Doc Democracy

There is a pretty decent build in these forums - fifth edition but it would be a trivial task to adapt to 6th... http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/20271-doctor-octopus/ Quite a decent discussion of doctor octopus later on. Doc

Have a look at the Brian McClellan books which is a fantasy setting in an age of black powder with some powder mages focussed round gunpowder. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sins-Empire-Gods-Blood-Powder-ebook/dp/B01MAUGT9K/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1489397937&sr=1-4&keywords=brian Interesting story if not brilliantly told. Doc

The best persuasion would be to show me that it would be, first, cool and, second, not unbalancing for other players.

Hmm. I am not sure I would, though, I guess if the character was a martial artist type that had bought a suite of martial manoeuvres then I might accept them buying to amend basic manoeuvres, reflecting the fact that they are knowledgeable about fighting techniques. Beyond that it would take extra-ordinary persuasion. :-)

Anything you pay for, I am fine with, that is beside the point...

An argument for strike to give me armour piercing? Well, the SFX of my attack is the generation of atom thick waves of force. When I hit with them it makes sense that they should slice through defences more easily than the clubs the other guys use...

And why is that not like me asking for an improved version of strike that gives me armour piercing?

Is this weed related?

You can't advantage manoeuvres, can you? It is easy to build a power that is a better haymaker than the manoeuvre. That power would not need the balance of risks and rewards the manoeuvre has.

There are many little bits of magic I bet soldiers wished they might have. A charm that prevents water and dust getting into their gun (even more useful for black powder weapons than modern stuff. A charm that strengthens the integrity of the weapon (so less chance of barrels breaking etc). A charm that keep your uniform clean (or at least presentable). A charm that cleans your uniform (when the first one doesn't work) A charm that speeds the loading of your weapon. A charm that helps your aim. A charm that reduces your need for water (or food) A charm that keeps you warm (or cool) A charm that identifies friends and foes on the battlefield. A charm that allows squads to keep in communication. So many little magics that make being a squaddie more comfortable. :-) Doc

I think that you might buy a few complications limited by an IIF focus. You only have the complications when you deploy the focus. I might have another complication that makes me unable to ditch the focus!! :-) Doc

C'mon Lucius!! Is this one of your words or the Palindromedary's?? Do either of you know what it means?? Doc

Well, I would be happy to use it if I had a clue what it means!! :-) EDIT: explanation and comment crossed. Not a word I have ever seen....not even in the odd SF and comics that I have been known to peruse!!!

Providing examples to highlight an issue with the rules has good and bad sides. Good, it provides an opportunity to see how the rule might play out in real gaming, Bad, it opens the possibility of an argument about the example used rather than the rule under the spotlight. :-) I can understand why you looked to mental powers to highlight your issue with haymaker, it is ranged attack issues on steroids. However, mental powers have their own peccadilloes and that has confused things. I think the rules imply minds have a physical geographic location. That is almost irrelevant to the question at hand. When you have two rules with absolutes it is not necessarily a conflict but where precedence might lie. Personally, from a gamist perspective, I think it is fair that, if I seek to exploit an automatic hit, by throwing additional power/damage down it, that the automatic fail rules for doing so should take precedence over the automatic hit. I chose to put the hit at risk, I should accept the consequences of that. Fundamentally, you are (in my mind) making the classic HERO mistake of presuming a particular SFX of a core rule/manoeuvre etc. The haymaker manoeuvre provides a character with the opportunity to squeeze free damage/effect in combat by accepting some risks. One risk is that someone takes advantage of your focus to attack you more easily, one is that if the target moves, it spoils your focus and you miss, the final risk is that the attack takes enough game time that others will notice and can exploit those risks relatively easily. You are applying the visual of the original use, a big brawler winding up a huge punch. I think the description is reasonable and, if the action being attempted does not meet the criteria then application of the manoeuvre is not appropriate. Now. You want others to provide a description of haymakering a mental blast that you will accept meets the criteria. You have not (that I have noticed) commented on the examples thrown out and so I presume you did not think they worked for you. That is fine, in your game you might rule that haymakers are not an appropriate manoeuvre for mental powers. You might want to create a better generic manoeuvre that works for all attacks, with a similar kind of balancing pros and cons. That is fine too. What might be useful is to either stick to SFX issues (can you describe how this might look in gameplay) or stick to actual game mechanic issues (is the rule fair and reasonable) because conflating them does not seem to be serving your purpose. Doc

Hmm. To me it looks as though the environmental damage is constant. If you are innocent AND believe, then you engage a force field that protects you from the damage. So, say the environmental damage is 3 BODY a turn. If you are innocent then the force field engages for 1 DEF. You then need to convince the relevant god that you believe. This is some kind of communication skill. You modify this -1 for every priest that believes you are guilty, -1 for every 10 lay members that believe you are guilty, +3/5/7 for every geas (variable based on difficulty) you accept from the deity, +3 for being initiated into the religion, +3 for complementary knowledge skill. When you make the roll you gain +1 DEF on the force field for every 3 you make the roll by. The numbers here are straight off the top of my head, but you can see the process... :-) Doc

I do love it when we begin to argue realistic for things that we are making up, especially when the things we are making up can have no relation to anything we currently know and perceive. Ninja Bear asked what would tilting his mind even be like. We cant know. Someone has to make it up. What does building up your will mean? We cant know. Someone has to make it up. If someone moves and spoils the haymaker, what does that look like? We cant know, someone has to make it up. :-) See the trend here. I admit that I am a very gamist gamer, I play a game rather than look too hard to simulate things or to tell a great story. That is my group, so it is possibly easier for me to accept a game rule for game purposes. However, I do like things to make sense. It was a surprise to me when Haymaker became a broadly available manoeuvre. I could not really imagine a haymakered pistol shot or a haymakered mental blast. However, I could see the game reasons for it. I began to exercise my imagination and see the alternate ways I could use to explain the added damage taken for the downside of lowered DCV, longer time and easily spoiled execution. In this case, I see the game requires that an attack is made as a result of aim being locked-on. That is usually instantaneous and used in that moment. The lock-on is usually through normal targetting senses and can be through other means and there is always a work-around if you want to spend the points. The point of haymaker is that you are focussing your attack in a very obvious manner, one in which others can take advantage of you and effectively walk-away from. It is an attack you would only use when your opponent is unaware, stunned or does not care about your upcoming attack. In the case of mental attacks, to someone with the right senses, you might see a build up of psychic energy focussing on a particular mind, it is highly focussed and the mentalist is not really paying attention to much except the attack. Then his target moves, physically. The carefully built up energies begin to dissipate and vanish as the mentalist finds it impossible to contain the energies and re-focus them at the same time...the haymaker fails.

Ooh! What about some nefarious attempt to stop the conquistadors and establish an enduring bloody Aztec Empire, drawing on dark magic and human sacrifice. It presents a difficult dilemma of whether to allow the atrocities of the Conquistadors and the massive death rates versus the ongoing evil of a horrific religion. All the interferers seek to do is immunise the population to a few common diseases and a bit of iron working. They hope numbers will do the rest... Maybe conquistador iron also interferes with Aztec magic, they may just tell the priests how to get round that bit and let fell magic win...

Mister E has it. I think google finds stuff on the site better than the site search feature. I tend to use google first because I usually find what I am looking for pretty quickly. Doc

Well, it was because it is not just a weapon and might be used as a tool to make other tasks easier etc. That could all be covered by the skill levels...

I have the odd notion that we should be able to model a crowbar almost purely with skill levels (though needed to look in the rulebook to check current rules) How about Crowbar: 4 overall levels, only to increase damage or with skills that could be enhanced with use of a crowbar (-2), OAF (-1) It potentially looks a bit expensive (12 points) but maybe not for the value... Doc

Turn Order is something I have wrestled with. It is not obvious from the Macro language - you cannot appear twice on the turn order but for HERO to work you need to appear multiple times per turn and each person appears a different number of times. It actually shows the complexity. I am not a pro subscriber and so don't get to use the scripting tools, I think it would be possible to do it using them. Doc

Well, there is the actual burn-out limitation, where you have to activate the power when you use it and, if you fail that roll, you lose access to it, usually for the adventure. If you take that level of limitation as a level then you can start to look at alternatives. For example having a big number and lowering it every time you use it, or take damage, or anything really. I like giving a dice pool. Say your power has 10 dice - all d6. If you use it, you roll the dice and remove any that roll a 6. You keep doing this and, when you have no dice in the pool, you cannot access the power. It is a pretty cool way of having something a bit uncertain and adds a bit of dramatic tension. You can add these mechanisms to individual powers or to power pools - if the pool fails, then all the powers are unavailable. You can utilise the variety of options in charges and endurance batteries to simulate other stuff. It all comes down to whether your changes are beneficial or detrimental to the use of the power and by how much. That then determines how much of an advantage or limitation you apply to the cost. Doc

Steve Saw your response to query number one. Very succinct! :-) Allow me to try another way. If a hero can produce 8 duplicates, is there a way, within the rules, to allow, for example, the third duplicate to originate from the second duplicate rather than from the base character?? There are obvious advantages to this, I suggested allowing an advantage of a similar cost to ranged but that would not be RAW. Doc

I think that this comes back to the usual question. What is it that the player wants to accomplish when using the power? You have provided a special effect but you need to explore it. There have been one or two ideas thrown out there. Ultimately you might suggest a power pool, allowing a huge range of effects that can be explained by slowing/stopping time in an area...

You know, you are not really looking for ranged duplication (that is, creating a duplicate at a distance from the source of duplication), you are simply looking to allow duplicates to spawn from a duplicate rather than the base character. Obviously, this us kind of like duplication at range. I think as GM, I would be happier allowing the change in spawning Point than ranged duplication, so might charge the same advantage as ranged for allowing a duplicate to be the spawn point of duplicates (without adding to the total number of duplicates available). Doc