Doc Democracy

Re: Interpreting "Body" Obviously this would be something for your game to define before you start but have you considered making your players define their BODY? You could have two BODY stats, one to represent clinging to life and the other defined as mass. Just like we have normal and resistant defences. So a character would start with 10/10 BODY - 10 Mass BODY/10 Spirit BODY. Soul Drain would affect the clinging to life BODY, thus if a character was affected by Soul Drain for 4 BODY then it would reduce Spirit BODY to 6 and leave the Mass BODY at 10. If either BODY was reduced to 0 then the character dies. As BODY costs two points then it would be quite easy to cost each type of BODY at 1 point each. This does introduce complexity to damage without unduly adding more complicated kinds of mechanic. You could easily represent a rampaging monster that soaked up physical damage but succumbed more easily to attacks on its spirit or the old man that could be taken out with a decent punch but clung to life under severe duress. Doc

Re: If Champions didn't exist... I'd be using Issaries HeroQuest system to run supers.

Re: Interpreting "Body" Of course, if you do define BODY as structural integrity you are going to have to come up with a whole new way of killing someone by 'severing their spirit' as that would not be doing any structural damage.

Re: hit location I am with the use it for non-supers games. Without the hit location table I would never have had the story of how my hard-bitten detective distracted a demon long enough for his priest companion to dispel it by landing three maximum damage .45 rounds into hit location 13....all randomly rolled as well. Doc

Re: Interpreting "Body" Good post! The problem is that I think your very first premise is wrong. You imply that the answers would be the same for all characters. I think that you have to look at the mechanics and the game structure and that you get very different answers from those two sources. For one character the answer might be that it is structural integrity and the loss of that leads to death, for another it might be an extremely strong will to live that keeps the person going long after others might have given up. In game mechanical terms it is a convenient way of keeping score. It would be possible to go from the D&D model to a Runequest model where damage to particular hit locations cause functional damage relevant to that location. That causes more book-keeping in a game that is already book-keeping heavy. Personally I use BODY in the system as a convenient way to keep score and make it a bit more functional by using it as teh measue of how often you recover when taken below zero STUN. Instead of -10 being the step into once per turn it is -BODY. Doc

Re: Change of Speed

Re: Change of Speed

Re: A stunning attack Rapier I see where you are coming from with this but I would like to point out that your response is appropriate for someone who is good with Hero - with someone who is not, they simply want a power that causes bleeding and that is exactly what they should be telling you. You should then be translating that for them rather than saying no. I'm sure you understand that - I just felt that it wasn't coming across. Doc

Re: hanging PCs together That is very much the way I have done it consistently in the past. I require each player to indicate why he is friends/would willingly travel with/adventure with at least two of the other characters - and I will not allow exclusive loops that exclude other player characters. I find that the players are far more inventive in doing this and it encourages them to develop their backgrounds and embeds them more firmly into their group.

Re: How to create water Personally I think that you are looking too hard at the game effect you are trying to achieve rather than the mechanical effect. It's a common problem. If you are trying to get a spell that allowed water to be created so that life might be sustained (enough to drink, not enough to do other stuff) then you could use Life Support - does not need to drink - usable by others. The special effect of the spell would be a cup that never emptied. If you are trying to create large amounts of water for other reasons then you want to look at the effect you want to create. If you want lots of flexibility then you should be looking at a VPP that is limited in effects to those that might be accomplished through summoning quantities of water. Doc

Re: What graphic novels should I get? Hmm. I was surprised that no-one has mentioned League of Extraordinary Gentlement (Alan Moore - volumes one and two) and unsurprised though a bit saddended that no-one mentioned Inhumans (Paul Jenkins & Jae Lee) Both of these formed recent examples of excellent comics writing. I think the second was best as I'd never been a fan of the Inhumans and never heard of Paul Jenkins! Doc

Re: Tricky Power Design I'd say that Joe gets to keep the STR because it is part of him. He is a person who has STR. Shardik is a sword, that does not have STR - not a miniscule amount such as -35 but none at all. Characteristics are a special case - not like skills. As I said, automatons don't sell back their STUN - it just doesn't exist. Neither is Shardik paying PD for having -25 STR just for having 0 STR. But, it is a GM's call. In my game I wouldn't give you points for selling it off. If your GM does the that's cool. How does the sword lift anything? How does it manage it? A person uses its hands and exerts strength, how does the sword manage it? Gliding doesn't mention STR. If the sword conferred gliding on the wielder then it would be whatever STR the wielder has. If the sword has no STR then it cannot lift anything. Doc

Re: Tricky Power Design

Re: Tricky Power Design

Re: Tricky Power Design Isn't amazing how a new baby just sucks your time away. I wrote notes for a different version of the sword on the way back hjome on the train. I got home at 6:15pm didn't go to bed until 11:30pm and I still didn't get time to haul out my book and stat up my notes... Anyway, I'll give you my rough thoughts instead. I thought that if the sword was to be my character then I should stat it up as if the sword was wielded by someone - which means that I would purchase STR. (I thought that buying STR down to -35 wasn't the way I'd go about it - when the sword isn't wielded does that mean it can exert some physical influence?) Instead I bought most of the characteristics as 'only when wielded' and purchased STR 30. That does increase REC and STUN but involves spending more points. I also didn't save as much on the END as I thought that would be used by my character. I bought every characteristic as 'only when wielded' as that indicates the fact that when there is no-one holding the sword then the ability does not exist - so only BODY, INT, EGO, PD and ED would be present and SPD would be reduced to 1. Rather than buying off running etc I also bought that as 'only when wielded' but wanted to cost out what buying all his senses as only when wielded would be as well. Of the powers I thought that Life Support and Damage Resistance would be omni-present, though was wondering if the Life Support should protect the wielder as well as the sword - potentially some savings there I think. I was wondering why Squirrel bought the Bestowed on Wielder multipower as there is only two powers and both can be on at full power. I suppose this allows for development in the future but it does cost points right now. The other thing I was going to look at was other powers for the Mind of the Sword. I thought that if the sword was lost it should be able to seek out potential wielders and control them. Thus I thought there should be some kind of Detect Human Life targetting sense there. There should also be a transform - to add a disad 'covets the sword' and then an ongoing transform to take over the wielder. If the sword cannot take over the wielder then it has to engineer a transfer to another wielder - obviously using the covet transform. I was also looking to add in a disadvantage whereby the sword might 'burn-out' its wielder. If the wielder had fewer points in characteristics then the sword would slowly kill them - I was thinking the wielder would lose one BODY per month for every 10% fewer points. I thought this would be a decent 20 point physical limitation. I was also going to limit BODY - for every BODY the wielder lost then the SWORD would have one BODY suppressed - and when the sword lost 50% of its BODY the wielder would die. Rough thoughts but I thought good for the roleplay elements of the character. As my version makes the wielder essentially 'invisible' mechanics wise I also thought that the sword would take 30 points worth fo limitations associated with the wielder - most likely HUNTEDS and REPUTATION stuff but possibly some Physical limitations and psychological stuff too. Doc

Re: Tricky Power Design

Re: Tricky Power Design I've been thinking about that and, when I get some time, will be submitting an alternative. Anyway. I'm not sure that you'd need UBO to get the effect of using a sword shaped object as a sword. When a normal character is grabbed and used as a club they don't have to buy +2D6 HA UBO on their character sheet - it is a fact that they are being used as a club. If someone picked up a sentient sword and the sword could not control them and did not want to endow the wielder with special abilities then that weilder could exploit the physical structure of the sword to get normal additions to their damage. No? Doc

Re: Romantic Fantasy Most Arthurian stuff is fantasy romance - the romance should be the backbone of the story against a good mix of swords and sorcery... IMO Doc

Re: Tricky Power Design It is an interesting slant at a character. I think I may have a go at the wielder as focus style of construction for comparisons sake..

Re: Evolution of the races? I think the simple answer is yes natural selection could take its course and result in varied species. The requirements are some kind of separation to allow the species to diverge and some selection pressures to force evolution of the traits you want in each race. If you are looking at real world science then the abilities you want the races to have would have far more severe consequences on their look and shape than those abilities would have in a more fantastic setting.

Re: Evolution of the races? Well, the primary driver of evolution is reproduction. As Outsider said the first thing you need is something that would provide some kind of isolation that would allow the race to diverge in particular ways and for there to be various evolutionary pressures that would lead to the various races. Now what you need to decide is what kind of pressure would make it likely that only those people with the features of the final race would make them most likely to reproduce. With dwarves it would have to be something where only those people with good constitution etc would reproduce - the short stature etc could be features inherited alongside the constitution. Long life could be the feature of the elves and other things came with that. It has been posited that if people were not able to breed until they were older that the things that shorten human lifespan might eventually be bred out and lifespan extended. Again other features might develop alongside the long lifespan. I think I would invoke magic to explain the isolation - only the background of the campaign would decide what the evolutionary pressures were. I don't know why psm would balk at orcs being the same species - I would be happy that all species humans/orcs/dwarves/elves came from common stock. It would suggest though that dwarves and elves could interbreed. Perhaps you would be happier with other races coming from human stock - that would explain why humans can interbreed but other races cannot.

Re: SPD based on Active Cost OK, I think I see the point. I can see that GMs might want to make high speed characters less attractive. I had a SPD 12 character in a 250 point game and while the SPD cost was a huge chunk of the character it made him _very_ effective. My most effective villain was also a SPD 12 one. Obviously a character with a 12D6 energy bolt is more effective than one with 6D6 if they have the same speed - but I'm not sure that variable cost SPD fixes that. Contrary to your feelings I think the rule of X type rules are the best way to address this. You can be superfast and superstrong but somewhere you'll be significantly weaker - probably in defences... Doc

Re: No progression in Champions Sorry - I should have included the link - you can find it here

The free Digital Hero article this month discusses giving players the ability to make fully fleshed out characters without reference to point totals and then play the game with no general progression of powers or abilities. I've been considering that for some time, instead of abilities getting better giving improvements in social status and access to facilities of outside organisations. The article also suggests awarding cards that could be cashed in for immediate in-game benefits. Anyone tried this out for real? I'm a classic case of a Builder personality and I would have to see _something_ progress during the game. Doc

Re: SPD based on Active Cost