Doc Democracy

Re: Discussion on costs of Characteristics

Re: Everything's a Power

Re: Possession This one is all my own and a bit more complicated than the others but it would make little difference to the build as to whether you wanted to possess someone living or dead. Rather than re-type, I'll just link you to where I wrote it out the first time... Doc

Re: What do the mechanic-specific numbers do?

Re: What do the mechanic-specific numbers do? Not at all! This is quite interesting. I'm not sure you are there yet but I think you are going somewhere! :-) What is BODY. To me BODY is your buy in to the gameworld. As a player you have BODY, when you run out of it then you lose your ability to take part in the gameworld forever. What is STUN. To me STUN is the thing that allows you to have in game effects as a player - you can consciously, deliberately effect the game world. With those it would not be possible to play a character with no BODY. A character with no STUN would be interesting though - a ture automaton with no volition just following preset rules - possibly with some randomiser for unexpected events. Like the rules presented for palying Dragonnewts in Runequest II. Doc

Re: Everything's a Power

Re: Discussion on costs of Characteristics

Re: Everything's a Power When I was looking at characteristics, these are the numbers that the players interface with the game. They are mechanic specific numbers that we have imbued with some meaning to make them fit but they are just markers. What is STUN? When you are below 0 STUN then you are, unconcious in game terms. There is no work up to this, it does not matter if you have 100 STUN or 1 STUN - binary state. What is BODY? When you are at -10 BODY you are dead. Interestingly, there can be work up to this state where at below 0 BODY you can lose more BODY to get closer to the -10 BODY. That dead thing is a binary state as well - doesn't really matter how much BODY you have except in the 0 to -10 part - and even then it doesn't impact on your abilities powers or skills. PD/ED/etc - simply numbers that we subtract from damage before applying to STUN and BODY. REC - a number we use at regular intervals to uprate the current state of STUN,BODY etc END - Though less so than other measures it is essentially a binary thing - above 0 END you have energy to use - doesn't matter whether you have 1 or 1000. At 0 or below then doing anything that would normally subtract from the END score instead subtracts from the STUN score. These are what I refer to as the game mechanic numbers of the characteristics. STR, DEX, PRE, INT and EGO have more gameplay interactions - the black box frameworks. CON is a purchasing framework for the game mechanic numbers. Doc

Re: Discussion on costs of Characteristics Most systems make very explicit rules on how you can use that strength etc and they make little effort to indicate whether increased STR is 'balanced' or not. It is a Hero thing to build and decide on such things. Much of what Hugh was talking about was not about not allowing strength to lift grab or throw but not allowing the application to be so easy that it makes STR more valuable. Right now Hero is a system where you go in and decide on how your Fireball is constructed and, if you really want a fireball that has no range and a hole in the middle or no hole but you are simply immune to its effects then you can do that. If you want a character who can lift megatonnes but is unable to apply that strength in punching or grabbing someone then you are looking at custom limitations etc and there is no indication of whether that limitation should affect figured characteristics by default or not. Stats are a black box that we are not allowed to look inside whereas the principle elsewhere in the toolkit is that we are allowed. I personally think characteristics are in there because that was part of the game design paradigm when it was first published. It was odd enough without having the extra oddity of not having STR, INT, DEX and the rest! I dont think they are necessary in a modern system, especially as they lead people to expect certain things.

Re: Discussion on costs of Characteristics I dont think that Hugh is suggesting that you 'nerf' STR but pointing out that as GMs we often allow STR to be used more easily and more widely than the mechanics of the system would suggest. That exacerbates the issue with the costing as the stat becomes more valuable. I think that Hugh's points are just as valuable as your own have been - no point in pointing out how useful and valuable STR is if you include things that the system actually mitigates against. Doc

Re: Just passing through This is one of the areas where Hero's philosophy of divorcing mechanics from SFX gets into problems. In other games intangibility is intangibility. What I would like to see is it taken from being an absolute power to a more graded one - not everyone is as intangible as everyone else! With some form of graded power I think it would be easier to dictate what you can travel through and how quickly, what you can expect to happen if you enter dangerous environments, and what if someone hits you or you fall. If there is a dice aspect to the grading then you might see offsetting of damage against damage for example. I think there is a place for SFX specific limitations for the power - many examples of intangible superheroes have SFX specific differences. The power should have common sense applicability - there is nothing worse than a system which throws you in a situation where you have to say that desolid doesn't mean that... Doc

Re: Repackaging Character Disadvantages

Re: Duplication... but different For me, this is just SFX. I can think of advantages and disadvantages of this but nothing excessive enough that I would ask for a modifier on the power. Doc

Re: Repackaging Character Disadvantages Not sure it isn't too late, whatever they are called now people will have the idea that in Hero you have to cripple your character to get enough points to be competitive. However, I'd be all for it. I'd call them Characterisation points. Doc

Re: Repackaging Character Disadvantages Hmmm. Methinks that anyone with an avatar name of Mr Yuck would leap at the opportunity to have a player with vulnerability to flash vs taste! Doc

Re: Discussion on costs of Characteristics

Re: Discussion on costs of Characteristics I think the point is that the game pushes people to buy their strength until the point where they would have to sell back more than one figured. It basically says that if you want a high STUN, high REC, high PD character then he will also be high STR unless you want to pay as much or more pointsand have a lesser STR. Doc

Re: Discussion on costs of Characteristics Have I proposed this in the past?? I'm getting severe deja vu...

Re: Discussion on costs of Characteristics

Re: The Cost of STR & Other Characteristics: An open discussion

Re: The Cost of STR & Other Characteristics: An open discussion

Re: Is the Hero the Ultimate System? It was Shem Whistler who used to frequent the boards who did this. I think that I would have to be committing to running to a Hero superheroes game to commit the time. If I can dig out the time I will see what I can do (or whether Shem would be willing to do it for me! ) No promises thought - real life is causing major time suckage at the moment... Doc

Re: PRE Drains Hmmm. I was thinking that the best way to make someone more likely to be impressed specifically would be to use transform to add a Psych Lim: Thinks I am brilliant/scary/clever etc" and "Susceptibility to PRE attacks from me" Those would provide very solid bases on which to build. If it was to be generally easy to impress etc then a wider scope for the disads would be relevant. Doc

Re: Combat, Aborting & Phases Didn't see that in FRED - possibly a 5ER clarification? Possibly Doc not reading the damn rules properly! Doc

Re: Combat, Aborting & Phases Been looking in FREd. Now as far as teh dice falling, there are specific mentions that block actions have to be declared before the dice are thrown in FRED, there is no such mention in either the aborting rules nor in the dodge or dive for cover manouevre descriptions. Possibly an oversight, possibly deliberate. Doc