Doc Democracy

I can only see it working if they made a decision right from the start about the power level, there are a lot of assumptions to be made. However, the modern game industry means there are people that can produce stuff for you that could provide pretty cool effects. Check out the gloom card game, transparent cards that layer up. I can see small card holders (to keep stacks together. You have a core power card with a few stats on it, like cost and end and damage. You layer advantages and limitations that overlay the stats but leave the core details showing. It could be interesting...

Explains why I could not find a definitive rule in the BBB! Thanks LL. Will get a GM ruling. I think in this case it should be reasonably simplw. Doc

Dunno. :-) Same question as far as I see it... I am presuming, as before that the answer is yes...

Hmm. Am building 4th edition characters and am finding it difficult to pick out what I can and can't do, too many versions after BBB. So, a character with Force Wall with a variable advantage can throw up walls with a variety of advantages. My question is, would he be able to throw up a zero END Force wall and then an invisible effects Force wall and the a hardened Force wall and maintain all three walls concurrently? My instinct is yes but I haven't found an explicit statement of that in the BBB... Doc

As for the magic roll, give them a choice, either make a magic roll or pay additional END. Cannot remember the limitation for giving a spell a magic roll but if it is +1/2, and all spells regularly take 1/2END, then they make a magic roll or choose to cast automatically but take full END cost rather than 1/2 END. Players like a clear choice, even if it is limited. Doc

Good grief, we are witnessing "a conversation" ON THE INTERNET. An exchange of ideas, give and take and actual changes of position. Well done those chaps! :-)

I was always worried that the standard power requires that body damage, ten wasp stings to kill you. :-) I like the idea that BODY damage could be inflicted allowing the poison to work without having to buy the associated killing attack.

I am thinking that you could easily do this with no normal defence. You define the defence as not when armour blocks an XD6 killing attack. You do not buy the killing attack, just roll the damage dice. If the damage rolled would not have been enough to overcome the armour, the NND has no effect. My one issue is whether this defence is common enough for the rules....that is likely campaign specific. Doc

My D&D favourite character of recent times was a half-orc monk. I think the addition of other races provides for an injection of mysticism etc. As it happens the order he belonged to was an obscure sect of Gruumsh, a lawful good one, that promulgated an alternate history of the races. In olden times, according to this sect, there were no humans and the elves and orcs were equally civilised. Corellion and Gruumsh decided to end the constant warfare between their children by merging them into one race (humans). Corellion cheated though and only merged half of his elves and then persuaded the humans that orcs were evil. Gruumsh was devastated and plucked out an eye, the one that did not see the trick. Over centuries the orcs and their god were brutalised and came to reflect the propaganda. This sect keeps the story alive, seeking ways to redeem their race and bring them back to civilised ways. There is a schism as to whether the elves should be forgiven or punished for millennia of hurt. Their biggest piece of evidence is the existence of both half elves and half orcs. How could that be unless humans were not already half and half.... :-) This sect were mystics, forswore metal weapons and communed with an ancient version of their god, the current version being too far removed from their iconography.... Doc

I am curious as to the nature of an unbreakable magic dagger that cannot be recovered if it is lost. Why not? Knowing that makes it easier to suggest a build that provides what you want. Doc

Because European Enemies was the epitome of good writing, huh? :-) There were some truly awful builds and characters in there...but I think it is right to seek to give villains lots of background to help the GM make them more than a cipher. I think in a villains book, or a source book, then that is right. In what we are talking about then much of the text and fluff just contributes to bloat ware style books.

But a new GM might need that descriptive stuff and I think the Standard format would not belong in any playbook I envisage. It should be just enough to pick up and play. And we need to break into groups where noone has played before and so the playbook needs to facilitate the players as much as the players.

OK. I have had a very quick go - not a huge amount of thought has gone into this beyond trying to make it look different and get the necessary information for playing at the table on there. I think it is about half a page and could easily be squeezed further....it is a character from the Champions Universe - Dr Macabre which takes up two pages of that book. http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/380-dr-macabrepdf/ Doc

It is all about how much information you NEED to provide for a character to make it playable for three or four sessions. There has been a history for all characters to provide every build detail for scrutiny. I think that is fine in a RULE book but entirely unecessary in a PLAY book. I will go to an example and see if I can come up with something and upload to site as an amateur example, a professional would, of course, do better.

Those character sheets are also full of detail I would not expect in a playbook. It should be there to give a taster of a genre, allow the GM to pick up and play two to four sessions max. With some clever layout and decent artwork I think Assault's estimates are achievable.

Yeah, I have been in the same space with the same thoughts. Sometimes you forget a game makes compromises with reality simply to make a game more fun. That was not my proposal though. I was suggesting the former. So everyone is effectively SPD12 but action on consecutive actions accumulates penalties in chances to hit, to defend yourself and, possibly long term END. That adds a strategic element of whether you go all out, sacrificing accuracy and care and risk exhausting yourself... SPD in this system would be how many times in a round you can mitigate these penalties and get you back on an even keel. ..now the little sensible man in my head is asking whether I really know my players. They will inevitably rabidly attack, using every action available to them....

Random us always the most difficult thing to pull off - systems always feel ordered and efforts to get random often have a different feel in game. I wish I had a decent suggestion. It feels to me like there needs to be a dice solution, one that is easy to read. In my head I see something like six dice. If you use a spell and roll effect dice the three of the dice will be red, three will be green. Match sixes in each colour, more red sixes means bad things, more green sixes good things happen. Other dice can be rolled if necessary... :-) This still feels a bit clunky to me. Custom dice might be better, if one side of a single die is red and another is green then your 3D6 roll can show anything between three greens and three reds without necessarily being tied to 1s and 6s. I would like to have enough dice like this such that I had one where each number was covered by red and green and the first randomness would come when three of those dice were chosen to roll my 3d6....

What? You gave everyone 12 Speed and imposed penalties for multiple actions until refreshed by an Action Phase? Or did you split up the current actions down to segments?? Doc

I think you should try aiming for 16 (as a discipline and, if it slips to 32, then so be it. If you aim at 40 you will end up with 60 or more!! :-)

Actually, that is it. A multiple volume slipcase thing could quite easily be 1) how to play the game 2) Powers, Skills, Complications etc 3) DC animated adventure style game 4) Avengers style game 5) Western Shores Fantasy game 6) Babylon 5 style game I am thinking of the first two very much in the concise style of the recent rulebooks - very little in the way of examples, those would be for the playbooks. I have suggested four playbooks - I am thinking maybe 16 pages. Just an overview of what is in play - the basic rules of building that have been used, an example of the style, perhaps 6 pages discussing how to build things for this kind of game a very quick adventure with a map a villain and four pre-gens. Each playbook should allow anyone to pick up the game and, with the aid of book 1, play the game. Four playbooks should be enough to showcase the diversity and there should be more playbooks to purchase... Doc

Oh absolutely, I am a good boy, I did not succumb to the evil optimisation urge - not least because the Gm is notoriously allergic to high speeds. :-)

It does fundamentally change things. Like non-combat movement - I dont think I would allow the concept in this - you can move your full allowance every segment. That means a SPD 4 Brick with 6m running suddenly goes from running at 2m/s (72km/h) to running at 6m/s (216km/h). I dont think he needs the doubling rule to get him up to doing high speeds. Not sure what effect the penalties are going to have but he will be accumulating 8 a turn!! :-) I like the fact it is easy to get up high in velocity but I think that the core running will have to be reduced (or the penalties for running so recklessly become severe enough that it is not worth using every segment unless you need to). Doc

My friend decided to run a fourth edition game as he just bought the bundle of books. I was excited and gave Ben digging out old books to build a character. I have just experienced an edge case that drove the demise of elemental controls. The character manipulates dimensions and mostly operates while shrunk. When shrunk he is also faster (better able to manipulate the fourth dimension). He has two big cost powers - shrinking and flight and so I bought an EC which gave a reasonably modest point saving and tied the powers together. The additional SPD was not costly enough to fit in the EC, so I bought it outside. Then I noticed that my SPD3 character now can switch to SPD 7 when shrunk. For a VERY modest investment of points (about 6 to my rough calculation), I could purchase an additional 9 SPD in the EC rather than an additional 4 SPD outside... It is only by revisiting the old rule sets that you begin appreciating some of the changes that have been made over 5th and 6th. Doc