Doc Democracy

You know, I have read this and the idea of adding a complication to someone's character sheet is my favourite but I have the idea of an IPE telepathy, gradual effect, only to send the message that this guy is something special. I would also give skill levels with social skills only against those that have been subject to this air of authority...

It is possible to build the horde as a single character that covers a large area and has lots of attacks, low defences but high damage resistance, susceptibility to area effect attacks etc. I think having huge numbers of low power opponents works hugely well as the bureaucratic logistics begin to overwhelm the narrative... PS: Christopher got in there before me - with a more detailed response as well!

To be honest, if I was going to create a character sheet from scratch I would be looking to design something evocative of the game I was going to play - lots of colour, lots of flavour and as few build stats as possible. It is a fixation of mine. To me the character sheet is the players GUI to the game being played and you need to take the system out of the way as much as possible. i find character sheets the most underdeveloped part of any game system that I buy, simply bits of paper to write stuff on and usually over-populated with numbers and space for other number with too little descriptive text and pictures. Amazingly it was HERO that started me on this path - the superhero silhouettes in the first Champions books and then the sheets for Justice Inc all brought the game out. I have wanted to take it further ever since. As far as traditional character sheets go, I think yours are good - well laid out and doing some of the background work for the player. It is good work. But, for me, it says nothing about the type, or style, of game you intend to play. Doc

OK Wardsman. A lot of the things you want to think through are not system specific. If you want to do the thinking in public then pick something - chat it through then make a decision about what you want and move on. My job (and anyone else still reading) will be to prod at your ideas to see if they are solid or might cause problems or to suggest other ways you might do that. for example, everyone is an initiate of a cult. My take on that would be to set characters up with a relationship with a cult. It would be for the character to maintain that relationship. To become an initiate the player would buy his character a contact with Osiris. Obviously some cults are going to be more valuable to belong to than others and so you could build each cult depending on how useful it might be to the character during play. I would list each cult with the cost of the relationship. I would also list the necessary psych limits - such as Hates Set and his followers. Obviously an initiate may not have this at a high level but as you invest in the cult this psych limit is going to increase until the Rune Lord will not hesitate to hunt down any local den of Set and kill those participating in those foul practices. It is here that you will clarify what cults require of its followers. I would also build my magic so that some spells are limited to particular cults and that you need to be an initiate to gain access to the spell. That begins to make magic distinct to particular cults and possibly the way folk fight to maximise their available magical enhancements. I would also build favours and contacts into the rune magic. Every time you cast a rune spell you use need to get your God to grant that spell. You will have to keep a track of how well the player is in with the god - essentially how high the roll is and how many favours have been built up. Casting the spell will require either one or more favours or a successful contact roll. Every time a contact roll is made it attracts a negative modifier until the character has sufficiently made the proper obeisances and sacrifices at the correct temple. You can offset those negative modifiers during play when the characters act appropriately to their religion in ways the god might notice. Some rune spells will be based on reusable charges. You may only regain those charges when you return to the temple, regardless of your relationship. Others will be based purely on favours bought - the charge can only be regained by purchasing a favour with the God while at an appropriate temple. If you spend some decent time working up the main cults then much of your politics and interactions will be there. You also need to think hard about the fringe benefits on offer through various cults - some decent fringe benefits will be the only reason some of the weaker cults will be attractive to the players rather than the ones offering the mainstream combat efficiencies. Doc

...though if a player has told you he fancies a change, then killing a character in the right way can be a dramatic boost to a campaign. The key is that the death is a surprise to everyone bar the GM and that one player.

BDH is right. The only time I got a real horror feel in a superhero game was when I played a haunted house, removing options and agency from the players, all guiding them towards the cellar where one of them almost died right at the start of the adventure. It only really worked because I abandoned the rules, assuming they were overmatched unless they figured the trick or until they went where they were supposed to. Irony is that they figured an out then threw it away which only fed the feeling of being swept toward a doom...

So the question might be why you are trying to recreate RQ in HERO when RQ seems so perfectly suited?? :-)

I would have them be creatures of the mind, partly embodied on the material plane with their beaks built using killing attacks defended by mental defence rather than PD or ED. Shouldn't matter the physical strength of the opponent - they simply phase through the physicality until they reach the mental morel within....

Yeah - all down to what you want it to do. Darkness - the debris cloud stays in place as long as the character pays END for it and anyone who enters the area cannot see unless they have appropriate senses. Flash - the power is instant and anyone in the area is affected whether or not the cloud remains in place. Change Environment - more nuanced than Darkness but similarly in place as long as character pays END. There may be other ways to build it and other things you might add to the effects but you need to think about the effect rather than the special effect (even if that is the inspiration for the power). Doc

Now that is something that might scare the players. Beginning to click into the whole re-write to concept rather than try to replicate functionality. :-) The power my players hated more than any other was Mental Entangle (3rd edition I think). I soon understood that any villain who even suggested they might possess that power became the sole focus of attacks until they were a faint red smear on the ground. The power was effectively removed from the game unless I wanted to label a villain as despicable beyond measure.... Doc

Hold on there boys! We dont need an argument about having an argument... :-) Like I say, in HERO there are a lot of ways to do things and the threads created to inform the 6th edition showed there are a lot of strongly held opinions on how to do stuff. Now there are officially suggested ways to do things but there is no-one (I cannot make that statement strongly enough) no-one who is going to come to your table and make you play in the One True Way... I have often felt a rule change was wrong until I played it and then saw why it was changed. I have also felt a rule change was wrong and felt completely justified when I played it. You know what? In the first instance I rolled with the change and in the second I ignored it. :-) We are here to explore the rules and how they might be flexed to do what we want. if someone doesn't like a suggestion there is no need to persuade them it is good, if everyone hates a suggestion, there remains no need. lets stay friends - not enough of us HERO afficionados to splinter into edition camps...

I am hoping my explanation was not specious. (Had to repeat, don't often get opportunity to use the word!) Comparing force field to damage shield is essentially comparing two special effects. Each one could now be built using a variety of ways depending on the effects you really wanted to achieve. The area effect tool is the officially suggested route to achieve a classic damage shield effect. The purchase of PD and/or ED using END is the officially suggested route to achieve a classic force field effect. Does not mean it us the only way but it is another tool in the toolbox and moves the power away from a defined special effect, like changing the name of energy blast. Doc

All good advice. The other thing I have found useful (and bang on about wherever possible) is designing the character sheet for people. If you give them a huge character sheet with scads of numbers on it then the players might (reasonably) expect to engage with ALL of those numbers (for good or ill). If you give them a really stripped down character sheet then it is setting expectations. I call the character sheet the GUI for the game. It should set the scene and play style that the GM expects to deliver and engage with. There is also a quid pro quo. If you as GM are going to be fast and loose with the rules then you might set things up for the players to be too. In this kind of game I might expect a character with a police background to have one or two skills to reflect that knowledge - PS: police and KS: forensics. From that a whole range of rolls might be drawn as long as the player coherently argues the case and you are happy to set ad hoc penalties for how specialist the knowledge is within the broader skillset. If the players feel the advantage then they are not likely to complain. Doc

If fear is what you are looking for then you need to demonstrate the power without killing the characters. It is indeed what redshirts were created for. Make the players afraid.

dont think you have been given bad advice there. dont volunteer for a long campaign. You might decide to run a four or five session game setting up the game you really want to play. do the things from the previous generation of heroes. If things screw up then it is not the players heroes that suffer and you can adjust things for the real campaign if that is what you still want to do.

The trouble with KISS sometimes is that it sacrifices colour, drama and dynamic tension. :-) it also falls into the frowned on category of instant kill....

I was possibly more attracted by a gradual effect, all or nothing transform. The actual physical damage inflicted prior to brain consumption is pretty low. :-)

Amazingly, we have not had any builds on how a brain sucking ability might be accomplished in an interesting way in HERO. That should be possible regardless of the way D&D handled it. I think we can all imagine how this might look in comic books or movies. We can all agree it would be a scary thing to witness and a worry to face any opponent with that ability. How would you build it such that it would work for you and the game?? Doc

I think when you are only applying such a thing to yourself the area effect goes beyond what is necessary - the use of area effect for this kind of thing becomes more obvious when you apply stuff beyond self. How would you electrify a fence? Would force field usable on others work on the dwarf just as easily as it does on the Titan - no issues? I can understand why the change makes it more of a toolkit mechanic than an off the shelf power. Doc

You might also simply boost the victim's REC score (only for transform damage) so that they heal themselves more quickly. That damage is based on REC isn't it? Or am I misremembering??

You thought about simply switching the vampire trope - turning people into mentalists rather than into undead - they need to feed on the mental energies of others. For the most part this does no harm at all and they can live quite happily among people soaking in the ambient mental emanations. For some this provides a low level empathic ability for a very few it provides greater power. Some of those use these powers for good, others for evil. All of them want to prevent too many people finding out about this community and they have developed an underground community where people can commune mentally and help each other cover up when the authorities find out about them. They do not want to be subjected to the kind of testing that central governments would be inclined to conduct to weaponise this resource first...

A lot of this stuff are just decisions for you to make as GM. I think what you need to do is pull out the stuff that is all about character building and deciding exactly what it is you want those things to feel like in play. I loved the way RQ made religion relevant, your magic was distinct and the requirements of the cults and their interplay with the various races and cultures further made even simple fighters feel very different characters in-game. I think you need to think clearly about what a cult is and how a player character interacts with that. There are lots of tools in the HERO toolbox to manage relationships. Then you have the three forms of magic from Runequest. Are they going to be part of the Mythic Egypt you create? Rune magic, spirit magic and sorcery all worked differently and I always thought sorcery was the least well, thought out and least well balanced. You could easily work with just spirit magic and rune magic. I think you also need to think about the impact of whether you want the various cult ranks: initiate, acolyte, rune priest and rune lord. Those also helped distinguish characters from one another while tying them into the socio-political fabric of the game world. You could put limits on a variety of abilities until a character committed himself to one faction or another. That is when the politics between factions becomes an issue. :-) If you want iron to be special, then it needs to written into spells and powers and character write-ups. If you want an iron sword to do double damage to all elves and trolls then you don't give the iron sword a convoluted power build, you build all elves and trolls with a vulnerability to iron weapons. :-) I am up for the project and ready to help if I can. You need to decide how you want to approach it. Doc

What rule set do you use? 5th edition? It is a sixth edition change and kinda makes sense. Area effect affects an area and damage shield is essentially an area effect, whether it is wrapped round a character or along a wall or fence. Doc

It is not a matter of the description, it is how you build it GC. Drinking a bottle of arsenic is fatal, how do you model that so that it is what happens in game. You also have to consider whether a single roll killing your character is delivering maximum game fun. With an old D&D character even a pretty high level character could be rolled in fifteen to twenty minutes. Losing that amount of time is no big deal. Modern games often require significantly longer periods of time with significantly deeper investment by the player. Losing that on a single dice roll can be.....galling. Real or not. :-) Doc

Well, I looked. Christopher is right. If you got hit with one of those tentacles in AD&D it would reach your brain in 1-4 rounds, no save. I guess you had to kill it or escape, though in those dark days there were not many written ways to escape a grapple. In third edition the mind flayer gas to have grabbed you with all four tentacles. In the next round, if it makes a successful grapple check, it extracts your brain....