Doc Democracy

I used the whole additional 12PD instead of just using the additional 7PD as you noted - well picked up. As you expected, your method and mine come to a very similar cost, 34/35 points. That will teach me to pay attention when I am posting from work and allowing my job to distract me from the important issues of Tunnelling costs!! 😄

Hugh provoked me to go look at numbers. If you look at the "full power" here you would have 16m Tunnelling through 13PD. That is 3+15+24 = 42 points. Any answer to the cost of the more limited power needs to cost less than this. If you look at LoneWolf's plan, then the core cost is 28 points, with an additional 12 points that add PD at the cost of reducing movement. With a -1 limitation that is +12 points that comes to a total of 40 points. I think the limitation on this power is probably worth more than two points. If you used my custom limitation then you would be paying 28 points...it is the same as the extreme at either end so you might think that you have more flexibility than purchasing either extreme, so perhaps a 1/4 limitation is the right one. that comes to a cost of 34 points. Doc

Seems like a custom limitation "Movement through substance reduced 2m for every +1PD above 6PD". You simply then have to consider how much that is worth. +1/2?? I think people sometimes look for complexity rather than reach for the obvious solution but this looks nailed on to me. Doc

Currently playing in Glorantha. Am using the gritty BRP Runequest for the base gameplay, the using the narrative-heavy HeroQuest for when they enter the Hero Plane or when extreme magical events take place. The contrast is really useful.

There is a difference, the one I think Duke is making, between generally, mostly and universally. I do not think I know of anyone that gets to the universal category. My wife hated Tom Selleck. There are a number of supermodels I don't rate (and some I cannot look away from). I think Duke's take is decent. He has a COM number that is the equivalent of text in the character description saying beautiful to men and women alike. The GM can take either under advisement. If the player buys 10 PRE, with the subtext of Incredibly beautiful, then the player has bought an extra 2D6 PRE attack, gets +2 to PRE based skills and, in most games (not Duke's), the confidence provided by growing up with such adulation, protects them from others influencing them (in the form of PRE attacks). Duke's take is that comeliness is not buying game effect, it is SFX with the influence that SFX can have throughout the game, soft power rather than hard mechanics.

In the real world, I am 100% with you. In a superheroic world, then I think I need to be as open to universal attractiveness as I am to flight, force fields, invisibility and pre-cognition. I am presuming that you understand I am not in the Bring back COM caucus. I mean I have publicly declared that i would get rid of all non-game-mechanical characteristics! 🕵️‍♂️

Are you saying you will believe a man can fly and shoot lightning from his fingers but not be universally attractive?

And the thing I learned fro this is that you guys have a U in glamour but not in colour! 🤔

Hunt Demons is Vera Farmiga from the Conjuring films. No idea about the eat your soul but she looks familiar...

Reckon you need to add Superworld by Chaosium. Big memories playing Bad medicine for Dr Drugs.... https://www.chaosium.com/superworld/

I am all for this in one-off and con games. But I would take END away completely then - and anything that would otherwise tire people out would simply be doing STUN damage. In the past I have abstracted END to some "energy tokens" - I used glass beads. When the narrative of the story was about pushing things on, I would take tokens away and some attacks (that I knew were END drains etc) would take away tokens. It made it more physical and less abstract, and the tokens came back when they delayed or rested.

Personally I think Israel fumbled the ball with this one. The HAMAS attack was particularly heinous and broadcast across the world, everyone who did not watch in horror was giving themselves away. It was something that serious pro-Palestinian nations could not actively endorse or excuse. I think if Israel had played up the horrors inflicted upon it, called on the wider arab nations to condemn HAMAS, to expel them from their safe havens to face justice for the actions of their organisation and to force HAMAS to return the hostages they MIGHT have broken the back of the HAMAS organisation and potentially began a healing process. I would have followed it up with a promise to release the non-HAMAS prisoners in Israel and a development promise to improve the infratructure of Gaza. It seems so easy to sacrifice the lives of living soldiers and to excuse the sacrifice of innocent Palestinians when you can blame HAMAS for hiding behind them, but almost impossible to sacrifice the vengence owed to those already dead under horrific circumstances. It is definitely an easier political line to take, to satisfy the short term demand for justice/vengence. The current policy seems impossible to me - they will kill many HAMAS fighters, they will degrade HAMAS' ability to operate and attack Israel in the immediate future BUT they will radicalise a whole new generation of Palestinians both in the Middle East and beyond, they will provide "justification" for future horrors in what is a massively assymetric conflict, and the cycle will continue. I think it is too late for a ceasefire - the Israelis are already too far in to withdraw now without significant victories, they have already damaged their credibility as victim and need to emphasise their ability, and willingness, to kill those who attack their citizens as a form of disincentive on future terror. The disagreements are already too polarised into who you are for and looking for who is the real villain rather than looking for a longer term solution. 😞

I think it is important, if you are going to have END in the fame, to list the cost for using the power. It can be "power description [5]". You can nake it stand out by listing END in green, and all the end costs in green, so that you link those things for players.

I can join the chorus of appreciating simpler sheets for play, divorced from build sheets or hero designer files. Watch your players, if they can't find numbers they are not obvious enough. One place the game mechanics drive a bit of confusion is conflating ability stats with game stats. By that I mean things like STR, DEX, INT etc sitting beside SPD, REC, END and STUN. I would have a combat box where all these useful numbers sit together. In the Supergirl sheet, I would probably remove the detail from the Enhanced physiology, just note that asterisked features are enhanced, then add some asterisks through the sheet. The GM needs the detail, the player's playing sheet just needs to know what is linked in this way. I might also push it out to two sides. I would put the picture, the background and the complications on one side, possibly bulking them out with some strategy hints and tips. I would then add a bit of text "colour" to the powers to encourage players to play the power and not the numbers. Yeah, when I was younger that was no problem, today it is becoming more of a challenge. 🙂 Doc

That might be preferable to a player with poor speaking skills being expected to orate in character or simply not be able to play face type characters. I say that as the player who often plays face type characters and am often deferred to in such situations even when my character is supposed to be a slow-thinking grunt. My friends expect it of me, and not of others. The game system should not reinforce this kind of stereotyping. In the example above, I would seek a bit of additional information - what is he drawing on to persuade the guards, why should they look the other way, why should you be different. I would not make the player orate (and potentially have them embarrassed at doing something they know they are not good - and perhaps not even competent at - in front of their friends).

I suppose it reflects a defence that is perfect until it collapses catastrophically. I agree though that it looks like something only villains will use! GMs can afford to be profligate with their points...

My questions would be, what is it about this limitation that limits what you can do. Personally, I dont think there is a huge limitiation on the fact that they are all armoured suits. Possibly if that limitation meant that they are all (at least) IIF and that the focus is trashable if someone does enough damage, then I would be up for the limitation. There would be some interest if the most relevant suit (the HulkBuster) got busted and then he had to go fight the Hulk with whatever suit happened to be available. 🙂

It would be odd if your CV did not impact on your ability to fence competitively as well as in deadly combat. Maybe not the start and finish but it should definitely contribute - possibly as an adder to your PS? Or the base for adders depending on the manouevre being used - or the "damage" inflicted by a successful engagement with an opponent.

So, I reckon those actions are actions that matter. In a table tennis game, I would have an opposed roll for the serve, the ball then pings back and forth every second or so, and in an action phase you get the chance to do something exciting to win the point. It would be interesting to have a baseline difficulty. You choose a baseline and serve against that. Success means that is the difficulty other actions work against. Your action might seek to win the point, or up the difficulty level. If you try to win the point, and fail, your opponent gets a bonus to win on their next action. Manoeuvres, like Smash, will alter difficulty level for your opponent's next turn. You might abort your next action to counter a successful smash etc. All the time the ball flies back and forth, the SFX of the difficulty level. 😁

Well. There are other options. I had the shadows as the physical manifestation of the additional SPD I suggested. I would consider allowing the attack to be Blast with a +1/4 no range (meaning the attack could be delivered where either the main character or one of the shadows was in melee range. That not only avoids indirect and stretching, it gives a bonus. The drawback is that it does not allow all of the skills etc that Zed might have. However, you could buy indirect or stretching on a much smaller amount of STR to do much of that stuff. These are not complicated in mechanics just a bit of a mind stretch to apply SFX to those mechanics. I would be considering this as a bit of a speedster character, acting more times in a round than most other characters but not the 3-4 times as often as characters with Duplication or Summons.

This demonstrates a problem we all gave, mixing up phases and segments. 😁 The point however is absolutely spot on, just because you are SPD 4 dies not mean you always go on segments 3,6,9 and 12. You could quite easily go on 5,6,11 and 12 or 3,8,9 and 12. Just doing this kind of thinking mixes up what you do in a round. Doc

Yeah, it makes the be desolid, become solid, attack, then go desolid again an arguable linked case - if you can travel after attacking, then why not use other powers like desolid.

Really, the only way to judge that would be to play it and see what you think. If you allow it, you might see people take bigger movements, allowing them to dive in, hit and move away (possibly into cover) with no ability of the person attacked to intervene. The rules as written mean that if you run in and hit someone then you will have to be there to take the consequences of that melee attack.

Also. I maintain that while looking to our own world can be informative, it cannot be definitive on what happens in a fantasy world where a vast array of other forces, powers and laws of nature exist.

I do think that all clerics should be more powerful in their sacred grounds as well, possibly defences and additional offence possible.