Doc Democracy

I have said it before but OMG Duke, when you start to type, you REALLY start to type! ? Am gonna have to read this at least twice to draw out what needs drawing out!!!

I am beginning to seriously consider having a single 10D6 blast power (and a second 8D6 blast power if I want primary and secondary attacks) and then a bunch of naked advantages that I can apply to one or the other blast power. The blast power might be in an MP along with flight and defence. I need to check if I might have a slew of naked advantages in the multipower...would that break my only one type of power per multipower idea? Probably, need to think harder about it. Doc

Just build it with INT and EGO. Don’t think you need to do much more in game terms to be sentient...

Personally, I liked the first edition Fantasy Hero encumbrance rules. They were pretty vicious and so there was a real combat penalty to wearing armour, you are good early on in the combat but you will get tired. I thought it made the lightly armoured combatant a decent, effective decision. You needed to stay out of range long enough to get that tank a bit tired, get him taking recoveries so you can begin slowly bleed him to death. As far as combat luck goes, there should be that idea that you cannot rely on luck forever, and sometimes it will let you down at the first time of asking. I quite like the idea of having luck dice for that armour. You roll the dice and every six provides you with 1DEF, possibly with a cap on how much you can get from any one roll You also reduce the pool when it saves you from damage. I think I would have things that restored the pool during fights, some karma style righting wrongs or something, or when an opponents combat luck saves them damage it restores your pool. But during an extended fight you are going to end up riding that luck. Unless you are playing a cinematic fantasy game, I would not use combat luck RAW. Doc

I wasn’t asking about how it was used. A tool can be misapplied but that does not mean it is doing the job it was intended for. Now, I am not sure that anyone really sat down and thought about multipowers in the way they would if HERO was being designed from scratch. I can see the multipower designed to help replicate heroes like UltraBoy from Legion of Superheroes. Indeed, fixed slots used to be called ultra slots. That was not a gun with multiple special effects but a range of powers that might be used one at a time. That quickly goes out the window when it hits the enemy (the players). I am wondering if it should be limited such that it can only take one of any class of power, so one attack power, one body affecting power, one defence power etc. This retains the the ability to switch between diverse powers, one or two at a time. It begs the question of how you do the archer type, and whether that type is indeed too cheap for its utility. Shrike has already pointed out several ways to achieve a similar end that is not too much more expensive... Doc

Another spin-off from the 6th edition is best thread. There seems to be a lot of talk about the value/effectiveness of multipowers. We got rid of elemental controls because the were simply a way to get free points. Shrike said that most people that want an MP actually want a VPP. Others are concerned that people throw things into an MP because it would be stupid not to. I guess that it throws up two questions. (1) As far as the toolkit goes, what is the multipower supposed to provide in game effect terms? (2) is it too cost effective? Doc

This was never my favourite way of doing it. My version is where the possessor has duplication. The actual PC is one of the duplicates who has a transform power which is used to create the other duplicate. When there are two duplicates, they can be combined, to produce a point limited version of the possessed person. As such, possessing a more powerful person does not give full access to all their powers.

yup, but if we are talking a life built on robbery, I tend toward the clash...

But the S&G song does not scream American Dream to me, a more subtle message. The S&G song I have been listening to incessantly recently is a cover...

In almost every game I play now I have dispensed with equipment lists and resources. It is too much trouble for me and harshes the buzz of the game. Sometimes, when access to equipment might be an issue I ask the players to write down the things they currently have in their possession based on their character descriptions. The police officer guy will have a gun as well as a radio without any explanation, the physicist might actually be carrying a geiger counter (though I might make him explain why) and the rock star will not be allowed to have that axe until I realise he was talking about his guitar... I am open to players having the things that they think their characters would have because it helps them better visualise the character in the game. Most players do not then seek to push the boundaries and they are usually better policed by the other players than by me. In HERO, all this kit is fine to be available without a single point spent, just like it is in other games. I get the players to spend their points on the things that make their character stand out. I have moved in a more narrative direction as I got older. Doc

Hmm. Random songs playing on YouTube while I peruse the boards and this comes on. As a foreigner this will always be my picture of what America stands for...

Have you ever considered a position in the diplomatic corps? ?

Are you really telling me to RTFM?!! ? I guess I could stretch to that....but it is entirely against my principles...

I think it all comes down to when the GM builds the game. He then decides how things are going to be. You can decide the ground rules, what is coming out of the core and what is staying in there unused. However, you do the. Have an obligation to explain those decisions to your players. You need to do it in detail if they are going to build their own characters. I think this ability to build your game would be a fantastic add-on to Hero Designer, it is currently a character building tool that uses all the rules, if there was a way to use and design game templates that players could use to design characters for that particular game, then HERO would begin to be fully realised. I guess that fits in with my dream 7th Edition, it would need that kind of tool... Doc

Have you looked at these guys? Never used them but they seem to suggest they will make what you want...price might be the question... http://www.besconcn.com/engraving-dice/28671353.html

I guess it all comes down to the game you build. say you are a member of the fighters guild, you get access to their special training programme. The “perk” of joining the guild is the multipower reserve. Every slot in the multipower requires the right guild skill to use. You can decide that either the character needs to make a skill roll to activate the power or get the default slot. The default slot would be an enhanced damage killing attack with the focus of any martial weapon (bonus for being in the guild). When you buy buy a new slot you also need to buy the skill to activate it. It is a decent way not only to add to the cost of boosting options but you might have to travel to find a master who can teach you, possibly even persuade him to teach you or prove you are worthy of being taught. Doc

How about: Boots that remove the accumulation of LTE due to marching, they are so comfortable. Boots that reduce the chance of slipping due to environmental conditions. A weapon that provide +1D6 to PRE attacks. A cloak that provides +1 DCV because it swirls so beautifully and hides where you are actually standing A cloak that delivers +2 rPD against slashing or stabbing weapons due to the steel mesh woven through it. Doc

Ah. My common communication to my players is that anything I "give" them I can take away. I promise that they will have an opportunity for gear to come into their possession but they should not rely on the fact that it will stay there forever. Money is especially difficult - large amounts of gold are not always with you and leaving it anywhere in a world filled with adventurers is "risky". Some of the stuff they have found and own was someone else's and will probably be someone else's at a point in the future. In D&D I seek to provide kit that matches the level of the adventure they are involved in and, if they have suffered a recent loss, the next patron is likely to have some things that they can take to use in their mission. I really want them to get into the idea that some things are ephemera but I need to be responsive to the fact that some things are signature items for the character, like the cloak of feather fall that the roguish warrior had, to enable him to escape from the boudoirs of beautiful women he had seduced and whose husbands had come home unexpectedly. When everything else went, the cloak was always retrieved or replaced.

Ooh, I never thought of using TK versus intelligence before - the idea being that you are pushing someone toward something that they might be able to reason themselves out of (if they are bright enough)... Would you allow levels with INT to provide additional resistance to the TK?? Doc

Only in the D&D paradigm. There are plenty stories where welders of magic are not averse to wielding swords...

I know it says pictures but this video is too funny not to share...

I think we are on the same page, the next paragraph essentially states that just as the warrior can buy that level of effect for free, the wizard should be similarly enabled (and buy something better with points). ?

He said (and I meant) “equally but differently limited”. It might even be close to mechanically identical.

I also think that in a society where a warrior can purchase a sword and skill levels to enhance it then wizards would not be developing spells to conjure slightly better swords, they would be developing spells to significantly enhance swords (cf Runequest - Bladesharp and Fireblade)

One of my friends was averse to running a game as he said the heroes in the campaign were too powerful and it would be too difficult to challenge them. In my next game session the scenario started with the heroes being captured by a mad robotocist. Each hero was attacked by a single robot, just one winked out to specifically defeat the hero in question. Each one was built on 125 points. I made the point that the real task of the GM is not to challenge the characters (that is easy), it is to challenge and entertain the players. Doc