Doc Democracy

I don't consider any movement power, and leaping is one of those to be a characteristic. 

The mixing of abilities and skills and game mechanics, this represents drives my proposal to get rid of the non game mechanical stats.

Surely buying STR was not the only way you bought Leaping ability?  Surely you checked whether you had enough?  Surely that's no less complex than buying enough.

The permeability rule, I can understand but I can also understand how TK was widely abused by players and cost should follow utility.

I wish I was good at coding!

I don't use a rule of X, but do something similar.  I know the kind of combat I want in my game, if players go toe to toe, fights will be brutal and short, I want the character builds to effect that.

So I have a campaign "straw man", based on best offence, and best defence, I run a "combat" based on average roll/average damage and see, over two turns, the damage delivered/taken.

So (picking numbers off the top of my head).  If straw man has offence (12D6 damage, SPD 5, CV 6, defence 20, STUN 50, CON 30) and the player has offence (8D6 AP, SPD 6, CV 7, defence 25, STUN 40, CON 25). 

I can say that the player, in an offence versus offence fight, has a 74% chance of hitting, doing 18 STUN and 0 BODY with less than 1% chance of stunning his opponent.  Over 2 turns that would mean on average 9 hits doing 162 damage.

At the same time his opponent has a 50% chance of hitting, doing 17 damage and 0 BODY with a 10% chance of stunning.  Over 2 turns that would mean 5 hits doing 85 damage.

I do thus straw man three times with each PC and villain, it gives me a decent idea of offensive and defensive power and whether I want the player to tweak his character up or down to get the kinds of fight I want.

Obviously players are unlikely to stand and trade blows but that comes into tactics for me, a good thing and irrelevant to raw power.

My issue is that it is reasonably work-heavy.  It should be possible to do a spreadsheet to do this for me, but I am a pen and paper man at heart, and so I use a LOT of scrap paper at the start of a campaign!  And I do not often test characters against villains, which I should.

Doc

12 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Character creation demands  software to create the charactersm now, It is nigh unto impossible if you have poor math skills like me.

This is fake news.  Honestly.  Character creation is no more difficult now than it was in previous editions, it just has a bigger budget. Especially in Fantasy HERO.

Package Deals still exist, previous package deals are pretty much compatible with 6th edition.

It bears repeating, 6th edition is no more complex than previous editions.  In fact, I would say that 6th edition is less complex as it does not have all the formulae for figured characteristics and if you raise or lower a characteristic, only that characteristic changes.  If you like the figured ratios, you can work them out and buy ED/PD/SPD/REC/STUN/END to those numbers.

The formulae exist, it remains possible to buy to those proportions.  I think it is good for the system not to be locked into them though.

8 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I don't usually do the "there is no such thing as a bad monster" thing, but I wanted to have the Beastmen be unpredictable and make players uncertain what they were gonna get when they ran into some.

I think the trick is making their actions rational within their society.

You can look at the actions of Japanese soldiers in WWII, wholly unacceptable but rationalised within their society.

You can look at Children of Time where male spiders were routinely eaten after mating, even late into their civilisation.

Comment on The Sparrow novel in spoiler because it contains spoilers! 😁
 

I think that makes things interesting rather than simply labelling a whole species as evil.

Doc

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Anyway, something like that.  To me this brings a proper balance to 

Don't leave us hanging like this Christopher!  🙂

9 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Not trying to be flippant, but...what do you mean?  MOST of the game uses characteristics in some form or another, so I really have no clue what you envision.

I guess I split characteristics into two types, one is the ability characteristics like STR, DEX, CON etc, the other type is mechanicals like SPD, DEF, STUN.

No way to get rid of the mechanical stuff, it us indeed part of the skeleton of the game.

Do we "need" STR?  It causes the mess you talk about, and @Hugh Neilson went through some of the other details (better than me). 

I think taking away those "ability" characteristics means you are left with skills and powers, it removes one of the three areas you need to think about when building a character. To me, it feels like a "purer" implementation of the system.

It would not stop you labelling a skills as an intelligence skill, or dexterity skill (to remove doubt when buying skills with all intelligence skills). 

Doc

To be honest, I would give it the DEF it needed.  I would be inclined to make it high with the potential of the heroes discovering that if they use particular wavelengths or frequencies the DEF reduced significantly.

Hugh, you never considered no characteristics at all?  To me, a lot of the tensions in the system are to accommodate characteristics, even in you analysis there.

Doc

I am an extremist as far as such stuff goes.  I think getting rid of figured characteristics is like getting rid of hereditary peers, a good first step.

😁

10 hours ago, Foxiekins said:

The big thing is if you're falling at 60m per segment, and you turn the power on, you'd start *decelerating*...

On 5/3/2023 at 10:29 PM, Foxiekins said:

the max acceleration they can create falls a bit short of 1 gee

I guess these things match up.  If you had it on, and started falling you would indeed accelerate - as there would still be a net acceleration due to gravity.

If you were already at terminal velocity and you reduce the effect of gravity, then I guess you would begin to decelerate until you hit a new equilibrium.  It is kind of head twisty and complicated though, and so potentially not good for the gaming table....(unless you came up with a handy reference that made it easy to use at the table.

I think it essentially needs a movement multipower.  Unlike @unclevlad I am going to go flight because I would rather work with existing powers than making up new ones, especially as the made up one only addresses the falling aspect and not what would happen if you were on roller skates or in the water.  The two movement slots are fine.  the falling one hits the problems Vlad mentioned.  To counter that, I think I would give the flight (only to counter gravity) and include in that custom limitation the details of what you want from it.  So it would not involve phases any more than the movement due to gravity does as the power is only countering that gravity. You would need to consider that the flight would need to be bought as if you were falling at 60m/s and were reducing it to 10m/s even though the full extent of that speed would not be applied if you had just begun to fall.

Doc

From a first read through of the rules, it seems to bring a lot of that feel into the game.

I like the way it uses the system to manage the powers available and to drive action.  Got serious questions about setting up a scene and how long to set it up for.

7 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

I think it is important to discuss what the character could do, and how this will work, with the player.  Let's assume a 5 SPD.  This one "abort whenever you want" phase will allow a once per turn abort to deflect/reset the multiple block penalty.  +1 SPD would allow one more phase to take any action, including abort to deflect,  Holding actions to the end of a phase will minimize the times when an Abort to Deflect is not possible.  As LoneWolf notes, skill levels to Deflect will reduce the impact of the "multiple deflect" penalties.

 

It sounds like the player is not expert in the mechanics, and may appreciate a better understanding of the options more than any "instant abort" mechanism.

If I had a SPD 5 character and buy +1 SPD and hold until end of phase, instead of acting on 3,5,8,10,12, I act on 3,5,7,9,11,12.

I reckon I concede initiative on 3 and 5 because, by necessity, I need to be reactive.  But then I move on odd segments, which probably provides me with a small advantage, and, of course, the additional action that I paid points for.

I would find this frustrating to play because I prefer being proactive.

As for aborting to deflect, if I have just acted on 7, I cannot abort my next action to deflect on 7, right? This relies on the player being aware of the point when one phase becomes another and when one segment ends and becomes another.  That is a tiring way to play.

Instead, the GM is looking for a reasonable cost to say to a player, don't worry about all the noise, once a turn, if you need to deflect to save an innocent, you can do that, even if the RAW say you cant.

It sounds like the player is long-standing and (unlike many HERO tinkerers) could not care less about having a better understanding of the rules/mechanics - she just wants to play a superhero.  The suggestions above, in the rules, clever uses of the mechanics might approximate the game effects but it would probably ruin the experience for the player.

Also, if those do, really, approximate the effect and have a quantifiable cost, then surely that is the cost to suggest, even if the power is, presentationally,  different.

Doc

This is the RPG sprung from the Sentinels of the Multiverse boardgame.

There are a few mechanics that seem interesting and am thinking of playing it.

Anyone had any experience with it? 

It depends on how clear you want this kind of thing to be.  How difficult do you want to make it for priests etc to consecrate and entire graveyard and remove a source of undead in your game.

If it is a routine thing, that any priest can do, then I think you need someone who has perk: priest with access to holy water and the right oils and KS: Holy rituals.  Then necromantic spells would take the limitation, "not on a consecrated body". 

If you want it to be more special, only someone with "true" divinity being able to do it, then I think it is really a minor transform.  As with all transforms, you need to think about what would reverse it.  Does it happen over time, or would it take a dark ritual, so an inconvenience for necromancers rather than an absolute barrier?

Doc

38 minutes ago, Asperion said:

Supes didn't start with his troubles with those rocks,

You made me go look at Wikipedia.  So Superman was first published in 1938 and the first use of kryptonite (on radio) was in 1943 and on paper in 1949.  It was interesting though that the author reached for it in 1940 (an unpublished story).

41 minutes ago, Asperion said:

disadvantages would have appeared in games regardless if Supes developed his problems or not

I think something along the lines of personality stuff might have, not sure they would be in the kind of disadvantage/complication we currently see.  I think the Superman element influenced a lot of other heroes and that core material would undoubtedly have influenced the making of the games.

Doc

6 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

Just saw this on Twitter.  Get over there and have your say...

 

I think that, when it came out, disadvantages were radical.  To build weaknesses into your character was a brand new way to build character into your character along with the abilities and skills they might have.  It is not just Champions.  I have said before, it was Justice Inc that brought home to me the way it had changed the way my players approached their games.  When the player who delivered mad slasher, after mad slasher came to me with Catherine Du Pont, with a huge COM, face skills, a single derringer revolver and a physical disadvantage that their first action in any combat was to freeze and scream was ASTOUNDING!!!

7 minutes ago, death tribble said:

Meanwhile over here the by-election results are in. Three Conservative MPS resigned after Boris was censured over Partygate. These were all safe seats. And they lost two of them. They retained the London one by just 495 votes.

Labour took the Yorkshire seat overturning a Tory majority of 20,000. The view is that the voters took revenge after their MP resigned in spite leaving them without a representative. Labour have never overturned a majority that big. It is also particuarly embarrassing as the PM Rishi Sunak's constituency is close by. 

The Liberal Democrats took their West Country seat. This used to be one of the strongholds until the 2015 election when they were all but wiped out.

And yet you do not highlight the biggest difference between UK and US elections...

Just saw this on Twitter.  Get over there and have your say...

8 hours ago, tunglashr said:

The point of this power was mostly to give a player something I know she will really enjoy, and just find a way to give it a reasonable cost.

The best reason to bend the rules is to reward good players playing good.  😄

The point that you can deflect and keep deflecting or, if you have already acted and it is not the same segment, you can abort your next phase to deflect has been made quite strongly.

It is possibly quite unlikely this power would ever have to be used.  What is wrong with charging 12-15 points for a power that they might never use.  You would probably let them pay 10 points for a point of SPD for the same extra action per turn that could be used for anything.

6 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

You'd need a suite of different heroic defensive powers, like "put a force field on target" or "grab object/person away" and so on.  Maybe a multipower of Heroic Gestures.  Then the Trigger is based on the Multipower's pool, the most expensive power in most cases.

Well, the OP of the question (you opened the thread here) was quite explicit in this thread that it was just deflection.

23 hours ago, tunglashr said:

The reason I wanted to do this power was so the character in question (I am the GM and making this for one of the players) can use her Deflection to save innocents when it isnt her turn.

So, as an isolated thing, the trigger is not too expensive and would provide a lot more functionality than the one use proposed, so I think either method probably comes out about 12-15 points. 

55 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

If you want a character who can do heroic things to save people in times of need, then trigger does, to me, seem like the idea solution.  It will be somewhat expensive, but you can buy a trigger that takes no time as a naked advantage to "any action to do something heroic" up to x points and buy that as the power you want.  If it automatically resets one a turn, you now have your extra speed point.  That way there's no need for a new probationary power or testing; its in the rules.

As I said, it comes down to how much you are willing to spend.  Do you gave a rough idea of what that trigger power would cost?

5 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

 

 

Looked at the book, so base Deflection is 20 points and the trigger would be a+1 advantage, so 20 points as a naked advantage.

2 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah, that was what I was trying to get at: what does this power actually do?  Don't think in terms of speed, think in terms of effect, then figure out what that means in terms of build.

I think it is a bit different from the usual kind of question, what it wants to do, is provide the character with a but of added potential to do heroic actions, the character can intervene to protect innocents and, once every 12 seconds, the character can do that even if they do not have an action, or an abort, available.

The reason I would have little issue with it is that it facilitates an heroic shtick.  Even when it appears impossible the heroine finds a way to put herself between an innocent and danger.  The rule is even easy for a GM to understand, "the player can, once a turn, use deflect to protect an innocent, even if they don't have a phase to abort to".

Yes it is outside the normal use of the rules, but that is what makes it special.  The big question for me is how much you charge for it.

@Duke Bushido is right.  Do it, use it on probation for a few sessions, then decide whether it works or not.