Doc Democracy

I think you actually need to sit and think what you want in game terms. Like Manic Typist said, what are you thinking about? In Wheel of Time the burn out was pretty much a massive reduction in ability (something no player really wants to experience). If you were thinking in those terms then I would say that it is a game event rather than a mechanic where you might tell a player, at a dramatically appropriate time, that while he is unable to do what he wants under normal circumstances that he could risk overclocking the powers with the risk that he loses his powers completely (very heroic) with a guarantee that if the worst happens he can re-cofigure his character with all the available points... If it is a shorter term burn-out then you are looking at a variety of different things and ways to do it. Doc

If your GM was up for it, I would allow a player to build five different characters, each with its own unique power set and complications. The only thing I would insist on them having in common would be Split personality. That would be a very strong psych limitation and totally under control of the GM. Player and GM should then agree what the triggers might be and what, if any, influence the player might have on changes. There is a LOT of excellent potential in switching out powers and personalities during a game but both player and GM need to be excellent friends and completely on the same page.

It all depends on how deeply you want to get into the SFX. If you think that humans are 90% water then you could control people's movements, you could draw all the water out of someone, mess about with the fluid in ears to cause dizziness, sap the water in eyes to cause blindness. So many things that directly affect folk. Doc

I am with Christopher. I would be happy to live to 100 but be physically 25 for the last 75 years...

Purchase increased knockback as a naked avantage. If the player wants to push is opponent away then he uses the naked advantage with his attack and that makes it more likely an opponent will fall over or be pushed back when struck. If you want it always to be a feature of the strike, then simply buy the advantage on the attack.

The alternative to using the whole multiform thingummymajig is to purchase the key powers each form represents. So bear might have additional STR and some PD, limited by being unable to speak or use other physical skills and magic. The special effect would be turning into a bear (including the size and weight as long as that wouldnot be seen as too advantageous). A robin would have flight with the same limitations and SFX of being a robin. It avoids a lot of the complications. Just in case you wanted an alternative. Doc

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My immediate responses would simply be about the names. I would not use Lion's Heart instead of Lionheart unless there was a great reason to do it. Full Throttle is not really a 'thing' over here though understandable to everyone. I would replace that name with Silverstone where the Grand Prix was often run over here. I was initially fine with Master-at-arms but I think Sarge, Beefeater or Yeoman shout England or Olde Englande more loudly. I would point out that your group shouts England rather than Britain (which is not a downside but a distinction that may be useful to make).

My group never has time to commit to a long campaign, we meet sporadically and cannot always guarantee the same folk. We switch systems and campaigns constantly. The upside? Experience is not an issue. The characters are almost designed to be throwaway, like a convention game. As such they are designed and built for the game they play in. Even if I return to a particular set, I can ramp the power up (later in their career) or tamp it down (earlier). The players trust me not to screw them over and I always leave a bit of headroom for them to customise. Like in comics, as I have got older, I have become less enamoured with continuity. Doc

You know. I think I really enjoyed the late bronze and early part of the Iron Age. It was prime time for the Legion, for Teen Titans and a number of other titles. I loved what people were doing to freshen up and change stuff, I loved the re-exploration of the Golden Age and especially All-Star Squadron and Infinity Inc. Crisis was a defining moment but it was the beginning of the end for me and comics. It really was a culmination of the continuity that has stifled stuff. What drew you into an ongoing title began to be exploited to make you need to branch out into other titles and it all went downhill. The more they tried to make me expand, the more I cut titles until I was reading almost nothing but limited series. I have gone with Iron Age as it was great when it began but I bailed out of monthly purchasing before it had ended... Doc

Well, the proposition for players is indeed that you can play any character you want, and that is true of several other systems. What HERO provides that those others do not is a GM proposition which is that you can play any game you want. Because all the levers are exposed, it is pretty easy to change the fundamentals of the game being played, increasing grit or cinematic tendencies, dialling up or down the importance of particular powers/skills/characteristics, making the damage or fatigue tracking more or less detailed. If the GM is up for the customisation, both the players and GM get the game they want but it remains fundamentally HERO. Customisation at every level is my mantra. Doc

I could write that multipower so that it worked as written. Obviously Lumen capacity represents the reserve of the MP and the active points of the powers determine the Lumens of that power. Slot costs are the points used to buy spells from the Guild. I thought that would have been transparent to anyone familiar with the system but the rules details would be available in a GM appendix...if they WANTED to read it. Ideally, to run the game, noone would need to. The multipower construct is important to the system - building a magic system that uses multipowers means that they can later be revealed to anyone interested in the guts of the system and will allow adventurous GMs to ad-lib and create new spells that fit with the existing ones. The point is that the system does not have to be on show. The multipower does not have to be one power at a time to keep it simple enough for newbie play. Brian's buddy is a cypher for folk new to the system...some of them will need to be exposed to stuff that we use multipowers for and the question was put as t whether that could happen without showing our working...

Hmm. A mage has to balance the number and power of spells his magic matrix can hold. The more powerful the spells, the fewer the matrix can hold. As all magical power derives from the moon, each spell is rated by the Guild based on its power in terms of Lumen. The Lumen capacity of the matrix limits how many spells a mage has available to cast at any one time. The mage may switch spells in and out of the matrix but this takes time and study. Arkelos the Mage knows the following spells (each with its Lumen value in brackets) Magic Missile (2) Fireball (4) Shield (2) Tenser's Floating Disc (1) Web (1) Portable Wall (1) Shocking Grasp (2) Invisibility (3) Arkelos has a matrix with a Lumen capacity of 6. That means, after some study, he can have Invisibility, Web and Shield ready to cast at any time. If he wants to cast Shocking Grasp, he would have to replace Shield or Invisibility. He cannot have more spells ready than his matrix can hold.... See. That is a multipower. It could be made more complex but as long as you are talking lumen and matrices then you are not talking HERO, you are talking magic. :-) Doc

I don't agree. I think you could skin a multipower written for purpose to look flavoursome rather than mechanical....going to go off and think about it...

Personally, I find Hero Designer an amazing tool for me. I think that for anyone familiar with the system it hugely reduces the bureaucracy of building a character. However, I do no think it is, in any way, a teaching or learning tool. Some of the things it does are only understandable if you already understand the rules.

I am hoping this is not a derail but I do like to keep damage systems consistent. The question that SETAC seems to have considered is what the attacks are supposed to be for. I think Blast should indeed be the core damage mechanism for fighting. I think what is needed is to find stuff that bring out the elements we need from that core damage. Blast - normal damage - STUN and BODY that is defended by all of the relevant physical or energy defence. If we want to provide attacks with more potential to kill then we add an advantage that means the BODY, or both STUN and BODY, are not defended by relevant defences unless those defences are resistant. You can also look at doubling the BODY (or adding armour piercing) for vicious attacks. In all of these it means the attack mechanic remains the same but you get Blast, Killing Blast, Heavy Killing Blast, Vicious Killing Blast and AP Killing Blast (ran out of decent adjectives and too lazy to check thesaurus...) Games have worked hard to pare down their systems to elegant core mechanics, I think HERO could do something similar, we have so many legacy mechanisms that are kinda same-y but different and that adds to complexity. Doc

Well, having read much of the contorted logic here, I am tempted to suggest that the paint ball idea be built as a 1d6 standard effect EB with blessed water as the SFX. Now, that 3 STUN is very unlikely to go through almost anyone's standard defences but it would trigger any vulnerabilities and susceptibilities to blessed water. Does that one make everyone happier? Doc

You know, creating barriers as a blocking action is quite easily simulated by buying either barrier or force field with requires a skill roll. The value of that defence will depend on your OCV compared to the average of those you fight. In play the force field is, by the rules, on all the time but is only effective if you make a block roll against your opponents attack. In game it simply appears that the protection appears as an attack is incoming and works best against opponents that are less able than yourself. HyperMan is right, in HERO it is often best to sit back and think hard about what it is you are trying to do. When I read your power I thought that it is limited defence power. It works less often than the straight power, the trick then is to devise the limitation in a way that fits the power. Doc

I like to represent madness by pushing psychological complications on the character sheet and so the thing for that is Transform. I would buy it such that the SFX are variable. That way you get to push random things onto the characters - one might go schizophrenic, another might become catatonic etc etc. If you had a decent list you could do it randomly or you could work out with the player which madness most fits the character and recent events... Doc

I think -2 is too low. I would go for -4 or so. The attack is not actually doing damage, so the damage aspect of it is hugely limited...

The damage is defined by the undead as a complication so there is no 'base power'. What the pistol does is give range to a substance carried by the character that triggers the complication. So, if you are carrying water and want to project it 50 feet, or 100 feet, what would you use to do that?? That is where some of the complexity comes in... I think. :-) Doc

To me it is essentially a very small TK. You are using the TK to hold something that you can then propel to a reasonable distance.... There are holes in this (like can it still hold when it is propelling) but I think it would be good enough to give a notional cost value... Doc

It all comes down to how the GM wants it to work, like Holy Water. It would be possible to build it based on an opposed roll between the cleric's relationship with his deity (built around contacts) and the aggregated evil in front of him. It could also simply be a flaw in undead builds exploited by clerics. If the cleric's skill is high enough the undead flees, higher again it falls apart. Each undead reduces the roll for the next one until a roll fails. Doc

I have gone through the process of putting a character together and put it into a document. It is not quite what I envisaged when I started but thought it might be worth seeing what folk think about it as an example to introduce the important character bits. http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/356-making-a-fantasy-hero-character/ Doc