Super HP [Supers]

[AlexanderHowl]

I suggest that we should have Super HP to complement Super ST. Super HP would provide an extra pool of HP that only absorbs damage when a character spends FP to active it. It is HP (Super-Effort, +400%) [10] and benefits from the same scale as Super ST. Super HP heals proportional to normal HP and adds to normal HP under normal circumstances (for example, a character with Super HP 30/120 and Regeneration (Slow) would normally heal HP 3/12 every 12 hours). The cost of Super ST should be increased to 50 CP/level to reflect the existence of Super HP.

So, what do you think? Would you allow Super HP? What impact do you think that it would have?

[awesomenessofme1]

It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how it would actually work. Do you just choose every time you take a hit whether or not you want to spend FP to take it off your Super HP rather than regular HP? Is there some kind of ongoing cost?

[Refplace]

I'd go with DR (Ablative, Costs FP) instead.
For me the best answer to high scaled HP is IT:DR.

[whswhs]

I don't think it makes much sense to say that you can make a heroic effort of will and withstand extra damage.

We have Damage Reduction (if I recall the name correctly), which divides damage that you take by 2, 3, or 4, and has an exaggerated version for supers that gives you bigger divisors. I think that makes better sense.

[Joseph Paul]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't think it makes much sense to say that you can make a heroic effort of will and withstand extra damage.

Spending FP to mitigate the consequences of damage like shock, stun, or the breaking of limbs (to some extent - no one is going to run far on a broken femur) might be a better fit?

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't think it makes much sense to say that you can make a heroic effort of will and withstand extra damage.

If you require comic book super powers to make sense, you end up with mostly lame super powers. The first Avengers had a scientist irradiated by a bomb, who should have just been dead or dying with radiation poisoning, a doctor who found a walking stick in a cave while on vacation, a rich man who put transistors, magnets, and roller skates in some iron armor, and a pair or researchers who discovered how ants communicate (but can't get them to do anything human-meaningful).

The difficulty I have with this power is game-mechanical; what happens to the increased hit points when fatigue expenditure ends? Does the injury scale when everything reduces? Then it's not too mechanically different from IT:DR with costs fatigue, except maybe for slam attacks...

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Culture20

If you require comic book super powers to make sense, you end up with mostly lame super powers. The first Avengers had a scientist irradiated by a bomb, who should have just been dead or dying with radiation poisoning, a doctor who found a walking stick in a cave while on vacation, a rich man who put transistors, magnets, and roller skates in some iron armor, and a pair or researchers who discovered how ants communicate (but can't get them to do anything human-meaningful).

I'm fine with accepting the tropes of the genre. But I don't see that "spend FP to make a heroic effort and gain increased ability to withstand damage" is one of the tropes of the genre.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how it would actually work. Do you just choose every time you take a hit whether or not you want to spend FP to take it off your Super HP rather than regular HP? Is there some kind of ongoing cost?

I imagine that you would have to pay one FP each time you take damage to shift damage to the reserve HP. In order to keep it balanced with IT:DR, a minimum of one point of HP damage would be applied to regular HP and the remainder would be applied to reserve HP. If your reserve HP reached 0, you would need to check for consciousness and at -(reserve HP), you would need to check for death.

For example, Tungsten Girl would have ST 20 [100] and HP+10 (Super-Effort, +400%; Super, -10%) [98], giving her HP 30/120. She also possesses DR 10 (Super, -10%; Tough Skin, -40%) [25] and Homogeneous (Super, -10%) [36] because she is made of living tungsten. If she suffers 60 damage from a 50 caliber BMG, she would subtract 10 for her DR (leaving 50), divide by two because of Homogeneous (leaving 25), and spend 1 FP to shift all but one HP damage to her reserve HP (leaving her with 29/95 HP). Since she did not take a major wound, she does not have to roll for knockdown, though she will probably take cover.

[Anthony]

There's nothing preventing taking IT(DR) or DR with a cost fatigue limitation, which will produce more generally coherent results.

[AlexanderHowl]

You have to activate those in advance though if you have Costs FP. They do not reflexively activate (unlike the Super HP).