Doc Democracy

Dont want to spoil for anyone who has not read the final book.

On this day in 1642, King Charles I raised his standard in Nottingham, effectively firing the starting gun on the English Civil Wars. http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/parliamentaryauthority/civilwar/ Important date for us as it meant we made decisions on how to run our country that are extant today... Doc

Hmm. Do you find a single substitute for the POW stat, or replicate the feel in a different way. One aspect of POW was that you got a free chance to increase it during play but it had a maximum limit (21 for humans). That maximum sounds like something I would pay character points for. So how about an END battery with a floating maximum? You cast spirit magic using END from the battery which regenerates as quickly or slowly as you decide to design it. You then limit the usable END in some way - possibly just start it at 12. You then allow that maximum to rise when defeating others magic and decreasing when buying rune magic Some Rune magic should be charge based. Some magics charges recover at the temple, others require the battery maximum to be reduced as well as going to temple. As far as Devine intervention goes, it was a last gasp effort to get out of jail. Roll your POW or less on percentiles and have your POW reduced by the amount on the roll (if it was successful). Why not do the same, using the END max on the battery as the target. Same mechanic, same GM fiat. Doc

It is a common problem that one of HERO's strengths is also one of its weaknesses. You can make anything you want but the base system essentially means you NEED to make a lot of decisions, There are a lot of things to help you, and FHC gives you all you need for a few sessions but, if you want an extended campaign, you do have to make some decisions. Indeed, you have all the tools not just to decide between the options provided but even to tweak and change those to be exactly what you want. If you want a fully realised campaign then buy Tuala Morn or the Tarokian Age or one of the others that are there. There is nothing "new" in those things, nothing you could not design and build yourself if you have the time and talent. :-) No NEED to buy every adventure and supplement, but they do save you time and provide inspiration. Doc

I think the big difference between Captain America and Superman is that Superman is not simply a moral authority but has the raw power to enforce that. It is more difficult to write for a protagonist that actually can do whatever he wants.

Yeah but my son grew up watching Chop Socky Chooks... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chop_Socky_Chooks

What I hate about it is that even if he had to make it, the writers allowed the Batman (did you hear that THE BATMAN) to be outmanoeuvred by the Joker. The whole superpower of Batman is that he always knows what is going down. I loved the fact that the villains my have appeared to have Batman in an impossible situation but the Batman's preparation and attention to detail means that he sees a flaw or has pre-prepared stuff that allows him to turn the tables at the last minute. It distressed me that they think that having Batman make a decision to choose between girlfriend and political necessity is a relevant story for Batman. I was waiting after he saved one to show why he knew the other was safe all along... Doc ...similarly distressed by writers thinking that making Captain Jack sacrifice his grandson to save the Children of Earth was a suitable outcome for a hero in the Doctor Who universe... :-(

They are called naked modifiers. Check them out. :-)what edition are you playing?

Bronze Age gods as gangsters....war gods getting protection money from grain goddesses...plus ca change... PS: thank you for pushing my likes into 300s! :-)

As GM I discovered that I was the player in our group that wanted to be leader and wanted to make decisions about what we did as a group. It is strange, I always thought that the others might resent that I dominated this aspect of our gameplay. As it turns out, I am the only one inclined to do it. A year of adventuring and I still have to prompt them to make decisions, remind them of the leads and things they might want to follow up and (most frustrating of all) push them to develop long term goals for their character that I can try to weave into a broader game narrative. No more guilt. When I play it is almost a gush of relief to actually do this stuff in game...they all provide the opportunity as GMs fir people to develop stuff, just don't seem motivated as players to do it. I have slowly traversed back to the railroad style of campaign I trained myself out of as it is the one that best delivers the experience to that particular group of players...

"Nice valley you have there, would be a shame if something happened to it..." :-)

Don't get too caught up in thinking that everything has to be accounted for. The supplies and expenses that the cult supplies more often than not come with strings attached. :-) I would fold all of the extra stuff into the relationship and how many favours you have built up. You might burn a few favours to get stuff and you might take on a few obligations of you do not have the necessary number of favours or good relationship status. (One day I may come to you for a favour, that day may never come...) :-) Doc

This is another one of those places where HERO begins to look complex and introduces huge bureaucracy unnecessarily. As far as I can see, the staff is a source of power that provides some defence against magical attacks. The big sticking point is that the power source only regenerates when it defends against magic. Is that right? Well, I haven't costed any of this, nor looked at the absorption as a defence rules in a long time. However, I would be tempted to build this as an END Reserve with a decent defence - even if that was SFX based like 25% Dam Reduction versus magic. I would build the reserve such that it only gained a recovery when it defends against magic. That way there is no bureaucratic tracking of END and BODY or conversions or anything else. If there is a desire for variability then make the REC variable - 4 END on 14-, 8 on 11-, 12 on 8- or something like that. You can save points on the defence by making it less good, or more specific (against ED or PD etc). Just because the SFX indicate a direct link does not mean the mechanics should. Indeed by trying to make it so, the power can not only look complex, it can be complex and less fun to play. Doc

Actually I think it comes down much more to the players you have than the archetypes in the characters. I am currently playing a D&D game in Roll20 and while the characters appear to have a balanced look, they dont play well because the players are not the best mix. Too many similar personalities not pushing the archetypes within their characters and so they are not really fulfilling their roles and so not delivering as expected from the on paper analysis... Doc

Texture is good, as is shape. Misses out on colour and finds it impossible to read printed text unless the printing involves some contouring on the medium (typewriter causing indents or print media standing proud of the surface). The question is, if you want a blind character, why work so hard to give him sight....??

Well, it depends. What do you want? Obviously it is an attack, and so you want damage, question is, whether it is standard damage, some special effect such as being energy rather than physical or armour piercing or something. It might also simply be a way of supercharging your regular attack to get more damage, possibly at the cost of increased endurance expenditure. Second aspect is the movement. Now if you want the movement to be usable you can either link the attack to movement so that they can be done simultaneously. You can make the attack dependent on the movement (if you don't have the space to charge, you don't get it). You might also make it part of the special effect. You buy a ranged attack but the special effect is you rushing up and hitting the target and rushing back to your starting location. So. Lots of options. :-) Doc

Who says I want originality?? There are scads of excellent stories in a multitude of comic books, written by folk who understand (and love) the caracters and comic book tropes, begging to be adapted for a different medium....

heh. And while I used to love continuity, the way it now twists and distorts movies gives me the heebie-jeebies. I want every movie to be a story in its own right, I dont want to have to see all of the movies to 'properly' understand what is going on and I dont want what happened in one particular movie to make another cool movie impossible to make. Continuity drove me out of a monthly comic habit (to the gratitude of my wife and wallet) and it has just about done the same with superhero movies... </GrumpyOldMan> Doc

Or there is the other option. Dont charge for knowledge skills but give the appropriate ones to the character for free based on the powers they have built. Doc PS: I may be 180 degrees from original post now... :-(

oh! If you use the Power Skill to allow folk to modify their powers on the fly you might tell wizards that they can learn their spells by rote or they can learn them in a way they understand. If they have the knowledge skills then you can allow them to make skill rolls to modify the spells on the fly. You might require a higher level of knowledge skill to get the base 11- chance to modify the power to reflect the complexity of the spell... Doc

I liked Suicide Squad. Went with my wife - the first superhero movie she has actually wanted to see in a decade - and she liked it. I have avoided BvS simply because I know how I want the film to play out and I know the versions of Batman and Superman I need to make that happen. I know it will not. The Superman I know and love is bright, optimistic and intrinsically good. So good that other people dont even need to ask if he is a hero. The Batman I know and love inhabits a dark world without participating in that world. He is dark and grim to the denizens of the underworld which makes others question his position in society but, at the core, he is just as much a hero as Superman. For them to fight there has to be some kind of mismatch of their world views. Batman is not stupid, he can see Superman is a hero just as much as anyone else, he can see that he would never do harm intentionally to anyone else and would try to avoid that harm even at his own expense but he knows that even that kind of hero draws risks. He would not go after Superman because Superman 'might' turn bad but because he represented a threat that Superman was unaware of and incapable of mitigating. Superman would only fight Batman in self-defence and be the one constantly looking to find a way to convince him they were on the same side. The difference between BvS and SS is that in the former you have two heroes. In the latter you have a squad of villains with, at best, a couple of anti-heroes. They need a different approach. I fear that Marvel may take Captain America to the same dark place DC took Superman. Both of them should be the shining lights of hope and optimism in their universes. Doc PS: sorry - didn't mean to write so much - obviously this means more to me than I thought!!

Like Nolgroth I like things that incentivise good background stuff. I like the need to know stuff before you get to cast magic. What I might do is provide the limitation as if it were a RSR and then reduce it to reflect that the roll might not always be required and may be altered. What I mean is that to actually know and understand the basics of casting Nolgroth's Virtual Tabletop then I would need to know KS: FantasyGrounds 14- and KS: HERO 14-. Now just to cast the spell under normal conditions, I do not need to roll a dice. It happens. In the classroom, under controlled conditions, I am perfect. Never been known to fail. Under field conditions? Well that is a different story. When need to cast the Virtual Tabletop when cast on L Marcus and where the Tabletop needs to contain a palindromedary then there needs to be a roll. There may even need to be two. If the casting is actively opposed by L Marcus then I may give the KS: HERO a -2 penalty. If it also needs the palindromedary to talk then the KS: HERO roll might also take a -2 penalty. This would provide the GM with options and allow a decent stab at requiring knowledge skills which might not always be drawn upon but which are necessary to even begin to purchase the spell. I would suggest situations where the skill roll might be enhanced but in those situations I would be more inclined to cancel out the need to roll at all. I am usually always for lesser bureaucracy but this would appear to be bureaucracy that adds to the depth and richness of the game. Doc

I think I would prefer Hard Cash but this has my vote. :-) Doc

Then surely the idea is not to mention 6th edition. You need just to present 5th edition versions of 6th edition powers and call them something different. You don't smash down prejudice, you work round it. As Tasha pointed out, there is nothing new in Striking Appearance. In 6th edition Steve really did try to move everything to more basic building blocks and weeded out those things that just worked by game fiat. It should make importing stuff much easier. Doc

You know that HERO has always written in powers dont you? It is the USP of the system for me. Just cause something is a 6th edition invention does not rule it out of a 5th edition game...