Doc Democracy

Re: Herb that heals 'Impairing Effects' or 'Disabling Effects' Yeah but a transform could be 'healing'. If you have your eyes gouged out then you have a permanent disability as a consequence of injury even though the BODY damage has long since healed. To get rid of the blindness then you need to have the PHYS LIM removed from your character sheet and the book way to do that is probably Transform - though you could argue Healing/Regeneration. The healing aspect of the eyes growing back could easily be a special effect of the transform. My problem with transform as a solution would be why someone with more BODY was more difficult to heal because 'game logic' would suggest such a robust person would be easier to effect a healing on.... Doc

Re: Intelligent weapons and items I always wondered what a sword really had to say of any real worth. Perhaps the best way to build a character with a sword that speaks to him is PSYCH LIM: Believes his sword speaks to him... Doc

Re: Herb that heals 'Impairing Effects' or 'Disabling Effects' I suppose that Sean is correct - the best way to heal someone is to heal someone. It depends if that is the effect you are looking for. If someone has taken 6 BODY, does using the herb heal that BODY. If not, then you need to think round the problem. Without books, I do not remember what the effects are, but overall levels (only to offset penalties due to impairment) is a good way to get round things - dealing with the symptoms rather than the actual problem. You could have a limited Healing that will remove the effects but not the actual BODY involved. I realise I am very late to this but I thought that I might add something, even at this late stage... Doc

Re: How to Build? : Ignore Pain I think that the big problem is that HERO does not have a generic pain build. The answer is, how do you model pain in your game. Once you know that you can know how to build an ignore pain ability... Doc

Re: Heroes from simpler times in the modern setting I think that heroes from simpler times are more archetypal and elemental in their natures. So I would think that they would have limits on the number of advantages and disadvantages on their powers and possibly be more directly powerful than modern types but less subtle. Doc

Re: caltrops I was thinking about why Sean included STUN drain with the drain running for caltrops. I relaised that if he hadn't I would have had problems with the way they would work in play... I like the fact that if you damage your feet then you cant run as quickly. That makes sense. It also makes meta sense if you say that the healing of the drain represents the healing of your feet. That can make sense if you do a HERO squint. The fact that there is no STUN or BODY involved does not make sense (though Sean's build kind of factors that in - and the fact that the STUN and running should return at the same rate). Well done Sean. Every time I had a problem with your build I found something else in it that assuaged that discontent.... Doc

Re: caltrops I like it Sean you are looking at what we actually want the caltrops to do? The idea is to make people decide to take their time passing through an area, if they do not then they are likely to get injured. That injury is likely to impair your ability to move after that. I think your build accomplishes those requirements. I was thinking of triggered by fast ground based movement and would not work if sufficient PER roll made (-1 for every 2m/s higher than trigger speed). Doc

Re: Anyone try removing Characteristics completely?

Re: Anyone try removing Characteristics completely?

Re: Anyone try removing Characteristics completely?

Re: Anyone try removing Characteristics completely? I don't think that Utech was suggesting a move from numbers to categories, just a shift to using powers or skills for those things that we currently use characteristics for. It would follow the trend in removing figureds to removing the black box multi-power-skills that are characteristics. Can you spot my bias?? Doc

Re: Anyone try removing Characteristics completely? I did suggest this in the 6th edition forums. I think that various aspects of the characteristics skew the costs of powers and skills. The current move has alleviated some of that tension, getting rid of characteristics would remove it completely and remove one of the character building triad that people have to understand before building a character. I don't think that removing characteristics removes crunchiness, in fact it probably increases it slightly as it requires people to think a bit more about the core character rather than relying on stuff just being there. Doc

Re: Impact of Figured Characteristics

Re: Balls of Steel

Re: Balls of Steel I'd be thinking that the problem here is in the BODY of the tree rather than DEF. Snapping it does not inherently kill the tree (though you've made it pretty likely). Would you require more or less STR to uproot or to snap. When you snap it, is it more pliable or floppy or brittle than before? That broken tree has the same DEF and probably the same BODY as before. It is an interesting questiopn though - how much STR does it take to snap a tree? I think using Sean's estimate (as much STR as it takes to lift it) might be a useful one. This argument highlights the problem with the use of BODY both as hits to kill and hits to destroy.... Doc

Re: Impact of Figured Characteristics

Re: Math Because that is the word we used on the streets as kids when we were expanding our vocabulary into sexual lexicons. It is a West of Scotland term and from casting about on ye old interweb - it would seem it derives from an Old Norse word pronounced the same way....

Re: Balls of Steel I dont think I am against it. I think that anything that can be done reliably with advantages should be possible without them at the cost of poorer defences, poorer OCV etc, just like the difference between combat manouevres and martial art maneouvres.

Re: Balls of Steel Is that new to sixth edition? [EDIT] It was explicitly dissallowed in FREd...

Re: Balls of Steel Multiple attack is for throwing lots of different attacks at once, not the same attack many times. Surely that is autofire?? Doc

Re: Balls of Steel See. the thing is, if you want to charge him points then you'd also have to decide what to charge if he decided to throw three or more balls at once. If you have built it in a way that cannot handle this then it breas the 'in game reality'. Gotta be careful....

Re: "Needler" -- sci fi projectile weapon I think I am with the crowd on this one. I would decide what level of armour would stop the needles. I would then build the drug or poison and give it the ,limitation of "will not affect targets with (whatever you decided) defences". The value of the limitation will depend on your decision on what would stop the needles. This allows you to effectively ignore the killing attack etc possibilities and focus on the attack and defences of the drug and victim if the victim can be affected. Doc

Re: Balls of Steel Like many things in a HERO game, the correct answer is "It depends". If you want reliable access to a ranged attack then I would ask that you buy a naked advantage on your STR (usable at range), 16 recoverable charges. If you want them as something extra that you use when everything else has been tried or unavailable and you don't mind me removing your access whenever it is inconvenient for the story, then no charge... Doc

Re: Math GURPS Vehicles? I think that Space Opera by FGU was the most complicated set of rules I ever attempted to read!

Re: Changing Speed mid-turn Yeah but it does kind of work for 3 to 5 as he would have had actions on 4, 8, 10 and 12. 4 actions are better than the three he would normally get. If his SPD was boosted to 7 then I would expect him to get at least five actions over the whole turn....