Simon

Re: Is Hero too preditable?

Re: Is Hero too preditable? Errr.... The per-die average is close to 3.5 the more dice you roll. The actual total will vary by an ever-increasing number the more dice you roll. Roll 10d6 for a while....let us know how many times you roll 35. Your rolls will average around 35, but will vary in both directions.

Re: The cranky thread Ummm...that's not entirely accurate. I've worked with a lot of the "old guard" masters -- Ming Lum, Wally Jay, Ji Han Jae, In Sun Seo, Mike Young...to name a few -- while there are certainly some that behave in the way you describe, the majority of them had more respect for their art than that. Yes, they would beat on your both physically and mentally (the good ones still do ), but there was always respect involved. Both ways. Very much like a father-son relationship...albeit a very, very strict father. They lead by example. If they say they will be somewhere, they are there. No excuses. We have a fairly odd mix of old and new in our school -- both masters were brought up very much in the old school (they've been studying about 40 years apiece) and their teaching styles reflect that. But they also view each of us (especially those of us that have been with them a while) as friends. We hang out, go drinking after class, etc. Our TKD master is an extremely old-school Korean stylist. If you go to the kukkiwon in Korea, hiis picture will be one of the few sets of blue eyes on the wall. He trains very hard (even with cancer, freshly-rebuilt shoulders, and any number of other issues) and expects us to follow. There is never any disrespect involved. Part of the training is supposed to be making you strong enough to avoid that kind of thing.

Re: The cranky thread Sure... long milliseconds = d2.getTime() - d1.getTime(); double seconds = milliseconds/1000d; double minutes = seconds/60d; double hours = minutes/60d; double days = hours/24d; double weeks = days/7d; ...and so on... Whatever units you need...

Re: The cranky thread Java SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy"); Date d1 = formatter.parse("12/01/2001"); Date d2 = formatter.parse("12/25/2005"); . . .

Re: A variation on time delay? Edit...never mind, missed the exception.

Re: A variation on time delay? Take "Extra Time" with the "Only to Activate" Adder/Modifier. While the Power is Instant, getting it ready to fire will take some time. Once it's fired, you'll need to take that time again.

Re: Making sense of DCV Np. I don't particularly like the exception for Dodge and Block (personally)...but that's just me...

Re: Making sense of DCV Yes, you are (wrong, that is). 5ER, page 383.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? That's not a speaker cable...

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Chemical Brothers, "Galvanize"

Re: Odd Skill Enhancer Question

Re: Odd Skill Enhancer Question Note: the following is just my interpretation of the reasoning behind the rule. While Steve is willing to clarify rules for us, he generally does not get into the philosophy behind those rules. I think that the main problem here is that some folks are looking at how Skill Enhancers operate "backwards" -- they don't add a +1 to the roll...or convert a generic KS to an INT-based KS, they There's a difference. There's no game mechanic for changing the cost of abilities during game play. You can change the levels of abilities (Aid, Drain, OIHID levels, etc), but that's a fundamentally different operation. Skill Enhancers don't add levels, they reduce cost. Again, this is just my interpretation of the reasoning behind this rule. Take it for what it's worth.

Re: Odd Skill Enhancer Question Don't pretend to be dense....it's not becoming of you. The book left some ambiguity as to the rules, so the guy that wrote the book was asked. He said "No." -- which removed the ambiguity and left a rather straightforward answer.

Re: Odd Skill Enhancer Question It doesn't say that you can't (explicitly) in the book. Nor does it say that you can (explicitly) in the book. One would assume that the fact that the book gives good discussion about the application of Modifiers to abilities like Skills, Powers, etc. and none whatsoever to the application of Modifiers to Skill Enhancers would be a good hint that it is not legal....but the lack of any statement to that effect means that there is ambiguity. Which is pretty much a given in a rule base as broad as the Hero System. And so you consult the guy that writes the rules (Steve Long) and ask him if such a thing is legal or not. And he says "No." Pretty straightforward.

Re: Odd Skill Enhancer Question

Re: A more feminine martial art This part I can chime in on: I've helped teach martial art "crash courses" for cops in the past. One of the biggest things we always need to beat through their heads (often literally) is not to blindly rely on their guns. A simple example normally suffices: Put someone on one end of the room, gun holstered. Put someone else on the other end of the room with a large stick/bat (or a knife, bottle, what-have-you --- we use styrofoam "clubs"). Have the guy with the club rush the guy with the gun. A disturbing amount of the time, the cops that we work with will sit there fumbling for their weapon, trying to draw it, aim, and fire on the charging attacker. They end up being beaten over the head.....all because they didn't just _move_ and use the weapons that they had available (hands, feet, head, etc.). Guns are meant for distance. Once drawn, 10-20 feet is ideal (as you note, punks that like to put the gun right up against you are fairly easily disarmed). But you need to take into account preparation time (drawing, aiming, getting into a good stance, etc.) when deciding whether to use the weapon. If you have an attacker within 20 feet of you, it's not the best time to be fumbling for a weapon. Use what you have until such time as you have distracted the attacker and created the time that you need to handle things.

Re: Some questions which are coming up. You're misunderstanding recoverable Charges. Recoverable reduces the value of the Charges Limitation (or increases the value of the Advantage, as appropriate). It is not applied to Charges by default. Recoverable Charges are meant to represent Charges which you expend during combat, but can recover outside of combat, given appropriate time. Things like throwing knives, arrows, etc. Charges without the Recoverable Adder recover once per day/session (as appropriate). If you want something like the wand you mention above, you take Charges with the rather large negative Adder of "Charges Never Recover" -- then once you use it up, it's gone. Any character points that you spent on it are "gone for good" -- which is why you received such a large discount on the price.

Re: Charge for noEND powers? If the Power does not cost END, then Charges maxes out at a +0, regardless of how many Charges you have....or how many Clips. The Costs END Limitation is applied after this....so you still get benefit. If you are taking a small number of Charges ( Charges as a single Limitation is rediculously complicated. IMO, it should be broken up into several (at least) separate Limitations/Advantages, with rules that require certain combinations (frex: you can't purchase the "Boostable" Advantage without the Charges Limitation).

Re: Ch'i Ki Qi ... In general: Ch'i = Chi = Qi (Chinese/Korean) Ki (Japanese) Folks are absolutely correct that it is a transliteration....the different spellings largely reflect different dialects/accents through the rather large region.

Re: Default Waterproof Computers?

Re: Default Waterproof Computers? I would say an emphatic "No" to the original question. In the same way that a normal character doesn't get to take the Disadvantage "Dependence: Air" Computers have certain things that they require and certain susceptibilities which will damage/destroy them. Just like humans do. They don't get to take Disadvantages to represent those -- Disadvantages are meant to represent things about the character/computer/whatever that set them apart from the norm (and disadvantage them).

Re: Hacker's Laptop Computer The export template used for the post above is a character export -- which will populate fields like hair color, eye color, etc. A more appropriate export template would be one of the computer template exports that have been created. As for the computer itself, the laptops that I normally use are middling-high-end laptops (nothing really fancy in terms of hardware) with a fair amount of custom software installed. The software that a typical hacker would need would include things like packet sniffers, port scanners, app scanners, etc. Most (all) of them are freely available (nessus, netscan, ethereal, etc.) and fairly easy to use. The skill comes in making use of the results/output and in customizing/extending the code for the apps to do exactly what you need in a given situation. In short, if you're looking to distinguish a "hacker's laptop" from a "gamer's laptop," you shouldn't worry about the hardware at all....just concentrate on the software. At a minimum, I would recommend: Traffic analyzer Network sniffer Network scanner Analyze Vulnerabilities Vulnerability database Telnet/FTP/TFTP/SSH Depending on the scenario, much of the actual "work" will not be done from the laptop at all, but from a hijacked system (to maintain anonymity).

Re: Question about Two Perks Steve sends his apologies...he's working on Pulp Hero right now and can't take the time to trace through everything. He wants to be sure that the answer he gives is correct....so we have to wait

Re: Question about Two Perks I'm currently talking to Steve on this, but if my understanding of the rules is correct, the math shown on 82 would indicate that Jacko is biuld on a _total_ of 250 points, 100 base + 150 disad. That would give you 100/5 + 50/1 for the total cost. If Jacko were built on 250 base + 100 disad (for example), the cost would come out to: 200/5 + 150 = 190 points. As a note, I remembered that I had the PDF of 5ER on my laptop, so I checked the pages referenced. It looks like the calculation for Jacko is correct. The calculation of the base on page 85 is not my understanding of the rules, since the total cost of the base (base points + disads) is greater than the character total (in this case, 250). That should mean that the final point tally is: 250/5 + 40/1 = 50 + 40 = 90 points. Steve is going to look things over and get back to me once he runs the numbers (he's a bit busy right now).