Doc Democracy

Haven't played this yet but intend to at the next opportunity. This comes from several discussions here on the boards. Rather than re-rolling etc, the natural 3 adds dice to the damage pool - one d6 for ever 1 the roll is made by (with a minimum of 3d6 normal). you then use the best dice for your damage. If you would normally roll 12d6 and need 11 to hit the a natural 3 will allow you to roll 20d6 and choose the 12 you want to use for damage. I like the way this might allow either maximising STUN or excluding enough 6s to ensure no BODY damage is likely.

pretty much the same principle that a sonic grenade might hurt the ears of everyone within a physical area, a psychic grenade might jangle the brains of everyone within a set area - no need to target a particular mind or brain...

I really am more about how something is treated rather than what it ostensibly looks like. Is it obvious? Well if I am the GM and I want to remove the focus, I do not expect the player to rely on activating it in secret and trying to hide its nature. I will expect villains to have seen it being activated, or there are mini-figures out there with Barrier-Man's belt activated Barrier . :-). That is obvious despite not gave a glow extend from belt to barrier. Accessible is accessible. If someone close can grab it during combat, then it is accessible. The barrier itself is, IMO, irrelevant to whether it is accessible or not. Doc

I had to really convince myself it was necessary. :-). Thus was not a discretionary spend....

I don't think you are missing much. Steve took a big step down the path of losing characteristics completely. You see the issues he had doing that but I think that characteristics are anathema to the underlying ideology of HERO and there very existence introduces a skewing factor to powers etc. The biggest issue is that not all characteristics are the same. Some are counters, like END and STUN. Some are skill enhancers, like DEX and STR. Some allow interaction with the game like OCV. Some are a mix. If you extract the counters and interactors, then everything else can be covered by skills and powers. Potentially everything can be done bar a couple of numbers - the counters would become more power like and the interactors more skilll like. A clever character sheet would remove the dissonance of no characteristics. The clarity gain within the system would be worth it, no longer having to balance energy blast with strength damage for example which has been a huge balance issue through every edition after first, weakening the key principle of 5pts equals 1 DC. Doc

Yeah but we are talking superheroes here. We can presume around 20PD already there. I think among superheroes we will average above the maximum BODY and therefore meet the key requirement of staying alive from a terminal velocity fall. With about 70PD against the STUN you are looking at 35 STUN on average and can expect to be stunned and potentially knocked out. All in all a reasonable outcome from falling so far.... :-)

You know, we seem to be stuck in a paper paradigm, even our electronic rules are essentially digital paper, not truly electronic. I think that the big system reference should be hidden on the interwebs... I am waiting for the first company to truly embrace digital to make things easier for players and GMs. I would love to see a rulebook that really works on a tablet, that takes advantage of the flexibility that digital text can provide. Paper is a fantastic technology and pdfs do not provide the same kind of value that a decent book does. However, the potential is there. For HERO the advantages should be huge - with all the detail able to be called when it is needed and folded away when it is not. I am also waiting for that time when the GM can claim that screen space that some players use during a game for game stuff. Interactive character sheets, notes etc. All the things that Roll20 provides at the game table. But I think that is several steps AFTER a decent digital rulebook. (and I am aware I am so far off topic now that I am going to stop dreaming and get back to work). Doc

I think the obviousness of touching the belt comes down to how obviously it is described. If the GM explicitly links the action and the power, or simply tells someone if they ask, then it is obvious to me. As for the accessibility, if the character also has a sword, does that also become inaccessible due to the barrier?

If you declare the belt to be accessible which means it can be grabbed away then I would go for OAF. It is obvious, when the power is switched on, that it comes from the belt. Good enough for me. If you can get close enough, you can grab it away, that is accessible. Doc

I would be happier if I had not made a resolution to be frugal for the next couple of months...and just gone and broken that...thanks Jason, now my wife thinks I am weak-willed....

Is now available on Bundle of Holding.... http://beyondthebundle.com/2017-04-11/champions-4e-bundles-faq/

I think this is a complication rather than a side effect. I don't think there is anything in the powers that is fine-grained enough. I think there needs to be something you design yourself. The use of your powers is killing you, what does that mean? Does it really impact on your abilities, on your resilience? While I would not buy it with points I see an END Reserve, maybe 100 END. Now, whenever you use your powers, you burn END. If you have no STUN in the reserve, none of your powers work but the only way to recover the STUN is to burn CON, BODY, REC and STR. I would also buy my REC such that it did not recover the effects of the powers. That would have a slow burn effect, an incentive not to use the powers and long term consequences if the powers continue to be used. If you want it more up front, have less END. If you want it frantic use the battery directly for the powers. Ultimately you need to be thinking of a way out, redemption, even just to get back to an even keel while looking for something permanent.

Yeah, they send you out monthly teasers for all kinds of things you think you might want for prices that are pretty easy to afford. It is all temptation, no commitment though... :-) It is a great way to build up a suite of game pdfs, especially to supplement the paper copies you might have. Doc

Hell Cantriped, you have just convinced me that I am never gonna revisit acceleration and deceleration again...or use it in my games. The non-combat bit was the absolute kicker. It will cost me twice as much to use my non-combat movement as part of the acceleration calculations. I might as well simply purchase twice as much flight (and have even greater non-combat). Even should I simply want better acceleration, I am better urchasing flight limited (only for acceleration/deceleration), I think I might be tempted to give that a+1 or better limitation considering the value I reckon it would have in gameplay... Something for the next edition to consider I think...

I guess desperation means I push my five metres of flight and use it non-combat, so get 20m of deceleration in the first phase. Don't even need to push in the second phase...

Good point, I need to keep reading when I go to the manual! So I go back to my original gripe, why is acceleration/deceleration broken in that the first turning on of a power gains 10m acceleration in automatically reversing gravitic acceleration? It is what the rules say but does not make sense. Acceleration and deceleration are effectively the same thing. I maintain it is unfair that the environment gets to apply a constant acceleration, segment by segment but non-combat flight does not. It is equally as inconsistent as gravity based acceleration disappearing the second a flight power is switched on...

I think you misread my question. It was basically saying that the SPD4 character moving on segment 3, and making a full move, gets to do that whole move is segment 3. He is not still moving in segment 4, allowing the SPD 6 character to shoot him before he gets to cover or gets close enough to deliver a punch. Like I said, don't think we are disagreeing, but you might disagree. :-) Doc

i was SO sure I had written segment! :-) I think you have gotten things slightly wrong though. I was going to make fun of immediately losing gravitic acceleration down and immediately beginning to accelerate upwards as breaking the deceleration rules....then I read the rules again. I am going to resent being forced to do that so often.... Anyway. Our SPD 2 character acts, gets knocked out the airplane his next action is on segment 6. By that time his velocity is 60m. I am presuming 12m flight and on segment 6 he begins to accelerate upwards. If I presume initial acceleration to be 0, we are at terminal velocity, first metre of flight reduces downward velocity to 55, next to 50. By the time he has flown 12m the downward velocity is 0. Stationary in the air. He will have fallen 240m, I allowed 30m down for the segment in which he accelerates upward. So, not as terrible as I thought. Deceleration of 5m per metre travelled. Not 5m per phase. Your example is only true if the spd2 character only had 1m of flight. Doc

I think the one thing I would want to add is to ignore the names of manoeuvres and concentrate on the effects they provide. It is fine for a manoeuvre to be called Trip but it tends to mean people think of tripping up their opponents. It can, instead, mean lashing at them with a whip and leaving them prone on the ground (not exactly a trip) or using some other method that renders an opponent prone through the use of overcoming their STR with your own... You can always amend the manoeuvre for a particular character as long as you do not unduly unbalance the drawbacks or benefits provided. Use them creatively as templates and you can provide your players with far more evocative combat manoeuvres despite them pretty much providing the same mechanical benefits. Doc

What you will find is that there is always a multitude of ways to do things in HERO and you may get quite a few folk providing you with options. All of them will be more or less rules correct, some will point out where you, as GM, need to make decisions on what you will allow and all of them will have pros and cons. Now, as usual for a player, this one has a visual that they want to play out in game. I am presuming that the idea is that the player wants to do something that gives him a combat advantage. My first question, as GM, would have been "Are you content to try and do this stage by stage using the combat rules or do you want this to always work when you try it?" There is a combat manoeuvre called Trip. That could be used at range by the character to render the target prone. If the target does not manage to get to his feet before the characters next action, the advantages are all there for the character to shoot him with the pistol in his other hand. This relies on a few rolls going well and will depend on how quick the character is in relation to those people he intends to trip and shoot. :-) On the other hand you can spend points on making things work the way you want them. I would guess that the main reason the player wants this (beyond being a cool visual) is that he wants to have a more reliable way of shooting an opponent. He could simply buy +5 OCV with pistol and limit it with (only against opponents that could be tripped using a whip +1/2 AND only when dual wielding a whip and a pistol +?). That makes the levels cheaper to buy but makes it far easier to hit opponents when fighting this way. The opponent is not prone and does not have to make rolls to get up but the player does not have to make rolls to accomplish the trip nor go through the whole STR vs STR thing. It also can be used every single action. The visual would be the same, "the whip snakes out causing the opponent to crash to the floor and the character shoots him in the back as he scrambles to his feet". You will note that I listed the value of the second limitation as +?, that is to reflect the fact that I do not know how often that the character would be without access to both. If the assumption is that most of the time, both these are available, then this limitation is worth no points. If you were to manage it so that there were times when he would be without one or the other then it might be worth +1/4 or +1/2, probably. Your judgement. The question is, would the player be content with this? Are you content to give him the +5 with his pistol under these circumstances? There are going to be other options offered, I am sure, which will accomplish the same, or render the opponent prone, or helpless or whatever. What you need to think about is what the player's expectations of this are - ask him. Find out whether he just wants that better opportunity to hit, whether he wants the opponent prone, whether he wants the sort of automatic success I outlined or just wants to know how to use the combat rules to achieve this kind of thing. Doc

Is the answer to this to make a difference between combat deceleration/acceleration and non-combat? It seems unfair that gravity is accelerating you every phase and, despite you firing your boots continuously, they only have an impact twice every six seconds (for a SPD 2 character). In combat, you can move to phased movement, which might mean a fall kills you quicker but you are being distracted by other things....

We all have had huge arguments about edition changes and there are those who hold out, refusing to move on or buy the next edition. I don't think a newbie coming to the game with fresh eyes would see significant differences beyond ever increasing page counts of the rules. We really do have a game that is substantively the same as it was all those years ago. That is exemplified to me when I pick up a first edition villain and, with a few adjustments for power level, can pretty much drop him into my current adventure. He might look a little bit two dimensional but fundamentally he is the same. Obviously I can spot the design issues as Doc FirstEdition is built with different fundamental assumptions in mind, such as END costs, power framework shenanigans and what constitutes an acceptable suite of skills but the fundamentals are all pretty much the same. A question of 4th, 5th or 6th to me is pretty irrelevant. I have them all. I probably run games with 4th edition hangovers that I never got round to updating in my understanding of the rules, I have 6th edition stuff in there that I like. This is HERO. You build the game you want. Each edition simply gives you a different perspective on how you might do that. Anyone that wants to adopt a whole edition and make everything else Harram, is missing something fundamental about the system. I love a system argument as much as the next geek but if you can afford it why would you not pick up a new edition and mine it for the things that you like?? Doc

I try to communicate to new players that each turn is broken up into a number of action phases based on your SPD. You can act at any time within each of these action phases but you cannot save them up and act twice within a single phase (obviously I get onto aborting to defensive actions a bit later on...) Doc

I think that the best solution in Roll20 is likely to be a custom card deck where each player has the number of cards as they have phases, with some design work, I think it should be possible to do a player by player run through of who should be next. Trouble would come with delays etc but I think it might be workable. Will be my next experiment, haven't actually played with the cards much...

To be fair to zslane, he did not say you HAD to gave the same velocity, he was pointing out that the movement effects linger through a phase even if the actual movement happens in a single segment (good and bad). Personally, the acceleration/deceleration rules were too much bureaucracy for my group, we ignore them. Doc