Doc Democracy

Re: Help Required. Undead PC

I'm looking at the number of posts and assuming you are fairly new to Hero.

Everyone has made very helpful comments on how you might go ahead with this. One of the main tricks in Hero is precision about what you intend to buiild.

You said you wanted an undead necromancer. I'm assuming that you have the necromancer bit covered with some magic system and a few spells. When you say undead, however, what exactly do you mean?

There are many kinds of undead and each of them have different specs. Your player may simply want the story potential of being undead with no real benefit over normal PCs then it could simply be a distinctive feature where the PC will show up on detects etc.

If the player wants more than that - advantages or drawbacks then they need to sit down and think out exactly what they mean by undead. A vampire is undead with lots of cool abilities but a few major drawbacks.

The suggestions above indicate some of teh ways you could model aspects of being undead but the player really needs to define what is meant by undead before you go into the detail of trying to build it.

Doc

Re: Adaptive Defense?

How many points are you looking to spend?

 

A 60 pt Cosmic VPP, Only for Force Fields (-1) will allow you to make a defense for just about anything you could dream off, in any configuration you might need. Plus you can mix in advantages or limitations as necessary when going up against specific foes. Hardened, for example, is a waste of points any time you don't need it. Going up against Firelord? +60 ED, Only VS Fire (-1/2 or -1, depending on you GM) still leaves you 20-30 points to play with in the pool to buff your PD or Sight Group Flash Defense...

 

And you get all this for the low, low price of 105 RC

 

Alternatly, you could go with a Force Field or Defense based MP, with all kinds of configurataions so that you can have protection against any type of attack. If you make them all Flexible slots, you can mix and match as necessary. But this will get costly fast...

You might also want to have an aid feeding a particular defence limited to defending aiding a defence he has already been hit with - so the defence adapts to past events but does not anticipate new attacks...

Doc

Re: [Campeign Creation Project] Pirates of the Naebbirac Astroid Belt

I can think of two things:

 

Small pods that attach and cut into the ship releasing 2-3 pirates each

 

Short range teleporters...

I keep thinking of the electronic thumb used in Hitchhikers.

I want an Hyperspace Grappling Hook. I can see the special effects. The pirate whirls an ariel (antenna to you US type folk) round to aid the targetting of a personal, one-use teleporter. He has to make a targetting roll on the nearby spaceship - his own ship would have to be close enough to allow this to work - the teleporter locks on (indicated by the ariel going taut in the direction of the ship) and he swings through hyperspace to the inside of the target ship.

Classic pirate style stuff. Will have to see if I can come up with actual game stats for it.

Doc

Re: [Campeign Creation Project] Pirates of the Naebbirac Astroid Belt

You cannot have 4 stars "orbiting each other." It would not occur in reality. You can have a pair of closely-orbiting stars "over here' date='" another such pair "over there," and have the two pairs orbiting each other [i']at a distance much further than that "within" each pair.[/i]

Of course, everyone would know that and that's what would make the system that much more interesting. Someone, or something must have engineered the system - possibly to produce the right environment to generate the mineral/element that is the source of so much concern.

Obviously the tidal stresses in the area would be a good source for many sensor and drive and other technology failures that could drive scenario drama as required. The unnatural mix of gravity tides, gases and environmental stresses could also be the source for anything the GM might want to consider.

Doc

Re: [Campeign Creation Project] Pirates of the Naebbirac Astroid Belt

Now. I have no intention of running Star Hero at any time in the near future but I do like reading this discussion - specially when you are in the formative stages.

If you are looking at swashbuckling boarding stuff then you really need to think of how you can get the feel of swinging over on a line with cutlass between your teeth (not recommended with laser blades!)

I was wondering if the pirates might have developed some kind of technology that would allow a man, sufficiently close to the hull of a ship, to transport through the hull regardless of shields or anything else?

It would be a risky exercise both getting close enough and doing the transport (not for heroes but in every boarding party at least one or two pirates will become superheated gas on the ship shields when the device fails to work).

That probably means the pirates get to the ship in a diffuse bunch and that the ship cannot rely on defending bulkheads etc...

More swashbuckling action as the pirates kill security and grab what they can before getting off the ship or disabling whatever security/defences/drives necessary for a more daring raid/capture.

Doc

Re: Weird Talent

Having considered all of the options presented to me, I think that I like the Heal option the best. The skills are an interesting idea but I still think that the skill presents some level of knowledeg by the character when instead it is simply a command to pick up its wheelbed and drive.

Thanks for all of the options.

Doc

Re: Weird Talent

"I can talk to my car but I can't make it work! Even when I scream obscenities it just sits there and I KNOW it can understand me..."

I'm doing my best to stay away from transforms, minor or otherwise, but I think it needs somethiung more than being able to communicate.

Doc

I am about to look at a pulp stargate style game. I was touting round my players for characters and potential weird talents and got the following.

Now that I think about it, if there is an opportunity

for something wierd, it would be nice for his

intimidation to occasionally work on non-humans: guard

dogs, engines that don't start, etc.

Now this seems fantastic to me - an arab with a PRE attack covers most of it - but what about shouting and swearing at a recalcitrant vehicle and getting it to work?

Ideas?

Doc

Re: Help me finish a character?

Personally, I would drop the 16 COM to 4 (I'm not sure why you think he is so good looking) and plough all 16 points into CON. That makes you more difficult to Stun (an attack would have to do in the region of 41 STUN to stun you rather than 33), improves your ED by 2, your rec by 2, your END by 16 and your STUN by 4. A marked improvement in your combat durability.

Doc

Re: "Divine Shield": ultimate defense

You do realise that you are playing HERO right? You get what you pay for and so a defence that is nigh on impregnable will cost LOTS of points. The high cost of 3/4 resistant Damage Reduction reflects how useful it is in defending the character. If you want something as good or better than that the basic design of the game would indicate that it would cost the same or more.

Sometimes damage reduction is the wrong way to go for effectiveness. If you ar playing in a fantasy hero game, or any of the heroic level genres, you can achieve good protection from the level of threat far better using armour and force field for less points than the damage reduction would cost.

Can you tell us the context for your question? You are obviously designing a character with some power/spell/ability but if you tell us what the character is, the game you are designing it for and the limits your GM is imposing then we can do a decent job of giving you options.

Doc

Re: Drain STR on Objects?

Not got here but doesn't the Ultimate Metamorph discuss Density reduction? It would seem to be what you want mechanics wise....

Doc

Re: Help me finish a character?

On second thought' date=' I might reconsider. There will be times when I hit someone and I don't want them to stick. Selective is no good, it can only be applied to area effect powers, period, so maybe something custom for +1/4, I dunno.[/Quote']

 

One of the problems that I can see with the discussion is that you are talking about game mechanics and obviously have some vision in your head about how that would look in the gameworld. The people trying to suggest mechanics to you are not privy to that vision.

 

The vision I get of your character is of a body with dozens of limbs, some with hands, others prehensile tentacles, that reflexively grip anything that they come into contact with. Thus anything that comes into contact with you sticks.

 

There are mechanical problems in making this work.

 

The first is that damage shield (which would allow that reflexive grabbing to take place) is book legal only for attacks and clinging is not an attack power.

 

The second is that damage shield is not selective.

 

Should you worry about that when you are already ignoring the fact that damage shield is not a legal advantage on clinging? Not if your GM says that it is OK. If he allows the first he is likely to allow the second as it defines the described power.

 

It wouldn't just be people that you had to worry about grabbing, a reflexive power would also grab objects like grenades (and those could be far more common in a futuristic environment).

 

What you have to discuss with your GM is how you let someone go. If the grabbing is reflexive then how do you release one grabbed person without releasing everyone/everything else? Selective is a good advantage for that. Selective would also allow you to attack without having the grabbing reflex occur.

 

If you have to consciously grab someone then many of the problems disappear - you are simply grabbing people and keeping hold of them as per the rules. The problem with this is that you could not grab everyone who attacked you.

 

This is why people ask about the description of your powers, it is easier for them to 'see' the appropriate mechanics when they share your vision of the character.

 

Edit: I think I find a solution' date=' I'll just tack on 'Gestures' as a -0 limitation, since it's both an advantage and a disadvantage, depending on the scenario.[/quote']

 

When would gestures provide an advantage? I can see how gestures could be used to limit your power (if the limbs are restrained then they cannot be used for clinging).

 

As for the EC thing - characteristics placed in an EC should always have no figured unless the GM says otherwise. Hero Designer has it right there.

 

 

Doc

Re: Totally Unstoppable?

this is the classic, if you don't kill the beast on its home plane then you can't kill it thing.

Personally, I'd be inclined to begin with the premise that if you can't kill it it isn't really there. Decide what it is that the summoned creature is able to do, buy those abilities as indirect (trans dimensional), have them require a focus (demon body) that takes damage like the demon back home. When you destroy the focus then the demon cannot use the indirect part of its powers. The summon demon ritual essentially only summons the focus through which the demon can act upon the material plane.

Does that make sense? I'm kind of sleep deprived at the moment.

Doc

Re: Hero System Combat Examples book?

One time' date=' I tried, as a simple exercise, to simulate the famous Hulk-Thing fight from Fantastic Four # 25-26 (1964). But I ran into various difficulties. For example, the Hulk grabs the Thing's arm then leaps and hurls him, with a force that even the Thing thinks will kill him. Under 5th Ed. rules (and probably properly so), a throw does no more damage than the thrower's strength regardless of the distance travelled. Also, in the comic example, the Thing grabbed a flagpole on a skyscraper to stop himself. Under current rules, he ordinarily wouldn't be able to do that to avoid the damage from the throw.[/quote']

 

The strength trick is something that could be bought if it was going to be used lots or could be an application of the Power skill or might simply be the sfx of a haymaker attack. It would fit well with the game mechanic of the attack taking extra time and the Hulk may have bought extra dice on his haymaker.

 

As for the flagpole, there is the matter of SFX for pluses to Breakfall (if you have a generous GM) or I would allow a character falling to hit an object that would effectively brake them for a limited amount of damage and then take lesser amounts when the character hit the ground - so instead of taking a 20D6 hit the character takes 12D6 and then 8D6 applied seperately against defences.

 

One of the difficulties in Hero is relating the narrative of the fight to the mechanics - there is a lot of potential if you are willing to be creative.

 

 

Doc

Re: Rethinking mental powers

hmm. I was right. I did propose an alternative system similar to this in this thread but it was prompted by a post you made about elemental controls...

funny how it all comes round isn't it?

Doc

Re: Rethinking mental powers

1. COPYING PHYSICAL COMBAT

Did I suggest something like this ages ago? Perhaps that is why I'm drawn to it....will see what I can find but I think your initial thoughts are more elegant than mine were.

My main reason for liking it - it makes the system more internally consistent.

2. A SKILL BASED SYSTEM

 

Each 2 dice of mental power converts to a +1 on your EGO roll, and you make an opposed EGO roll against your opponent who can add 1 point for every point of mental defence to their own EGO roll. The attacker has a penalty depending on what he wants the defender to do (reading surface thoughts might be -2, reading the next level might be -4. Doing so undetected adds a further -2 penalty and so on)

 

Instead of levels of effect you have the penalties mentioned above. You might, or might not, still use a 'to hit system' but you don't really need one.

 

Breakout rolls are basically repeated opposed rolls, but the attacker uses their original roll, and the victim gets +1 per time period unless the attacker renews (i.e. spend more END)

This is an interesting system but it fails on the consistency side of things.

Doc

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

Normally a character with a high Find Weakness roll still has to take multiple phases to accomplish the same effect unlike what is being suggested in this thread which is nearly instantaneous.

So the issue isn't about the lowering of defences but the speed at which it is done?

As it was presented, I think that the same Find Weakness skills are more potent without autofire most of the time even taking the extra time into consideration. Autofire Find Weakness is not likely to achieve the same drop in defences as the equivalent level of the skill without autofire.

As I said, I think it gives enough of a boost to warrant costing more but I don't think that it is inherently unbalancing unless Find Weakness is also unbalancing.

Doc

Re: Is HERO an ideal or even an adequate game for those new to RPGs? Should it be?

It also requires the player to be content not to look behind the curtain and be happy to believe in the great and powerful Oz.[/Quote]

 

But as for this, isn’t that true in any system?

 

It is more obvious in Hero. In many other systems you get a description of what happens - in Hero you get all of the system mechanics displayed for all to see.

 

It is a problem when you have complicated builds especially - think magic missile. The player sees huge amounts of stuff including some kind of fudge for the 'automatic hit' whether that be area effect or huge numbers of levels and that makes the mind begin to think about that rather than the cool effect of firing missiles from your fingertips that always hit your opponent....

 

 

Doc

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

If a character makes a high enough Find Weakness roll with this method enough times isn't the net result about the same as buying an NND, Does Body as a Naked Advantage for the character's strongest attack?

 

Would anyone allow this build into a game? Even if limited by RSR?

No real difference from a high enough Find Weakness skill - would you ban that too?

Re: Is HERO an ideal or even an adequate game for those new to RPGs? Should it be?

You’re not the only one to say things like this, but I am, well….I guess I just don’t quite see it. You see, part of why I fell for the Hero system so hard is that I saw Champions II and said “Finally a game that can do magick RIGHT!”

 

So tell me – what DOES make something feel like “magic” to you?

It is the colour and sfx of the system that makes something feel magical. Ars Magica makes magic feel like magic and Chivalry and Sorcery did so too. They presented a system that felt like you were following magic systems rather than fractional power systems.

In Hero this depends on the GM doing the legwork to provide that kind of feel to the player. It also requires the player to be content not to look behind the curtain and be happy to believe in the great and powerful Oz.

Doc

Re: Is HERO an ideal or even an adequate game for those new to RPGs? Should it be?

Hero doesn't have more rules than many other games (D20 for instance)' date=' it just has them all in one place. And its not that complex. The math is very basic. If people think the math is hard then they need to sue the public education system. Its not rocket-science or quantum computing folks. Its not even compound interest. Its multiplication with fractions (and we live in the age of the calcluator). [/quote']

 

It's not the system that's difficult, it's the calculators. They make them so complex these days!!

 

Preaching to the converted on this one - I think Hero is a really simple system presented in a very complex way.

 

OCV and Thaco both use a formula, its just that D20 provides a GUI (charts), whereas you have to make your own for Hero. We're running from a DOS prompt.

 

I think 8 pages of "GUI" (charts) or so is all that stands between newbie players and All That Is Hero. All they need is their character, dice, and a little chart that says: "Roll X on 3D6 to hit DCV Y" and they are off and running.

 

This is exactly where I think Hero falls down - it looks more complicated than it is froma character sheet. It is something I am working on for my group. Will share when I eventually get it finished.

 

And even in a power heavy genre' date=' character creation isn't that front-loaded. I recall Twilight 2000 and Aftermath were pretty tedious in terms of character creation. And yet, when I and my friends were 10, we forged through it and got rolling.[/quote']

 

I think that some of the terror in Hero creation is that you start with a blank page and anything is possible - there isn't the templates that get you going in other games - even if the processes are complex and tedious they are step by step stuff guiding you through. hero does expect you to think, and to think creatively!

 

 

Doc

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

Hmm. It's a difficult one. Obviously it isn't the fact that you are cutting the defences to an eighth that we need to think about - buying the power straight provides that ability.

What the autofire does is give you the extra time in combat to achieve that advantage.

Lets take an example:

AnalystGuy has a SPD of 5 and a 6D6 attack and 16- Find Weakness. To make his attack useful against an opponent then he really has to get to 1/4 defences. Under normal circumstances this means that on segment 12 he has a 98% chance to half defences, on segment 3 over 90% chance to quarter them and, on segment 5, almost 80% chance to eighth them.

He has to survive until segment 5 before he begins to be a threat and this should happen most of the time.

SuperAnalyst has a SPD of 5, 6D6 attack and 16- Autofire Find Weakness. On segment 12 he analyses his opponent and has the same 98% chance that he will half defences, 80% of the time he will quarter them and about 25% of the time he will eighth them (the beauty of the bell curve huh?). Obviously he automatically fails in his roll as at some point the penalties will kick in.

AnalystGuy takes time but will 50% of the time go beyond the eighthing of defences, SuperAnalystGuy gets his benefits straight up but will rarely achieve eighthing and almost never anything beyond that.

I think that the element of time is useful but it does have a detrimental effect on the Find Weakness skill (enough that I think I might increase the autofire cost by +1/4 rather than +1).

What I would say is that part of that +1/4 autofire would be that it is a one-off shot - they have to fire it that way - no firing two shots and then trying another two shot salvo - all or nothing. Otherwise I think that I would bump the cost up to +1/2 or +3/4.

Doc

Re: Is HERO an ideal or even an adequate game for those new to RPGs? Should it be?

I'm curious as to why I keep seeing this, or similar, statements about Hero and Supers.

 

I don't see it. It isn't unless purposely viewed that way. This honestly and seriously bugs me. A lot.

If you look at the sentence as written it says that the system is written to accommodate super style games.

What that means to me is that the powers section of the game (and probably the part, along with frameworks, that scares most people) needs to be larger and more comprehensive to allow all of the nuances that super style games require.

Obviously fantasy magic could utilise the same powers but I think that if you were reading the core rulebook as Fantasy Hero and the powers section was labelled Magic Powers and Spells then people wouldn't be as intimidated as they would only crack it open if they wanted magic. They would be secure that they could ignore it if they were playing a muscle brained fighter.

As such, I do think that supers skews things because, if the game is to be multi-genre, then it requires so much of this stuff to be upfront rather than tidied away somewhere that the faint-hearted know they can safely ignore it.

I wasn't saying that the game was a supers game - I believe I have stated elsewhere that I will probably never run supers again using Hero - but instead that accommodating such a wide range of genres makes the book and system scary to newcomers. Especially if they are the trailblazer in their group.

Any system is much easier if there is someone to mentor you through the intricate bits. When Zornwil asked about being for those new to RPGs I assumed a situation where there would be no Hero experience in the playing group.

Doc

Re: Is HERO an ideal or even an adequate game for those new to RPGs? Should it be?

Hero should be an entry level system. At the current time I definitely don't think it is ideal though. It is set up to accommodate super style games which probably skews things and it doesn't do enough in the core to provide a playable game.

I think that the core rules could do with a decent 8-10 page game insert where all the main decisions of the game are made and explained and provide an introductory scenario - something as simple as the bank robbery (for supers), bar-room brawl for Fantasy Hero or Pirate Attack for Star Hero. No production value - should be considered a throw-away but it would show a new GM, what they should be thinking about.

Doc

Re: Limited invulnerability

Uh oh! He used the "I" word!

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Hiding behind the palindromedary

Sean's like that. He can't leave well enough alone...

Doc