Doc Democracy

To be fair, Zephrosyne, did say that he was very pro-active in setting out build rules ahead of a campaign. I am afraid I do not have the energy to do the amount of work for this to work consistently. If it is explicit on how certain things should be built before I start out then I guess I would adapt my concept to those rules. I think most games do not have that much in the way of build detail to police the variety possible in the game.

I have two types of response to this: :-) 1 - There are ALWAYS reasons why something that looks like a focus is not. For the powersuit idea the two that immediately come to mind are that the armour simply cannot be removed by other people, it is mage armour and only the bearer can don or remove it; it is nano-tech and immediately reforms itself if removed. In neither case would teleporting the man out of the armour work in SFX considerations. 2 - the player has a right to decide whether his/her powers may be removed without his consent (outside of game-mechanical things like drain etc). It is not for the GM to say that it is impossible to have a powersuit character without at some point losing access to all the powers granted by that powersuit. If the player thinks the powersuit is cool then why not allow it, and simply not choose to remove it from him at points where those characters who did take the discount would lose their's. Doc

Our biggest problem with issues like this one is that we are firmly in the land of make-believe. More so than in many other cases as we have nothing that equates even remotely to teleportation. As such, we have no real-world analogues to lean on or to equate things with, no idea of what the problems that might be associated or anything else. All we have is fiction and we know how (un)reliable that might be for finding anything close to game balance. When it comes down to it, I have sympathy for what Zephrosyne is saying about a simple approach - low cost power or simply saying no - but this discussion is very much about how you accomplish something in the game without breaking it. The game is not about the SFX (which is all that popping someone out of their armour actually is) but about the mechanics of that (important that doing it is fun in some way) and how much it should cost. I think it is a cool power, it leverages the Focus limitation and makes it worth the discount that someone took when designing the character. The biggest questions the GM would have to tackle would be the inconsistency of how things are bought in HERO and making sure that the player understands the limitations. If the power armour character did not actually take focus as a limitation (and so did not take the discount), which of these suggested powers still works and still honours the design pact at the start of the game for both the teleporter and the powersuit guy AND makes some kind of narrative sense. To memory, I think that Transform is possibly the one, happy to hear others... :-) Doc

My usual route for someone who wants to be able to do everything is to say yes but your "theme" is therefore versatility and because you can do everything you can do it less well than specialists, so if the usual energy blast is 10D6, every power man has 8d6 or 9d6. If the usual force field is 20PD 20ED thenevery power man has 17 or 18. everything, just a little bit less of it.... Doc

You could quite easily also go for the 1D6 NND Killing Attack, Does BODY, only what he can fit in his mouth. :-) Doc

The ultimate effect is for you to be in control of the summoned creature. I think that I would probably opt for a limited version of Mind Control. I think I would have to require some kind of opposed roll with the magicians summoning prowess and also restricted to summoned creatures. You might also want to add colour limitations such as taking time, making ritual or knowledge rolls etc to get your counter ritual in place to challenge the magicians. Beyond that you would simply have to roll well enough to mind control the creature. I like this route because it does not require you to have to replicate a variety of summoning spells, just to suborn a creature summoned by other people. Doc

The difference between, you have it, and, it is on the character sheet, in my games is that things you have can be taken away, sometimes arbitrarily, by the GM. Things that are on the character sheet you may be deprived of (based on how you bought it) but you will inevitably get it back and somethings you simply almost never lose access to. I think that if your player wants a better falcon then he can buy a better falcon or can spend the same resource and time training it himself. Then he will have a better falcon until I decide to deprive him of it, permanently by killing it, or temporarily by any number of means. If I decide the falcon will ruin a particular encounter, then I will ensure that it has been distracted by a juicy rabbit or fine looking lady falcon for the duration. I will make sure the player knows that is the case. I will also deprive players of their weaponry and horses in much the same way. If the falcon is on the character sheet then I will feel a need to engage game mechanics to deprive him of the falcon whether or not it will ruin an encounter. Doc

To be fair to zslane, while your build there has the appearance of someone having more than 12 phases in a turn, the power introduces another body with phases all of its own....

I like the idea of Iconic Man - as the game has not started, noone really knows what powers Iconic Man should or did have so there is wriggle room for the players. I like the potential there is for a number of future developments as powers might be further discovered and the potential for special powers when particular individuals cooperate.... :-) Doc

I am with you here. If I take the limitation I know that it some point it will be triggered. If one of my players takes the limitation, I warn them that at some point I will take away their powers and it will be pretty much at a time of my choosing. :-) I am very open to this because it should lead to the players having to think outside the box and possibly even talking rather than falling to the first resort of might makes right. My group are currently playing D&D and I think in the next session I am going to be forced to kill one of them because they simply do not try to do anything beyond resort to combat - the current antagonist at the end point of the last session said "Surrender and your friend will live" - he has the party druid at -5hp, helpless. Their response "We will not listen to any more of your lies". Huge lack of imagination or thoughts of the consequences. Talking is how they get information out of me - not getting their characters killed.... Kudos on you for looking for an alternative.

Maybe it is because I am usually the builder in my group or heavily involved in the design of every single character. I know that I pay heavy attention to the idea of whether you want to lose the focus during combat or whether you never do. It is the gameplay that is high in my design priorities rather than a simulation of what the thing actually is. I would deprecate any argument that was based on "the wrong focus". That is entirely wrong in my opinion, the wrong focus is the one that leaves the player in a situation they never wanted to be in, simply to achieve some odd sense of simulation of reality (or even more perverse, simulation of a hypothetical, made-up reality. Doc

It really depends on how meta you want to get. Thia was on the money and I like the idea of the love interest being a special effect of the Rival disadvantage. I also like the idea that the love interest is a floating source of information, skills etc. You could build that as a Summon or even just a VPP. You give the hero a psychological disadvantage that means he/she cares about the love interest and you have skills that are in the game until the love interest is taken out by the opposition/environmental effects. Red shirts were essentially summoned entities to provide alternate targets, short term muscle/skills for the early part of most Star Trek episodes. :-) Doc

My biggest issue with using TP, whether UOO or not, is that there is no well tried and trusted method for defending against such things. It is often there as an option because the SFX are obviously aligned with the mechanic. However, as far as the game is concerned, this is not a matter of moving a character, it is a matter of depriving that character of powers that have been paid for. To me, that cries out for an alternative game mechanic, one whose primary purpose is the deprivation of powers, not movement of the character. Doc

I don't think it is an attempt to nerf a cool concept rather than a discussion on how much that should cost. While the act of teleporting someone out if their armour in reality all comes to the same thing, it has a very variable effect when comparing teleporting batman out of his suit (which gives minimal resistant protection and a buff to PRE to teleporting Iron Man out of his suit which provides all of his powers. In both cases the precision of the necessary teleport is the same but the game effect is wildly different. The ultimate driver here would be for powersuit man to buy his suit as a patchwork of foci (cluttering up the character sheet) rather than OIF suit. As I said earlier, the key thing would be that the power is seeking to circumvent the inaccessible element of the focus. It is true that anyone who purchases a focus is essentially saying that they accept, at some point, they will be deprived of those powers. By purchasing inaccessible, they might be aggrieved for that to happen in combat. If they had used OAF (and taken the cost benefiit) then there could be no such hurt feelings. You could simply use an overwhelming transform, - switch from in armour to out of armour, the cure for which would be taking the time to put the armour on again. That might be the measure for how much the ability should cost, regardless of the mechanic used to deliver the gameplay. Doc

Sense and the general environment really are one of the remaining bits of the system that are most obviously bolted on. The ways to change environmental conditions, like ambient light are not as elegant as other, more combat oriented, parts of the system. Part of that is the often highly variable effectiveness of these powers which makes them difficult to cost and part of it is the built in SFX of that kind of power which sits poorly with the fundamentals of the rest of the system while Images comes to mind as the most obvious thing to create something you can see, as has been pointed out, you could create an animated oil painting with images, that shed no light at all. Indeed, if you are simply casting light you are not actually creating any actual image at all, by effect, you are allowing anyone who happens to be within range to see stuff in a defined area. You are facilitating their senses and, in HERO terms, it is questionable whether Images is the mechanical effect that should be used. I am not proffering anything different as yet, the solutions that are comping up are all interesting and, if Lucius is getting down to, "I tried a few and this seems cheapest", we might not have an obviously elegant build for it... :-) Doc

And that is the beauty of HERO while being one of its biggest frustrations. It is actually, to my mind, a nod to the fact that HERO incorporated what is now recognised as a narrative gaming style way back then. The player being able to control aspects of the narrative. one player chooses to be able to teleport people out of their armour, another player chooses not to take the discount given by focus to ensure that he is not vulnerable to that kind of thing. :-) Doc

I think our first issue is defining armour. HERO, when it comes down to it, is all about definitions. We all know roughly what we are talking about, something that covers the body, providing protection from damage and other things. The big problem is that we have so many ways of building that. We need to make some decisions. First, whether we presume a focus and if so, accessible or inaccessible. In most builds I think armour comes out as an OIF. As such, the player has specifically given you permission, under certain circumstances to take it off them (and to deprive them of all the powers associated with that focus). The power the OP is talking about is, therefore, how that focus might be removed but in less time than normal circumstances. The big element is that an inaccessible focus can be removed in one turn if out of combat, an accessible focus can be removed by a grab roll. Perhaps the way to do it is to change the focus from inaccessible to accessible? I am am thinking that if you could "drain" enough points to equal the difference of the powers in the armour being bought with OIF than with OAF. A simple example 20 points of resistant defence, armour (OIF) - 30/1.5 = 20 points 20 points of resistant defence, armour (OAF) - 30/2 = 15 points So by draining 5 points, I effectively make the armour accessible. I can now grab it from him. This is defensive so the effectiveness of any drain power is halved. My thoughts on SFX for this is the sense used to teleport slowly defining what is the person and what is the armour before allowing them to be separated. The more complex and powerful the armour, the more "drain" that has to be achieved before a "grab" can be attempted. This is not as clean as the dispel option but I think it is more colourful. And it treats the focus as a focus... Doc

Or a 15 point social disadvantage - Financial problems, defined as 'loss-making manufacturing plant'. :-)

There was a cool organisations tracking process for agencies etc published in Champions 3 (I think). It allowed you to track an organisations resources and thereby make it responsive to heroic activity etc. You could use the same kind of system for a company (if that company was central to the campaign plot). You could model the production of handguns or any other commodity but the way companies work is within an economic and regulatory framework - so the company would need to be solvent and would need licensing perks to be able to do business and manufacture. That is a very small amount of points. Companies, if you were to model them in game, would be the kind of thing that would potentially have extensive non-combat influence. You could buy a company perks, contacts and favours that it could use in a campaign against a superhero... Doc

I saw my mistake as soon as I posted but was at work and had no chance to come back to it. I think it is possible but you get a bit into hand-wavy territory. You could quite easily have a table showing the strength of the power growing as you get a better roll, though it would grow in a very predictable way. If you wanted to be funky, have six different ways for the power to grow in strength - then use 4D6, the fourth dice to choose which growth pattern gets used... All depends on how much drama you want. Choose the base effect - that gets bought normally Choose a greater effect (subtract the cost of the base effect from the cost of the greater effect and apply a roll limitation on the remainder) Choose a greater effect II (subtract the cost of the base effect from the cost of the greater effect and apply a greater roll limitation on remainder) ....etc It could end up quite bureacratic or it can end up adding to the excitement of the roll depending on your and your players wishes and facility with the rules... Doc

I am in the camp of 6th edition being a better iteration of the game, even if the presentation was flawed by being too huge for most people. I understand why it is huge - the key demographic always wanted more explanations and examples and this gave them that in spades... For the game, I am a huge proponent of removing figured characteristics and would probably have gone even further. I think we could have separated out all of the characteristics into powers, skills and system numbers (STUN, END, BODY, CV etc). It would, however, have been a move to a more hardcore HERO which would not have expanded its horizons in any fashion. It would have addressed some of the issues such as STR and Blast costings and other little bits. It would also have made the system cleaner by removing more of the things that presume SFX from names of things. Doc

Surely this is just a compound power with sliding rolls for effect (with the GM agreeing that all the effect rolls are resolved with one throw of the dice). So 8D6 Lightning Strike +2D6 Lightning strike (14 or less) +2D6 Lightning strike (13 or less) +2D6 Lightning strike (12 or less) +2D6 Lightning strike (11 or less) +2D6 Lightning strike (10 or less) +2D6 Lightning strike (9 or less) +2D6 Lightning strike (8 or less) This is a bit of a simplified roll for example purposes, you could make it more complex with skills etc. The character is able to reliably throw an 8D6 Lightning bolt. On a roll of the dice additional power gets added. On an 11 the lightning bolt is 16D6, on a 14 it is 10D6 and on 8 or less it is 22D6 - be careful of this guy.... You can work out the skill rolls and provide a similar range with all the modifiers you need making each additional damage bonus cheaper than the previous one but the build itself is pretty simple. Doc

Don't need to discuss, it is a game mechanic, I made the requisite roll and I want the resulting benefits. the spherical robot, if it wants to be immune to that combat mechanic will need to buy that. I think something like levels, only against trip or some other more complex power. i would say it is prone when set to spinning such that it cannot get its bearings and needs a second or two to orient itself. anything that sounds reasonable really. Doc

I am with Ninja-Bear here. We have a picture in our head of what prone means, a person sprawling on the floor, needing to get up to be combat ready again. There are however game mechanic penalties that can be applied to any opponent, not prone as described in the dictionary, but prone as described in the rulebook, with subsequent penalties and time needed to get rid of those penalties. Doc

I think that this is just another example of where the power name infers SFX. It should be called something technical and boring like Changing point of perspective. That describes what clairsentience does, moving that point of perspective in space or time. Steve's answer is right in that if you want to affect the game then you do that in a variety of mechanical ways. The mechanics are all in the powers in the book and the SFX come after that with the requisite advantages and limitations applied to properly reflect how it looks to everyone else. Doc