Doc Democracy

Re: Power Concept: Along for the Ride I was thinking duplication. Sometimes hes a dextrous armoured god and sometimes he's two people...

Re: Alignments

Re: Power Concept: Along for the Ride

Re: Does anyone have any idea... The idea, as I understand it is that an EC is a single power whose effects cover lots of game specific mechanics. That means like flame body could provide flight and damage reduction and EB and a few other powers. All of those effects are produced by exerting this single power in some way and so they are all potentially END costing powers. This makes the one drain affects all EC powers more understandable as well. Doc

Re: Power Concept: Along for the Ride

Re: Power Concept: Along for the Ride

Re: How do you handle healing? There are a couple of issues there Mark and you are right there are a few things that you want feel wise in a game without making it too much drudgery either for the players or the characters. I was thinking of using the recovery system that I had outlined but, as you say, you could quite easily see everyone fine five minutes after a fight. I think that a side effect of the healing should be that every advanced recovery that you get inflicts some long term STUN (possibly long term STUN and END) that you recover at a rate of 1 point per hour spent in restful sleep with proper food and water. Given that you'll get eight hours in a night I think that I'd set that long term STUN/END at five points per Recovery for supers and three points for heroic campaigns. That effectively limits its use and if it has to be used extensively then the recipient will be unconcious or fatigued for a long time. Slight amount of extra paperwork but useful enough to ensure that people survive and respect the impact that major fights have. Doc

Re: Alignments

Re: Alignments Alignments have a bad rep. However, I do not think that the Hero System should be excluded from using them. I dont think that referring back to the drawn out arguments that have dogged D&D need get brought into this thread. I guess the true Hero response to such a question is: What do you want alignments to represent in your game world? I can see where you would use them - detect evil/good are obvious spells in a fantasy world and you could easily get into all kinds of existential arguments about what is evil and what is good. Gods provide decent archetypes and if the alignments are presented as affiliation to particular deities in the game world then you get all kinds of possibilities in game play. Doc

Re: How do you handle healing? I agree with Lord Liaden. I dont like the current system, it is clunky, cumbersome and bureaucratic. I would prefer a power where I could stimulate a recovery in another person with an advantage that provided 1/10 REC in BODY (round down). This would be a nice clean system simply allowing the player to get the benefits of a mechanic already in the system. Doc

Re: Affects Desolid

Re: Affects Desolid

Re: Energiser Bunny Effect I prefer options that do not need a dice roll...

Re: Energiser Bunny Effect Once again you'r emixing up mechanic and game effect. Breakfall will allow you to avoid damage from falling. That does not mean that you necessarily do stuff like Batman. It can mean doing stuff like Daffy Duck - both get to the bottom essentially unhurt - the special effects of how they did that vary considerably... Doc

Re: Energiser Bunny Effect Another way of providing a character who sticks aorund is to buy BODY and STUN as a power and buy it as a lock out with some other power. It means that as your STUN and BODY go down you begin to lose you powers as you automatically draw upon the extra STUN and BODY but that locks out various powers and abilities. Doc

Re: Energiser Bunny Effect The thing that made that guy useful was that the opposition could not afford to ignore him, if they did he switched to offence and did them damage, so they had to address his presence which, as you say, provided others with the opportunity to backstab etc. There needs to be a credible threat. Which you have not discussed about your character - I'm sure there is but it is the other part of the equation for that kind of character. Doc

Re: Energiser Bunny Effect That _is_ the system. It is also one of the places where characteristics lead people down the wrong path because they immediately assume that lots of STUN/REC/Defences means that someone is Hulk-like. Think about what you are describing and you will see that it has the same characteristics as a classic brick. What you need to do is divorce SFX from the mechanical terms that you are using. This _is_ crunchy. It doesn't really get much crunchier. Doc

Re: Energiser Bunny Effect Well, it sounds to me like you have a brick on your hands and he could quite easily be built like your bog standard brick. it will take overwhelming force to ensure that the character is taken out of the fight never mind permanently damage him. Most attacks will appear to damage him in a more cartoon fashion - large lumps appear, birds tweet about his head, black eyes, beak spins around his head etc etc - but it does not affect his combat effectiveness. I would suggest building a brick character with the defences and STUN relevant to that and then provide for the SFX of particular attacks. If you are not seeking to gain advantage (you fall over but are not trying to convince opponents that you are prone or unconcious) then that is simply the SFX of your BODY/PD/ED/REC/STUN. Unless they do actually overcome your defences then you will be entirely at liberty to cause damage on your normal phases. It requires a bit of a mind flip but if the powers are not detailed on the character sheet then they wont be too confusing. I might have a +0 limitation on the defences of (only in combat) which would reflect that if he was pricked by a pin he would bleed real blood. This leaves you at the point where you have a character who is damn near impossible to KO or damage in a fight (despite a variety of SFX) and still gets to attack. Doc

Re: Energiser Bunny Effect Nice to see you back on the boards Shem. I think one of your problems here is that you are doing the classic thing of basing an in-game schtick on meta-game concepts. Your idea (and schtick) should be described without using any game terms and then use whatever is in the toolbox to achieve that in-game regardless of what it looks like in terms of ED/PD, CON, BODY or STUN. So. You have a character who gets hit. What happens then? Stunned? Knocked Down? Bruising? Bleeding? Broken bones? Does he (in your concept) get up immediately and hit back? Does he take a while to recover, then get back up? What is the idea? Once you have those things in mind you can begin to think about what you want. If a character is in a fight and you expect him to attempt to hit five times in a round then you do not want him stunned or knocked down (in game terms) in that round or else you need extra speed to allow for that time and still to get five hitting attempts in there. (though that does skew the action phases a bit). Obviously, the special effects of defences and other resources (such as BODY, CON and REC) can represent things happening in the game - if an attack is greater than x STUN then opponents will see your character fall backwards with stars round his head but he shakes his head and biunces back into the fray with almost no noticeable time taken.... That is all SFX and depends on good descriptions of attacks rather than listing STUN and BODY and subtracting defence numbers... A bit more work in game but probably a lot more fun. Doc

Re: Your first question D'oh! I kept running into the 1000 post limit on the search. I completely failed to understand the importance of listing from the bottom up.... Doc

Re: Your first question I have absolutely no idea - shows how important it must have been to me. I'm amazed that some of you with such high post counts remember the event! I thought I'd go back and find out but though I know I joined in 2003 I cant actually find a way of finding that post... Doc

Re: Lower Water and Part Water

Re: Lower Water and Part Water

Re: Lower Water and Part Water

Re: Lower Water and Part Water