability to draw on the link for benefits.  So a goblin might lean on the link to add to its sneak ability (+2 to begin, possibly upto +5 as it gains ability).  Such use will change their alignment to evil.  Orcs might be able to use it to boost STR, Drow to cast magic etc.  drawing on it will change their behaviour, like the Dark Side of the Force.

In that way, their God has given them a temptation to become evil and do evil.  It does not mean they give in and a non-evil orc might be seen almost better than a non-evil man, elf or dwarf because they constantly fight, and win, against the very real temptations they face every day.

All this works better in HERO because it can model all that better than D&D.

Doc

The problem doesn't arise in one-offs and dungeon where everything you meet is slavering hordes ready to tear you apart.  Killing in those situations is effectively self-defence.

The problem is in campaign play where you have tribes of orcs, goblins etc.  Mothers and children.  When your "good" party raid the village to accomplish their quest, killing 99% of the warriors, what do they do with the "evil" non-combatants.  After all, they remain evil.

As my group never grapples with such high-falutin ideas we rarely have any issues.  I do think a large part of that is that we are, to a man, white middle class folk that have never suffered discrimination.

I do think that the presence of folk that are inherently evil opens up the option for bad behaviour (random slaughter of essential innocents) simply for existing under the flag of "Well, they are evil and I am good".  It is the whole poor take on alignment that permeated D&D.  The same players would scream injustice if I persecuted their LE assassin character in cities of "good" folk.

As a workaround, I have proposed in my Greyhawk HERO, that goblins and orcs were created by evil gods.  They live in the wildernesses and lands ruled by evil Lords because it is the only place they are welcome.  The reason?  Not because they are inherently evil but evil shaman/priests can sacrifice any single orc/goblins etc to create a horde (size limited by the power of the priest and length of the ritual).  It is the reason such hordes exist and towns often refuse entry to these creatures because of the risk inherent in their very existence.  Their actions determine their alignment, just like anyone else but their heritage determines their risk.

As such, even the non-ravening hordes, non-evil acting tribes of humanoid creatures have a dislike of "good" nations who force them to live in horrid places with horrid people.  In the example above, the mothers and children cannot be presumed evil, there will be the usual ratios of good folk and bad folk in the village.  They will hate the players who just slaughtered their men-folk though.

This may change how players interact with humanoid villages, but it has to change how I play them too.  For instance, why would a whole village accept the kidnap of a local human maiden?  Why would all the menfolk fight to defend that bad action? 

There will be good and bad humanoid communities.  There will be times when a village of orcs has come under malign influences, just as that might happen with human villages.  There will be times the players consider atrocities but it could no longer have the convenient cover of "it doesn't matter, they are all evil, even the babies".

Doc

How odd.  My very first post on these boards, 20 years ago was about desolidification and invulnerability!

15 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

 

@Doc Democracy, I think the reason why Desolid became fixed because before 4th, you may not know how much Desolid to buy. Desolid was based on Body spent to go through correct? Even though Hero System rarely uses absolutes, it probably made more sense for Desolid to be an absolute

We often ascribe too much wisdom to the people who laid down the foundations of a system.  It us like when you grow up and realise that your parents never really knew all the answers, they were just trying to do their best at the time.

To me, being desolidified is a combination of effects.  One is the ability to travel through solid objects leaving behind no trace of passage.  That could easily be Tunneling with invisible effects.  One is that damaging effects don't affect them.  We have a number of powers that might be used for that.  There is nothing fundamental about the power except an absolute effect that we don't hold for anything else having.

As for not knowing how much desolid you want, have a look at the table of materials.  You want to pass through them all? Buy the relevant level of Tunnelling.  Link the defence to the Tunnelling (or vice versa), make it all drain together.  Call it phantasmal form.

More true to the HERO axioms and it avoids all the issues of having to buy affects solid on your attacks (unless you take that as a disadvantage on the defences).

37 minutes ago, Gauntlet said:

Of course, I hate that they took away Force Field as it makes their base value much higher, making it where you must have a much lower value of defense if you are using a multipower.

I think that I usually bought my force field down to 0 END so often that I have not really felt that particular change - my 20PD/20ED Force Field (0 END) always did cost me 60 points.

17 minutes ago, Gauntlet said:

 

Problem still is that this power often does not work in a Champions game as characters frequently have bought up EGOs and/or Mental Defense, both of which make speaking with them impossible. In addition, if you have Broadcast Only you can't understand what they have to say.

The purpose of the power was to speak in tongues, where people would be able to undertand what you had to say. The conceit would be that someone with mental defence, high EGO and/or high DECV would realise that someone was seeking to communicate with them and would be able, if they wnted, to understand him.  They would have an additional defence if the person relied on that power to persuade, interrogate or anything else that required them to comprehend things.  Just having spent on those things should not inhibit you more than anyone else.

The other thing, you as a GM can do, is come up with a power that reliably works for the average person in the campaign and then declare that it is a "thing" that work in the described manner for a described price.  Steve Long, several times, said that it would be fine for a GM to work out how much it would cost to endure the majority of attacks in the campaign, then declare, for that cost, you can purchase Invulnerable, and ignore damage regardless of the role or details of the damage inflicted on them.

In this case, you have worked out a reasonable way to allow everyone (not explicitly enhaneced) to understand your speech.  After that, you ignore the core mechanics of it, and call it Speaking in tongues (anyone that can hear you speak can understand what you mean), Xpts.

Do not allow the details of the system rob you of cool powers, or force you into a never-ending recursion of powers, advantages and disadvantages to better model reality.

Doc

I agree, but I reckon there are going to be a chunk of people that dont become aware of the need for such decisions until they are well into the game and others that make ad hoc decisions, or assume stuff because they played earlier editions 20 years ago.

I think people starting with NTH create their game, if they stick with it long enough but the failure to recognise them, means we probably lose a chunk of those people that end up thinking HERO is too complicated.

7 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

@Doc Democracy, pretty much any fixed cost ability has that issue.  Damage Reduction is a good example - the more STUN you would otherwise take, the more Defenses effectively added by Reduction.

Yeah, I have a problem with that kind of fixed value power.  I reckon the cost should be based on the campaign limits, possibly with a floor and ceiling values, rather than being absolutely fixed.  The reason I mention floors and ceilings is because, no matter how many points players are given, some things are not worth that much (like life support and enhanced senses) while others should probably not go below a certain value (like desolid).

All begins to sound a bit complicate though, doesnt it?  🙂

Doc

I just wrote a post talking about instant change.  I think Desolid has a big relationship with it.  It is a black box to allow players to have something cool.  It was fine for years but the more us geeks talked about it, demanding standard pricing for things the more the non-standard nature of its existence became exposed.

Even just the fact that it is a standard price.  It should probably vary its cost depending on the starting points of characters in the campaign.  Limitation valuers should also be campaign dependent.  I think it probably is now too cheap, a 40 point power that cost 8 END was a big investment for a character built on 150 points+points for disadvantages.  For 6E characters, 40 points that costs 4 END is not really the same investment.

Doc

I think a strength of the system (and a problem sometimes for GMs) is that there are often lots of ways to achieve an effect in game.  The best thing I get from seeing the details of someone's build is to get insight into how they did it, how they looked behind the understood or implied game effects and used that mechanic to deliver something else.

For instance, I liked to see how Steve deconstructed instant change and gave a build.  I did not NEED  that to use instant change in my game.  I still dont.  What it did do was give me ideas on how to achieve similar things when players came, stuck on how to do a build.

I have learned so many things on these boards by people saying Energy Blast [sic] is not an energy blast, it is a way to do damage to someone at range.  If you want to lift someone into the air and drop them to do damage, then Energy Blast is probably what you should be thinking about, and everything else is SFX.

4 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

I started in Champions 1e (not Hero - Champions - OTH). Duke never left Champions 2e. How many of us Hero Grognards started with 4e or above (NTH; system before game)?  For those who did, how many started in a group that had already learned Hero with an OTH game, and how many started with The NTH System and designed their own game?

I will put my hand up for 1E Champions.

I think you missed out a category though, those who just run a game under 6E without trying to "create" a game from the system toolkit...

Yeah, but removing line of sight range and adding area effect (anyone who can hear voice) covers most of that.

Defences could be an issue, though similar things can prevent other solutions.  There are hand wavy things with a few things.

I like Dean's solution but Detect feels fundamentally hand-wavy to me when you get to speaking and writing and reading.

I am however, fundamentally accepting of waving hands to achieve a reasonable solution to say yes to a player for a cool power.

Doc

5 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

And here I am, paraphrasing the locals:

 

If it ain't 2e, it ain't Bible.

 

 

though I do spread some love onto Sidekick as well. 

To be honest Duke, you bring a kind of New Testament take to 2E, even if your commitment to it might be quite fundamental...

18 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

You live on an island in an active volcano zone. I question whether orneriness has gotten you far enough.

Says the man shouting from the midst of the biggest cloud of woodsmoke seen on the North American continent in recent history...

3 hours ago, unclevlad said:

--It tries to be universal...all levels, all genres.  There's far too much marginal material that shouldn't *be* in the core rules.

You are 100% right here.

Duke says we ruled too much about 2E and wanted the true answer to Al, our gaming queries instead of being content with a few rough options and a steer to doing what was most fun.

Steve Long was probably the right answer to the wrong problem.  He dedicated himself to getting all the details folk argued about in the rules sorted and pushed into the main rules. 

What we needed was someone who was more focussed on game theory, boiling the system down to its essentials, who was the ghost written by someone who was focussed on delivering gameplay.  And Steve writing a bunch of Almanacs outlining options on how to use the rules if you wanted to nail down the details.

A lean, flavourful core. A suite of genre books that provided the spices to deliver specific types of game and another suite for the number geeks who wanted detail on what that cool thing should look like in HEROcode.

16 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Correct, but you can get around that with "Telepathy, only to understand spoken words."

 

 

You are going to have to explain how understanding spoken words helps you read or write a language you don't know...

2 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

That is all I needed; thank you.

You should count yourself lucky that it has only gone two pages...

The classic build for this would be Telepathy, "only to allow those you are speaking to to understand".  The SFX is that you are speaking in tongues and everyone hears you in their own language.

It does not allow you to read or write those languages.

Doc

36 minutes ago, Sketchpad said:

Does it really need to be built as a power/ability? I've always leaned into the genre conventions of a game over having to build every little piece. I can only imagine what someone like Superman would look like if every one of his tricks were statted out. Maybe look at making a custom maneuver over a power?

I think the difference us whether you want to do it reliably or not.  Whether you want to gave to roll dice. The power I suggested would work reliably unless someone sought to intervene.

Personally, if it wasn't so much of a pain in the ass to do, I would gave every character have an SFX based VPP, where they could do anything their SFX justified.  That would feel superheroes, if it wasn't for the constant calculations on whether I could fly at that speed, shrugging off bullets while carrying the ark of the covenant....