Doc Democracy

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

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

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

I agree. The question is how much. In this case, it is only undead that get knocked back. I reckon the utility, in any normal campaign will be limited. If you are in a zombie apocalypse game, then the utility is much greater, a reason why such limitations are always going to cary from game to game. In this case, I would be content for the value to derived from paying for does KB as an advantage to the main power. As it is just a 2D6 Heal, it would probably rarely do too much KB as it would be subtracting a 2D6 roll for KB. If you wanted to be harsh, and you can see that I don't, then it would be 2D6 halved (as Heal is a defensive power) subtracting 2D6 and would practically never manage any KB. How much should the player be paying for that?

The reason we ask whether HERO is too complicated is because we have more detail to argue about. I would bet @Duke Bushido would be more than happy delivering this power in his 2ns Edition game. As players we have pushed the game designers to give us more and more "official" rule options. Those options already existed but we think, if they are written in a rule book, we can use them without too much thought or discussion, just punch the numbers in. We then wanted more guidance on those options, it is no wonder the core rulebook got so big. I don't think HERO is any more complicated, I worry we make it too complicated. We begin to obsess over the detail and fret more about getting the numbers right than getting the feel right and delivering a decent game. There is something about us that loves the detail and makes us question the minds of other folk that bounce off this beautifully detailed system that "can do anything" but in the process we insist on showing all the detail, ensuring that every micro-point is audited and processed. I love the availability of the derail, I appreciate others who know it far better than me, pointing out when I stumble and permit things that could be exploited in unanticipated ways. What I appreciate most however, is not a complex build but an elegant one, one that achieves a game effect that would awesome to see in play, that HERO can put together from its parts that would be a total black box everywhere else. The detail for me is about helping adjudicate the effect in game, being able to explain to the player how this would work and how it might be changed to deliver different game outcomes. It is not the system, it is us that gets too complicated. Doc

I think the biggest downer of the two power approach is the need for additional dice roll, when it should be entirely unnecessary. I like the fact the a stronger heal is likely to throw undead back further.

If I was the GM I would be indicating that undead cannot be healed by positive energy, or a god of that nature. I would not need it in the spell. If I wanted to be helpful, I might have all undead affected by heal spells as if they were blast, and then the character might not even need the does knock back advantage. This is almost at the level of SFX effects, the positive energy cannot heal a creature of the negative plane and causes them, instead, to be pushed away from the source. It is a cool effect, not likely to be of much use most of the time (unless it is based in hell or Ravenloft - in which case I might re-evaluate utility), why are you so adamant the player needs to pay for it?

@Christopher R Taylor, if this was going to be a core use of a power rather than a cool addition that makes the character stand out, I might be keener to bottom this out. I think there is often a readiness to build complex rather than fuzzy. I prefer to go with something close, that hits the right notes than to plumb the complexities of the system.

The idea is a wave of positive energy which heals everyone and knocks back undead. HERO does not gave a positive energy power. We were looking to the best solution. I would allow it as a +0 advantage, you would ask for +1/4. We seem to agree on everything else... I reckon it is, therefore, a GM dependent call and @sevrick can take that into consideration. Doc

Why? The point Hugh was making is that, by making the power only versus undead, you take away it's utility in probably more instances than you gain from it. It becomes that healing wave that also impacts undead - that is consistent. Hugh was saying that without restricting the knock back, you could use the power to knock back foes at the start of a combat where healing your enemies would not be detrimental back pushing them off a wall, out of a tree, or holding back an angry bear. Would you tell a player they could not use it like that? Restrict it's utility with no price discount? Doc

You are 100% correct, I forgot that bit. Again, I think it is a +0 advantage, the +1/2 advantage for does KB gets a +0 advantage of "only versus undead". I was also missing the Does KB advantage. So the active cost would actually be more than Lone Wolf's build but the area effect is significantly larger.

This is a good build. I think you are right about the healing dice, my head was still in 5th edition Healing where this was a small bijou healing power. However, I am still attracted to the single power. 2D6 Heal BODY, +1/2 8M radius area effect, +1/2 double KB, -1/2 Requires Roll, -1/2 Gestures (both hands), -1/4 Incantations, -0 does not heal undead. 40 active points, real cost 18. I like the bigger area and the KB should be, on average, enough to push undead to the edge of the effect. But you are doing something, you are pushing them back. In my build above, the effect is the same for everyone in the area, roll the Heal dice once, it heals everyone but undead the same amount, and that same number determines the KB effect for those undead.

Then change the words. "Does not heal undead'.

Sometimes it looks like you guys are looking for ways to spoil cool concepts but I appreciate the dive into rule wrinkles. I think, like CRT, if you are looking at bare mechanics, then nothing is implied. Just because you are adding an area effect heal with an area effect Blast does not mean those areas are the same. You might have a mortar that fires energy at an enemy while the backlash heals those close to the mortar. 🙂 As such, you limit the Blast to ensure its effects overlay the heal. Anything that limits the use of a power limits the power, IMO. If I am going to stop the Blast being used at range, it is limited. Also, I would not rule that "does no damage" is not a limitation just because the attack is low dice, in the same way I would not increase the limitation because it was 20 dice. I most often invoke this rule when the limitation is not limiting either because another limitation effectively covers it or the context of the xampaign means it will never come up. The corollary of this is rarely invoked in the forums that if an advantage is not advantageous it costs no points. I often see advantages suggested that increase the costs of niche powers and might make it seem, to a newcomer, that the system is actively hostile to cool concepts. I like the idea of this power, it would be cool in play and quite evocative. There are obviously issues and wrinkles to iron out and, like many such discussions, it comes down to a finger in the air, testing on what a reasonable amount if points might be. As a GM, I would be looking for reasons to allow it, working through, with the player, how they expect it to work in game. As such, I would waive the need for a compound power. I would allow the does KB on Healing versus undead. It would do the undead no damage, I would lean on the dice rolled on the healing roll to determine the knockback delivered. If anyone was concerned that the healing would heal the undead, I would apply a +0 limitation/advantage on the healing power "not versus undead". I think both the player and I would be on the same page as to what would happen in game, I would be content that the player was playing a reasonable amount of points and END for the additional applicability when there were undead involved. Doc

My question is whether you see healing spells having this effect on all undead, or perhaps only healing spells granted by a particular god? If so, you could probably buy a physical limitation for undead that they take knockback from healing spells cast by [healing god]. That way you don't need to be thinking about the attack and inflicting strange effects. If not, I might think about a trigger on the EB, only happening when the healing is cast on undead. That would save on the END expenditure. That is not necessarily true. You can work out how many points you are spending on the knockback advantage. Say the power was 25 points, and the does knockback was 12 points. You can put the limitation of "only versus undead" on the knockback. Now that is not hugely limiting, but I might give you +1/4 because it doesn't affect other enemies in the area. So the cost of the knockback would be 12 divided by 1.25, or 10 points.

N.K. Jemisin - Broken Earth trilogy I have kind of avoided these books because of the hype - each book won the Hugo for best novel that year. The first book was a 99p deal and so I bought it, then did not read it for about a year. It has an interesting conceit, human communities living on a world so geologically active that there are regular cataclysms that put humanity on the brink of extinction. You get three perspectives on the society and how the people with the ability to psychically touch the earth (for good and bad purposes) are feared and, unless taken into servitude by the state and forced to work for its benefit under the careful watch of the Guardians who can negate their powers and kill them, hunted down and killed. The story examines the current cataclysm, how it affects the various communities and begins to dive back into previous civilisations and some of the strange artefacts that have survived from those previous ages. Personally, it is a decent read but not something so fantastic that I think it stands out, certainly not when Children of Time was published in the same year (and that did not even make the shortlist). Anyone else read the whole series, does it improve each book? The central "twists" of the novel certainly were not twists to me, all pretty much in plain sight from the start. Not saying it was not well-written or even not enjoyable - it passed two days travelling very well, just not what I think about when I think "amazing SF". Doc

I think the working assumption here is that it means a strong EM field. I caught a player with that limitation who blithely walked into a fight scene with a minor villain close to three mobile phone masts. Each had an agent who was focussing the beam onto the combat scene. He could not fly and his force field failed to come on. He was forced to rely on powers he rarely deployed and was suddenly grateful I had not allowed the limitation on his multi power. Never again did he sail into combat without first assessing the risks, and his force field was soon "hardened" against EM interference. Doc

Are you familiar with Glorantha? The priests of the Lunar Empire suffer from their magical ability being cyclical in power until they manage to build a Temple of the Reaching Moon and extend the Glow line, within which their magic is constant. Feels a bit similar. Hmm. Coming to it from a spell focus is interesting. Every spell might come with a limitation of the level of Mana needed for it to be available. So the more powerful spells are either cast in urban areas or need a dedicated mana engine to facilitate it's casting. The mana is ambient power rather than the personal power of the caster and so the creation/ownership of such engines (relics etc, ark of the covenant) would be heavily contested. I guess the way this works means that Wats of conquest are reasonably rare as defensive combat drawing on native power gives an advantage over foreign magic users. It would also mean that civil wars are bigger and bloodier.

In my teens and early 20s, I subscribed to White Dwarf. It was brilliant. I anticipated the envelope coming through the door and read it from cover to cover. I unsubscribed when it changed from being a doorway to the community to a doorway to the GW saleroom. I have nothing like that today. In my experience, gamers like racking gaming as much, if not more than actually gaming. I think the rise of actual play streaming and stuff comes from that place. I think therefore that game companies took a wrong turn in thinking more books drive more revenue. Instead they needed to be thinking that more community drives more revenue. I bought White Dwarf every month for years, absolutely there was content in there, I used a chunk of it and read the rest. It created personalities for me (Lew Pulsipher, Phil Masters and Marcus Rowland were my celebrities). There is some of this in the industry but the companies themselves are pretty poor at it. I think Wizards could make money by giving the community space and they would get the "rent" they need that way, while using that to drive consumption of good quality product (from which artists and writers got paid living wages). I think the patron model comes close to this but it still feels a little bit soulless. I would be happier with a patreon that fed my need to connect with my tribe than one that just feeds me product. Doc

To be honest, I would not make you pay for that. The game is about paying for utility and getting colour for free. We often remove that colour in the interests of balance and fairness to the detriment of gameplay. "I want prehensile hair" "What can it do?" "Lower my glasses, comb itself and maybe point in a direction" "Cool, write it on the character sheet, no points. If you want to do more useful stuff in game, the first time is a power stunt, after that it costs" Strap in! Duke is gonna type a STORY!!! 😁

I am interested in the general play mechanics of ley lines. So, if you are a wizard, you build your tower on strong, or a nexus of weak ley-lines that you tap for power. Or, do you avoid those because opponents have ready access to power sources if they attack you. Are all ley lines the same, like electric cables? Or do they have different "flavours" so that you might build on a stasis ley line with little evocation or illusion ley lines present? I presume major lines are reasonably stable and predictable, like old telephone lines but outside that you might have more mobile phone like "patchy reception". Can all wizards "see" all ley lines or might they be blind to certain flavours? During encounters, there may be some manoeuvring to get the best reception for your casters compared to the opposition. How do you represent that in play and how do you adjudicate in a random encounter where little pre-planning was possible? Are these the things you were thinking about?

In original Traveller, IIRC,every stat was a damage. Wasn't a game I played much, so I might be wrong. In this case, however, my perspective is simply that Max END becomes variable in gameplay. If you use physical tokens (I like doing that for END and STUN), it is a matter of a separate cup, to put unavailable END tokens into.

I liked Sean's suggestion. It is analogous to long term end loss. The more big hits you take, the less able you are to take damage and longer healing requirement. Not for supers but definitely in more heroic genres. Doc