Doc Democracy

Re: Can this Detect even work? I'd be inclined to allow it. To me there has to be a connection between the location and the teleporter to allow the teleport without error - some shining thread that the teleporter follows regardless of location. I think I'd only allow active locations though (those that the teleporter could actually use) but that would provide some information about the teleporter (i.e. - he was within a particular radius). I think I'd also allow shielded locations for an extra point. Doc

Re: The limits of regeneration I'll make sure that my next electricity based character gets the benefit of his lungs continually breaking water down to oxygen and getting some life support benefits from that... (+0 lim - must be able to spend END)

Re: Changing HERO - What are the limits? Get back to work man - if you don't have time to lunch until next Friday you definitely dont have time to be on these boards!

Re: Changing HERO - What are the limits? Right now its hot air and a spreadsheet! He's frantically trying to put the campaign together before we want him to run a game for us... Looks interesting though - we're all itching to play in early Middle Earth. Doc

Re: Killing Attacks - Eureka! I've done this for quite a few of my games and I am very taken with it. The biggest drawback as far as I'm concerned is that I don't get teh rush of throwing huge amounts of dice. I always loved watching the faces of the players when I used all of my D6 and then asked for a few more! I am considering altering the number of damage dice based on the to hit roll (which does nothing for speeding up combat but provides that thrill of actually rolling the dice). The better you hit the more dice you add to your initial damage dice and vice versa but imposing a maximum damage based on the bought power. So I might roll a fantastic to hit roll providing me with an extra 8D6 but as I had bought a 12D6 EB, regardless of the roll, I could nver do more than 72 STUN and 24 BODY. Doc

Re: The limits of regeneration I think it is dangerous to start quoting real science in a game situation as the rules can only approximate anything and often break things into usable chunks rather than what might best approximate real life science. The problem with saying that regeneration is healing dead cells is that you are referencing SFX. Regneration is returning lost BODY to the character - we apply SFX to that to simulate our form of reality. What we have to be careful of, expecially in a system like Hero, is that we do not allow arguments based on SFX subvert whatever balance we strive for in the game mechanics simply because it seems to make sense. Hero GMs need to be more careful because things are bought - when a power is bought with particular SFX then the GM needs to make sure that all the facets of that SFX have been bought as game mechanics. If they have not then you get a disconnect during play when things don't work as the player expected. It is our duty as GMs to make sure that happens as rarely as possible by ensuring the design is as rigorous as possible - not by stretching powers beyond their intended game effects because the SFX make sense. Doc

Re: "And I'll form... the head!"

Re: The limits of regeneration

Re: Changing HERO - What are the limits?

Re: The limits of regeneration

Re: "And I'll form... the head!"

Re: Changing HERO - What are the limits?

Re: Dogfighting My comment here would be that for starfighters there is completely different three dimensional context than that for atmosphere bound vehicles. Unless a starfighter dogfight is taking place near a gravity well then there is no difference to direction changes in any of the three dimensions - this might mean that some of the manoeuvres that prove effective in aircraft will not be as useful in space combat... Doc

Re: "And I'll form... the head!" This is a classic Hero question. The first thing to do is try and remove the colour SFX from the actual game mechanics. What exactly, in game terms is happening? In essence the character is gaining movement powers. Those powers are only available when a pet is present. There are some questions the the GM would ask: Is there a chance that a pet would not be available when the character needed it? Do the pets always do what they are told? Does it take any time for the pet to arrive once the need is present? When these questions are answered then it would be possible to begin to design the game effects and decide which ones best fit what the player wants. For example, if a pet is always present when Bunny^2 wants it and always does what Bunny^2 wants then it is likely that you are looking at a multipower with foci. No followers required - the animate nature of the foci is all SFX. It's all a matter of looking first at the game effects that the player wants before choosing which tools you will use out of the toolbox to achieve the desired game effects. Doc

Re: Duplication old school Yeah but if each of the duplicates can bring forth 16 more duplicates in a couple of phases you have 256 in your army of one - more characters than you want to have to control in a champions game! Doc

Re: Changing HERO - What are the limits? Don't apologise to him - it only makes him feel the need to be more argumentative!

Re: Tips/Tricks/Advice Deadlands was the game that turned me on to 'bits'. I am keen to use poker chips to keep track of STUN and/or END in my next game. That way I can see the pile in front of the push monster rapidly disappear... I'm thinking that END might be best to use the chips with as it is less core to roleplaying games in general - people are used to tracking damage... Doc

Re: Changing HERO - What are the limits? I think that toolkitting is an advanced part of a HERO gamers experience and, as such, have no problems with such a thing being part of the Ultimate line. The Ultimate Toolkit - now that's a book I'd pre-order and buy one or two copies of... Doc

Re: Duplication old school

Re: Changing HERO - What are the limits? I'm with Phil. To me Hero is almost a design philosophy and I can use the bits and pieces provided to me in the toolkit to make the game that I want. Now, it is obviously much better for transferability if somewhere there is a character sheet with numbers on it that could be taken to another HERO GM and say "Can I play this character" and he could discuss what would and would not be allowable in his game but (in my mind) not necessarily. I think that Phil's system would need some explanation to HERO GMs but that they would recognise things as HERO based rather than a new game. They would be able to see the origins of the game and they would very quickly adapt and be able to 'play the game' rather than get bogged down with how the system worked (because they already 'know' it). I think it would be nearly impossible to come to a core set of details because you'll always find someone that has changed one element of that core set in their game and still feel that they are playing HERO. Doc

Re: Duplication old school I think Sean's take is best though (obviously) would change it slightly - I wasn't convinced about the megascale teleport though it does give some flexibility, I would buy the doubled duplicate number for five points and then limit the doubler with (extra time) and (only next to earlier duplicate who has not yet duplicated). So the character will duplicate on his first phase and at the end of the next phase will be able to see the two become four, at the end of the turn the four become eight, in a minute the eight become sixteen etc. I might then buy the next few doublings with minute extra-time limitations and call them two minute delay, three minute delay etc. Doublings could come down in price to 1 point per doubling and the potential for huge numbers of duplicates - given enough time. Doc

Re: Take your time

Re: Take your time I feel your pain Sean. Where do you get all of these questions from? Surely you aren't actually coming up with this stuff during actual gaming sessions? I would possibly think about applying penalties to retries. If someone mind scans then wants to do it again a phase later then I'd apply a penalty. For example - say they want to scan 10,000 people (-8 penalty as you said). Well if they want to scan immediately after then you could apply a -8 proximity penalty (harsh? possibly!) and the proximity penalty would reduce as per the mind scan chart until there was no proximity penalty at 1 week. There may be a break point at around a day where it might be worth trying again when the time spent cancels out the proximity penalty or goes slightly beyond that. This is quite harsh but it means that the player can take a chance immediately but realise that if he fails then he'll be waiting some time before he has a reasonable chance to try again. It might lead to some more hesitation before immediately jumping in with a mind scan. I have lots of ifs buts and caveats in my head but have not got the patience to go through them all just now... Doc

Re: Who knows physics? I thought you were going to say what I was thinking... Do you need physics or biology? Plants do absorb UV light to use in photosynthesis. Some plants utilise the energy provided during photosynthesis to photo-luminesce (and as a bonus side effect they convert carbon dioxide to oxygen). Now if you have bands of properly genetically modified algae within your dome then the algae could adsorb the UV from the dome, bio-luminesce for you and help scrub the atmosphere of carbon dioxide.... Sod physics, long live biology! Doc

Re: Metamorphosis Yah. Creepy was the word. It was PBeM and as such he was able to play him as really disconnected. He was no longer sure that his core body was the original - the original may have been killed among the carnage of previous fights and wehat is left is an alternate version of himself that simply feels the same as the original. The campaign was harsh and some of the characters reflected the harshness of the world. Doc