Doc Democracy

You do seem to miss the point of the toolkit aspect of HERO. I think I tweak the rules differently for every campaign I have run over the past ten years (it was vanilla Champions for the twenty-five or so that preceded those). I think the speed chart is the bit I struggle most with. I both love and hate it. It was magically innovative in its day but it can feel so restricting in some genres and compared to some modern systems. I embrace the SPD chart and all its works but I want it to work for me and I do REALLY think about things like phases and what they mean in the game I want to run rather than as they are described in the toolkit. Doc

I think I either allow it to be sold back at full value or not at all. It is a small amount of points to begin with and I think my options are to say no or say yes and make it matter. Doc

Then I guess I am lazy, shortsighted and biased, these are burdens I will have to bear because I think it is too late for me to change my spots.... I do challenge the equivalence of OCV and OMCV unless you are changing the fundamental basis of the world, a task too onerous for someone as time-poor as I. Doc

Not in most campaigns. There are a lot of normal situations that I get players to utilise their OCV that even a mentalist or others would use and so I would appreciate a disability worth points. If I was sure there would be no use of OCV in the game, then I would not permit the point grab.

The only characters disadvantaged by low OMCV are mentalists. I am talking Golden Age superheroes here. There will be mental combat but for someone with no offensive mental capabilities selling back OMCV has no drawbacks. Obviously I could contrive points where this brick might have to use OMCV but it would indeed be (and look) contrived.

Again, depending how I want to do it, my phase could be on 6, 7 or 8 then? The language is not as clear as you want it to be. Segment 6 is not my phase, unless I want it to be. I know that within the rules, all my action, including movement will take place within a single segment within, what I like to call, my phase. 🙂 I will continue, in my games, to ask that character using a full phase action to declare on the first segment of his phase and activate the power on his DEX on the last segment. During that time, I will allow a zero phase action.... Doc

That is reasonably clear to me until I get to the point where it says it activates on his DEX in the phase. My SPD 4 character acted on segment 3, his next action requires a full phase, what segment does it activate on? Doc

I am experiencing the feeling that we are not meaning the same thing when we say phase. My understanding is that a phase is a variable amount of time. I get as many phases in a turn as I have SPD. To me my SPD 4 character has four phases of approximately 3 seconds (segments) each. If I have a power that requires a full phase I expect to have to use it on the first possible segment of the phase and it activates as the last thing on the last possible segment of the phase. To me, that is what makes the limitation worth it. Doc

I am SPD 4, I begin activating my teleport which takes a full phase to power up. I begin doing that on segment 3 and expect it to be ready on segment 6. On segment 4, my SPD 3 opponent fires a bullet at me. I am low on STUN and do not want to go unconscious. I want to turn on my desolidification but that is a zero phase action while I am activating a power. Will the GM let me??

D'oh! Found the thread from earlier this year, will read that...

Is this the only characteristic, in which losing some of it does not disadvantage a character? Would you allow it to be sold off? How would you make that impact the character in-game?

I think that this is something true across the Western world. All of our politics were defined by the nineteenth century struggle between labour and capital and our current parties were forged in that fire. The political context has changed for most people. I do not think that the things we are truly concerned about today are so easily defined in terms of left and right, labour and capital. The political power framework has not caught up with that in many places (especially the US and UK where there has been two big beasts dominating the political landscape). In Scotland the defining political question became union or independence and suddenly the political landscape changed drastically and what had been a very minor party (Scottish National Party) not only increased its share of the vote, it actually became the government of Scotland and of the 59 MPs Scotland sends to Parliament 56 of them were SNP. Labour, which had nothing unique to offer in this new political spectrum lost 40 MPs in seats that were considered safe. The swing from Labour to SNP in some of these seats was close to 40%. I think that the three big parties in the UK during the 20th century (Liberals, Labour and Conservatives) are all going to have re-invent themselves to address the new political realities or they will cease to exist. We can already see the strains, Labour and Conservative parties are polling the lowest share of the national vote than ever before and we have new parties and groupings beginning to emerge under the strains of Brexit that voters might swing to in large numbers simply because they no longer strongly identify as Labour or Conservative. You may not be a political pariah for much longer.... 🙂 Doc

Interestingly I have subsequently noticed that the confirmation happens in all situations on mobile devices but not on the home page when using a desktop/laptop... 🙂 Never noticed the difference before. Doc

There is nothing, not even Charlize, that would make me recommend that...

I think it comes down to how you expect this gymnast/pianist to participate in the adventure. I would expect the gymnast to climb a rope better than the pianist and the pianist to notice a change in the pitch of the force field better than the gymnast. However, I reckon all of that could easily be folded into the professional skills. I already take a broad view of professional and knowledge skills. More detail is only necessary the more interaction these cyphers have with the story.

Neither have I. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, nor that because some do that it means it is obvious that suggesting increasing speed infers reducing movement to keep things consistent. I understand the frustration with referencing specific issues such as a sprinting Thing but it does reflect the mechanical approach to things. I am with Chris Goodwin, I see very little difference in play between editions and think my job as GM is to deliver a game to my players that they have a good time playing. The biggest difference between editions is in character creation and the "feel" of the rulebooks. I think the ability of a GM to build a character and support in judging edge cases and esoteric powers is better in 6th than in those that came before, that ability has cost the system colour and inspiration (a fault present in many universal systems). I think as a game engine, 6th edition is best; as a game to play it is lacking. I don't think that is controversial. Arguing edge cases and preferences shows we have more in common than we have differences. We will never play the same games but I would bet we would all be able to enjoy playing in each others games regardless of how we had to create characters to get there. Doc

You might tempt me into accepting Charlize Theron in a catsuit....a la Prometheus...

Aint nothin’ perfect not even Doc Democracy or Cassandra.... 😄

It might not surprise you that I would be interested in that kind of decoupling, movement bought per turn and divided between phases like Duke was reaching toward and SPD used as non-movement actions.

To do that you have to reduce the standard amount of movement allocated to a starting character. Obviously this is possible but if the argument for figureds is it is more intuitive, reducing your movement because you increased your speed is NOT intuitive. 🙂

If there were no dissenting views there would be bog all to talk about! I am pleased there are dissenting views but welcome does not mean accepted without debate though... Doc

But SPD 6 means that he does 100m in about 8.5 seconds leaving Usain Bolt in a heap of trembling muscle...do you see Thing as a sprinter???

Speed is ALWAYS a difficult call. You think that Ben Grimm qualifies to run more than twice as fast as a normal person. Normal person SPD 2, 12m running (24m NCM), so 48m every 12s. SPD 5 puts him at Olympic level (around 10s for 100m). From memory Ben was not in a high speed position and I do not see many test pilots competing as Olympic sprinters. Not looking to quibble - I think there are indeed good reasons to push for both DEX and SPD and I do not think that unenhanced running speed will pose game breaking questions because a character was given a speed that meant the player was provided enough time in the spotlight. I think any decent player will be able to justify any characteristic they think it important for them to have - this is make believe we are playing - I just don't think that raising one ability should demand an increase in any others...

I guess that this one of the tings I actually like about HERO, all of the imbalance is right there in front of you - there are very few black boxes that those in the know exploit. It is also one of the reasons that I have come down very firmly in the camp opposed to figured characteristics, there are things you really do need to buy to be efficient, little black boxes that deliver more than they seem to and others that deliver much less on a pro-rata basis. I am just about to balance the characters submitted for my Golden Age game (if I eventually receive the final promised character). One of the things I need to do is show how truly efficient high SPD is. So much more opportunity to be in the spotlight, deliver damage or recover from damage taken... The other thing I need to do is protect particular areas for characters (who is strongest, who is fastest, who can withstand most damage etc) I like every character to have something that they stand above the other characters and, in this game, above everyone else in the game (that is for recurring characters, there is potential for one-offs to break this rule).

Though in the same D&D game I have seen players contrive to make monsters and useless characters, achievements made more obvious by their existence right next to one another... :-) Doc