Doc Democracy

1 hour ago, LoneWolf said:

Unless they bought usable as a second mode of movement (leap) they would not go up any distance. Usable as a second mode of movement is only a +1/4 advantage and swimming is dirt cheap.  It would only cost an extra 5 points to add that to 40m of swimming. If you want to do a dolphin leap you need to purchase that ability.               

I am inclined to go all SFX on this and not require additional powers for things that make sense.  A motorcycle running up a ramp would also get no ability to leap over a row of buses?  Evel Kneivel would have been devastated...

Now, how far is a really difficult question because water is a real drag, submarines would not leap far and I do think dolphins do have a leap ability that adds to their velocity.

I would be meaner than @unclevlad for that reason, I might give him about 5m.

17 hours ago, Cygnia said:

This is a group that cares more about a stolen book than 3 murdered people from their organization.  And who appears to hate the owner of said stolen book more than the person who stole it (and framed us)!

It is interesting, my group has a lot of passive agents too.  I am 100% active and it makes me wonder how much in-game conversation you have compared to player conversation.

We are probably 40/60 or lower but it means I drive the game narratively by laying out options and opportunities and then doing in character talk (and sometimes rolls) to provoke action.

I find they go along massively, just as readily as they frustrate passively.  I almost always have to play a face character to allow me to do that.

It is almost impossible when I am GM unless I railroad them but sometimes they even seem to enjoy that.

Doc

4 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

But that story line in a comic that takes itself as seriously as most of them do?

It was the height of the Silver Age, comics did not, on the whole, take themselves seriously at that time.  There were some classic stories during that time that gave rise to stories that were more adult, where the art was actual art and a desire to create things that would merit collecting. 

It is sad that this drive for quality shrunk the market and priced out multitudes of future comicbook readers.

I held out against Baxter versions for years, until it was all I could buy but continuity and crossovers pushed me to buying only back issues and trade paperback collections.

5 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

You realize you arr making the point that the Joker is non-descript and uninteresting as-is; do you not?

If I am, I am doing an incredibly bad job of saying things!! 🙂

I have read a LOT of Batman and fewer Joker stories.  I have read great Joker stories and some awful ones.

I think, in the good stories, more than any other member of the rogues gallery, Joker is the antithesis of Batman. It is that direct contrast that often makes the story a good one, the opposite throwing the heroic into sharp relief.

I agree with @Christopher R Taylor that writers got into a bit of a bidding war in how far they could take chaotic evil and a lot of that almost glories in the anarchy rather than in the heroics necessary to remedy it.

In the Dark Knight film, when Joker left Batman with the dilemma of which of two bombs he would choose to defuse, who he would allow to die, classic Batman would have had a contingency to cut the Gordian knot and prevent both bombs.  THAT is why he is a SUPERhero, not one of your run of the mill heroes.

The Joker gives the writer free rein to imagine excesses, it is his job however to ensure he gives the Batman a way to rein that it.  any sacrifice should be personal. If it came to it, Batman would die and save both people.  I hate that they wanted to make drama by having the Hero fail.  If I pulled that crap in a fame, my players would string me up and it demonstrates to me, again and again that the big studios fundamentally do not understand superheroes.

4 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

One thing I would love to see DC do is make The Joker a Hero. And not just an opposite world. One where somehow Joker, becomes a Hero, and performs heroism the same way he used to perform acts of villainy. 

I understand the desire and I might even be interested in a one-shot story.  However, to me, that moves the Joker away from that archetypal entity I was talking about and potentially from being as interesting.

Like superman being a bad guy.  I enjoyed reading the first Injustice series, I powered through the second one and never touched another.  Superman is interesting to me because he is an archetype of good.  The most powerful being in the universe and he ties his own hands and will rescue kittens as happily as stand up to Darkseid.

These stories, if written well can be intriguing and reflect in useful ways on the mainstream archetypal delivery of the character we usually get.  It helps define and redefine that archetype because you can see what might be were he not so archetypal.

However, I like my clear boundaries.  I like my heroes and villains. I like the straightforwardness of it when real life is showing me ever murkier shades of grey. 

I suppose that is why I am not concerned by the Joker as a villain.  He is not real, I do not equate him with people in the real world, he is, in my mind, supposed to be pure evil (something I might find difficult to say about any of my real world villains) and the claims in comic and in commentary about mental illness and everything else is the potential inadequacy of our society to really handle quintessential evil.  We look for reasons and patterns and potential redemption. 

Obviously US culture is significantly different from the UK and EU in this respect as we do not consider the death penalty as compatible with human rights, the most fundamental of those being the right to life.  It is not, here in the UK, within the state's gift to, judicially, decide to remove that right. In the US, it would be inconceivable that the Joker would not face the death penalty, even after just one story, so, if he is to be available for future stories, he needs to either not be caught or designated in some way that avoids that judicial process.

Getting back to the point, if the Joker became a superhero, who would he be fighting against?  What would the competing tropes be? Who would be his nemesis? Or, in other words, what would be the point?

The suggestion that Batman created the Joker is almost true.  Batman is less intriguing without a rogues gallery and for that gallery to be in rotation is satisfying for readers.  It is not Batman that created the Joker, it is the mythic structure of the stories.  You could write stories where Batman combatted organised crime and petty criminals and delivered them to the justice system but you might as well write Law and Order.

Superheroes do not exist in the real world and to read their stories you need to suspend disbelief not just that a man could fly, but that real world consequences have no place in mythic tales.  You might as well ask why Odin never simply killed Loki, it was pretty obvious it was all going to end badly...

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Yeah.  As an outsider looking in, I one-hundred percent agree with that.  However, that doesn't really do anything to bolster the idea that the Joker should continue to be used, incorrigible; unobtainable. 

If they killed off the Joker, then the comics would have Joker knock-offs filling the space.  Batman is an archetype and his stories need opposing archetypes for him to work.  If not the Joker then some other character of a similar archetypes who might as well be called the Joker.

I don't like comic book continuity, it skews too many things as time goes on and the players neither age, grow or change.  If there was no continuity, then there would not be 1000's of Jokercrelated deaths over decades, just the potential victims in this story.

I like superhero stories, always have.  I don't mind them re-using villains in the same way I don't mind them using the same heroes, I know what I am expecting. The same as when the daleks or cybermen turn up in Dr Who.

In a superhero game, I only repeat a villain if the players demand it, otherwise I undermine their successes.

The problems with Joker and Batman stem mostly from continuity which demand they explain things and connect them to stories from before.  The need for grimdark nonsense drives some of it.

As for the neural health thing, there is an argument that anyone who commits a drive is mentally ill.  Folk use crazy and mentally ill epithets too easily (in comics AND real life).  I take the comic-book diagnosis of Joker's mental illness with the same scepticism as when he us declared medically dead, open to question.

To me, he represents an archetype of fear and chaos which manifests in a variety of ways.  I enjoy the stories that emerge from putting such an archetype into a place like Gotham and how it's archetype of justice and retribution engages with those results while sticking to a principled refusal to take a life.

Doc

9 hours ago, tkdguy said:

I'd be happy to run HERO again, assuming my players aren't expecting a superhero game. I'll do fantasy or scifi instead.

Probably a common thing - superhero games are difficult to run and difficult to get players properly bought into because they are different from what people expect.  Cinematic mythic stories where the powers are emblems of the archetypes represented - not sure HERO actually captures this aspect of superheroes. 

I think HERO is best in delivering the Indiana Jones and other pulp larger than life adventures where the supernatural mixes with the mundane....

Doc

10 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

OH MY _GOD_, YES!

 

 YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYWSYESYES

 

YES, YES, _YES_!

 

Sign me _straight_ the #\'( up, _PLEASE_!

 

 

I dismiss this response as Duke has never been a massive comics fan anyway - losing a great villain would be of no value to him!! 

😄

9 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

That doesn't mean I approve of it at all.  Nothing would make me happier than never seeing another Joker story in any form.  He's a grotesque and deeply distasteful exploitation of the whole subject of mental illness as well as a just generally negative cultural influence the whole world would be better off without.  Don't mistake my acceptance of the inevitability of Joker remaining part of Batman forever with any kind of fondness for the character.  I can't get rid of him so I have to tolerate him instead, but I sure won't give DC a penny for perpetuating the ugly stereotypes behind the character - something many of Batman's other rogues and Bruce himself are also guilty of to one degree or another.

 This is a more literate argument against Joker stories.  I think I still disagree - am not sure the Joker is presented as mentally ill - he is, like the heroes, an archetype of chaos.  And comic books stories are all about archetypes - something the evil Superman trope fails to accept.

9 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

the failures of the justice system in Gotham that allowed so many murders to be committed by the same few criminal lunatics over the years,

This, to me, is a symptom of written comic books rather than anything to do with criminal justice in Gotham.

9 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

Is there a national or even worldwide reassessment of superheroes (who are almost all ultimately vigilantes) resulting from this, and how does Bruce deal with that and reactions from other heroes?

An argument against superhero comics really.  I think I would miss them. 

10 minutes ago, Rich McGee said:

Except that the story Joker dies in doesn't need to be the last Joker story. 

Absolutely.  However, this is not a line those that run with the "good guys are stupid" line would use.  They rationalise that Batman would do more good by killing the Joker.  I say writers want the Joker alive for more stories, you say the same, even to the point of resurrecting the Joker.  Batman killing the Joker only muddies his status as a hero, it would have no impact on whether he killed again, writers want iconic bad guys.

I think that is fine, unlike defending an attack, this is denying a movement power.

I think I might go for Change Environment if it was a power that could be used in game.  If it is something in a scenario, I might give a player a roll to notice a material difference and simply rule it not versus clinging (though would have heavy SFX rationale and some clinging, depending on SFX might work).

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Sure, but the rules as written state that if a power doesn't normally do body,

I would be happy to consider Healing as doing BODY, it just happens to be adding rather than subtracting.

😁

3 hours ago, sevrick said:

Somthing I find funny, is in all these comments I don't think anyone addressed my original question in how Knockback is supposed to work RAW with healing. Is it ment to be like we are doing it? That is using the body healed to Knockback someone.

It has been mentioned a few times, some folk wanting to use the dice rolled to count BODY as if a normal attack, some content to use the BODY healed for knock back purposes.

I think for simplicity purposes, you roll the dice, find out how much BODY people will be healed or will be used to determine knock back.

Personally, I think that if you create a wave of healing energy, then it will heal and knock back regardless of whether there are people to heal or people to knock back in the affected area.

The big takeaway is that it is pretty much a GM call on how they want their game to run.

Doc

7 hours ago, Old Man said:

S&S doesn’t absolutely require human fighterism. Elric is squarely S&S and a powerful warlock in his own right. Gray Mouser is a former wizard’s apprentice who still remembers some of his training. It’s more the style of magic that sets S&S apart—ritual and summoning, rather than balls of fire. 
 

Unfortunately that’s where 5e D&D really falls apart for S&S. You could easily run a game of rogues, fighters, and barbarians, but the only magic D&D really supports is high fantasy video game magic. I’m sure it’s not impossible, but it’d be hard enough to inspire me to look at other game systems. 

 

There is no doubt, in these days of multitudes of game systems that it is easier to get a system better suited to the intended game but the problem is often those dammed player preferences.  sometimes you need to put the effort in and compromise on the system. 🙂

I reckon I would be OK with providing cantrips to players with the SFX of powders and potions.  I think sorcerors should be mainly NPCs and, in their lair, might be able to almost free cast within a specific school of magic. Outside their lair, they may have one or two pre-prepared spells, at least one of which would be to escape a bad situation.

You never WANT to deal with a sorcerer, it should be seen as almost suicidal, unless you have learned a weakness, or you simply intend to steal from them, not to confront. 

for a PC sorcerer, I would be looking at extending casting times, probably into multiple minutes and hours.  I would be looking for the player to be mortgaging their soul for power, like the bad guys do, creating the weaknesses that random adventurers ight discover and exploit.  A powerful sorcerer should be like an over-extended private equity firm where one bad investment might start a failure cascade.  There will be rituals to keep up, debts to be maintained, objects to be found and places to be visited or the PC will have to repay in ways he never wanted to consider when getting the power to summon that huge earth Elemental...

Doc

My definition is that the optimiser is looking for things to be more fun for everyone, including the GM.  The power gamer is willing to sacrifice everyone else's fun to maximise their own.

Doc

I reckon I could buy into a human fighter game.  I think you would need to consider how you provide for the things D&D tends to expect from an adventuring party, not least healing.

I reckon with specialisms in various areas, it would be an interesting game because the players would need to make themselves distinctive.  A scout, a medic, an archer, a scholar, a scavenger, a heavy weapons specialist, or any other style.

I actually think it could be fun.

Doc

Happy Christmas all.

8 minutes ago, LoneWolf said:

To me the big draw of the Hero System is that I can create the character I want.  I would have very little interest in playing a Fantasy Hero game where the GM writes up all the spells.  For me the character creation process is half the fun.  

Yeah.  I get that, it is my draw to the game too.  However, you adapt to the folk you play with.

They do design their own characters, they just don't engage with the detail of the system.  They describe what they want, then I crunch some numbers, then talk through how things would work in-game, then adjust if necessary.

The only difference between you and them would be that I wouldn't need to crunch as many numbers, we would go straight to discussing how things would work in-game.

Doc

26 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

We might, for example, see Healing Burst as a spell in such a game described as 2d6 BOD Healing, 4 meter radius centered on caster, does 2  meter knockback (away from the caster) to all undead or demons instead of healing them.  COST X Points; SKILL ROLL: -Y; END: Z.

The big draw for me for this over your standard game would be that the spells would be underpinned by the system.  If the builds were available online, I could start there and tweak to my heart's content, while less geeky folk could simply choose from the standard menu.

Guarantee that if I did not hide it we would not be playing HERO.  The first few times half the group spent forever pouring over the sheet, taking ages.  There is no inherent desire to gain any mastery of the details, even while being content to play a game I offer.

My group rotates GMs and systems and we have been gaming together for about 25 years.  If the desire was there, it would have been evident by now

I was talking U2...

I am for balkanisation on North America, the Western territories becoming their own, third colony nation, independent of both USA and CSA.

That provides a lot more opportunities for trade, conflict and politics.

9 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

How is it any less cool for the player when built as two powers.   

I think my take is due to playing with people who are not "HERO players".  I am probably very sensitive about things looking complicated, and I keep builds focussed.

I can already hear my player asking why there is a blast in there and the unspoken frustration that HERO is too complicated, it "needs" this.

Personally, I can appreciate the double power, I can understand the desire there might be to stick closer to the rules as written.  I can even appreciate the fact that the double power keeps things below AP limits and makes magic rolls easier.

I still know my players would be happier with the advantages Heal.  Would make more sense to them.

Of course, in many cases I hide ALL the build data on the character sheets I hand out, with either of these would be showing the dice to roll, the modifier to any roll and potentially END cost.

Doc

4 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Doc, but I have been away from the boards a few days-  victim of the American medical 'system."

 

I ran out of blood pressure meds two weeks ago, heart meds shortly after that, and what my wife calls my "don't stab that guy" meds Saturday past.

 

Finally got enough funds to fill them all up yesterday, but it's not like flippong a switch.  It will probably take two weeks to get the fluids back out of my lungs, for example.

 

At any rate, I jave been avoiding pretty much _all_ human interaction as much as possible, so as not to strain either my heart or my self-restraint.

 

Give me a few days (I havent even read this thread yet), and if this thread is still active, I'll take a stab at it. 

 

 

Look after yourself Duke.  As Bono said about the US health system, "the rich stay healthy, the sick stay poor". 😞

Doc

1 minute ago, Gauntlet said:

I do see that this discussion has seem to have gotten some people up in arms.

Nah.  There is no aggro, just a lack of things to talk about, so we grip onto interesting topics and squeeze them to death.

If we were too considerate and accommodating, there would be even fewer things to read on the forums.

It is very rare there is real antagonism and discord.

Doc

@sevrick I think you will note we are now past page 3.  Duke contests, this is the time by which all threads will have devolved to adherents to particular positions arguing about the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin.

If you are interested in the minutiae of the rules and associated philosophies of gaming, read on.  If not, you have heard enough to know there is no right answer and to make a decision that suits you, your players and your game.

Doc

@sevrick

I guess that is where we differ.  I think it is a cool effect and, as GM, would be working to make it work.

The easiest, at the table way to make it happen, is to use the roll for the area effect healing and subtract 2D6 to see if the undead in the area get knocked back. 

This effect has added a relatively significant amount to the cost and AP of the power, whether or not undead are present.  There is a cost to the player right there.

Doc