Doc Democracy

I am looking from the outside in here. Now, in the UK, broadcasters have pretty strict rules that they have to follow on political coverage during election periods. I was of the understanding that there were no such rules in the US. Is that right? Each broadcaster can take the position they wish and broadcast on that basis? Or is it that the big networks have rules and others (like FOX) are less constrained? If there are no rules then surely the fact that broadcasters choosing a candidate and "run blocking" is standard operational procedure??

Claire, I have uploaded a few character sheets. There are three that compare a standard presentation with a more stripped down version. There are another 4 that actually use the roll over scheme and very closely hide the system from the players....though I used it in detail to design the characters and the rest of the game. http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/337-simple-presentation-of-characters/ Doc

Make it a role playing challenge. Transform them into the same person with an additional DNPC - the vampire....

Ok Claire, you asked if by turn we meant the 12 segment turn. I think people reckon that to be fine as it maps directly to a twelve second turn and you get five turns in a minute. You can dismiss segments from your game if you want and use seconds instead. However, if you have a more fundamental issue with breaking your game into 12 second chunks, let us know. Lucius suggested 6 second ones. You can do anything you want as far as this goes. If you want to retain the concept of what is called post segment 12 recovery, then you need to choose a threshold for when that happens. Otherwise, chose the length of a combat round, abolish free recoveries and you are good to go. You also asked about inverting skill rolls. Essentially most skills come as base 11 or less or base 9+(stat/5). I would be including ned to have skills presented as rolling 10 or over (equivalent to 11 or less). You can then have knowledge: Villains +5 noted on the sheet, that means you add five to the roll. You can either subtract difficulty numbers from the roll or have a range of target numbers for more difficult tasks. I fiddle that stat based skills, just divide the stat by 5 and subtract 2 to get the number to note next to it on the character sheet. Doc

Your call and indeed a houserule... RAW, these things take no time. If RAW dont fit your game though, you get rid of them and THAT is what this thread is all about..

I believe you but I dont think you can rely on everyone else cutting you (or any of the rest of us) slack. You are right, text has no tone of voice so it is incumbent on us writers to ensure we do in text what voice does by intonation. I dont think I am the only one that will have interpreted your text the way I did. Doc

Ooh! A bit unfriendly Christopher... I can understand wanting the power of HERO to set and design my own game but might want to use the toolkit to deliver a more streamlined game. I think we need to accommodate everyone's playstyle, that's the core attraction of HERO in my opinion. Everyone can come and adapt it to what they want... Doc

In the rules there are things which officially take no time. Examples are "making a PRE attack, making a soliloquy, or making a roll at the GM's request". I dont think this covers conversation, even for the most creative of players. However, if the villain stands up to crow about his role in the players downfall, none of them get the chance to fire a cheeky energy blast at his mouth....it takes no time...

But of course, in HERO games, especially Champions games, a monologue takes no time. They are fun and we want to let them get that dialogue in there. :-)

This is pretty easy. Just a matter of flipping things over. Currently you need to roll equal to or under 11+OCV-DCV. If OCV = DCV then you have a 62.5% chance to hit. To maintain that chance to hit you need, if OCV = DCV, to roll 10 or over. In this case you need to remember that you add levels to OCV or DCV to keep the effects right. It is up to you here too. You can remove SPD from the game. What you need to decide is how many actions you want people to have before they get a recovery. Effectively you are then setting the SPD of the game. So if you decide the players will get 4 actions before a recovery then the speed of the game is 4. It also means that all of the opponents of the heroes will have SPD 4 too (though you can highlight a dangerous opponent by giving them bonus actions). With a spd 4 game is means that 2500m in a half phase action means 2500m in 1.5s (which equals 6,000,000m per hour) pretty fast! :-) In a fixed SPD game though, it means that if you have 20m movement that you can move that distance as your full action. If you want to do other things during your action then you move half that (or less) and do other stuff (like attacking). However, it is easier to think about when everyone is moving at the same time. I think that the best advice was to think in terms of Active Points. You also want to think how much impact you want from improvised weapons. If you allow them to add significant damage from stuff they pick up, the players will always be looking to find that kind of bonus damage. If you dont then they will only do so when it desperate. An easy idea is to change the nature of the attack based on the weapon. As someone said earlier, allow the use of a broken bottle to change normal damage to killing (remembering to apply the damage to the weapon too if you want that realism AND complexity). You could allow rigid items to provide a level of penetrating or ranged or armour piercing... I guess a lot of what you want to do might depend on the genre of campaign you plan on running. What you playing? Superheroes? Super-Agents? Fantasy? Sci-Fi?? Doc

There have been a couple of proposals of this kind on the boards which have been discussed extensively as to the desirability and practicality of this. I am currently enamoured with dice pools and allowing good attack rolls to add to the damage dice pool. If your attack is 12D6 and you roll well, you might get to roll 15D6 but you only count the best 12. This does, as Outsider notes, further enhance the value of OCV (and thus DCV as its counter - perhaps suggesting that DCV should be cheaper than OCV...) Doc

I remember a Hammer House of Horror film where the hero brandishes his crucifix at a vampire who was, prior to conversion, jewish. The response was a chuckle and "boy do you have the wrong vampire!". And there would be a crucial HERO definition point. Does the holy symbol matter? Does it have to relate to the person wielding the power (as I would rule - the power to repel comes from the god you worship, not the prior beliefs of the vampire) or is the vampire repelled by exposure to the symbol they relate with holiness (puts clerics in a very difficult position!). This comes down to whether you are trying to impose an effect - like the invisibility or the additional DCV - that happens because that is what you want or to have a power that has a more variable impact depending on the characteristics of those watching. The second is sometimes more satisfying for the gamist in me but the former is more satisfying for the narrativist and simulationist. :-) Doc

Personally, I think this is almost a kind of invisibility power. Rather than making an intelligence roll to counter the targeting penalty the player should have to make an EGO or PRE roll to overcome the reluctance to attack the seductress. That covers the in combat stuff. She is not invisible, unless you are talking mirrors and cameras, to live people. If they are going to attack, they find themselves very reluctant to do so. If not already in combat, then I would be backing this up with a single mind control attack continuously being made, possibly with gradual effect, simply to say lets sit down and talk. I might have a gradual effect power to reduce the will of those She talks to, setting them up for conversation and seduction attempts. In fact I might have a linked power, if she begins conversing with a target, one power focuses on reducing the will of that target, the other is targetted on anyone else in the area to give the vampire and her target "some space and privacy". :-) This is like a social quicksand, once you are in it gets worse and worse. And your mates abandon you... Obviously much of the effectiveness of this power should disappear when faced with the appropriate holy symbol, aggressively brandished...or something like that. Doc

Just because I like pushing this out, the way I have done possession in the past has been the following... First transform an opponent into the duplicate for the duplication power I have on my character sheet. The details of that are that, when joined, the duplicate has the mental attributes of one duplicate and the physical attributes of the other. It works because there are few other powers in the game that make two bodies join into one. It also works because it leaves the possessor in control of the body of the possessed while retaining the mental attributes of the possessor. It does not allow for a possessed body to be killed with no danger. I like to use the transformation on opponents, setting them up as potential duplicates, so that if one host is getting killed the possessor unduplicates, leaving the physical body of the possessed (and the current target for attacks) still there but another host available for the next action. :-) Not the official route but mechanically pretty cool. I would allow the disembodied head of the victim as a freebie. It is a nice narrative tool that allows the victim to interact and discuss without having access to any of his powers and only his knowledge skills. This method would also avoid the need for breakout rolls. It does require a method to undo the transform but that fits pretty well with your scenario - if the players find out how to undo the ritual then they can reverse the transform which invalidates the duplication... :-) Doc

Yeah. I am with HyperMan here. I would define an area effect and, within that area, you should be able to chain the lightning - selective targets within the area. That would not be cheap but it would allow, for example, you to hit three agents without hitting any of the hostages standing in front of them...

I think I mostly agree with you. However, I would reverse the decision about rider and horse taking BODY. I guess it depends on the horse, a warhorse is probably much less likely to rear at taking damage and then not require a riding roll. If the rider takes damage then I think the riding roll is required to stop them falling off. As far as knockback goes, in heroic games it is more likely knockdown that you are talking abut. The lack of BODY damage should not be a huge issue because it should only take 1" to go far enough to be completely off the back of your horse, the horse's KBR would not count unless you were stitched into your saddle... :-)

I think it is good to have some way to distinguish between those that have been trained to fight on horseback and those that have not. :-) The penalty skill levels are one way to do that. You might also have a skill called, for example, mounted combat which would remove the need for the penalty skill levels (by removing the OCV penalties - you would need riding AND mounted combat for that). It think those trained should be able to go without making rolls until they are take BODY from an attack, or their mount does. However, it would depend on the type of game you want to run. A horse could be modelled simply as additional running with a bonus to lance attack damage and casual strength. That could be limited by Physical Manifestation and OIF (though someone with enough STR might separate you from your horse more like an OAF)... :-) Doc

You know, these things cost very few points to begin with. If you want incredibly long lived rather than immune to aging, then list it that way for the same points. If you get player pout, then give them a point off. It is nothing much to worry about in the grand scheme of things. I prefer this kind of micro-gifting of a point rather than trying to come up with more complex schemes...

I will begin bringing things over soon. This displays an aspect of my Belbin profiling (analyses the role you play in a team). I scored 0 in "finishing/completing". I am not the guy who crosses the t's, dots the i's and ensures everything is delivered. I am, apparently a mix of what they call Plant (creative, unorthodox and generators of ideas) and Shaper (people who challenge the team to improve). What that seems to mean is that I am incredibly excited about new stuff, want to introduce it, want to keep tinkering until it is good enough to do the job it is intended for and then loses interest in the last bits that might make it usable for everyone else... :-) So I a tinkering and solving problems but not packaging up and bring the solutions back to the boards... I will force myself to overcome my natural inclinations and in time will continue posting character solutions here. Doc PS: this post is an exercise in self-shaming. Part of my process to overcome that lack of finishing by making public promises...

As the beneficiary of the accent effect, I would like to extend the group from "attractive British and Australian girls" mentioned by surrealone to unattractive Scottish men. Two years in Nashville did amazing things for my self-worth but it took me years to readjust to my league when I got home. Attractive girls, way out of my league, regularly approached and chatted me up when they heard me talking in stores and restaurants. Once, even when my girlfriend was sitting beside me... Now the value of that in an RPG might be limited but it shows that you stand out, are noticeable and noticed and may gain bonuses to talking with folk well beyond the usual. My wife recently met an acquaintance of mine, a tax attaché in London's French Embassy. I thought I was going to have to help her o a chair as her knees obviously gave way when he was speaking to us.... :-)

Then I would say that this fight should last as long as it takes the players to find the solution to killing the dragon while staying alive amid the wholesale destruction being wrought by this force of nature. The actual fight should be over in an instant because the heroes have found the instant kill solution.... Doc

Wish more people would get carried away more often - would make the boards much more lively... :-)

It is all related. We have a bit of a mix and match mess with damage related powers/characteristics etc. :-) All interesting to read...and I guess I started it - I said that if you bought 1d6 HA then you should have an advantage that caused the STUN rolled to be killing BODY dmage and the BODY damage to be killing STUN.

Yup. That is also a solution. As long as we are consistent about things then it works. I would be content with either - the problems arise when you make a switch for one reason without looking for the unintended consequentials. :-) The benefit of your solution is that STR stays at 5 (addressing some of the costing issues) and retains the 5 STR = 1D6 damage relationship. Doc

Yeah Steph. It is a how long is a piece of string question. The length of the combat will depend on how tough your dragons are compared to how tough your players are. In runequest the PCs find it difficult to combat the dreams of dragons. There is also an article in Dragon magazine I think that talks about dragons and how there has evolved an attitude that adventurers will pack up and find that dragon to kill in a way they will not tackle equivalent big baddies like vampires and lich. It also depends on how you play your dragon. Most dragons in my games are highly intelligent and magic using. It would take an adventuring group a lot of work to bring one to the point of a stand up combat and the dragon would be unlikely to participate in a combat it could not win... However, some of the smaller dragon types are simple cunning beasts of the forest and mountains and they are a difficult fight. they fly and strafe and grab and drop and use all kinds of tactics that have made them the most feared of magical beasts. Of course if you do kill one, the pay-off should be immense (and, as Thorin found out) very difficult to hold onto.... Doc