Doc Democracy

My favourite way of building possession as a power is to 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. Doc

*In My Oh So Humble Opinion, Obviously

It is but it is counting two sets of dice rather than one (some of the problems folk have with dice amazes me). The harder you can make a single roll work (and make the rolls more consistent with outcomes) the better. Doc (IMOSHOO)

I am with Steve. I think high STR combatants should benefit from glancing blows. I think that balances high DEX combatants choosing to risk missing to increase damage...

Yeah, but in supers the damage etc diverges and the options diversify even more. Like I say, once the brim gets ahold of the martial artist, it tends to mean game over... As for balance, the big drawback in HERO is for the GM to balance things and to enforce the things that do the role in Fantasy Hero. Did you use the encumbrance rules for the armour? I seem to remember even five points all over required a substantial amount of STR to avoid significant END penalties. First game I played that really enforced the distinction between heavy, slow and well-armoured versus fast and lightly armoured through player decision rather than by class.

One of the lovely parts about HERO combat is that so many things influence it but it also makes exercises like this virtually impossible! So many variables, each with an impact. The presumptions you made sound reasonable at the start but I am unsure as to whether they are cost neutral - I am presuming you did that? There is also the presumption that 8 rPD and 5 rPD are all over defence and have no impact on DEX, END or anything else? In Fantasy HERO the penalties for armour used to be brutal. I am also wondering if you have taken BODY damage into consideration - I reckon your martial artist may be leaking in many more places than his opponent... Obviously the idea is that lots of things are happening the cleverer opponent should win if everything else is even. I found, that in evenly matched superhero brick versus martial artist combats there was a play between how often the martial artist can hit and wear down the brick before the brick manages to grab the martial artist and squeeze him to death... I would also like to think how the hit location stuff might work for someone who is being held/squeezed... :-) Doc

Yeah, there is a trade off. When I was looking at this in detail, I was also looking at bleeding the damage down, having a place where you might deliver a glancing blow, thus a high strength, low CV opponent might deliver glancing blows to lightly defended, fast moving opponents. If I am a brick, I get value in even getting half damage against the martial artist. The trick is in making it all balance and not be intrusive to gameplay. I might expect martial artists to hit bricks in the mouth and soft points while bricks get glancing blows on legs and arms until one of them gains an advantage

But if I aim at an arm (1/2 BODY) and end up hitting the vitals, I do 2xBODY, no?

Hmm. I should always check a link before I comment... :-) I dont think that chart works for me. It is lovely to look at but does not reflect what I want gameplay-wise... I think I effectively want to partially disassociate damage with location. I think the hit location is too much of a risk. I think if you miss the location there should not be an automatic assumption that it misses completely. Now i have spent exactly zero time in thinking about this but I think that if I aim for the head, miss at -8 to the roll but hit at half that (-4), then I should manage a hit with normal damage at a reasonably close location (or even the same location, just without damage bonus). I would even allow a hit aimed at an arm to hit the head, though the damage inflicted on a missed roll would be half that, even though the ultimate location was the head. Doc

I actually think there is merit in this, though it would require some thinking for the sake of balance. The idea with the random is that you always hit somewhere. I like the idea that the better you hit the better you are at doing what you aim to. So, if you are looking simply to do the most damage you can then you want to hit head or vitals, if you want someone taken out with less chance of killing them you are looking at chest and abdomen, if you want to stop someone running away then you want to hit their legs and to disarm you want to hit their hands/arms. The question is, how you determine whether a hit has gone towards what you want or something close to the target or a miss because you were too ambitious. I never liked the fact that I could guarantee a hit but maybe kill someone with a good shot and a random location to the head when all I wanted to do was stop them running away. It is counter intuitive to hit well but get a worse outcome. Doc

Hmm. For a character idea, I would be inclined to design a decent base character and have a multipower that has five all-or-nothing powers. Each power would be related to a distinct physical shape. base powers might be limited, boosted or advantaged based on the shapes. this is more manageable than multiforms. it should however give the feel the player is looking for....

Actually for a first time Champions campaigns he big thing that GMs don't do is spend enough time thinking through all the detail. To change the system will require that thought to be done. If the GM is also going to customise character sheets, even more thought. I reckon all new GMs should be made to change something fundamental! :-)

This is a pretty old, mature (in the age sense) discussion board and most things have been mooted and chewed over with many of them resolved to the way it is done. There are however renegades and individuals that insist on doing things differently. Both they and everyone else will tell you how you can go about doing it that way and why most of the folk on the boards tend not to. That doesn't mean most of them think you are doing it wrong, just doing it strange. :-) I think, if introducing others is the key feature of the change, that you also need to think a lot about character sheets. Re-skinning the fame is a big deal and, as part of that, you can make it look pretty much like a D20 game. I ran a game, low powered, that I presented to the players in custom designed character sheets, all rolls succeeded if, after modifications, they exceeded 10. All the skills were presented as pluses to the roll, all difficulties as negatives. It ran well, and some of them never really recognised it as HERO as I changed the names of stats etc to reflect the flavour of the background.

That was indeed the point I was alluding to. To suggest that animals evolve to avoid stress on their environment implies a level of agency that does not exist. :-) I keep telling people that evolution is almost only about numerous baby survival. If smaller animals are eating enough to both sustain them and deliver healthy babies that survive while larger animals may not get enough food to provide for themselves or to make their offspring less healthy, then, generation by generation the species will become smaller. Sex and babies is all that counts! :-D PS: apologies to OP for thread piracy - will not talk evolution any more...

Ah, I was not challenging the fact that species may get smaller but that they "shrink in size so as to not stress their environment".

Attractive as this is as a postulate I am not sure it works. Is this from scientific proof or from the gaian style approach to evolutionary theory??

ooh! ooh! Just reading the thread for the first time and it was Chris Goodwin's post that prompted the idea. The thought of the chisel. What if all engineering and science was based on this sympathetic magical principal? Our discipines of science are describing deep magical resonances in the universe. The fact that chisels work is not because they are sharp and deliver force to the point against the material, but instead the chisel gets better the more it resembles the archetypal chisel of Ur-Hasham. Our engineering is not entirely about manipulating physical properties but by combining various elements that achieve the end magically. We have rationally moved away from the principals of sympathy, so far that things barely resemble their original archetypes but are effective because they combine other archetypes to achieve the ends and is only really useful when the proper sacrifices of the earth's blood (oil), or Sun's spirit (electricity) are made. An airplane would be far more effective (and environmentally friendly) if it more closely resembled the sky chariot of Ur-Septimus... Doc

Thank you. Straight up brick. Pure patriot. Nice simple character to play and his schtick (every character in the golden age campaign I played him in had an absolute - though we had to pick something obscure for that - not invulnerable etc) was movement. He would always get to his objective, though sometimes I wished I had not stated the objective so casually... ...he once found himself, having plowed through a sea of mooks without thinking, facing the whole of the WolfPack while his colleagues were delayed behind him...he had go!

My favourite Golden Age flagsuit that I played was US Male - neither snow, nor rain, nor Ratzi scum can stop the US Male... :-)

What noone has said explicitly as far as I can see is that you can have an alternate ID simply by writing it into your backstory. You can use the fact of the alternate ID to justify a complication - but by doing so you are telling the GM that he (or she) should use that aspect of your backstory to complicate your life. Always remember that - you are in control of the details of your character as long as they are consistent with the GM's campaign right up until you give the GM rights by offering up those details as complications in return for a few character points. You control how much control the GM has on those aspects by how many points you seek for them. :-) Doc

Just thought I would drop in the fact that I took inspiration from this thread. I have some adventurers in a dungeon where goblins and kobolds are at war. the goblins have the advantage of numbers the kobolds are supposed to be a trained war band with some higher level leaders (it is D&D 3.5). I constructed small 4 kobold units - the point unit carries a huge shield with some cutouts and works on complete defensive mode. The next two run interference, taking cover behind the shield and using their actions to hinder opponents or helping the main unit. The main unit is one of the higher level kobolds wielding a pike at range, over the cover of his unit. It provided the heroes with a different challenge - slow moving but difficult to break down and finding it easier to deal damage to them. the secret is obviously to break up the unit, the big secret is working out how. mini-kobold pike blocks for the win...

I think it is a cool idea. I like the idea of just creating a field that disrupts the reliability of the teleport is best, heroes inside the field cannot be reliably teleported. In that case you might have each bot changing the environment, the area growing dependent on how many bots are close together. All the field does is make any teleport originating within it be less reliable. I do love heroes to interact with their environment, I want them to squeeze utility and be alert to how this might be working against them. Provenance is everything. In my fantasy game a rival group of adventurers were mopping up after my players heroes had cleared an orcs nest. Some of the heroes were sick from fighting a mummy and the opposing leader offered to heal them. Generous? Absolutely. But he told them that part of the cure was focus based, a consecrated stick they needed to keep on their person for at least six months, else the sickness might return. The stick is nothing of the sort, it is a small transmitter so that the cleric can listen in to what they are saying and p, if close enough, divine their location. Since then they have been wondering how this rival group seems to get in to situations just before they do and been able to rip them off, stealing items and poisoning relationships. It was fun at first but am now thinking I need to drop bigger hints to see if they can work it out... Doc

you know, I am thinking that the bug itself, depending on whether you want it to be mundane or special, might not need any build at all. What is necessary is the ability to detect it. So essentially you have a small transmitter that anyone with the right receiver equipment can "hear" and locate. That transmitter is a focus for your detect (and indeed what you actually detect!). You can pick them up in any large city. Or you might have an exotic transmitter that only the hero can detect. That is a focus combined with a particular number of recoverable charges (the number of bugs available at any one time). I have thoughts that the bug delivery system is likely to be a minor transform. You essentially transform a target from the target to a bugged target. :-) That provides you with the mechanism to get it there - invisible effects if you want to do it surreptitiously. was wondering if the transform should be against DEX or DCV to reflect the most appropriate defence against being tagged... Doc

Hmm. If there is something that can be eaten then it means it is taking damage. You are also talking about a mythical style power of eating something rather than the core issue of dealing damage. HERO does not do absolutes and so, saying that he can bite through anything would carry a caveat of anything normal. As such I would be inclined to use this as a 1 pip, NND, does BODY. the defence would have to be defined by the context of the mythical power - I am thinking something Holy might provide the necessary defence. This way - the attack is a bite size chunk out of anything - not huge but ignoring defences. Doc

I disagree Darkness. I think the actual mechanic used is irrelevant as to how likely players are to figure out what is happening. How the GM describes the game effect are absolutely relevant. I am for efficient character design - do not utilise powers unless those game effects are absolutely necessary and cannot be delivered by a simpler mechanism. The more the GM has to adjudicate on the power and the more knowledge the player needs to have to parse the power build, the less efficient it is. If the idea is to make the character more difficult to hit because his image is displaced from his physical location then that is effectively accomplished by added DCV. If the idea is to make it impossible to hit unless you aim in the right place then you are looking at a different set of powers. To add complexity to the character build because you want more complexity on the game play is (obviously in my most humble opinion) the wrong thing to do. :-) Doc