Hello, MY First Thread, And Help Me Create A Hero

A few questions.
Why the name "Morpheus Rex?" Wouldn't that mean literally "King of Sleep?"
What game system are you translating from? (My guess is Palladium/Rifts)
Is this for a game someone else is running, or just making a character trying to learn the system?
Which version of Hero are you using, and what books do you have?



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Under "Complications" (or Disadvantages if you're using an earlier edition) put a 5 pt Complication for -

Negative Reputation: Mistakenly thought to be of an unpopular sexual orientation, Infrequently (Extreme; Known Only To A Small Group)

A Complication, or Disadvantage, is like a liability where the Skills, Powers, etc. are like assets. This gets you an extra 5 pts to spend on the character. Whoever is running the game must approve Complications and will almost certainly set an upper limit on how many points you can get from them. Complications are often a good place to start building a character. Look at Batman: his character is almost DEFINED by "Haunted by death of parents" and the rest of the character flows from that.



Another example of a Complication, this one worth 15:

Hunted: Dr. Chu, mad scientist conducting experiments on the character. Very Frequently (Less Pow; PC has a Public ID or is otherwise very easy to find; Mildly "Punish" )

Complications/Disadvantages usually gain points according to how often they are apt to come up, how severe they are, and other factors. For example, as Dr. Chu's patient, this character is probably easy for Dr. Chu to find, and that's why it's 15 pts and not 10.



Any particular specific reason the power has the exact limitations it does?



Oh, that's easy in Hero.

Look up the Power "Regeneration." It's slow by default, restoring 1 lost pt of BODy per week. Use the "Can restore limbs" Adder.




WHY can't he use it in combat? Because it requires concentration? Because it takes a long time? What does it mean to be "scrambled" and how often is the character going to be exposed to an electromagnetic pulse powerful enough to scramble this ability?

But I'm going to make a few guesses about how it works, to show you how to create powers in Hero.

Start with what we call "Reason from Effect." In other words, ask "what does this power do? That's easy, it moves him instantly up to 75 meters without physically crossing the intervening space. The Power that does that is, conveniently, Teleportation.

So, Teleportation up to 75 m costs 75 pts. This is the BASE COST.

Some Powers have "Adders" - optional extras that add onto the Base Cost. Say you want to be able to board a bus and get off where you want without worrying about bus stops. Normally if you are on a bus and teleport to the sidewalk, you could bowl pedestrians over and crash into a lamp post because you're still moving at the bus' speed. Also, you'd sit on the bus and stand on the sidewalk. No Relative Velocity is a 10 pt Adder and Position Shift is a 5 pt Adder. Now your Base Cost is 90 pts. Might as well add Safe Aquatic Teleport so you can pop in and out of water and raise the distance to 80 m so it has an even 100 Base Cost.

No, optionally, we can apply one or more Advantages to a Power. Advantages make a Power "better" in some ways, but more expensive. Let's add Safe Blind Telport so you can go someplace you can't see (if you won't "fit" exactly where you meant to go, the Power puts you as close as safely possible. "Safe" means you don't appear inside a solid object, if you just teleported into an active volcano's caldera you're still fried.) This is a +1/4 Advantage, meaning we find one quarter of the Base Cost, and add that to the Base Cost.

100 + 25 = 125

This is the ACTIVE COST, a rough measure of just how powerful an ability potentially is.

Now we can apply Limitations. Limitations make a Power less effective in some way, but cheaper. I'll apply some Limitations that explain why it can't be used in combat.

Limitation (explanation) and value:
Concentration, 0 DCV, unaware of nearby events (sitting duck, totally in a trance) value -3/4
Extra Time, 20 mi (takes 20 minutes of concentration) value -2 3/4
Lockout (can't use other powers) value -1/2

Now, about the "scrambled by EMP" thing. I'll interpret that as "takes a lot of energy to teleport through jamming or interference."

Extra END Cost, X10, in uncommon circumstance (costs 120 END pts if jammed etc.) value -3

END is ENDurance, the points you expend to exert yourself. The Teleport cost 12 normally, and 120 if you're in an intense magnetic field, there's a nuclear bomb going off, etc.

Total Limitations is -7. We use a minus sign to avoid confusing them with Advantage values, but we don't actually subtract anything. To get the REAL COST of the power, we take Active Points and divide by 1 + 7.

125/8 = 16 Character Points this cost from your total budget. Using the Hero Designer program makes the math easier, and I think there's a helpful chart in the rule book you can use if you don't have Hero Designer.




So, anything he can hear or read, he can understand and respond to? Given that you have this ability, why is it that further on you list




As far as I know, Klingons and Vulcans don't communicate by sense of smell or bioluminescence. This is like saying "Can manipulate any form of matter, and oh yeah, can manipulate peanut butter."



How does a geeky two bit piano player come to be a world's expert on Space Science?



I'm not sure what "Skill Master" is in whatever system you first created the character in, but in Hero we have "Skill Enhancers" including one called Scholar that this character should take. Scholar costs 3 pts but subtracts 1 pt from the cost of every Knowledge Skill (minimum cost still 1.)



Besides Scholar, and lots of Knowledge Skills, consider Skill Levels, giving you a bonus to a given set of Skills (such as Knowledge Skills)



Look at the STR chart. Find what STR lifts 5 tons. That's your STR score. Looks like 18 in DEX and INT.

Lucius Alexander

House of the Palindromedary