Some help building/balancing powers

[Vlad]

I'm preparing a short campaign of warrior tribes who have banded together to stave off a common foe and wanted to give each a unique ability to distinguish them in battle. Unfortunately, my understanding of powers is somewhat limited, so I am hoping people here could offer some ideas as well as comment if they think the options are significantly unbalanced.

Tribe 1 (The Grey): This one I believe I have set as sort of an innate cape/cloak combined with 1-2 levels of super jump, allowing them to leap and glide over large patches of battlefield. The gliding limitation on flight in the basic book handles this pretty much the way I want.

Tribe 2 (The Red): I would like a way to model Power Blow as an ability, but I am completely spinning my wheels when I try to structure it. In order to make it more appealing, I'd like to also allow it "charge" (concentrate) while the PC is either a. moving or b. doing anything other than attacking

Tribe 3 (The Blue): I would like this ability to allow a PC to essentially "disappear" from battle if he spends a turn outside of an enemy's vision, forcing a new stealth vs perception contest if the PC attempts to attack them. We normally have a house rule allowing at the very least a dodge-4 even against attacks from the back hex once a combatant appears in play.

When I think about these ideas, my head spins and it feels like they might be impossible to model, but I've rarely seen anything fail to be solved here so I thought I would see what people might come up with. Any/all ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Vlad

Tribe 2 (The Red): I would like a way to model Power Blow as an ability, but I am completely spinning my wheels when I try to structure it. In order to make it more appealing, I'd like to also allow it "charge" (concentrate) while the PC is either a. moving or b. doing anything other than attacking

Compartmentalized Mind, Basic p.43, limit it to Power Blow, Concentrate only when not attacking for -80%.

Originally Posted by Vlad

Tribe 3 (The Blue): I would like this ability to allow a PC to essentially "disappear" from battle if he spends a turn outside of an enemy's vision, forcing a new stealth vs perception contest if the PC attempts to attack them. We normally have a house rule allowing at the very least a dodge-4 even against attacks from the back hex once a combatant appears in play.

Chameleon, Basic p.41, choose an appropriate level.

[Vlad]

Thank you - those ideas are very helpful.

For Tribe 3 - I guess I was thinking of a property the character would have which for all intents and purposes caused others to "forget" about their whereabouts when not in their view. Perhaps this would amount to simply being untrackable by anything but vision via a high level of silence or similar.

In trying to think it through the game mechanic I am trying to play with is the idea that once a combatant has been introduced into battle, they cannot try to use stealth unless they find a new place to hide, likely outside of the battle area. Now I'm questioning if that is even a proper interpretation of the rules or just a house rule we use.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Vlad

In trying to think it through the game mechanic I am trying to play with is the idea that once a combatant has been introduced into battle, they cannot try to use stealth unless they find a new place to hide, likely outside of the battle area. Now I'm questioning if that is even a proper interpretation of the rules or just a house rule we use.

Stated that way it sounds like a house rule you use. There's no reason you can't go from being seen to being hidden in the course of combat without running off into the distance. (What does 'out of the area' even mean?)

You are generally going to need to be someplace conducive to hiding to be able to get Stealth working. Chameleon can help with that I think. And if you've previously been spotted, your enemies will have a decent idea of where you were when they last saw you. But you can sneak away from that location of course.

If you're thinking about combat as close melee combat, then employing stealth will usually imply running away from the opposition to find somewhere where it's possible to hide, but I'm not sure what you mean about 'outside of an enemy's vision' in that case. For ranged combat, shooting from locations suitable for hiding or moving stealthily is pretty common.

[Vlad]

Maybe I can get at the source of my confusion another way. Attacks from the side are at -2, but assuming a totally silent attacker who started and attacked from your side, what is is that allows the defender to get a defense at all? All I can come up with is the "general awareness" of combatants in battle, which is kind of the thing I'd like to suppress or negate.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Vlad

Maybe I can get at the source of my confusion another way. Attacks from the side are at -2, but assuming a totally silent attacker who started and attacked from your side, what is is that allows the defender to get a defense at all? All I can come up with is the "general awareness" of combatants in battle, which is kind of the thing I'd like to suppress or negate.

Characters can see and generally have situational awareness into their side hexes. Back hexes are the ones where you can't see it coming. (Which doesn't mean you can't tell it's coming by other means and defend...or does depending on which portion of the Basic Set you look at, little bit of a bug there.)

[Vlad]

yeah I guess it's defining the source of the "situational awareness" that I was interested in. I can put my fingers an inch behind my eyes on either side and move them all I want and never see them. Maybe it's the idea that over the course of a second a character is likely to rotate their field of view somewhat...

[Tinman]

For Tribe 3: I thik what you are looking for is very swimilar to 'Mind Clouding' from Psionic Powers. IDHMBWM but I'll try to elaborate when I get home tonight.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Vlad

Tribe 3 (The Blue): I would like this ability to allow a PC to essentially "disappear" from battle if he spends a turn outside of an enemy's vision, forcing a new stealth vs perception contest if the PC attempts to attack them.

Extra Option: Backstab (from DF2) [1] and Stealth +5 (Only for Backstab -60%) [4]

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Vlad

yeah I guess it's defining the source of the "situational awareness" that I was interested in. I can put my fingers an inch behind my eyes on either side and move them all I want and never see them. Maybe it's the idea that over the course of a second a character is likely to rotate their field of view somewhat...

If I put one finger on the side of my head, I can't see it...but if I put my whole hand an inch or so behind my eye and orthogonal to my head, I can see it. My peripheral vision does include things that are behind my head so long as they're a certain distance away. (Recently verified, to the confusion of people around me...) The eyes can definitely cover more than 90 degrees off-axis.

GURPS combat's 'side vision' probably does assume some head motion, but it doesn't take much to cover the 240 degrees of regular front+side vision.