Doc Democracy

Before I start, I should apologise, this is likely to be long and rambling. I am visiting my wife's mother, so I often lie in bed in the morning, delaying getting up and thinking.
 
Today my thinking is about HERO (recently it has all been about Baldurs Gate!).
 
HERO is a detail game and we build characters to have game effect.  It is seen as a difficult game because there is so much detail and new folk find it difficult to make effective characters.
 
I have been wondering whether that is because we start with everyman stuff and begin adding to it.
 
What if we started with a Hero?
 
If the focus was on game effect, then your standard hero would go, for example, five times a round, hit 60% of the time doing, on average, 15 STUN through defences and moves 20m.
 
You define your schtick, your attacks are because you are Strong, or because you have eye beams etc etc
 
You could then add "upgrades".  The first half dozen are "free", you could hit more people at once, move faster, have more actions, improve your defences, extend your attacks (versus different defences, more effective versus heavy armour, etc). You could add movement, add senses, add various things.
 
If you want more upgrades, you make compromises.  These can either be limiting the effectiveness of existing powers or taking on complications.
 
I wonder, perversely, if this focus on effectiveness would bring more attention to the powers rather than the mechanics. It would mean the players would have a big signpost to a standard that they deviate from rather than a base level they need to build from.
 
It would lend itself to big books of upgrades! 🙂 I can imagine the Ultimate Speedster book having lists of upgrades and compromises.
 
Obviously, those upgrades and compromises would all be coated and built (for the GM) rather than being black boxes like other games.
 
That's it.  An idea for a new way to play the build a character.  No other changes. And focussed on new players not existing experts...
 
Doc

How different would this be from the Mutants and Masterminds approach (emulated a bit, I think, in Champions Complete) of providing template characters.
 
The main difference I perceive would be taking this one step further to package up "upgrades" and "compromises" as pre-fab packages, rather than making the player hunt around for +2d6 Blast or -1 SPD.
 
I think this would be another example of a "game powered by Hero", as it requires setting campaign defaults, maximums and even minimums (assuming each upgrade and compromise can be taken only once, or only X times).  Games, not just a game design system, are needed to attract new players and GMs.

Before I start, I should apologise, this is likely to be long and rambling. I am visiting my wife's mother, so I often lie in bed in the morning, delaying getting up and thinking.
 
Today my thinking is about HERO (recently it has all been about Baldurs Gate!).
 
HERO is a detail game and we build characters to have game effect.  It is seen as a difficult game because there is so much detail and new folk find it difficult to make effective characters.
 
I have been wondering whether that is because we start with everyman stuff and begin adding to it.
 
What if we started with a Hero?
 
If the focus was on game effect, then your standard hero would go, for example, five times a round, hit 60% of the time doing, on average, 15 STUN through defences and moves 20m.
 
You define your schtick, your attacks are because you are Strong, or because you have eye beams etc etc
 
You could then add "upgrades".  The first half dozen are "free", you could hit more people at once, move faster, have more actions, improve your defences, extend your attacks (versus different defences, more effective versus heavy armour, etc). You could add movement, add senses, add various things.
 
If you want more upgrades, you make compromises.  These can either be limiting the effectiveness of existing powers or taking on complications.
 
I wonder, perversely, if this focus on effectiveness would bring more attention to the powers rather than the mechanics. It would mean the players would have a big signpost to a standard that they deviate from rather than a base level they need to build from.
 
It would lend itself to big books of upgrades! 🙂 I can imagine the Ultimate Speedster book having lists of upgrades and compromises.
 
Obviously, those upgrades and compromises would all be coated and built (for the GM) rather than being black boxes like other games.
 
That's it.  An idea for a new way to play the build a character.  No other changes. And focussed on new players not existing experts...
 
Doc

OMG - so many attacks just before the weekend!  I may have to retire to my country estate to recover from the trauma...
 
😄

It was only after I did the last post that I spotted what the problem might have been - the error message though asks me to remove the "highlighted words" and the whole thing is highlighted....!  Huge hit to my self-esteem that the system thought all my prose was offensive!!!

Tried to edit to make this more comprehensive and the system objected to the whole thing.  🙂

I reckon we should avoid a discussion of social justice here, the moderators might object.

I reckon we should avoid a discussion of social justice here, the moderators might object.

I reckon we should avoid a discussion of social justice here, the moderators might object.

It does not actually have an increased OCV, it has an increased chance to hit because you are considering three hits in one roll.  If you shoot at something three times you have a better chance of recording one hit than if you shoot at it just once.  That is simple statistics.  Personally I would give someone the chance to block the attacks using the "core OCV" as the measure of success and each successful block would knock one off the "effective OCV" to roll to hit.  The special effects are that it is buzzing about taking time to attack again and again.

I think that the final question is part of why the additional OCV is limited - the target has an opportunity to dive for cover and potentially reach some kind of protective place where the attack cannot hit.  If the target plans to run to cover but would only get there by the time of the third attack, then the attackers roll needs to get a result that hits before the target gets to cover.  It makes things slightly more bureaucratic but potentially more exciting too.  

I find myself with less sympathy for those pining for the days when "our thing" was special and pointed at and laughed at.  I think I am happier with more people who are comfortable with superhero and gaming references, not least the appearance of NPC as a concept in random social media conversations.  I think there is more stuff for me to cherry pick and live off than in the old days when everything was specialist, expensive or home-made.
 
Obviously there are the issues like complete canon and I take great pleasure in educating newbies in the tyrrany of continuity.  I have been there, pined for completeness and then come out the other side, looking for complete stories that can exist.  I love asking those saying that batman should kill the Joker whether they would be happy knowing there would never be another joker story?  Some are but the majority want more stuff to watch and read.  Joker's continued existence is purely by commercial demand, not from any inherent flaw in Batman's priniciples or society as a whole. 
 
I want lots of stories, I want good complex series.  I am content for those stories to be coherent within themselves and owe no continuity to previous stories or to limit future stories by what they reveal.  I guess that is why I drifted into almost exclusively reading old stuff and Elseworlds stories.
 
However, the more people there are involved and interested, the more people there are who are likely to create in this space and, even if 90% of that is dross, it is still likely to be more than I had growing up.
 

Doc

The problem with alien cultures is that you need a degree of familiarity at the same time.

It's the difference between "yeah, I get it" and "no, I am not going to read forty pages of mediocre prose just to be able to play". Much of the skill in worldbuilding lies in that difference.

I think the trigger is essential to this.  The power is set to go off, it needs not be close to when they are about to die and could be years in advance, and sits there waiting for the right circumstance.
 
I think the definition of dead is important.  As Duke mentioned, the games are fantastical enough that many undead, mechanical and other non-traditional living beings exist.  If -10 is dead, then the trigger is when the being is taken to -10 BODY (that is my working memory too).
 
Doc

I thought I'd expand my reasoning a bit.
 
Let's assume for the sake of easy math that the initial attack hits on 10-, or 50%.  Which means it has a 50% to miss.  Two attempts gives it a 25% chance to miss, or 75% chance to hit.  Three gives a 12.5% chance to miss, or 87.5% chance to hit.  I'm reasonably certain both my math and my reasoning are correct. 
 
Going back to the dice probability chart for 3d6, 12- is a 74.07% chance to hit (approximating 75%), and 14- is 90.74%, close enough to 87.5%.  Because we're working on 3d6 and not percentiles, we can call +2 per pass "good enough".  We can buy +4 OCV with a single attack for +8 base points. 
 
I'm assuming each attempt is a separate "pass" taking +1 Segment of Extra Time.  -1/2 is an Extra Segment, or -3/4 is an Extra Phase.  Let's assume -1/2 for a variable amount of extra Segments that could be 0, 1, or 2; it could as easily be -1/4 if it seems too much.  With the +4 to hit: if you hit exactly or by 1, it hits on the third pass, at +2 Segments, if you hit by 2 or 3 it's the second pass, at +1 Segment, and if you hit by 4 or more it's the first pass, on the Segment it's fired. 

1.  More duplicates?  Buy more.  +5 points to double.  Eek.  I don't like the approach, but this is a trivial workaround if you do.
 
2.  On the Resurrection...mmm, I know it is.  I may have mis-thought it a bit.  BUT...8d6 probably isn't *close* to enough, which I think CRT emphasized.  
Healing, N d6 (N will be discussed in a bit), Resurrection (+20 points), 0 END, Resurrection Only (-1/2), Trigger (when struck after being killed), plus maybe the expanded effect, and the "must be hit again" limitation
 
So, what's N?  First, the healing must be great enough to take the corpse to 1 BODY...and if this is going to happen all at once, on the trigger, we're talking taking the BODY to full.  So, even with just 10 BODY...we're talking 20 BODY, or 40 pips.  Hello there, 12d6 minimum, and that's if you don't allow damage past negative BODY.  
 
Oh, and...we need Decreased Re-use Duration...a HONKING BIG ONE, if we want it to work as OP suggested.  
 
So, we're looking at, what, 140 base points with a +3 1/4 advantage...?  +1 1/2 decreased re-use, +1/2 reduced END, + 1/4 trigger, +1 expanded effect.  595 active?
 
3.  Chris was pointing out the qualifier to my statement.  You can't recombine with a dead duplicate...so for the duplication approach to work, the duplicate has to be resurrected...at which point, he's not dead, and therefore, recombine's allowed.
 
Mmm...
 

Re: Healing/Regeneration power build
 
The phylactery is the real character, and it Summons a new Lich every time the old one is destroyed.

Re: Healing/Regeneration power build
 
Summon does not work. Sure you can MAKE it work, if you want to ignore some bits, and this was how we did resurrection before we had resurrection, but technically the summoned creature, even if it is DEFINED as the original is still a GM beasty and NOT the original, and, even if the player was allowed to run it, it can not stay around indefinitely - only so long as it has defined 'tasks' to complete.
 
Resurrection DOES get expensive though it is the 'right' way to do it, probably....if it is a GM villain, handwave it for goodness sakes, if it is a player....hmmm....
 
Here's a cheat: + 30 BODY (only to avoid death if hit again after 'dying' -1/2: no figured) and +50 STUN (only active if hit again after 'dying' -1/2) costs 66 points.
 
Basically, say your ghul has 30 stun and 10 BODY norally and gets 'killed' i.e. takes 20 BODY damage, it appears to all intents and purposes to be dead, but in fact has 50 BODY, so is only down to 30: gets hit again and the extra BODY and STUN clicks in and it is up and running at full health. Probably not wxactly what you are after but about the right effect?

Re: Homing
 
Personally I like to do it using continuous uncontrolled (requires attack roll every phase, ends when attack is successful). You make the attack, pile in the amount of END necessary to keep it going multiple phases and it will keep attacking until it actually hits or runs out of END.
 
Doc

... Subtitle ... ?

Thanks, Hugh. 
 
 
how about that!  It took sixty-odd years, but I finally found a place where I'm the _subtle_ one!
 

 
 

I tend to ignore BODY once the current adventure is over.  Start of next adventure, everyone is hale and hearty.
 
BODY damage, as you intimated, should raise the stakes during the adventure and players should be adapting their tactics to ensure their injured comrades are not unduly exposed to further BODY damage.
 
Doc

The Janus Key appears to possess sentience and some level of intelligence, and randomly "chooses" a wielder to appear to. That's how Amnesia of the Cirque Sinister got it. You don't find it. It finds you.
 

Henke is a bit of a legend, true. Almost as good as Ibrahimovich and much more personable! When he went from Celtic to Barca in '04, the two clubs met in the Champions League, the game played in Glasgow. Larsson scored on his old club -- and refused to celebrate. Class act.

My favourite player on my favourite team is a Swede.  Hendrix Larsson is a god.  Sweden is the last country I would find fault with....

Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Less hate for a dessert you probably have never tried.  There are a lot of scandi-snacks that I might point at that are, health-wise, as questionable as the modern classic you are trying to denigrate.
 
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