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Doc Democracy

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Everything posted by Doc Democracy

  1. It is why I am a fan of one recoverable charge for this. It might end up purely as a 1/4 or 0 limitation as it recovers every post segment 12. So you get 0 END for free but can only use it once a turn. As GM I think I might be leaning heavily towards the +0 limitation.
  2. Just in the rules (6th edition), if your attack has extra time it means, if you use another attack, the attack with extra time goes back to the start, and you need to wait the whole period of time again. 6E1 Page 374, "Attacks are an exception: if a character takes this Limitation for a power that requires an Attack Roll, he cannot make another attack until the power’s been used". There is the usual, you can get special GM permission to ignore this.
  3. That sounded like Extra time for me, but for attacks that means you activate it and it takes a full turn to be ready to throw. Problem is that it forbids you using other attacks in the meantime. I was sure I saw a limitation that meant you could only use it after a certain period had lapsed since its last use, thought it was called cooldown or something. It is like phasers that overheat and need to cool down before firing again. Could not see it in main rulebook or in Star Hero.
  4. Yeah, you are right. My response is edition based. I am also agreed that using a complication is a bad precedent to set. The recoverable charge does indeed sound like a good option.
  5. My problem with using Trigger or END Reserve for this is that you are actually paying points to limit the use of the power. Trigger might be acceptable if it provided an additional attack that turn, a significant advantage in any combat, and if I was using the END reserve to track the bureaucracy, I would not be charging points for it. Doc
  6. You know, this is beginning to get very close to belonging in the political thread in Non-gaming discussion. Possible close enough to draw the ire of Dan Simon should it go further.
  7. Bingo. The xenovores might not call or think of themselves as evil, it is aculturally loaded term. In the D&D-verse, where such things are laid out absolutely in the cosmos, there is no escaping the term. Doc
  8. I know Duke has left the conversation but I know he can't help reading things either, even if he no longer contributes. I think this is not what anyone us suggesting. The point of the thing is not to be evil, just to be evil. The point is to further the ends of whatever drives that evilness. In Fantasy that usually derives from deities or supernatural influences. It can also be well-established cultural practices, things they know are abominable but are mandated by their God, or provide them with power.
  9. Come on Chris. I am trying to have a discussion, not a fight. I am not trying to be right. Essentially, the OP asked about evil races, a staple, as you admit of fantastical literature and fantasy RPGs. I was looking to explore the concept, you seem to want to say it is impossible for a modern, sensible person to admit such things could be part of an imagined world, unbound by the limitations of our reality.
  10. Well, if that entity is living and breathing and essentially a mortal extension of a supernatural manifestation of evil, and work to bring evil to the world, then I am comfortable that I am slaying an evil creature. This is not a simulation of any reality, it is a fantastical representation of mythic archetypes. Usually the protagonists are indeed teams, working towards their own individual destinies for the world. Usually one of those teams is good as that destiny aims at more happiness and kindness in the world. The other team is evil as it aims at pain and suffering. Those labels of good and evil are a bleed over from our own existence, we know what we like and the things we like are good. While the hackneyed high fantasy long-since wore thin, I also weary of the multi-hued or shades of grey grimdark ambiguity. I like heroic fantasy. I like to see principled people fighting for common good and if that requires dark evil antagonists as a stark contrast, I am quite comfortable with that. What I am really against is any suggestion that a paticular style of gaming, literature or myth-making is BadWrongFun and should be deprecated. As long as everyone involved is bought in and enjoying themselves then it is fine and good. I think that if someone's game relies on evil bad guys that are guaranteed bad and guaranteed to do the wrong thing, and the players are on the same page, then being able to attack, oppose and kill those evil opponents without shedding too many tears is fine.
  11. Interesting, I dabbled with 4th edition and never went back (4th was the first edition I never bought a book for). All my D&D is 3.5 and before. It is interesting that they seem to have moved in a similar direction to me (narcissist, not me! 🙂 ). Probably things from and with connections to the various non-prime material plane entities. Have they grappled in 5th edition with what the plane of elemental evil actually means? Is it simply a huge source of energy to tap? I kind of bet they dont philosophise about what evil is and is not... I have read both Invincible and the Boys. Not seen the animated series though. What is better about it??
  12. I have indeed thught about it a lot because of my Greyhawk HERO project. I wanted to replicate the universe in HERO terms which, like many things in HERO, meant I had to delve deep to understand what question I was actually asking. All I wanted was to build detect evil and protection from evil. Suddenly I was wondering what it was I was detecting and protecting from.... 😄
  13. Our problem is that we are making all this stuff up and trying to relate it to our own experiences. As such, our understanding of what it would be like or our understanding of it would be like, by default, is always going to be faulty in some way. Looking around for comparisons, in the past, people often cast those with mental health issues as evil or possessed. We now have a dilemma of whether someone who would do really evil, cruel acts can actually be defined as sane. It is a good debate to have. Do you need to be "insane" to be evil, or can you be sane and choose to do such things? The criminal justice system can wrangle with those issues. In gaming, if a race created by an evil god has a link to that god, which rages inside their brain, urging them to do the cruel and evil acts, that you need to presume generate mana for those particular dieities (why else to do it), then are they insane, evil, robots, free-willed, in pain?? Can that link be severed? Can it be blocked? Are there some who are born without it? Does the link (as I suggested up-thread) provide some advantages if you lean into it (like the Dark Side)? All of that stuff is gameable. And none of it needs humanoid races to be irredeemable but might "explain" why so few of them manage to live "good" lives. If the majority tend certain direction then the inertia of the society probably pushes most of everyone else down that way. Just think growing up in such a society where to show kindness is likely to be seen as weakness and you become prey? In the D&D-verse. Does detect evil mean that you detect that the person has committed evil acts in the past, has thought about committing evil acts, approves of evil acts or has a link to the elemental plane of evil?? I know which one makes more "sense" to me. Doc
  14. Have you just created an axiom that proves every other RPG is evil, as HERO does not embrace the absolutist ideas of other systems. 😁
  15. I don't think so, they are not sentient beings. Of course, in a theistic world with active gods, it is probably rare for many of those things not to be the result of an evil act. It would not be a stochastic universe.
  16. Greyhawk exists in a humanistic universe. The Old Ones, Deep One's and mildly twisted one's exist within that reference and are evil, because they are bringing human existence to an end. That doesn't mean every universe is so deterministic but it does mean you cannot use "common sense" words like good and evil and expect everyone to be on the same page.
  17. Oof, that is dark and doesn't help with all of other evil races. Would also mean an orc horde was a sign of a LOT of extreme horridness. Demographics would be skewed too.
  18. I think the planes of elemental good and elemental evil remove any relativity in the idea of good and evil. It also makes it difficult to define. Good enhances the universe, helps it to develop while evil works to rip things up and makes life worse.
  19. I had 100% forgotten this was how Desolid worked.
  20. Ach, tripped myself up. I meant not because they are evil and act evil. I think inherently evil might have a different terminology in my Greyhawk. Inherently evil would mean you have a link to the Plane of Elemental Evil. Some races are born with such a link but it does not dictate their alignment and the various detect spells are sensitive enough to differentiate between evil and "inherent" evil. I think any D&D campaign has that planar theology built in. I think the mortal races should be equivalent in that they can choose how they want to behave and have a behavioural alignment. Similarly, elves are inherently good, that link works when they watch to leave the mortal realm and "travel" to whatever end place their theology determines for them. I am inclined to treat drow and duergar like orcs and goblins, twisted races that have had that link to the plane of Elemental Evil added to their essence by some god or another. I am also inclined to give those races the ability to draw on the link for benefits. So a goblin might lean on the link to add to its sneak ability (+2 to begin, possibly upto +5 as it gains ability). Such use will change their alignment to evil. Orcs might be able to use it to boost STR, Drow to cast magic etc. drawing on it will change their behaviour, like the Dark Side of the Force. In that way, their God has given them a temptation to become evil and do evil. It does not mean they give in and a non-evil orc might be seen almost better than a non-evil man, elf or dwarf because they constantly fight, and win, against the very real temptations they face every day. All this works better in HERO because it can model all that better than D&D. Doc
  21. The problem doesn't arise in one-offs and dungeon where everything you meet is slavering hordes ready to tear you apart. Killing in those situations is effectively self-defence. The problem is in campaign play where you have tribes of orcs, goblins etc. Mothers and children. When your "good" party raid the village to accomplish their quest, killing 99% of the warriors, what do they do with the "evil" non-combatants. After all, they remain evil. As my group never grapples with such high-falutin ideas we rarely have any issues. I do think a large part of that is that we are, to a man, white middle class folk that have never suffered discrimination. I do think that the presence of folk that are inherently evil opens up the option for bad behaviour (random slaughter of essential innocents) simply for existing under the flag of "Well, they are evil and I am good". It is the whole poor take on alignment that permeated D&D. The same players would scream injustice if I persecuted their LE assassin character in cities of "good" folk. As a workaround, I have proposed in my Greyhawk HERO, that goblins and orcs were created by evil gods. They live in the wildernesses and lands ruled by evil Lords because it is the only place they are welcome. The reason? Not because they are inherently evil but evil shaman/priests can sacrifice any single orc/goblins etc to create a horde (size limited by the power of the priest and length of the ritual). It is the reason such hordes exist and towns often refuse entry to these creatures because of the risk inherent in their very existence. Their actions determine their alignment, just like anyone else but their heritage determines their risk. As such, even the non-ravening hordes, non-evil acting tribes of humanoid creatures have a dislike of "good" nations who force them to live in horrid places with horrid people. In the example above, the mothers and children cannot be presumed evil, there will be the usual ratios of good folk and bad folk in the village. They will hate the players who just slaughtered their men-folk though. This may change how players interact with humanoid villages, but it has to change how I play them too. For instance, why would a whole village accept the kidnap of a local human maiden? Why would all the menfolk fight to defend that bad action? There will be good and bad humanoid communities. There will be times when a village of orcs has come under malign influences, just as that might happen with human villages. There will be times the players consider atrocities but it could no longer have the convenient cover of "it doesn't matter, they are all evil, even the babies". Doc
  22. How odd. My very first post on these boards, 20 years ago was about desolidification and invulnerability!
  23. We often ascribe too much wisdom to the people who laid down the foundations of a system. It us like when you grow up and realise that your parents never really knew all the answers, they were just trying to do their best at the time. To me, being desolidified is a combination of effects. One is the ability to travel through solid objects leaving behind no trace of passage. That could easily be Tunneling with invisible effects. One is that damaging effects don't affect them. We have a number of powers that might be used for that. There is nothing fundamental about the power except an absolute effect that we don't hold for anything else having. As for not knowing how much desolid you want, have a look at the table of materials. You want to pass through them all? Buy the relevant level of Tunnelling. Link the defence to the Tunnelling (or vice versa), make it all drain together. Call it phantasmal form. More true to the HERO axioms and it avoids all the issues of having to buy affects solid on your attacks (unless you take that as a disadvantage on the defences).
  24. I think that I usually bought my force field down to 0 END so often that I have not really felt that particular change - my 20PD/20ED Force Field (0 END) always did cost me 60 points.
  25. The purpose of the power was to speak in tongues, where people would be able to undertand what you had to say. The conceit would be that someone with mental defence, high EGO and/or high DECV would realise that someone was seeking to communicate with them and would be able, if they wnted, to understand him. They would have an additional defence if the person relied on that power to persuade, interrogate or anything else that required them to comprehend things. Just having spent on those things should not inhibit you more than anyone else. The other thing, you as a GM can do, is come up with a power that reliably works for the average person in the campaign and then declare that it is a "thing" that work in the described manner for a described price. Steve Long, several times, said that it would be fine for a GM to work out how much it would cost to endure the majority of attacks in the campaign, then declare, for that cost, you can purchase Invulnerable, and ignore damage regardless of the role or details of the damage inflicted on them. In this case, you have worked out a reasonable way to allow everyone (not explicitly enhaneced) to understand your speech. After that, you ignore the core mechanics of it, and call it Speaking in tongues (anyone that can hear you speak can understand what you mean), Xpts. Do not allow the details of the system rob you of cool powers, or force you into a never-ending recursion of powers, advantages and disadvantages to better model reality. Doc
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