Steve Long

Re: Converting adventures from other systems for fantasy hero I will second (or third, or fourth) the idea of adapting adventures from other games by selecting stuff we've already written up in HERO products (typically the "Core Library" products with the blue and gold covers). You should be able to find pretty close equivalents of most D&D monsters in The HERO System Bestiary (or can easily "tweak" an HSB monster to get what you want by applying a Template from that book). The HERO System Grimoire should have a pretty close approximation of most spells. And so on. The trickiest thing, and something you'll have to learn for yourself from experience most likely, is dealing with the different ways each system "runs." In D&D characters tend to get injured easily and healed easily, and this is reflected in how the monsters are created and used. In the HERO System, characters tend to be harder to hurt/kill, and harder to heal, so a D&D encounter based on rapid injury/healing will probably need to be re-arranged to better suit the way HERO "works." Or if you prefer you can use various options and variants to "tweak" HERO to work more like D&D -- but that's always seemed a bit silly to me, and in any event you clearly don't have a whole lotta spare time.

Re: Follow up to Christopher's question... I'm not going to try to work through the numbers, not this early in the morning on a Monday, so I'll just answer generally. As noted on 6E1 189, Advantages bought for a Characteristic affected by DI, he has to buy that Advantage to cover the Characteristics gained by DI. That probably means buying it as a naked Advantage. If you want to Adjust a naked Advantage, you need to figure out how to break it down into "increments" so that you know how many BODY it takes to improve the naked Advantage by one "increment." And certainly, if all this is run through a Focus or subject to some other Limitation, that Limitation is going to apply to the naked Advantage (and the Absorption, in your example).

Re: Champions Villian Voulms Beyond 3: Is There Room For More? At this point I don't think it's likely that we would need a CV4; the whole point of the CV trilogy was to make it so large and comprehensive that we wouldn't have to publish multiple villain books (because, among other reasons, villains published in later books tend to be "marginalized" compared to "core" villains). At most, I could see the possibility of a book like Evil Unleashed, that compiles all the villains from various published supplements into one book for easy reference, but that'd be years down the line. Nor do I foresee any sort of a "book of NPC heroes." As opposed to villains or even other sorts of NPCs, books of NPC good guys don't seem to be of much interest to the average Hero consumer.

Re: Single Power Naked Advantage and STR from Various sources No. Here's what you do: 1. 50 x 1.25 = 62 (rounded down); 62 - 50 = 12 Active Point cost for the naked Advantage. 2. 12 / 1.5 = 8 = Real Cost of the naked Advantage.

It's the Ides of September, so I do believe it's time for a chat! Come on over to the Chat Room tonight at 9:00 Eastern, 6:00 Pacific to hear the latest news, ask questions, find out what's in the works, and talk Hero!

It's the Ides of September, so I do believe it's time for a chat! Come on over to the Chat Room tonight at 9:00 Eastern, 6:00 Pacific to hear the latest news, ask questions, find out what's in the works, and talk Hero!

It's the Ides of September, so I do believe it's time for a chat! Come on over to the Chat Room tonight at 9:00 Eastern, 6:00 Pacific to hear the latest news, ask questions, find out what's in the works, and talk Hero!

Re: PRE Complimentary to Charm? It's just allowing for the possibility that a GM might want to do something like that based on the special effects of a character's abilities. Whether to allow it is certainly up to the GM.

Re: Knockback Damage and Absorption Good question — I’m surprised no one’s ever asked it before. Physical Absorption can Absorb damage from Knockback. However, as noted on 6E1 166, the amount of BODY purchased is the amount the character can Absorb per Segment. Since Knockback by definition occurs in the same Segment when the attack that causes it hit the target, the combination of BODY damage from the attack causing the Knockback and BODY from the Knockback itself may reach the character’s threshhold and then “cut off.” For example, suppose a character has Absorption 10 BODY (physical, to STR). He’s hit by a Physical attack that does 7 BODY, and thus Absorbs 7 BODY. The Knockback from the attack then does 5 BODY to him. He can Absorb from that BODY, but since his maximum Absorption per Segment is 10 BODY, he only Absorbs 3 more BODY (to a total of 10), not the full 5 BODY (which would be a total of 12, exceeding his limit).

Re: Giant weapons and characters It looks like you're interested in a discussion, and only I can reply in the Rules Questions forum. So, I've moved your question to the Discussion forum, where everyone can join in. Now, here's my answer, though I'm sure plenty of Hero fans will chime in as well. See 6E2 203 for rules about how making weapons larger increases their damage (and affects the STR needed to wield them). See 6E1 442-44 for Size Templates that you can apply to a normal-sized character to make him larger -- as discussed there, you don't necessarily have to buy every ability in a Size Template if you don't think it's appropriate for the character you have in mind, but the Size Templates provide what are considered the "standard" abilities for creating a larger (or smaller) than normal character in HERO System terms.

Re: Multipowers w/Advantages and END cost If a character buys an Advantage for a Multipower’s reserve so that it will apply to all slots (as discussed on 6E1 405), that Advantage affects the END cost of the slots even though it doesn’t increase their Active Points per se. For example, suppose a Multipower with a 60-point reserve has two slots (Blast 12d6 and RKA 4d6), with the Penetrating (+½) Advantage applied to the reserve so that Penetrating applies to both slots. When used at full power, each slot costs 9 END: 6 END for the underlying power, +3 END for applying Penetrating to it (which “increases” its Active Points to 90 for END purposes).

Re: AVAD versus special effect Absolutely you can. As the GM you can pretty much define everything in the rules and campaign setting to work however you want.

Sorry folx, but my Master Plan for World Domination™ requires me to be in Tibet tonight to offload a shipment of mutant yaks, so I won't be able to do my weekly online chat. See you next week! I may even have some pet yaks to raffle off.

Sorry folx, but my Master Plan for World Domination™ requires me to be in Tibet tonight to offload a shipment of mutant yaks, so I won't be able to do my weekly online chat. See you next week! I may even have some pet yaks to raffle off.

Sorry folx, but my Master Plan for World Domination™ requires me to be in Tibet tonight to offload a shipment of mutant yaks, so I won't be able to do my weekly online chat. See you next week! I may even have some pet yaks to raffle off.

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) Nice stuff! I esp. like the V'han.

Re: The Ultimate Mystic As I've said previously, we have no PDF version of The Ultimate Mystic available. We weren't routinely preparing them for sale when that book was published. We'd like to go back and create one, but we have a limited amount of time in which to do things like this. Publishing new books, and a long, long list of other things, take priority over preparing a PDF for which we don't think there's a lot of demand. If we can ever get to it, we will, but I don't see it happening anytime soon. It's possible I could whip one up myself, though since we've switched to more advanced versions of InDesign and don't necessarily use the same fonts that might be more trouble than it's worth. Even if I did that, though, it would almost certainly lack bookmarks and other such features most people expect, which would probably result in more complaints than revenue.

Re: Drain Fixed Locations It is not against the rules for a character to Drain (or otherwise Adjust) the Fixed Location(s) of a target’s Teleportation. However, for these purposes all forms of Fixed Location should be considered an Adder, so the Adjustment Power must have the Can Add (Remove) Adders (+1) Advantage to affect them. Beyond that, though, the GM is well within his authority to forbid this sort of power if it doesn’t make sense. If someone brought that to me as a GM, I’d immediately want to know (a) how the character can perceive that the target has Fixed Locations, and ( by what mechanism do you purport to be able to interfere with them (particularly if you want to do so separately from affecting the Teleportation itself). I can certainly think of situations where I’d allow something like this, provided it was properly defined within the campaign’s definitions for how Teleportation works. For example, in a Star Trek-like setting, I could buy the existence of a device that scrambles transporter settings. But if this was just some player’s entirely mechanical attempt to take tactical advantage of a game mechanic with no real thought for special effects, common sense, dramatic sense, and game balance, I wouldn’t allow it. But YMMV.

Re: AGP2 hardback It is going to be printed. If you want to take advantage of a bundle deal for book + PDF, you'll have to wait until the hardcopy book is available; we can't set up bundles and sell them in "pieces."

Re: Personal Immunity vs Summoned As a default rule, no, it’s not legal to purchase Personal Immunity for Summon so that a character is immune to the attacks of whatever he Summons. If a GM chooses to allow this anyway, it’s up to him to figure out the cost.

Re: Affects Desolidified and a Desolidfied Attacker 6E1 190 states, “Desolidified characters cannot automatically affect each other unless their powers have similar special effects (for example, two wizards using similar Desolidification spells could hit each other normally while they’re both Desolidified).” If two Desolidified characters are fighting, and their special effects for Desolidification differ, either of them can affect the other with an attack that has the Affects Desolidified Advantage (or with an attack that already affects Desolidified targets, see 6E1 190). They don’t have to have the Affects Physical World (+2) Advantage on their attacks, since neither of them is trying to hit a solid target.

Re: 3 questions for Transparent Barriers and No-Range Attacks If a Barrier is defined as Transparent (one-way or two-way) to Physical Attacks, then characters going in the appropriate direction can move through it, or reach through it if they have enough Reach. That would allow them to, for example, punch someone on the other side of the Barrier, or deliver a No Range attack based on touch (unless the GM rules otherwise). And of course Ranged Physical attacks, such as thrown objects, will pass through it by definition.

Re: figgired Characteristics I'm sorry, but I don't answer game design/philosophy questions.

Re: Barely Off The Ground "Barely off the ground" is "barely off the ground," and that's as much definition as I intend to give. If the GM wants greater precision, he's welcome to supply it.

Re: Based on CON That's a known errata, it just seems to have been overlooked in on-site data entry. I'll get to that next time I add some.