Doc Democracy

You are right Hugh. The second not should not be there... :-)

I think all that Bluesguy has missed is that if you do not have a skill and the GM has not classed it as an everyman skill (one everyone has without paying for it) then your base chance of success is 8 or less. Obviously you can do the things that might help - use the super laptop and hacking software, take extra time, get someone to give you advice to improve on that but it does not get better due to your characteristics. Doc

My thoughts were that force powers ran from an END Battery that recovered by drawing on the Force - if you were blocked from the Force for whatever reason (drugs or technology) then you would run out of juice and be unable to do anything. You could immediately recover your whole END Battery by drawing on the dark side. That had a side effect though - it was a cumulative effect transform that added bad complications to the character - psych limits, addictions, etc. You could 'pay off'/heal a cumulative effect before it transformed you by doing heroic deeds etc but once transformed it was far more difficult to get transformed back. I also had the Dark Side be available for power boosts - your 20STR TK would become 30STR etc - anytime you wanted it but it would attract the same cumulative transform as a side effect. As such the effects of the Dark Side would be different for every character - once the cumulative transform was enough a change would be made. It would then begin again from zero but the character would be darker. I would have liked the existence of a transformation to make the dark side more tempting - additional powers, more END as well as instant REC and even bigger boosts (obviously all accompanied by heftier transforms). That game never happened and I never got the chance to playtest it though. :-( Doc

I dont want to get stuck on the mind control as an option/not option but the points raised do present an issue with what the power can actually do. I have high STR - can that be hacked? All of it? Or just the portion that is higher than standard human?? Can I not use an inherent ability if told to do so? Well hypnotists seem to be able to persuade people that they are blind, even though their eyes obviously do work and therefore I would say that mind control should be able to do it too, "you cannot see and do not know why" "you cannot use your energy blast and will not realise until you try to use it" Mind Control is a wide ranging power. I think my main purpose in the conversation was to understand why you thought that another power would not be noticed while mind control would... Doc

ooh! What about "if you decide to use power X, instead do nothing for a phase"?? Doc

I would use, "if you try to use X Power, you will find yourself unable to". I am sure with some thinking, I could find alternates. Doc

With that argument in mind, I would dispute your contention that Mind Control would not work. Why should the detail of the mind control mean that the person would be aware of what they cannot use when the detail of a suppress/drain/transform etc would not provide the same information to the victim?? :-) Doc

OK. In HERO then, everything you do to achieve this effect is going to need invisible effect. Otherwise the player knows they have been affected and how. It would be a difficult thing to run in an RPG. I am also interested in how she knows which abilities to hack. Can this happen before she sees them in action? Does she have an analysis power that lays out the capabilities of opponents?? I know that I am not making this easier but if you want it to work like people expect then you need to have thought of these things before game time... :-) Doc

Nope - it sounds too clinical - it needs to hit at the gut level as well as the intellectual... I do like Bribers and Backstabbers though. :-) I think that this with the more intellectual sub-title would work well... You need the hook that makes people look and then the detail that makes them keep looking and the goodies promised inside that makes them splash the cash... Doc

It is all in the marketing. I think there needs to be a specific hook that makes people look at it - something explored that is perhaps overlooked in other products and becomes a selling point. It cannot require players knowing deep history but the suggestion of depth needs to be there to avoid it looking shallow. Talk about walking a tightrope... And then, like I say, a few bits that could be used anywhere - decent maps and adventure ideas. I think that your campaign concept is good - but the name would not sell it...it needs a title that shouts out the political intrigue (and the appendices should outline how HERO could be used to best exploit the social combat that would replace the physical). Another dragon??!! Avoid the tedium of adventuring and try your luck in the most dangerous of all sports - medieval politics.... :-)

Yeah. I have picked up exactly none of the fantasy settings. I have no investment in them and, if they were re-issued/broadened, I do no think they would be at the top of my buying list. I think that it is good those settings exist. I think it is vital for a system to have a functioning ecosystem for lazy/time limited GMs to use. I dont think HERO's settings will sell themselves. If there is to be a setting for HERO it must define, for new GMs, what the expectations are. It has to explore where there is room for GM decisions that would not impact the usefulness of future material and where such decisions would limit the value of such material. After that, what is needed is adventure/campaign packs, These need to be well-produced little things with decent maps and cool ideas that tie into the main setting. Not enough that they require the setting to play but enough to hint at a broader background that is available to those that are interested. The more of these that exist, the more the setting itself becomes a priority to buy and the vastness of Turakian Age becomes an advantage as there would be huge swathes open for the GM to exploit however he wanted. HERO is a vague system and it needs to be shown off for others to appreciate it. Smaller, well-written modules that might be useful for fantasy games outside of HERO would be better sellers than those that need HERO and its setting to play. I know that I buy fantasy modules all the time simply for the artwork and maps that they come with that I then often use for other systems... I have not voted for any as I could not, with any integrity, say that I would buy any of them. Doc

You know, my biggest concern is that somehow it has become accepted that we should consider all, or oven most, politicians to be venal and/or corrupt. It is a dangerous situation and it means that politicians have very little incentive to strive to be better, noone would believe them. If all our politicians are venal and/or corrupt then who is to blame? In a democracy the ultimate blame must rest with the electorate, it is they, after all, who elect these venal and corrupt people. The problem is that we cannot be bothered to actually engage with the process, we want a vote or two every five years to be enough. It is not. I think there is also the problem that we flock to rumour and half-truths about our politicians, holding them to higher standards than we hold ourselves, feeding a scandal hungry media more ready to challenge personal failings than with policy failings. the biggest problem with an acceptance that all politicians lie is that when one really does simply say whatever is most personally beneficial then there is not the outrage there should be about a politician that blatantly lies to the electorate. It would behove us all to demand our politicians are truthful, that they are held to account for lying and that we are more circumspect about what we call a lie. We all need to accept that we get the politicians we deserve and that simply sounding off on the internet is not engaging with the political process and does not strengthen democracy... Doc

I like this and am actually now surprised it is not an official modifier. I mean, NND and the other AVAD type advantages take defences out of the game except when they attack is absolutely ineffective (see what I did there?) Why should you not be able to take DCV out of the game except when the attack always misses? After all - HERO is pretty much a numbers game, the balance between how often you hit and when you do how much damage you get by defences in a turn compared with STUN/BODY and how much you recover in a turn. All autohit does is remove some of the randomness of how often you hit. The question would be what it is worth...+1? +1.5?? Doc

The big thing with the magic missile builds in HERO is that there will be a very small chance of missing unless the GM has built it with the proviso that anyone without magical defence or unearthly CV will get hit automatically but if you have a massive DCV then you might actually either dodge or block the missile. That would be a cool game moment... The other thing is that, unless you decide to artificially limit the use, the upside of the HERO build is that you use it as often as you want...

1D6 NND Blast, 1 hex area, accurate, megascale, no range. (5*(1+1+1+0.25+1))/1.5 = 14pts You could add autofire if you want but it gets expensive quick... now there is often good reason to exclude using accurate and megascale together but I think magic missile fits the bill. If you can dive 1km for cover I reckon I can live with a magic missile missing....

This as always comes down to player preconceptions. The films are not much use as they do not seek to balance jedi with anything else and power levels fluctuate depending on the demands of the story. Just look at the Jedi fighting in the arena - there were a huge number of Jedi and they were losing until the clone trooper reinforcements arrived - overwhelming force (not Force!) was apparently enough to potentially wipe out the Jedi. The big element in getting the Jedi across will be in the "Cool Tricks" arena. Obviously one Jedi cannot take on a whole platoon of storm troopers unless he happens to be a seriously powerful one and even then he will eventually be overwhelmed by numbers. However, creative use of powers with boosts to PRE attacks should make the display of power enough to make time for all kinds of last minute escapes - the GM has to remember the psychological effect of the use of Force powers on everyone else. I think I would look at having the Jedi be able to do the same things as other players but in cooler ways - they do not use armour but instead deflect and dodge (both of these things can be built in HERO in exactly the same way - through the use of small modifiers such as armour costs END and deflect and dodge requires skill rolls the added PD/ED should 'feel' different in play). The thing is to have a list of those cool Jedi tricks for players to pick from and, in HERO, if the player really likes one of them it is a simple matter to allow practice to make those things really good. For example, the player loves the deflect and dodge stuff and begins to put practice into that area and in time not only dodges and deflects but actually reflects some bolts back at the person firing the shot... That can be done in other systems but in HERO you can watch the development of the power. To bring it in on cost there might be big limitations on the power such as higher END cost, range effects, limitations on what power of blast could be deflected, and anything else that seems appropriate - even succeeding on a relationship style roll with the Force. Each of these can slowly be bought down until it is a really cool power. HERO is a crunchy system. I do not think I would rely on narrative story modes helping balance out over-powered force users from everyone else. What you need to do is build in the cool stuff to the crunch and find other ways for the social points spent by other characters make them important to the game. You also have to allow the ranged combat characters to be important and have the Jedi be specialist close combatants and have particular areas where they might become actively detrimental to either the more dubious plans of the players or hindrance to stealth ("I feel the Force moving strongly in someone close by....") Doc

Ha! A sensitive spot obviously. I think we can make a decent argument for the focus limitation - it is all about the value of the limitation (+0) always being a potential. I want to be able to make potions that anyone can use. It does not make sense for those only to be usable by me and if I am carrying them, the fact that someone can steal them off me or break the focus and deprive me of their use, makes them worth less than they might otherwise be. I had never considered the fact that OAF provide a UBO as part of it but I reckon they consider it a wash when a usable focus can be used by opponents or friends. Doc

If the OAF is usable by others, we could have it usable by others?? Doc

This does make me think though that perhaps Damage Shield should be a subset of trigger than the ingenious switch to being a subset of area-effect that it got in the last edition....

Now that is just provocative!! You are asking, on the HERO boards no less, for a way for something to built ONLY one way??! You can look at the examples in the book and you get the riposte - a reflex attack on anyone attacking regardless if you have an action to do it. If ten people attack you, you get to riposte to them all. You may suggest that should NOT be allowed but it is the example in the book. I do not think that anything else does that apart from damage shield and there is more elegance to the trigger solution. I think the example of the smoke grenades in the text is also a nice example but again comes close to the warning sign in my head. If you need cover your reflexive action is to pop a smoke grenade - this happens regardless of what you are actually spending your action on, Like a squid spraying ink... I was confused by the use of trigger in the Potion of Giant's Strength example - I could see what the trigger was adding to the mix - the power already has charges and OAF and the trigger is quaffing the potion. Then I realised what it did was allow ANYONE who quaffed the potion to benefit from the additional STR. So it is quite a useful way of loaning powers to others - though I think those would, like the potion be best suited to continuing charge type situations - otherwise you get into questions of how long, or who pays the END etc (though I think that you could see SFX that would welcome those questions). Doc

I was going to explain it to you in detail but when I tried it was insisting in enclosing all the text in a quote - every time I clicked back to WYSIWYG it seemed to add the end quote command at the end... ...my bubble has burst, my opportunity to be patronising lost.... :-( Doc

Great - I think some of those, as I said, begin to lay down some useful expected limitations on the use of the advantage. :-) What strikes me throughout the whole of that write up is the repeated use of, if appropriate. No GM wants to have an argument about appropriateness when a player is resting his whole character design on something that like this... Doc

You mean this one? http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/90570-ace-of-spades-champions-complete-work-in-progress/ I searched steriaca "ace of spades" on google - this was first hit. Doc

I had to go and read these rules - not familiar with the detail and there is a LOT of detail. I think that the limitations you state are reasonable and would mitigate the use of the advantage. I do not, however, see them explicitly in the rules text. I see no requirement that a trigger is activated on a discrete event. The rules say the power is activated when "a defined circumstance occurs". Nothing in that requires something discrete. I agree that such a requirement would be a good thing. Neither do I see a limitation on the number of times it may be go off on the same target. Indeed, the rules provide an example of a riposte. That explicitly indicates that the riposte can be delivered many times in the same segment. If someone attacked with an autofire attack, I would presume that the riposte would be triggered for each attack, explicitly following the rules. Just for exactitude, I am presuming when you say turn, you mean phase. :-) Doc

While the distinction is a good one, something we should think about closely, the actual example Sean mentioned probably does work better as an uncontrolled AoE. If you are in the area then you are subject to attack when you enter and then at regular intervals if you remain within it. There is possibly a think piece that might be done to look at the use of powers that you set up but then only have effect when something happens. Uncontrolled and trigger are two aspects of that, there may be more. Am gonna go read some rules before I tackle anything else in this conversation!! :-) Doc