The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents

[Flawless P]

I'm sinking my teeth into this newest AP and I love the fact that James has 5hd in mind.

If you don't mind discussing it hopefully without spoilers to the rest of the game...

What kind of challeges did you find in as Mr. Stolze said "Giving the kids the keys to the car"?

Also, if I can get Thad to weigh in on why he chose to go with turning his 5d in mind into 5hd, and what kind of challenges role playing wise arise when you have the power of "knowing every fact ever".

All in all I like it. James has been consistently tied with Norm for my favorite Hero so I just felt the need to ask.

[Salrantol]

I'm sinking my teeth into this newest AP and I love the fact that James has 5hd in mind.... Also, if I can get Thad to weigh in on why he chose to go with turning his 5d in mind into 5hd, and what kind of challenges role playing wise arise when you have the power of "knowing every fact ever".

I believe that's "5hd+5d in mind".

[Flawless P]

I think it's 5hd in mind plus 5d in Super Science!

[unitomega]

I think it's 5hd in mind plus 5d in Super Science!

Nah, pretty sure he was rolling raw Mind checks at 5d+5hd, at points. Which is way cooler since it means that if James/Green Goo slept he would continue to think up cool new things even then. But instead James is just constantly trying to find the Unified Theory of Everything(mancy) 1/100th of a second at a time.

[ThadExMachina]

I'm sinking my teeth into this newest AP and I love the fact that James has 5hd in mind.

If you don't mind discussing it hopefully without spoilers to the rest of the game...

What kind of challeges did you find in as Mr. Stolze said "Giving the kids the keys to the car"?

Also, if I can get Thad to weigh in on why he chose to go with turning his 5d in mind into 5hd, and what kind of challenges role playing wise arise when you have the power of "knowing every fact ever".

All in all I like it. James has been consistently tied with Norm for my favorite Hero so I just felt the need to ask.

The choice primarily came from the fact that he was no longer running on human hardware. Since he was basically an organic supercomputer, I wanted to reflect that in the stats. For RPing purposes, I tried to approached it by having James be (if possible) more rambling and detached than he was before. I'm not sure how noticeable the shift was externally, but that was the aim.

The people I RPed with back in "the day" day were almost all high school theater folks (as was I), so I tend to blame that for my tendency to focus heavily on characterization while often forgetting the minutia of specific systems. If I'm being honest, that's one of the reasons I've run so few games in my life; I have a terrible memory for rules and numbers.

[Flawless P]

I like it. He basically went from being scatterbrained because he was hyper intelligent but not very smooth.

Then when he became hyper intelligent and collected himself a bit, he became a super computer and became scatterbrained because he knew everything all the time and he was still to an extent working off of a human brain for an operating system.

It I dig.

[Decimator]

Ross, did you ever get an answer on radius defense powers?

[clockworkjoe]

Ross, did you ever get an answer on radius defense powers?

> I've had two separate PCs so far create defend powers that have the radius quality - the first was a forcefield that I ruled outgoing attacks from anyone other than the power-user were hit with the defense power - it blocked attacks no matter who was using it.

Sounds right.

>
> The second PC had a magic illusion defense with the radius quality - he said it was a mirror image type effect - creating misleading illusions. He gave it an extra he called enemies only for +1 point that said only enemies were affected by the illusion - I think it's too powerful for those points - he wanted the defense power (4 HD with interference) to apply to all allied players in a fight.

Yeah, that's actually in the book - "Controlled Effect."   As long as he's paying for radius and Controlled Effect, that's pretty much how it works.  Lessee, my WT math is a little rusty but...

Illusion Defends (+1), Interferes (+3), Controlled Effect (+1), Radius (+2) and let's give it If/Then (only works against attacks where aiming is a thing) (-1).  Total cost is 6/12/24, so 4HD is 48 points?  That about right?  If you really WANT to nickel and dime him, you could make him buy Controlled Effect TWICE - once so that bad guys who get close aren't also being protected, and once so that good guys within the radius are protected but not fooled.  That seems kind of antagonistic to me though.  48 points is a pretty big investment. 

>
> How would you rule defend powers with the radius extra? Can that even be applied? Defend powers normally have the power capacity self but can you buy an extra power capacity to range and then get radius for it?

The way I've done it is that defend powers are self-centered.  If you buy Radius for it, it protects everyone in the radius, centered on the guy generating it.  If you buy Range for it, you can look at a dude way out there an protect him with it. 

[Flawless P]

So we are looking at something along the lines of:

So much for taking damage 9/die 4hd [72 pts]
Defends[Self]
Extras and Flaws: Radius +2, Controlled Effect +1, Interference +3, Duration +2, If/Then(must be able to gesture and speak) -1

Gives all allies within 30 ft 4hd of Interference this lasts for the entire battle, Good luck.

Of course there are nullify and interference powers to reduce the effectiveness of the defense but that is a pretty awesome power all things considered.

[Tadanori Oyama]

I'd like to add that, by default, all Defends powers are Self only. I've always made my players buy, at a minimum, Touch (+1) before allowing them to add Radius (+2).

[Flawless P]

I'd like to add that, by default, all Defends powers are Self only. I've always made my players buy, at a minimum, Touch (+1) before allowing them to add Radius (+2).

That is why I didn't take the Self Only flaw for another -3.

I think that you would be well within your rights to request that they add a +1 to affect others witha  self only power.

Although some might argue that that +1 is included in the cost pf Raidus since Area is only a +1 quality and Raidus is a +2.

Still 10/die for 4hd dice is 80 pts. Which really is just a drop in the bucket for a 500 pt character.

[Tadanori Oyama]

Well, you can't take "Self Only" on a Defense power because only effecting yourself is the default.

This is one of the reasons I love/hate Wild Talents: stuff like this is subjective. It ends up coming down to the GM of the individual group.

I've found that any persistant defensive power over 2 Width starts to get a little silly. Even just to get through those I had to start making it the rule that persistant defensives gave Gobble dice per round, not per attack, so there was a chance of overwhelming a highly defensive character.

[clockworkjoe]

Well, you can't take "Self Only" on a Defense power because only effecting yourself is the default.

This is one of the reasons I love/hate Wild Talents: stuff like this is subjective. It ends up coming down to the GM of the individual group.

I've found that any persistant defensive power over 2 Width starts to get a little silly. Even just to get through those I had to start making it the rule that persistant defensives gave Gobble dice per round, not per attack, so there was a chance of overwhelming a highly defensive character.

That's how Canddie, the bodyguard monster in the boss fight of street tier, had his defensive power set up and I thought it was quite satisfying because the players had to coordinate to overwhelm his defenses and regeneration in order to take him down.

[Flawless P]

Well, you can't take "Self Only" on a Defense power because only effecting yourself is the default.



This is one of the reasons I love/hate Wild Talents: stuff like this is subjective. It ends up coming down to the GM of the individual group.

I've found that any persistant defensive power over 2 Width starts to get a little silly. Even just to get through those I had to start making it the rule that persistant defensives gave Gobble dice per round, not per attack, so there was a chance of overwhelming a highly defensive character.

Yes that is why it Self Only wasn't included.

Another seldom thought of ruling is that, Daze (+1) actually reduces all dice pools that are rolled by a character on their turn.

Since in WT we only roll dice when it becomes important. We can use a Daze power to lower not just the next turns active component but also lower the opponents Defensive powers/Regen with that same daze.

Sure you have 4hd of armor, but the daze that affected you last turn lowers that "Roll" to a 2hd for this turn because rolling the dice was important  that turn due to the daze effect.

At least that's how it seems to me. Not a lot of people use that component however.

[Tadanori Oyama]

Yeah, once I added that it started to work alot better (except one player had a fit when he was losing a fight). There's alot to be said for forcing players to work together. For some reason, in my experience, superhero games end up with players going in extremely different directions and seldom cooperating of their own free will.