Doc Democracy

I think this is central to understanding HERO as a GM. It is incomprehensible that anyone would want to downvote it. 😞 I immediately wanted to put my players in just such a situation, it actually demonstrates the power of the system. Doc

And I think this is the root of the problem. We want something like natural light that mitigates the effect of natural darkness. We also need some mechanism that allows us to game dark generating powers when they come up against light generating powers. These are two different game mechanics masquerading as the same thing. 🙂 I think the sniper issue can be dealt with through simple SFX regardless of how everything else is working. If you take Redsash's dispel build and give it SFX of generating light across the affected area then the sniper issue and 'real' effects of light are dealt with. All the benefits and disbenefits of being in such light can be worked through as common sense. We only need to consider the dispel aspect when that light comes up against a power that actively promotes darkness. Doc

The reason I do not like Aid as the base for this power is all to do with those outside the area of effect looking in. If I am a sniper on top of a roof, 200m away. I am in complete darkness and can see very little. When the target walks into the room and turns on the light (to light their own environment) I am still in complete darkness and would not be able to target someone in the neighbouring room without a light but am really only dealing with range penalties for the target in the lit room. How does the Aid solution provide the sniper with the ability to see in the room? There is also the issue that generating light makes you visible from a long way off by people nowhere near the area of effect. Doc

This was my first thought. I preferred the physical limitaton because it was bit less defined and more all encompassing than being desolid. It is better for the same reason, easier for the GM to decide how things play out when he loses the containment suit.

I was thinking of a physical limitation, cannot interact with the world unless in a containment suit. I would then think about the suit and how it might be damaged in game... Beyond that, the character is standard. Easy-peasy. 🙂

Absolutely, if introducing this significantly slowed down the game, then I would drop it immediately. I am thinking that I might limit the use to one person per phase...or give each player a few RUSH tokens that they can use each night. I do not subscribe to the need for symmetry. 🙂 I will not pursue that option... Neither do I wish to break the action phase economy. I am content with the phases and SPD elements of things, the rules already allow you to rush into the segment before your phase. I am content with the rules around aborting. Unless I went with the Rush token idea and then I might consider allowing that once or twice per session per character. What harm can it do really??

I missed hipshot. However, I think 1 for 1 seems a bit stingy! 🙂 The 5th edition version seems to add too much time to the process - having to roll a dice and do the subtraction, while it may be exciting, takes time, time, time... 🙂 Doc

I liked keeping the target number constant, it meant the calculations were all focussed on the same thing, was the result greater than 10. (I had made a deliberate decision to go greater than 10, reducing the chances of success from 62.5% to 50% on an unmodified roll). If I wanted to keep the same result profile as in RAW then the result would need to be at least 10. There is merit in everything remaining constant - there is never a question of "What do I need to roll?" it is always the same.

I am considering allowing my players to rush an action. This is allowing them to voluntarily lower their OCV to improve their chance of going first in a segment. ordinarily if players are acting on the same segment on the same phase then it is a DEX countdown. I was thinking of improving DEX (for the purposed of going first) by 2 for every 1 OCV foregone (though I think it should be -1 to whatever roll for success you are rushing). I do not see this being used regularly but it is something that might be useful in mixing up combat a bit if someone might take advantage of being able to go first in a phase (at the cost of being less able to accomplish what you want to do). Doc

I don't think advancement would be appreciably slower. Yup, the new system costs more to establish some baselines but the vast majority of improvements cost the same as before. I think it would only be improving combat values that would cost more/take longer and I am pretty sanguine about that. Doc

I did it in a game I ran for D20 lovers. I customised a character sheet and told them that the test for success was to beat 10 on a modified roll. So roll + levels and bonuses - difficulty and penalties. In combat, OCV is a bonus as are skill levels and sundry situational modifiers; DCV is the difficulty with range etc providing penalties. With skills, the difficulty was 10. I treated every improvement to base skill as a plus on the sheet, so Stealth 11 or less was listed as Stealth on the character sheet; Stealth 13 or less was listed as Stealth +2. Worked a treat, everything was about beating 10, rolling high was always good. However, to show the fickleness of gamers, not one of them complained about Runequest when looking to roll under a percentage to hit and roll high for damage.... Doc

Harrumph!! Hear Hear!! Continuity/coherence ruined comics and is ruining my superhero movie consumption!!!

Which is fine if you tend to play in a group. I played most often on my own, or with one friend. Ruined! My whole life!!! These people should be hung drawn and quartered....with a rusty spoon..... 😄 Doc

I remember waiting for the different Champions books to come out. Neither Champions II nor Champions III seemed to me to be advanced or optional, they were live additions to the core rulebook. I remember us changing our characters to accomodate the expanded ruleset and I used the three books as a set. I guess how I consider those rulebooks to be coloured by how I remember them when they were released - so many new things my characters could use and accomplish. Doc

My Great Weapons Fighter now has to use healing potions in a fight rather than relying on his abilities to get him through the combat. I find it a pain to play - I did GWF *because* I did not want the hassle of thinking about healing! 🙂

Welcome to HERO! 🙂 Any GM, doing the job will have a headache for every campaign until you are comfortable enough with saying no to ad hoc things the palyers come to you with because you did not expressly forbid them at the outset. HERO is described as a toolkit, the GM should build the campaign game before the players build the characters. In other games there are house rules but in HERO it is expected that the GM will put together a game using the toolkit. It is obviously possible to skip this but you then open up every rule, whether or not it is appropriate for the game and campaign you are trying to run... And, used to other games you will get the argument "But it is in the rulebook!" to which an experienced HERO GM will say "No. It is in the toolkit. I am not using that rule in this game."!! 😁 Doc

With heroes of this power you really need to begin challenges that are social and investigative. The heroes need to know what they are fighting and why before they get to unleash. If you read Justice League, you are talking about unbeatable power head on, their stories are often about getting in a place where they can bring the firepower to bear. I find concentrating the power in one villain is a high risk strategy, I prefer dispersed foes, ones that mean the heroes have to be more discriminatory and surgical. One of my friends that I was trying to persuade to run a game thought the group was too difficult to challenge (they were running at about 500 points under BBB rules). Next scenario I had each hero begin by being called out by a robot. They were built on 125 points but designed specifically to defeat each particular hero. I made that part of the next adventure, the robots tattoo'ed their defeated opponents and left them in prominent public places in the campaign city. It was supposed to demonstrate to my friend that the GM can beat the heroes any time he wants and it does not need a lot of points to do it. Instead it decided him that he was never running a game in which I built my own character. 😬 Principle is still a good one. The challenge for the GM is not beating the players or competing on power, it is coming up with a credible threat and an entertaining game. Doc

Duck Season!!

Boris was caught discussing a future trade deal with the US where he did not rule out including access to NHS contracts, potentially preferential access for US big pharma, meaning we in the UK would pay as much for those medicines as you do in the US. Obviously inflating drug costs would put additional pressure on the whole service and cause other things (like hospitals, doctors and nurses) get pared back.

You mean NHS?? 😬 It would be political suicide and probably end the Conservatives as a political force, possibly forever.

Project Fear!! People will be lining up to trade with the New Bear Republic and there are international rules about rivers and water. Teasing obviously but when the public buy in, practicalities and details are not persuasive. Not being allowed would be waving red flag to secessionists. Trimble reckons Scotland wont be allowed, I don't think they can be stopped.

Well, Wales voted Brexit too and their economy is much more hard-wired than Scotland or NI's. I think they are stuck there for at least a decade. Wales does not have a history of independence like Scotland over the last 50 years or rebellion like Ireland over the last 500. It would take time to build the necessary momentum to achieve escape velocity... As for the Queen, she remains monarch of Scotland just like the multitude of other Commonwealth countries. Doc

The way it worked with Brexit and will work for Indyref2 is that people stop listening to concerns about cost and practicalities. Several of my Labour voting, Union friendly friends would now vote yes as independence, whatever the costs and troubles, is less scary than Tory rule in Boris' Britain.

It would have been as inconceivable as California leaving the United States. Many of the reasons are the same.

NI has elected more nationalist politicians than unionist ones for the first time ever. The DUP has lost all its leverage over the Government and they are going to have to beg Johnson to support their position in their Assembly (if it ever gets re-established). I think both Scotland and Northern Ireland have a right good chance of having independence votes in the next Parliament, especially if Brexit is going badly.