Derek Hiemforth

Something like these?

Combat Chart-portrait.pdf Combat Chart-landscape.pdf

As far as I know, they've never been formally statted up for Champions in a published book.  Astralle first appeared, along with the description of her deal with the seven demons, in The Ultimate Super Mage by @DShomshak back in the mid-1990s.  He might have some thoughts...

By default, Vehicles don't have to pay END for their movement (6E2 p188 or CC p162).  The Warship is an example of a ship that does have its movement cost END and keeps track of its power usage (see Star Hero p217, second paragraph under Propulsion Systems).

No.  6E2, page 74, Under Usable Attacks, says, "...a character cannot use defensive maneuvers or Actions (such as Block, Dodge, or Deflection) as part of a Multiple Attack."  Two-Weapon Fighting just offsets the first -2 OCV of a Multiple Attack when using two weapons. It does not change the restriction on using defensive maneuvers that's already built into a Multiple Attack.

12 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Just because you were asking about putting them in an EC, I had assumed that this was precisely what you had done to meet the END requirement.

Same here!   

If she's clever/devious enough, it should be something that's only about knives, and not at all about TK or mind reading. As much she can, she should try to hide those other powers, and make victims think the knives are all they need to worry about... 

5 minutes ago, rravenwood said:

Whaddya know - actually, 3rd edition DOES include the rule that Enhanced Senses don't cost any END, but they screwed up on the layout and the paragraph which says that appears AFTER the listings for Infrared Vision and Enhanced Vision (p.23), so it's easy to overlook. 

Great catch!  I was specifically looking for that language somewhere around Enhanced Senses, and I still missed it! 

4 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

In 3rd ED, can you put an Enhanced Sense in an EC? Following all the rules naturally? I could not see any rule for or against it. 

Champions 3E, page 36:  "Powers that don't use END aren't generally allowed in Elemental Controls, but the GM can make an exception to this rule."

Weirdly, 3E never says that Enhanced Senses don't cost END to use.  So if you assume they do (as the book says you should, since it says any Powers that don't cost END will say they don't cost END, and Enhanced Senses  doesn't say that), then yes, you could put them in an EC.

Now, I have literally never encountered a GM, even back in 3E days, that had Enhanced Senses cost END. Also, under Endurance on page 78, it says, "...some Powers do not cost END to use. These Powers are marked "No Endurance Cost" in their cost summary."  Well, Enhanced Senses doesn't have a cost summary. Sooo... do they really cost END?  Or was the bit that says they don't cost END just accidentally left out?

I would say the latter, and that therefore they cannot go in an EC unless they get that all-important Special GM Permission™.  But just reading the book as it is, it seems to say they can, but also that they cost END.  🤷‍♂️

On 7/25/2021 at 6:02 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

Really? I love the Western Shores too however I never felt it was designers to be adventured in. The Countries too close and delineated for adventure.

I've always more-or-less had the idea that the countries aren't quite as cleanly delineated as they appear on the map. Many of their write-ups describe monster incursions in the borderlands, and the general feel I get is that the further you get from the "core" of each country, the less well-defined it is. So there seems to be plenty of potential danger to travelers, or reasons why caravans need guards, or orc uprisings that need to be opposed, etc.

And of course, the entirety of the eastern part of the Shores, with the Daemon's Cleft, Celinad, the Ruined March, the Witchwood, the Drakor Mountains, etc. are all adventureland.  

On 7/25/2021 at 6:02 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

For example why adventure into Daria? It has a wall blocking off it from Ambria. Perhaps adventuring in the Peaks of Dawn.

Kron's Wall hampers armies, and therefore keeps Daria and Ambria from constantly being at war, but I don't think that does much to isolate Daria from adventurers. I'll agree that it's no tourist destination, so adventurers are unlikely to want to just go there to see what's there, but I can think of all sorts of plot hook reasons why they might want/need to go to Daria.

Perhaps they have family there being threatened under the tyrannical rule. Perhaps they've learned of an old ruin with an item of power, and they want to retrieve it before Zephrahm and Sarador find it and use it to break the balance of power with Ambria. Perhaps they're crusading do-gooder types who want to bring down Zephrahm and Sarador in hopes that their successors will be less terrible to the people. Perhaps they're spying for the Dwarves of the Peaks of Dawn, gathering intelligence on Zephrahm's war preparations. Perhaps they're smuggling something or someone into or out of Daria through Vlaskarov. Perhaps they're pirates (or just Brondheimers) plundering the All Sea coast. Heck, for a twist on things, maybe a powerful necromancer arises in Daria --  a land of ancestor worshippers seems ripe for such -- and Zephrahm and Sarador actually seek out the PCs' help in stopping him before he can put the lich of some great past Darian Wizard-King back on the throne or something.

On 7/25/2021 at 6:02 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

The Greatwood forest takes up nearly half of Ambria. So if the elves control it, what’s an adventurer to do?

The book itself notes, "Though the Elves patrol the central forest, the outlying areas are more wild, and make a good location for wilderness adventures." The elves rule the forest, but they're not its only inhabitants, nor are they everywhere at once...

On 7/11/2021 at 10:54 AM, Scott Ruggels said:

Here's the  map at high Res. Enjoy!

https://imgur.com/a/5IcmFXZ

Thanks for this, Scott!  The next time I do a Fantasy Hero game, I think I'm going to set it in the Western Shores. I've always liked its level of detail.  It's plenty to build on and get you started, but it's not so much detail that it's too much to digest or that it doesn't leave room for adding your own ideas.  It offers plenty to get the creative juices flowing, then gets out of the way.   

No.

You're not missing anything, exactly; it's just that the +¾ level of Takes No Damage From Attacks is unique to Mental Paralysis Entangles only, which is why it isn't listed as an option along with the +¼, +½, and +1 versions.  It's a special case.

It doesn't follow either of the rules of the +1 level of TNDFA. It follows the rules described on 6e1 p217 under Mental Paralysis.

10 hours ago, BNakagawa said:

part of the mechanical question is how to handle vertical flight with turn mods. Can you just take a regular turn and be considered to be going straight up or down or should you have to move 1.5 your turn mod before being allowed to go vertical?

Let's say you have Flight 40m and you want to do an Immelman. To finish it you obviously need to turn 180 degrees, so you need to make three 60-degree turns. For simplicity's sake, I'd say you'd need to halve your movement distance for fighting gravity until you level off after the third 60-degree turn.

The first turn (presumably right after the start of your Phase) is "free," and now you have to halve your movement speed, then you have to move at least X meters before making the second turn, and then X more meters before making the third turn. After this, you no longer have to halve your movement speed.

Crunching some numbers, it comes out to needing to allocate 24m of movement distance to account for the halving that comes with climbing, leaving 16m unmodified for flying level after the Immelman. So the total distance traveled this Phase is going to be 28m (24m halves to 12m for climbing, plus 16m remaining of our original 40m = 28m).  That gives us a Turn Mode of 28/5 = 5.6, rounded to 6. So you make the first 60-degree turn, fly 6m up, turn again, fly 6m further up, turn the last time to level off, and fly 16m more.

All of that is for a Full Move.  If you only want to do a 20m Half Move, then it would be free turn, fly 3m up (which uses up 6m), turn and fly 3m further up (which uses up another 6m), then turn to level off and fly the remaining 8m for the half move (14m total distance moved / 5 = Turn Mode of 3).

40 minutes ago, foolishvictor said:

Alternatively, the player should buy the advantage that allows any turn at any time and then apply a disadvantage to the that advantage: (Limited: Only to simulate real world aerobatic maneuvers -1/?, optionally combined with, Requires a combat pilot skill roll -1/2) 

Probably even easier to buy Movement Skill Levels for use in decreasing the Turn Mode.

It's Total Distance Moved This Phase / 5.  The first 60-degree turn is free, then you have to move the Turn Mode distance before you can make the next 60-degree turn.

Yeah, I'd just change the format from "Only for X" to "Only for X or Y," and lower the Limitation value.  How much to lower it depends on the campaign, etc.

Not in one with common power sets (like all Brick or all Powered Armor), but I've done some with common origin, where all of the characters get their powers at the same time from the same cause (a la Fantastic Four). I kind of prefer that setup, to be honest. It seems to make the group more cohesive.

19 hours ago, jdounis said:

1)I think the Damage Classes/Adding Damage (pg. 156-157) section leaves out key information about adding damage to advantaged powers compared to

Hero 6th Edition vol. 1 & 2. Was this intentional for Champions Complete? There is the reference to special active point calculation for Damage Classes but not how this is applied

in Adding Damage, i think if the intention was to keep the rule for adding damage to advantaged powers someone could not deduce it from current text.

That's probably fair. Certainly, Champions Complete intended to be much briefer in its discussion of damage classes and advantages, but I probably got too brief there.  I probably should have included an entry under Adding Damage for considerations when adding damage to an attack with advantages.

I do think, perhaps naively, that many/most folks will extrapolate to the correct answer anyway. In the same way that Advantages "reduce" the number of Damage Classes in the attack, so also do they "reduce" the amount of benefit you get from added damage.

But you're probably right that I shouldn't have left this as something they would have to extrapolate; I should have added at least a sentence or two about it.

19 hours ago, jdounis said:

2) Minimum Damage from Injuries (pg.157), without the example, could be misintepreted as this STUN damage is on top of other STUN damage(even if the header states minimum)

if think this could benefit from adding that "if final STUN damage is below final BODY damage" or something similar(forgive me, English is not my native language).  

This one I think is okay as-is in the book. However, instead of "A character automatically takes 1 STUN for every 1 point of BODY damage that gets through his defenses," perhaps I could have said "A character automatically takes at least 1 STUN for every 1 point of BODY damage that gets through his defenses."   

7 minutes ago, Simon said:

The concept that he’s after is fiddly by nature (and questionably conceived, as noted above). I dislike handwavium to get around bad/fiddly concepts.

Fair enough.  Honestly, were I building it, I would build it very much like you suggest, where non-combat systems have their own END Reserve that has a REC almost (but maybe not quite) big enough to keep up with the bleed if they're all used at once. Then the weapons systems can be powered from a different reserve that only recharges at the base, etc.

7 minutes ago, Simon said:

You're still just borrowing trouble.

 

Buy 2 Reserves, if you want.  

 

Reserve 1 powers the essentials.  Has a REC slightly less than the burn rate of the essentials.  Any non-com ability that you want to run off of the suit takes the Limitations mentioned above (Costs END, Always On), where appropriate.

 

Reserve 2 powers the combat abilities. Has a REC that only applies when at the base.

 

Done.

If you want Reserve 1 to only function when Reserve 2 is active (has END available), that's a simple Linked on Reserve 1.

Yeah, but then you still have to keep track of END for all of these little powers that aren't normally END-using powers. That's fine if you don't mind the bookkeeping, but I definitely see the appeal of just saying, "These peripheral systems all work as long as the main batteries aren't dead" for the sake of simplicity.   

Since steel is already an alloy, I'd suggest making it a ground rule that, in your world, one of the components you need to make steel is some highly rare element, and knowledge of how to use it is closely guarded. Most people, even most smiths and armorers, don't even know the name of this ultra-rare ingredient, much less where to find it or how to use it.

That kind of leaves the door open for you.  Maybe this rare component is actually magical, and only alchemists or wizards can combine it with iron to make steel. Or maybe it's just a rarer element than iron is, and the knowledge is tightly held by only a few, which makes them as rich and powerful as if it were magical... 

This came from an actual character in a past campaign (not mine; another player's).

A character with Growth and Full, No-Fringe Invisibility, Linked.

Why's that weird?  Because this was back in the days when Growth added to PRE (3E, to be specific).  So when the character used Growth, he had a PRE of about 75, but he couldn't use it very effectively because no one could see him when he was grown.  The whole dynamic was just weird, and was one of those things that sounds like a much better idea on paper than it played out in practice.   

I recommend keeping your life simple...

Have an END Reserve for the Powers that cost END to use, as per usual. Then, for the smaller Powers that don't technically cost END to use, but that you can't use if the suit's batteries are dead, take a -¼ Limited Power Limitation: "Doesn't Work if Suit's Batteries Are Dead."

Easy-peasy lemon squeezey.   

Of course, this presumes that the GM agrees that the suit will have dead batteries often enough to warrant a -¼ Limitation...

10 hours ago, Opal said:

Giants were opponents of the Gods in both Norse and Greek (the Titanomachy) mythologies, so those are places to look for inspiration.

 

In one setting I used, giants were an "elder race," slowly vanishing from the world, leaving behind ruins and cryptic monuments, and represented in the present by isolated individuals wielding strange powers that might be magic or technology, holding onto ancient fears, grudges, ambitions, or just habits, with tired monomaniacal zeal.

3 hours ago, Mr. R said:

 

Ohhhh!  I like that!

That might also explain the giants' motivations (since, as @archer mentioned, they don't need human stuff in general, like orcs do). If the humans occupy the lands that the giants once held, then that means the ancient and sacred places of power for the giants, which might hold the keys to a return to dominance, are in human possession. Perhaps the giants have a leader who seeks to return them to prominence by retaking those places and reclaiming their lost secrets...

On 6/23/2021 at 5:54 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

Sounds like exactly what you said. CE -4 PER with AoE.

Agreed.