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PnP help! Power frameworks!

Archived PostArchived Post Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
Hello! i'm new to the Hero system (and i love it D:)

But i still did not understood how multipower and power frameworks work (eww. that sounded awful)

Multipower gives the player the power to.. do a power in the range of the power reserve ( ? )
but.. what about the... slots in the frameworks? i still did not get it <.<
Post edited by Archived Post on

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  • Archived PostArchived Post Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
    edited May 2012
    Alright, here's the lowdown. A Multipower is a way to reduce the cost of getting a lot of powers by making them at least partially mutually exclusive.

    The points in the Multipower reserve limit how powerful any slot can be, and since you already paid for most of the active points in the power the slots are given a large discount depending on which level of exclusion you picked:

    Fixed, the slot always takes up it's entire active points worth of the reserve even if you only use a little of it. This gets it's cost divided by 10, but remember that this is in addition to the reserve cost that you already paid for.

    Variable, the slot takes up only as much of the reserve as you choose to use this phase. The cost of these slots are only divided by 5 to make up for the extra flexibility.

    Multipowers are not cost effective unless you have at least two slots.

    Powers with set effect levels like Desolidification don't make much sense as Variable slots, while other, highly situational, powers can be abusive if bought as Fixed slots.

    Variable Power Pools, the framework you didn't mention, simply make it feasible to have a ton of different powers with the restriction that you can only have so many at once. This can get expensive if you want to change powers on the fly in combat.

    If you don't want youir GM to kill you for slowing the game to a crawl then you should have a sheet of paper with all of the powers your planning on using written down before the session starts, and you'd better have the GM approve all of those powers before you try and use any of them.

    Multipower slots are set in stone and paid for individually, VPP slots are not but you pay more up front.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
    edited May 2012
    It's been a while, but wasn't there also an Elemental Control framework? All the powers had to be thematically similar, or something, and you got a discount of some kind? Oy, it's been years since I thought about p-n-p Champions...

    The Multipower I always liked to think of as a utility belt --- have some fixed gadgets that you could use ONE AT A ATIME. Another example would be Ultra Boy from the DC Comics Legion of Superheroes: he had (basically) all of Superman's powers BUT he could only use one at a time, so he would have to switch from invulnerability to super strength and could not use them both at the same time.

    A Variable Power Pool I always like to think of as a wizard's ability to just "do magic"... sure, you could say a wizard has a fixed list of spells in his spellbook and can only use a certain spell at a time (Multipower) but if your wizard can just "whip up" a spell to fit the situation, then variable power pool is the way to go.

    As noted, though, you REALLY don't want to tick off the GM by having to construct brand new powers at the drop of a hat... and VPPs are also dangerous because they would let the player circumvent any obstacle the GM presented (unless the GM tightly monitored the VPP)....
  • Archived PostArchived Post Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
    edited May 2012
    Sorpaijen wrote:
    It's been a while, but wasn't there also an Elemental Control framework? All the powers had to be thematically similar, or something, and you got a discount of some kind? Oy, it's been years since I thought about p-n-p Champions...

    The Elemental Control(EC) was removed in the 6th Edition. Now, if you have thematically similar powers, you can apply the Unified Power limitation which also means that any adjustment power that acts on a power that is Unified acts on all of them.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
    edited May 2012
    cptpatriot wrote:
    The Elemental Control(EC) was removed in the 6th Edition. Now, if you have thematically similar powers, you can apply the Unified Power limitation which also means that any adjustment power that acts on a power that is Unified acts on all of them.

    Ouch, if limitations still work as they did in previous editions of the game, this could really hurt. Limitations suffered pretty serious diminishing returns, so another limitation (such as this Unified Power Limitation) may not actually reduce the cost of a power all that much, while creating a situation where the power could be very seriously impacted.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
    edited May 2012
    wrote:
    Ouch, if limitations still work as they did in previous editions of the game, this could really hurt. Limitations suffered pretty serious diminishing returns, so another limitation (such as this Unified Power Limitation) may not actually reduce the cost of a power all that much, while creating a situation where the power could be very seriously impacted.
    If it's a -1 limitation it's cutting the cost in half, which is all an EC ever did. Also, the suggested starting points in 6e are 450, iirc. The few points you might lose in a fractional adjustment are meaningless in the big picture when you have an extra 100 pts to play with.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
    edited May 2012
    Actually, it is only a -1/4 limitation
  • Archived PostArchived Post Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
    edited May 2012
    Cosmic_One wrote:
    If it's a -1 limitation it's cutting the cost in half, which is all an EC ever did. Also, the suggested starting points in 6e are 450, iirc. The few points you might lose in a fractional adjustment are meaningless in the big picture when you have an extra 100 pts to play with.


    A -1 limitation only cuts the cost of a power in half if it is the only limitation.

    Example 1:

    Power costs 100 points.

    -1 limitation reduces that to 50.


    Example 2:

    Power costs 100 points, but already has a -1/2 limitation, reducing the cost to 67.

    -1 limitation reduces that to 40.


    Example 3:

    If it was a 100 point power in a 50 point EC, with the same -1/2 limitation mentioned in Example 2:

    Power costs 50

    -1/2 limitation reduces that to 33.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
    edited May 2012
    Ashen_X wrote:
    A -1 limitation only cuts the cost of a power in half if it is the only limitation.

    Example 1:

    Power costs 100 points.

    -1 limitation reduces that to 50.


    Example 2:

    Power costs 100 points, but already has a -1/2 limitation, reducing the cost to 67.

    -1 limitation reduces that to 40.


    Example 3:

    If it was a 100 point power in a 50 point EC, with the same -1/2 limitation mentioned in Example 2:

    Power costs 50

    -1/2 limitation reduces that to 33.
    Yes, but my point was that they give you 100 extra starting points to offset the increase. So the 7 point difference between 33 and 40 above is not that big of a deal when you have an extra 100 points to compensate. In your example that could be 14 slots of an EC with no real cost penalty to the respective character compared to 5th edition - where the starting points are 350.

    Either way I guess it's moot as the limitation is only -1/4.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
    edited May 2012
    Cosmic_One wrote:
    Either way I guess it's moot as the limitation is only -1/4.

    Indeed.

    Is the 100 extra points assigned specifically for the increase in cost of EC's ? Or are there other cost increases ? I mean 5E had a significant starting point cost increase due to changes in power, skill, talents, etc costs, despite not having a significant change to EC costs.

    It doesn't really affect me that much as I, based on the changes from 4e to 5e opted to not buy 6e. It felt weird as I had bought everything that Hero Games had ever released (dice, software, books, t-shirts, etc) prior to 6e.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
    edited June 2012
    The increased point total is mostly do to turning all secondary characteristics into actual characteristics, including CV. Meaning you have to buy them all up separately. This helped balance considerably and allowed for effective supers that didn't have at least 30 DEX.

    Characteristic point costs were changed appropriately, except that DEX is now the only characteristic with a roll that costs 2 points instead of 1. I personally don't think that the higher initiative is worth the extra point cost, but it's small enough that it doesn't bother me too much.

    And actually, most elemental controls ended up being cheaper when converted to the limitation, mostly due to the fact that you no longer had to have all the powers at roughly the same point cost and that you can apply the lim to both powers that don't cost endurance and that are in other frameworks like Multipowers or VPP.

    They also replaced COM with a talent built on limited PRE since the only thing COM did was modify PRE rolls. Since theoretically PRE was already D&D Charisma, this isn't a huge change. That didn't stop there from being an idiotically huge amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth over it though.
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