Doc Democracy

Re: How would I write up this power My initial thought was Summon powered from an Endurance battery where the REC of the battery was dependent on there being available ambient energy. Like the thought of potential effects on the environment - possibly just SFX but the local temperature dropping when the villain is about and recharging his battery would be colourful. Doc

Re: Help with an ability Hmm a lot of the bits and pieces with respect to knowledge sounds like a limited telepathy to me - he picks up information and stuff from those around him - possibly gradual effect area effect telepathy. Thus when he comes to somewhere new his telepathy begins interrogating those around him, slowly sdpreading in area and growing in strength until he knows the whole place like a native - people thin he speaks like them (its broadcast telepathy) and he understands weven the thickest of accents. This covers one and two. Three, as above, I would use the Cramming skill. Doc

Re: Standard vs. Dramatic scenes (Torg-inspired) Well, in combat situations the two things that matter are ability to hit and ability to affect your opponent. So if you normally need an 11 or less to hit you'll be doing that 62.5% of the time. A bonus to hit means you hit more often. A bonus to affect could be more impactful in a game. If you hit 62.5% of the time and usually do between 38 and 46 STUN but the bad guy has 40 PD and 100 STUN then hitting a few more times a round doesn't make a huge diffference to the fight. If the average damage was shifted to between 51 and 59 per hit then you immediately make a difference. Doc

Re: Theory Discussion: Defense Alternative Good attempt by Chris to bring things back on track - I will deviate again. Reading this I was thinking that there might (as per a long past thread) be an argument for increasing the number of dice rolled for damage based on the success of hit and decreasing them for the amount of defences you have. At the end of the calculation if you have dice to roll they go directly to STUN and BODY - which would have implications for lethality indices (something that only occurred to me as I typed). Perhaps the current system facilitates the do lots of STUN and little BODY.... Doc

Re: Please review this Sciences package The genetics could quite easily have been covered by the Biochemistry skill - speaking as a biochemist who has worked in genetics for a while. The problem with these things is that it is always easy to look for specialisms. If you want to include genetics then you might also want to include other biochemistry specialisms. I believe there is a large connectedness table in the Ultimate Skill for this kind of thing. I would, in superhero world, tend to keep supervillain science at the very top level and give them big numbers to reflect their complete mastery of particualr fields. Breaking it down is more for super agent stuff... Doc

Re: Looking for an adventure to run at a gaming convention. Well, one of my favourite one-offs for people who have never played Hero before is the Coates Shambler from an early Adventurers Club. It needs a small amount of work - such as drawing up a few pre-gens. I'd suggest playing it once with your regular gaming group, telling them in advance that you want to use it and will be looking for comment - you iron out one or two wrinkles in your use of the adventure that way. It is a pulp adventure which I find goes down well with a maximum of people and allows you to showcase the system without the majority of D20 fiends comparing it relentlessly against their favourite system and the superhero bias that you get in other places. If you do not have access to that adventure, I have used a few of Steve's 'penny dreadfuls' to good effect for one-off entertainment. They need a bit more fleshing out with NPCs and possibly maps and pre-gens but if all you need is the advneture frame - then they are a good (and cheap) way to go.... Just go to the store - look up adventures and there are a huge range of them sitting there at $3-5. Well worth the download for this kind of thing. Doc

Re: Vampires AND disease? OK, as pointed out when you begin looking scientifically at supernatural phenomena you can essentially say what you want and the supernaturalness of the situation covers everything. One option for the vampire scenario that wasn't mentioned was that the infected blood does not provide the nutrition required or tastes bad or even gives the vampire an upset tummy. These all follow simple aspects of spoiled food. All of the other options are open as well - depending on how the GM wants things to play out. As far as the werewolf thing goes, it would be possible to rule in a number of ways. Pregnancy could be a way of fixing form for the period of the pregnancy (evolution normally works these things out to allow survival of babies - or weeds out the things that do not!) and whatever form the baby was concieved in is the form in which it would be born (with or without the were features). You could rule that the shapechange infection is automatically transmitted to offspring and thus the foetus changes with the mother. In evolutionary terms you could rule that the transmission of were genes is a new form of offspring generation and thus becoming a were either switches off gamete production and results in sterile forms that can only propogate by creating new weres or that shapechanging causes embryos or foetuses to be aborted. Any of these could result in story potential. Doc

Re: The Hero Forum's Hottest Man in Comics.

Re: The Hero Forum's Hottest Man in Comics. My wife doesn't read comics and it might just be Hugh Jackman but she definitely prefers Wolverine to all of the other superhero types she has come across in the various tv shows and films. Doc

Re: Some advice While reading Markdoc's post something else came to mind. People coming from D20 style games often fail to recognise the increasing value of bonuses to DCV or OCV. A +3 advantage in Hero is FAR more significant than a similar advantage in D20. In Hero someone CV3 fighting someone CV6 is at a huge disadvantage - only 25% of their attacks hit and they get hit 90% of the time. That means that the CV6 opponent can regularly sacrifice accuracy through manoevres and translate that into extra damage. In D20 a +3 advantage provides an extra 15% chance to hit and a 15% chance less to be hit. Not nearly as significant. This is an area of differentiation that people tend to gloss over and be surprised at when they see the numbers. Doc

Re: Universal Framework Proposition [LONG] I'm presuming that you are looking at the post at the top of page one - that was changed in post 52 of that thread that brought it to the state as posted by Christopher in his thread. Anyway. 1) You purchase the pool, 2) you purchase slots into which you can place power effects (one slot would not be limited to a single power depending on the type of slot you bought), 3) you purchase the active point limit for a slot (which might be one power, a tight group of powers or a broad group of powers). What we wanted to do was, in effect construct a framewrok power where you might have different ways of exploiting a particular SFX without having to break it up into seperate frameworks to keep it point competitive. Well - I moved away from that 9 and I was using very old Hero notation where limitations were + and advantages were x - 2nd edition I think. It has stayed in my head. I hope that the notation used in post 52 is clearer. I think we eventually made things more costly but we do still need that to be tested for play purposes Doc

Re: Some advice

Re: Universal Framework Proposition [LONG] You're not as prolific as you were at one point, there is less opportunity for us to cross at the same time! You got real life stuff to do now? Doc

Re: New Mechanic: Universal Framework The percieved problem is probably best outlined in the threads Zornwil and myself rambled on at length but essentially to remove the various frameworks and have them rolled into one coherent whole - it should make the system more accessible to new players - old players dont really care - they can use what's there, the learning curve scaled long ago. It should do everything the extant frameworks can and provide a coherent framework for framework powers - a better guide as to what to use when and easier to see what is the best way to structure your powers. Too many newcomers to the game see frameworks as the bit of the game where experienced players gain over newcomers as they know all of the exploits to get more bang for their buck. It should also avoid the problems of having to have a series of frameworks to reflect a power effect. As for the definitions - we were still working toward them but something like single power effect: laser bolt (EB with variety of advantages/disadvantages) narrow power effect: light projection (EB, RKA, Flash etc) broad power effect: light manipulation (EB, RKA, Flash, Images, darkness etc) There was more stuff but I kinda forget. Check out the threads when I was still actively thinking about this.... Universal Framework Proposition Polishing the Hero System (especially Zornwil's post) & possibly the Power Construction - theoretical question thread. Now that's a lot to read - quite interesting if you want to think hard about frameworks but pointless if neither Zornwil or myself are actively pushing at it just now. However if someone else wants to have a look and take the next step, please feel free - I am still theoretically interested just not practically got the time to do the legwork. Doc

Re: New Mechanic: Universal Framework It came originally from Zornwil. He was looking at putting more coherence to the system and I had a rush of blood to the brain that added to the original thoughts. Christopher has put it very succinctly. By power effect you are talking about Power Armour, Flame Powers etc etc. you should be able to replicate those things that you used to build using the other three power frameworks but it puts a bit more of a limit on cosmic power pools...a downside a didn't see a work around to and something that I didn't see in practice anyway (most cosmic VPPs that I saw, the player had lots of pre-written powers and not a huge amount was done on the fly (all of which could be covered by one or two broad, fluid slots. As indicated though - neither Zornwil or myself consider it a finished product and it is sorely lacking in playtesting.

Re: Universal Framework Proposition [LONG] Like Zornwil, too busy with other things. Please feel free to use/abuse as you wish. There is defeinitely work needed on it - I keep looking at my notes but haven't yet felt the urge to work on it beyond other things. I think that there needs to be an overarching structure to the whole framework thing - its kind of arbitrary just now as it tries to model comic book feel with underlying structure. Not sure that works as well as it might - though its done OK for years. My use of Hero is firmly in the heroic/fantasy/pulp realms now. frameworks tend to be more prevalent in superheroes and so of less immediate interest. Doc

Re: The Hero Forum's Hottest Woman in Comics. Black Canary gets my vote - she has the attitude and streetwise to go with the outfit. I'm sure Howard Chaykin drew her once - will see if I can find the evidence... Doc

Re: Sooo... Immunity to magic Damage Reduction is a way to do it, Desolid is a way to do it - though you have to handwave the residual requirement of the user to have affect solid world on their strength and other attacks for it to be cost effective. Another way is to create a perk of immune to magic - costed at whatever you think you want PCs to consider the power at in your world - and then all spellcasters buy their powers with not versus Magic Immunity (-1/4). If you, as a GM, want absolutes in your game then you can do that in the creation of the world. You set up the fundamental precepts of the world and ensure everything else is built accordingly. Magic especially so. You should think hard about the things you want with respect to magic. Do you want anti-magic areas or spells? Do you want creatures immune to fire magic etc? All of that can be built into the setting and all magic be subject to those limitations rather than trying to individually trying to buy classes of creatures particular powers... Doc

Re: A question of balance Sean I think that the cost is correct - it provides a utility and it is up to you whether you want to use it to its fullest potential. If you are concerned that the power does not provide you with its fullest effect for the points spent then why not put it in a multipower, one slot with IPE one without. Out of combat you can use your IPE and get that effect, in combat you effectively push the power with subsequent greater effect and visible special effects. Doc

Re: Poisons It would depend on the description of the poison. For some, the debilitation would allow them to shoot their energy blast but be incapable of effectively aiming it (raising their arm or whatever to the required location or focussing their gaze to get full power or something). For others they would be paralysed and be able to blast away wherever their arm happened to be pointing... Many poisons work in a variety of ways. If you want them knocked out then simply use a dmage attack and remove their STUN. These options are for those attacks that do not effectively remove consicousness but remove the ability of their victim to fully function. Doc

Re: AK: Everywhere Now that is a concept for a TV show if I ever saw one. People get picked up by a taxi driver and he drops them off where they NEED to be rather than where they asked for. All they have to do is work out why they need to be there. Doc

Re: Poisons If I did use TK versus CON to 'grab' the victim, then I would be inclined to rule that the effect of the grab would be to debilitate the victim - they would be woozy and unstable rather than the classic grab of a TK attack. Give the poison victim a bit more leeway to act without providing them full access to their physical abilities. Doc

Re: Poisons I was wondering whether a debilitating attack might be simulated with TK vs CON... Its a crazy notion but I was thinking that TK can be used to grab someone, this power would measure the STR of the poison versus the CON of the victim to determine whether the grab succeeds. You are back with the whole continuous uncontrolled continuing charges etc debate for effect. Personally I would allow a continuous uncontrolled attack that could be treated mundanely and/or time limited in effect. I've never thought of trying this before... Doc

Re: Get the tomato juice ...

Re: Telepathy build question