Doc Democracy

Just want to say that this thread was essential in me getting Hero Designer up and running again. I haven't been able to reset the file association but I do now have a tiny batch dfile with the hero.ico on my desktop which will open HD. whatever works, huh? thanks fr the help. Doc

So now there is the question of what strategic decisions mattered when 10 in every million were good enough to be battle mages that no longer count when the biggest bang you can muster is a 12 pound cannon. :-) What natural resources suddenly become valuable and cause Klondike type migration and castles suddenly come into vogue as real defences. The loss of top tier predators like gryphons and dragons open things up in the ecological spheres and the loss of undead probably lead to the question of whether the Gods are actually relevant any more... Things like that?? Doc

Do you have a rationale in mind for losing magic?? Is it some meta-environmental change thing? Something to do with the Gods?? I think that question might provide a lot of the first steps for how and why things change. There is so much magic can do that technology would not be able to match or even come close. You need to think what the incentive there would be for developing the technology. If magic can keep your socks dry when you are marching then you are almost beyond modern technology. :-) Why invent gunpowder when you have lightning bolts, magic bows and stuff. There was a decent thread with a lot of this stuff in it just a few months ago that you might usefully mine for ideas. I think I recommended looking at the Brian McClellan "Gods of Blood and Powder" books for similar ideas. Doc

Obviously a key template for this kind of hero would be Booster Gold. Personally I like the Uber potential - who ya' gonna call?? By the time the hero team get to an incident there is a well-meaning, untrained paranormal trying to resolve the issue. :-) Doc

recent news in the UK turned my head to the way different people will react to being superpowered. This covers a spectrum, not just hero and villain. So, you have the people who feel the need to help others, you have the people that exploit the powers for gain. You have people who use the powers to boost something else (like Superman who actually just wants to win X-Factor) and you have the people who look to make money in more legitimate ways (ever thought of an Uber style app for superheroes??)...others have covered the ideas related to religion etc. Plenty more ways for people to react to this change in humanity.

I think the wriggle room is there where there is a well-defined campaign rule for ritual magic, or other such things. That campaign rule puts things available for players and GM alike, to be utilised. It is like adding to the Everyman skills, or saying everyone is psychically gifted and so everyone starts with 2DC of each mental ability for free. I often think GMs (absolutely including me) fail to think carefully about how such things might deepen/enrich a campaign and change the design decisions of players... Doc

Hmm, there should be the opposition (the evil guys) and the official opposition (whether army looking to minimise the security risk or regulators looking to classify and categorise) and some media interest (either castigating or cheerleading).

The other thing might be to have an END battery that only charges during ritual with x number of cultists. The power can then be cast depending on how much END is available... :-) Doc

The text in the 6th edition text has the following (p392) If a Requires Multiple Users power is one that characters have to pay for, all members of the group using the power must have the power (i.e., must have paid character points for it or otherwise learned it in the manner specified for the campaign). I reckon the otherwise learned it gives the Gm a little bit of wriggle room. :-) I do like Bolo's solution though... Doc

The big down side of requires multiple users is that all the users need to have the power/skill that is being utilised... If this was a summon, I think that there would have to be particular demons of certain size. A single cultist might be powerful enough to singly summon any demon but a normal cultist would need support. All cultists get balancing powers and complications as they rise through the heirarchy, one bonus is a power that boosts others summoning power. A two cultist boost will help summon a demon of one greater rank, a four cultist boost will increase two ranks and eight cultists raise it three ranks.

You know, I was certain someone mentioned they wanted something "different", not just buying a language. That was why I suggested a universal skill. I don't think I would allow any talk to the animals languages unless it was inherent in the ambit of the campaign. If it was, I might allow direct purchase or require prerequisites depending on the tone I was looking for and the rarity I was hoping for. Doc

If you wanted to go down the language route I think that you might require the purchase of the Universal Skill - Talk to the Animals. Just like Jack of All Trades but makes learning animal languages easier - but also necessary before you can begin buying them.

There is more wrong with this than I want to go into. However, you picked up the key detail wrong, it was not that I outclassed one of the villain bricks, I outperformed all of the other characters in my group. It wasn't just the bricks that were annoyed and it was not just a character thing, it annoyed the players. I was getting three times as much of the GMs attention than several other players. The spotlight came to me EVERY segment and sometimes two or three times before another player. The villains are another matter but from that I learned that SPD 12 villains would be a real handful for most groups to deal with (I made a Deathstroke rip-off with SPD 12 on the back of my learning here and he was roundly hated by every group I put him up against). Doc

I wouldn't be so sure, acting every segment is powerful and attracts a LOT of spotlight. The others were SPD 4 and 5. I built a SPD 12 speedster for a golden age game and he outshone every other character. We never allowed another SPD 12 in any game.

Currently working out velocity means building SPD into the system. If you go with Sean's thoughts then you would work out velocity in terms of move per turn and your move per phase would be (move per turn)/SPD. To me that is no more complex mathematically than we have and allows a more consistent approach with regard to movement. It makes movement SPD independent (which may seem counter-intuitive) which allows a more consistent, system level approach to what velocity means in damage terms. Doc

Well, there is a lot of judgement involved in unified power. It is meant to be disadvantageous to the power and if you do not think it is, then you should not allow a discount for it. The key reason for not unifying all your powers is that when one of your powers is drained you are effectively powerless. There should be a good reason for linking powers this way and that reason should dictate which powers should and should not be included. The minimum number of powers is two. You can use it anywhere that seems to make sense, including powers sharing a focus and linked powers. There is nothing however that says you have to take unified, even if SFX suggests it might make sense. Most judgement arises when the player wants to unify some powers and not others. As GM you need to decide what makes sense and where the player might be wanting to game the system. Doc

I don't understand. :-( What is the difference in the last two columns, are those numbers the metres moved that segment? You say "each segment you have a phase you can use your movement" but confuse that by saying that not everyone will be able to move every segment. I am presuming that you mean you will be able to use your movement once in each of your "action" phases? So SPD 4 will get to move 4 times per turn? That still does not explain (to me) why you can't reach your full potential speed...and that sentence seems to be missing something at the end...

The official, IIRC, was pretty draconian. If you are SPD 4 and change to SPD 3 on segment three, the next common segment to both SPDs is segment twelve as SPD 3's segments are four and eight. If you are SPD 3 and change to SPD 4 on segment four, the next common segment to both SPDs is segment 12 as SPD 4's segments are six and nine. I think I would rule that the switch from 4 to 3 would mean you would go on on segments eight and twelve and the switch from 3 to 4 would mean that you go on segments eight, ten and twelve. My thinking is that if the SPD 3 character uses segment four to up his SPD then he would next be active on segment 8. If he had been SPD 4 from the beginning the next active segment would have been six but he has to delay that until eight. The chart says next would be nine but two successive actions is often pretty powerful and so I pushed segment nine into segment ten. Not a straightforward rule but pretty plain (I think) and fair. I don't think it would be possible to game the chart using this method and it does not penalise in the way the official rule does. Doc

I like the fact that you are adding a really critical roll into the combat sequence. Every turn the balance of the fight might shift based on the number of actions each side gets. I think that I would have the variable happen with one roll and warn players that while putting all their eggs into one basket can pay off, 3 SPD and +3 SPD, 8 or less, is pretty risky. :-) Better to take +1 SPD, 8 or less, +1 SPD, 10 or less and +1 SPD 11 or less. The best thing about this is actually the fact that it is all within the rules as currently written and the level of variability is entirely within the hands of each individual player. Doc

What are your problems on paper? I am not sure that levels were allowed in ECs (unless associated with a power) in 5th edition, I would be inclined to buy them outside the EC with the limitation that they are subject to drains that target the EC powers (a 1/4 limitation in sixth). Doc

The most effective I have been in a Champions game was when the GM had sought to isolate me from the rest of the team and failed. His carefully constructed pairings were then disrupted as I used small powers to provide each of my team-mates with a slight advantage that tipped the balance in each and every case, like the flash that blinded the brick's opponent providing him with the opportunity to haymaker and stun his opponent. That fight ended quickly. An opponent left unengaged can be used to tip the balance in subtle ways, players will soon learn that truth. Doc

Desolid is a strange beast because it causes issues in almost occasion when you come to think about it in strict terms. If a desolid character is not affected by gravity then why do they walk on the surface like everyone else instead of bouncing up or simply flying off into space as the planet leaves them behind. If they are affected by gravity, then why do they not sink into the surface of the planet drawn ever downward, unhindered by the solid mass of the planet pushing back up at them... Other questions like how do they see (interact with light) or breathe (interact with oxygen) etc all rear their heads as well. Desolid must be the ultimate handwave power simply because we all know what we mean - we want a character than can ghost through walls and ignores attacks as they pass right through them. My take on gravity is that the character is affected because it makes most sense and that any desolid character has learned how to use residual surface tensions between the ground and air to resist being pulled into the planet's core. As such, gravity based environmental effects work (though, inconsistently, I do not allow gravity based attacks to affect unless they have bought "affects desolid"). :-) Doc

The fast portals are actually a way of adding area of effect to those martial arts manoeuvres rather than range. I don't think they stretch the rules really. The ball bearings are effective but you would have to know the prevalence of hardened resistant PD to truly judge its potential effectiveness. If I was going to challenge it, I think that I would have looked to the additional STUN multiplier. It is written up as an assassin's attack, so focussed on killing, why then is it set to do so much STUN unless you are chasing a way to get chunks of non-lethal damage past heroic charcters? :-) Doc

The powers are all based round sonic powers. When you left I think a lot of your build might have been in an elemental control which no longer exists, there is an limitation however (unified power) that provides that kind of build (where powers all derive from a common source and draining one, drains them all. It would give an additional +1/4 limitation on all the powers that are affected, I wasn't able to tell from the colour which powers might be linked in this way. I think Opale is bang on about the sonic attack, it feels more like a side effect rather than something you should be paying for. Use those points to get the END down to 0 and then you only use END when flying noisily. You are also paying big for characteristics that will not particularly affect or play to the character's playability. While END and SPD potentially look low, STR and EGO look a bit high - a hangover from when those were needed to generate figured characteristics perhaps. I had to wean myself off of buy STR for characters, it was just too good a deal for most characters in previous editions.

My concern is your energy management. With forcefield on, using your attacks and a little bit of movement each phase you are burning 30 END a turn and recovering 8. You need to win quick or you will be burning STUN to keep going. [edit: missed the fact that the END was 'only to activate' on both fields, makes END less of an issue] Will have a think but the multipower and damage shield are where your big concerns are. I am not too worried about the 9D6 blast as I presume your primary attack will be the 5D6 AVAD, which should deliver a reliable 17-18 STUN past defences. You are the GM, so you need to tell us what you expect attacks to average out at, SPDs and CVs. That will provide a decent feel for effectiveness in game. SPD 5 is slow in a game where the SPD of bricks might touch 6 and fast where bricks never go past 3. A low SPD game also makes REC more effective. Doc