Doc Democracy

Re: Proportional area attack Ooo! I like that idea. So, you have autofire and a maximum number of shots (with NCC on the number of shots fired). However, instead of taking a -1 per target you take a -1DC per target. I think that I would call the modifier x1/2 and call the rest a wash. :-) Doc

Re: Slow target power. An interesting wrinkle - but given that all the movement etc should be relative should make no real difference to anything at all. This is not the game as written. Yes you can give someone the skill and knowledge on how this is to be accomplished. Yes, you can give people the skill to carry something out - but you have not given them the ability to do so. It is like giving someone with no voice box the knowledge of singing and the singing skill - without the voicebox they are still unable to do it. If there was technology available in the universe, then these skills would allow the person using that equipment to plan and carry out the time and space deformations. They would still need access to the kit that made it happen though... There are places where skills and powers overlap - stealth and invisibility bump up against each other often enough - but this is not one of them. Doc

Re: Slow target power. Need to go look at my books cause I cannot remember all of the advantages in play just now. I am thinking that all you are looking at is a movement drain with an advantage to reflect that it impacts the movement currently in use rather than anything else. I am thinking that for a single person attack I would charge this at x1/2, for an area effect where it would impact various people differently depending on their movement type, I would charge x1. For your fifty point limit you are now simply looking to see how much of a movement drain you can afford. My thoughts would be that you'd want to be using some form of continuing effect on this if it is to be useful at all...but that does cut even deeper into your fifty point limit. Doc

Re: Super Heroic Behavior

Re: Super Heroic Behavior

Re: Super Heroic Behavior Purple Justice You will see you have stumbled into the HERO Forums where we are all kind of number geeks. If you suggest things like this, you will get comment and challenge. If you want to use it and do not get upset by seeing things deconstructed then it is a very valuable place to check things. You will find Hugh an immense help in finding the inherent flaws in your number systems. Personally, I like the concept that there is a benefit to being superheroic beyond having it fill out my complication totals. I think though that rather than having a list that the players can game, you should do it by declaring heroic actions when you see them. If a character is acting appropriately heroically then they can recieve a HERO point, and these can be cashed in to affect chances to hit and damage caused or avoided. This means the righteous have an inherent advantage in a fight, but surely in a superheroic milieu that cannot be wrong, can it? Doc

Re: How to build : a putrtefyied hand which become a group of bees This is an interesting one. You want the character to begin with a disadvantage that will disappear over time during gameplay. Now that is easily done as Andy pointed out - you can model the breathing and heart problems with some complications. I would go with a physical limitation of not being able to breathe easily - limits all the time greatly (game effect is all END using costs 2x END). I would go for weak heart where physical activity that uses more than a set amount of END a CON roll is required to continue the effort or a phase is lost. These are two decent complications. However, you might ask the player not to count them in the final totals. Instead he could use the same number of points to build an attack along the same number of points - the attack is useful but to begin with not very successful in getting bees into people. However, the complications lessen as the attacks are successful and the more successful attacks you make the more likely it will be that the next bee will be successful. In this manner you should have a period where the bees will be there and then pretty soon the character will be cured - when the last of the complications disappear, so do the bees and the attack form. All of this would be effectively cost neutral. Personally, I would ask the player to consider the situation after the affliction is cured - what happens then? And ask for there to be a ready made power with counter-balancing complications to slot into place in their stead. Doc

Re: Roll With The Punch: Martial Arts? There are a lot of points being made about Roll with the Punch not being available after a dodge or block. It is rattling about my head but why not allow a character to abort and try a block AND a roll with the punch at the same time. Appropriate penalties like with Multiple attack, so the character is less likely to block but if he does not he has a chance of reducing the damage taken... Doc

Re: Setting Campaign Limits You are forgetting that this is HERO. You can buy PD or ED as 'only versus STUN' if you want. Probably worth a 1/4 or 1/2 limitation... Doc

Re: Setting Campaign Limits Good advice from Tasha there. The problem with HERO is that you have so many things to alter that you feel the need to include them all in your guidance. If you focus down to the need for offence, defence, movement and skills then you can set a few guides for each of these. Tell them what is poor, sub-standard, average, good, superb for each of these categories and tell them that they need to have, for example no more than one area as poor or two areas as sub-standard. It keeps the guidance simple and will not scare the horses. The problem with many games is that you feel you need to be a financial lawyer before you can even understand what the rules about the rules are! Doc

Re: Creating a Linked power... need some advice Effectively you are trying to protect yourself while doing a move through. You could simply purchase added defence and movement (only while moving through). You might want to do it as move-by instead as it means you get to move the path you intend even if you do not knock targets back or to the side... I like the idea of the move through and if you cannot knock back or knock down then the movement comes to an end. You might also want to look at whether you simply do an area effect attack with a linked teleport, the bashing into things and invicibility are all part of the special effects of the attack.... Doc

Re: Which tools from the toolkit can be dropped in a low powered game?

Re: Which tools from the toolkit can be dropped in a low powered game? As to the SPD question. When I ran a low level game I made all of my basic heroes SPD 2 with one of them SPD 3. A combat turn involved two actions for everyone. The character with SPD 3 got a bonus action after everyone else had used their first action. Not quite the SPD chart but close enough. I used DEX to adjudicate who ot to use their actions first. You could do this with any base SPD. As long as most characters are the same SPD it does nto really matter - quick characters get a bonus action, slow character lose the first action of the round. Doc Doc

Re: Precognition/Retrocognition recording? Not sure what you trying to accomplish in game, but if you put a focus requirement on the use of the precognition (like only displays on a TV etc) then you are into everyday tech stuff - copy it as you would any tv broadcast. :-) Doc

Re: Character with two "bodies"

Re: Character with two "bodies" It does not sound to me as if you want the two bodies to merge at any time. As such I might consider building two characters and splitting your character points between them. That means you get to spend the same amount of points as other players but split them between two characters. Or build it through Summon... Just some options unless you need some of the advantages built into the duplication power, you could limit that by not allowing them to merge into one... Doc

Re: Use it, and it's gone? Since every character will have it you can give it to them as an everyman thing - all part of the basic package with no extra cost. If you wanted, you could deduct the cost of the regeneration etc that the characters will use but the END pool is in the same boat as the default 2m running etc that characters get for free. In other cases, where an END pool with no recovery is a good mechanic for a limited, finite resource, you as the GM can decide not to charge for it. It is a campaign disadvantage for a character and so should probably not cost them anything. GMs are pretty hot on enforcing the edict that "if a complication or limitation does not limit or disadvantage a character then it is worth no points" but often less hot on the corollary that if something does not materially benefit or provide advantage to the character then it is also worth no points. That could include anything you want (including rafts of 'colour' skills and knowledge) but you have to ensure that sneaky players do not seek to gain advantage from gifts you have given in such a way. Doc Doc

Re: Tropes Revisited: Beautiful Female Martial Artist. Ideas sought

Re: Tropes Revisited: Beautiful Female Martial Artist. Ideas sought I was wondering about whether a mixed message thing might be interesting here. In my Golden Age campaign one of the characters was called Nisei - daughter of Japanese immigrants whose parents were put in the concentration camps after Pearl Harbour. She was determined to show that she (and her peers) were good american citizens. She would dress in traditional Japanese dress with classic Golden Age stars and stripes trimmings... Doc

Re: How to Build a Grappling Hook Hmmm. Ranged Clinging.... Never noticed that detail and it provokes visions in my mind of someone who could levitate as long as there was a building or cliff nearby. Doc

Re: How to Build a Grappling Hook What people have (amazingly) so far not pointed out to you is the way HERO does its stuff. You rarely ask a question like "how do I build a grappling hook?". What you need to think about is what you need the grappling hook to do. As you will see, most people here have assumed that you want a grappling hook that will allow you to throw it up round somewhere and use it to get around by swinging on the line. However there are a couple of things that you might want to do with a grappling hook, and the first one is to be better able to climb a sheer wall. That could be done in a number of ways depending on how realistic the game you are playing in. So. When doing something in HERO you sit down and think, what do I want to accomplish in game terms. For example, do I want a method of travelling about or do I want something that helps me climb a sheer wall? Next step, decide on the power you want to do this. In the example of climbing a sheer wall you might go for the realistic option of a bonus to climbing roll, or you might go for limited flight (only to travel up where grapplig line is fixed), or you could go for limited clinging (only for where grappling line attached). Each of these has different effects on how they might be used and you have to decide on what effect you want. In this case the ability you decide on is only available when you have a physical item in your possession and so you declare it a focus (grappling hook). Then you can go about the process of putting the points together. It is one of the difficult parts of getting into the game - getting in behind the special effects to build the game effect but once you have it the system is extremely powerful in providing you with what you want. HERO rewards the GM who does a lot of upfront work to define the game world he plays in by delivering the exact game world the GM wants and the tools to tweak that at will. Doc

Re: The best approach? Todd I have never tried to 'learn' the Hero System. By that I mean I never sat down and began reading it to get to the point where I knew it. Even in the early days that was more than my head would permit. Instead, I began by playing the system. I created characters and fought them to see if they 'worked' in practice. I introduced players into a controlled environment (characters created by me as pre-gens) so that I could see what the players wanted to do with the stuff I had given them and learned the mechanics of gameplay through that. Over time, I found that I had used pretty much all of the rules in one way or another and probably knew those rules inside out. It took time and lots of playing the game but most of it has stuck. Everything since then has been gentle evolution rather than revolution (though you'd never believe it look at some of the debates we've had on changes! ) You have a major advantage in that the boards are here to bounce things off and suggest other ways to accomplish things. That should make the learning process much quicker. You also have the possibility of starting in pulp or fantasy rather than in superheroes where all of the rules have a decent chance of being needed. Both pulp and fantasy give you a great excuse for presenting much more limited options. Doc

Re: Toolkitting: Relative versus Absolute

Re: Toolkitting: Relative versus Absolute That was the idea. You would have a basic design idea and be able to switch power levels as and when you need to.

Re: Advice Required: Indistructible Force Field The other thing to consider is that if this _is_ a grimoire spell that many people have access to, then there will either be a lot of people who do use it and benefit from the protections so granted, or there will be a magical countermeasure that people can use, either to allow weapons to bypass the protection or to remove the protection. A protection spell that is dispelled leaves the user pretty well vulnerable.... I see a booming trade in potions that suppress such magical shields while friends ready ranged weapons...available of course to the players as well as others. My take on such things (as with poison) is that if the players want to use it, then so will the opposition. It made poison use by PCs in my game almost non-existent. Doc