Doc Democracy

Had a chance to look at the rules now (though I only have 4th and 6th in pdf - 5th is safe at home on the bookshelf...) and in 4th (which I suspect is probably identical to 5th in this) Force Wall could be made opaque to one sense for a +5 adder and to a sense group for a +10 adder. There is no provision for the adder to be transparent in one direction but I think to say transparent one direction for sound would be a +10 adder... For 30 active points you would get a 4ED Forcewall, 4m in length (a 1.2m diameter circle) and completely invisible (I am being strict in interpreting the length - it says 1" (2m) for every 5 points in the power but does not explicitly exclude adders and advantages - in my game I would give this a reasonable 4m diameter. Also strict in minimum cost (10points) which I take to mean 10 points of defence bought, not including adders and advantages). You would get a 2.5m diameter for 40 active points and a 4m diameter for 50 active points. The costs are very much about the length of the wall and keeping it fully invisible. If there were some way people might notice that it existed (it might hum slightly, or be warm or something) then the cost would fall. Doc

My thought was an opaque megascale barrier with megascale range. You just need something big enough to interpose between the sun and the earth. Will have a look at rules but it might not be too expensive....

And there you have the character of the boards - if you ask a question you will get multiple ways to do things, all based on sound logic with each person tacking to the position they are most comfortable with in their game. :-) I went to the view that there was a sense affecting power in play here but the effect was not like something affecting someone else's senses but erecting a barrier against them. That is why I went with the force wall route. It is indeed like building an invisible room. I thought about using the wall element of Entangle but it seemed to require too many modifiers whereas Force Wall seemed the obvious thing. That does raise the question about SFX. It is a pretty trivial effect really and I dont think it should cost too much in the way of points. I also think that the edge effects are better covered by Force Wall than the other options, Invisibility requires megascale etc and even then might be susceptible to someone further away than that. I might go and see what Steve thinks about a barrier to senses - seems like it would be a decent adder to the power. The privacy field SHOULD have a mild defence against sonic attacks and I am building it slightly backwards with the defence providing the main focus rather than the main focus providing a slight defence...but it works in my head. But for the OP - you now have a few options - none of them are THE way to do it, they all have pros and cons. In HERO, ultimately, you make a call on what you think best decribes the power you want and how you want it to play. The best thing about that is, if it does not play the way you want, you come back in and change the design until it does play they way you want. :-)

Hmm. Shouldn't be on eBay. Saw Demon on there for £15. Lucy I already have Ninja HERO or I would be £20 poorer....

There is a champions complete for about £18 on eBay just now, 0 bids. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hero-System-Champions-Complete-superhero-roleplaying-core-book-/222684642662?hash=item33d909fd66:g:rXUAAOSwh2RZ6QDd The PDF and printing is more expensive but the PDF will last forever....

Many thanks mrinku. :-)

You are making a false statement that group adders are rules-legal. There is indeed the implication that what works for advantages can be used for adders. Steve's suggestion is that group naked adders should not be allowed but he can't forbid you to use them. He is content that the solution you came up with seemed a workable one. I note he did not even refer to the point in the rules where he said the you should not generally allow naked advantages to apply to powers in a framework...it is quite a permissive approach. However, if you stray into GM permission territory, then you need to be expected to begin using GM judgement more and more. I don't know about you but while I do like to work within the rules and get clarity, when there is a rule I don't like, I don't use it... I reckon if Steve had come back to you with a firm, naked group adders should not be allowed, especially not where a framework is involved, you would probably have come to the boards to discuss how to do it. I would... This is not a big deal, work out a solution that works for your group, understand that you are operating in grey waters and that the character might not be accepted, as written, in some other groups. Doc

Personally, I think Steve's response is right on the money. If pushed for an official response, it looks like he would plump for saying no to naked group adders. However, he is not being pushed and, in the spirit of maximum game fun, suggests that the GM takes all of the powers, sees what each of them would cost individually and then suggests that the price be the most expensive. Not sure what more you need to know... Doc

I think that for the selective invisibility, one method might be for the Invisibility to have a +0 advantage - not versus those whom InvisibleGuy is in telepathic contact with. I would then have the character buy an area effect 5 or 10 point telepathy power (cannot remember if there is a minimum point buy for telepathy) purely for the purposes of excluding people from the power. The telepathy would provide a mechanism for the character to make contact with those he wishes to see him and everyone else would have to deal with the invisibility. I think it is right for this to cost more - it does provide more utility - the question is whether you pile the cost onto the Invisibility as an advantage (and there is a case for that I think - and something Steve might like for a future APG) or require the use of another power... Doc

I do love this site - folk are always helpful. :-)

I have the books etc. I can photocopy/scan from books if necessary. It really was whether someone has done the work I don't want to. :-)

There is a fifth edition excel sheet in downloads, it should work for fourth I think. Will check the Facebook page, never thought of looking there... EDIT: now I know why I don't use Facebook... :-/

Personally, for a privacy barrier, I would be looking for an invisible effect Force Wall, transparent to physical matter and works only versus sonic. It would essentially create an invisible wall that you can walk through but prevents the passage of sound waves. That would not take too many points, and probably should not...

Is anyone aware of a form fillable 4th edition character sheet? My group just started a 4th edition game and I volunteered to tidy up the debris of the character design phase in time for the hext game... Doc

I am not 100% with you here. With Duplication you have one body, then you gave two. With teleportation you gave one body in one place, then you have another body in another place. What if your duplication allowed you to create the duplicate at Range? What if you duplicated at range and then recombined, at Range, to only leave one body. What if that body was the one far away. My friend's character, the Madding Crowd was based on someone who was uncontrollably accessing all her alternate universe personalities. There was always a few of them around the 'focus' of her personality and some were continually phasing in and out of this universe, even if only for microseconds. To teleport, she simply focussed on one of those alternates and that became the Crowd until she focussed elsewhere. It was not precise but it was, mechanically, teleport. Doc

Not in the rules as written but it comes close. On your rule switching from SPD 3 to SPD 7 on segment 4, what segment is the next action?

Isn't thus simply a naked autofire autofire, three shots, reduced endurance, only the best shot is effective??

Yeah, but it would have been a small sacrifice for leaner, meaner system. I think once you got used to it, it would be odd to go back - like we are running a 4th edition game tonight and creating characters with the whole figured characteristic thing is SO WEIRD....

And all of this comes because HERO still has its roots in the first wave of RPGs where characteristics were de rigeur. Characteristics are probably the one element of the system that is absolutely counter to the core concept of the game - buy the mechanic, describe the effect. They skew powers and skills. I think if Steve had realised that 6th would not bootstrap the game into a more profitable strata he might have been more radical with the new edition. I think we might have seen a system where the only 'characteristics' would have been the actual mechanical ones (STUN, END, CV etc) and everything else would have been a skill or a power. That would actually have cleared out a lot of the dead wood lying about - the difficulty of talking 5pts for a DC of damage when STR gives the same damage and a cloud of other things as well... I had a half-planned fantasy campaign once where weapons did not have damage attributes but instead they delivered advantages etc to your physical attributes. So, a sword would make your STR do killing damage (using that as an advantage rather than a different kind of damage roll), or a bow would add range to your STR (and make it killing). I stumbled on clubs, which should allow you to do more damage until I decided that armour piercing was enough for what I wanted. Too much work, not enough time. :-( Doc

In Deadlands there is a mechanic where monsters are tougher when the fear level is high. Players influence the fear level by going round telling tales of how they defeated monsters, positive feedback as the lower fear level means that previously undefeatable monsters begin to become managable... This sounds like something similar - get some good use out of those conversation and oratory skills - have them giving interviews and getting out with contacts etc. The combat attributes help in defeating things - the social attributes convert those victories into something more broadly substantial. Doc

How could I have forgotten that Lucius had already been there...

I have often said that if it were men that bore children, we would, by now, have cracked the artificial womb where there would be far less of all that messy biology and pushing....

This is a case where the naming of the power on the character sheet should be significantly different from the naming of the mechanic in the rulebook.... What would you call this??

Essentially trying to gain actions in a turn through judicious changes to SPD. Doc

If you were playing that hero then I think you would be ****ed whatever you chose.... :-) Doc