Building your own (base) powers

[Christopher]

Disclaimer: This is not about applying Adders and Power Modifiers to a Power (well, not in the conventional sense at least). I do not talk about the power after modifiers. I want to talk about the "base powers"* (short: BP) - Resistant Protection, Density Increase, Swimming - how they are build. And most importanlty how the GM can build his own/modify existing ones.

*In lack of a better term and to allow clear, unambigious communication of concepts: We take a Base Power (in however many increments we want). Add Adders. Add Advantages. Add Limitations. And have a (finished) Power.

I had those ideas for some time now and never got around to write it down. But Lucius starting his thread about Complications gave me the final nudge to write this.

I will start by why I think some "less generic" base powers were even implemented/kept around.
Then I will discuss how the GM can modify existing powers/price his own base powers by disecting the process.
And finally I will give calculation examples for Persistent (not constant or end costing) and Inherent* (versions that are part of the Character and normally solved with Size Templates) Versions of Growth, Shrinking and Density Increase.
As well as several self written Base Powers I came up with.


First of all: Why were powers like growth, density increase and shrinking even added (or are kept around), when they are clearly build from other base powers (and thus could be replaced by those)?
The answer is two(three)fold:
First, Active Point efficiency. Growth gives you a lot more "bang for the AP" then just buying Characteristics and a naked AoE Advantage, wich means it fit easier into Power Frameworks (wich are AP limited). This also makes them a lot more Endurance Effective if they cost END.
Second you can get special powers into the Frameworks too. Normally Knockback Resistance would be a problem in any Framework. It is not a problem as part of Density Increase or Growth. The same way Flash and other special Defenses build on Resistant Protection (or 5E Forcefield) are not a problem. A Naked AoE advantage as part of Growth is also not a problem (despite naked advantages counting as special powers).
A side effect is that new base powers are often drained differently. You cannot drain Resistant Protection with "Drain Defenses" - only "Drain Resistatn Protection". Drainability has to be keept in mind later on, during modification as different drainability might be unwanted.

There is no reason GM's should not be able to use both effects for thier game. Making Light is a common issue in HERO. The only way is a high Active Points, low Real Cost Image build, wich causes havoc with most frameworks.
Or perhaps a player wants a version of Growth that does not cost Endurance to maintain. Current rules would require him to buy Growth with 0 END and Persistent or buy raw Characteristics (wich is AP ineffective and unessesary).


Disection/how to make your own.
The process is rather simple:
1. Take any number of existing Base Powers, apply Advantages and compound them where nessesary.
2. Apply Limitations
3. Take the real cost of that power as Base Cost for your new Base Power. You just made a new Base Power.

Let's go over the existing Base Powers that are build based on other Base Powers.
Resistant Protection: Defenses, Resistant (+1/2). Is drained seperately.
5E Force Field: Defenses, Resistant (+1/2), Costs Endurance to Maintain (-1/2); Again drained seperately
Growth: Compount power of STR, CON, PRE and the like. Plus perhaps a naked AoE Advantage for HTH (really big sizes). With (per 6E1 230) Costs Endurance to Maintain (-1/2), Linked (-0), Side Effect (heavyness and bigness penalties; -1/2), Unified (-1/4). Can be drained seperately, but you can also drain parts of the power (Drain the STR granted by Growth as if it was normal STR).
5E Growth: It lacked the Movement boost. No unified. But the Characteristics had "no Figureds" factored in (wich is required for Characteristics in Frameworks).
Shrinking/Density Increase: I guess you can figure it out from Growth. Except that the Side Effect is smaller (-1/4 only) and they contains different special powers (CSL/SL in case of Shrinking). Growth is "3 Levels of DI plus some combination/size bonus".
Telekinesis: STR, Ranged, limited Indirect*, does not add to base STR*
*Those two might just counteract each other directly. The pricing is a lot clearer when looked at it as "STR, Ranged(+1/2)"
Swimming*, Leaping, Swinging, 5E Gliding: All limited versions of Flight* and hence costing less (with the sugestion being half). Running is more like a brother (3D, but only along surfaces, but also slightly better KB resistance and free points).
Weapon Reach: Based on Stretching. Some weapons (Lasso and Kusari-Gama in particular) might be better of being built with a less limited version.
Regeneration: It's been on again, off again "Healing with modifiers". I am sure you can fnd the approximation to the 6E cost somewhere when you try to rebuild it with 6E healing (some rounding can be involved in creating own base powers/talents)

 

*Swimming and (Air)flight might have thier costs switched around in some games. A campaign playing almost exclusively under the water/with water breathers might have Swimming cost 1/m (and half the free points), but Flight cost 0.5/m. In such a scenario "Water" is the "Air" of the normal campaign, while "Air" is perhaps as common (and situational) as Swimming is on land breather campaigns.

 

I guess that leaves only point three - giving some example builds. First the persistent versions of Shrinking, Growth, DI.
These power can still be drained explicitly (as the Character has the ability to change his Size/Wieght) and it is easiest to let normal "Drain [base Power]" work against it too (i.e. nook Growth and Persistent Growth can be drained the same). Of course you can still drain each granted Characteristics seperately.

Persistent Growth: Just take above calculation and remove the "Costs Endurance to Maintain" part (wich removes that limitation value and keeps the powers nicely persistent). At the book pricing AP are divided by 1+1.25 (2.25). We only want to divide by 1+0.75(1.75).
So it is Book Base Cost times 2.25, divided by 1.75. I get to the following costs for the respective levels of growth:
32, 64, 116, 154, 193, 276 - a lot cheaper then having having to counteract the END part via 0 END and Persistent. Or buying the stuff directly

Persistent Density Increase: This time it is exactly .25 less on both values (the Side effect is less limiting then for Growht). Times 2, divided by 1.5.
So it's 5 (one level), 11 (two level) and 16 (every full three levels)

Persistent Shrinking: Same Divisor/Multiplier as DI.
8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48

Inherent Growth/Shrinking/DI: Not to be mistake with a Power that has Inherent (the Advantage). This is a alternaive version to build "permanently big/small/heavy" Characters. Of course we do have the Teamplates at the end of 6E1, but those have a problem: They use complications. If you do not need that Complication (already have enough others or game does not uses Complications), those would be "more expensive then they need to be".
Complications and Limitations are not equal - a fact that lead to "permanent Blindness" becoming a sellback instead of a Complication in 6E.
Since the Character can no longer change it's size the growth cannot be "Drained". So Unified also has to fly out in addition to "Costs Endurance to Maintain", leaving only the Side Effect to lower the cost. Of course the component Characteristics can be drained seperately (you can still have you STR drained, as usual).

Inherent Growth: times 2.25, divided by 1.5
Inherent Shrinking/DI: times 2, divived by 1.25

Limited Range STR/Short Range TK: Normal STR subjects you to Damage Shields. Telekinesis is very AP ineffective. Sometimes you want to build the ability to use STR without being subject to damage Shields. For example, if the Character has a unbreakable/non-conductive Cybernetic Arm he should be able to use any HTH-Combat Maneuver against a foe without suffering most damage Shields. Limited Range STR is build like TK, just with "Limited Range" instead of "Ranged". So it only costs 5 every 4 points. Like normal TK it does not adds to base STR.
A GM could also just go and say "when limited to melee range it costs like normal STR (1CP/1SR-STR), but also has to be bought seperately form normal STR".

[Scott Baker]

You wonder why some of the powers were added (e.g., Growth, Density Increase, and Shrinking). Your examples date back to 1E. In those days, there was nowhere near the granularity or number of choices that we are familiar with today. The powers in the game reflect the comic book powers of the time. Reasoning from special effects wasn't called out, and it seems obvious, in hindsight, how Steve and George probably started with a slightly different concept, and then evolved it.

 

In those early day you could not build the 3 powers you listed, as they were defined in 1E. There was no way to add climbing, no KB resistance, or increased KB. There certainly wasn't anything such as a Naked Advantage in those early rules. And with the original rules, it was hideously expensive to purchase any of these as Always On to represent a character who was always bigger, smaller, or denser. Which led to the dichotomy in 5E/6E around the size/density templates (for characters who are just that way), and the powers for characters that turn it on and off.

 

If I remember correctly, value-wise (ignoring things that we couldn't actually buy, and the actual effect of being larger, smaller, or denser):

• Shrinking wasn't worth the points you paid
• Growth came in about even
• Density Increase was worth more than you paid

2E followed closely on the heels of 1E, so there wasn't any significant change in the core of the system. After that I suspect the momentum of what had gone before carried things along.

 

Just a perspective on how this started. As always, Hero is a toolbox, and you can do what you want with it. However, it wasn't always the garage mechanic's toolbox that it is today. Some of your analysis only works because of the growth over the last 33 years. 1981 was a simpler time indeed.