Starlord

I would ask him what he thinks is important about his character. A brick should be the strongest/toughest on the team. Ask him how he'd feel if 2 other guys wanted higher STR than him. Then he'd have nothing to stand out. Remind him that everyone will have the most fun if EVERYONE is happy with their characters. You can't 'have it all' when playing on a team. Also, try a slight limitation like forcing everyone to have a certain amount of points spent on noncombat skills/talents/perks...say 30-50. Make sure you bring up situations where they can use some of those skills/talents/perks in the game also. With 50 less points to spend, your brick will worry more about his STR, defenses, and a few 'brick tricks' before he worries about that DEX and SPD. If all else fails, THEN hit him with the lead pipe. He's a brick...so he can take it.

Careful there, Stargazer. This post constitutes 'cheerleading' according to Nucleon. He might be offended.

Just saying "leave" might've been easier. No thanks, I'll stay. Oh, I was meaningful until I dared 'cheerlead' against you? YOU mentioned a rule, Gary called you on it. He proved you wrong and you wouldn't listen. He called up the FAQ, then you fall back on "Well, its an optional rule". He calls you on that, you still don't listen. I told Gary not to worry about you, you very clearly just wanted to argue. Now I see above, after YOU argued rules with him point-for-point for the past 3 pages, you (quite hypocritically) accuse HIM of relying too much on the rules. Whatever. Yes...but I don't hide behind the excuse, "I'm debating serious matters IN CHARACTER.", just so I can be pretentious and condescending to people. That's why I used the 'funny, sticking out tongue' smiley. It wasn't a serious retort. Or what? You blast me with Nucleonic energy?

Ouch, thats tough. I think it has to do with respecting the team and, especially, everyone else's character not just your own. That's why we had so much fun and we're able to play and be happy on the same campaign for 6+ years.

The opinion of a person who constantly refers to himself in third person and others as 'mortal' isn't very impressive to me either. ...and I'd think for the 'all-powerful' being you claim to be you'd know that: A. I've been an active and meaningful participant in this thread B. Gary is correct about the rules C. It's 'excellent' with a 'c', not exellent.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Interesting... Ah. See, being in the Champions forum I always assume that we're referring to the Supers genre. I never encountered any major problems playing without limits in all my years playing HERO in the supers genre. However, at lower point totals I COMPLETELY agree with you. While I have far less experience playing Fantasy HERO, we did find that strict AP, CV, PD, ED, etc., limits had to be set. My experience is the system starts breaking down around the 200 point and under level. Of course, maybe others had different problems.

Re: Arguments for Arguments sake... As I said before to debate actual stats/abilities for characters you need a baseline or set of ground rules, which just happens to be the established Champions characters. To be fair, I don't think everyone here was specifically arguing character stats. They were using established characters to try to show different concepts at different power levels and different types of game play. You are correct here.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Interesting... Sure thing, but...we still never set ANY limits whatsoever (well, other than the obvious one: total points). The points balance themselves. If you build a guy with 100 DEX in a 350 point game, he still has ALOT of weaknesses. Now metagame-wise, we all agreed to have our schtick and noone was allowed to infringe too much on that. The MA never came too close to the speedster who never infringed on the 'weird powers' guy who never infringed on the straight 'energy projector', etc. Occasionally, we would agree to always allocate a certain number of points to skills/talents/perks.

He's not going to listen, Gary. Its obvious at this point he'd rather ignore the rules and stated genre conventions just so he won't have to admit he's wrong. I've seen these people before.

Great point. If your supposedly quick MA is at a lowly SPD 4, where is your brick? SPD 3?!?! The equivalent of a VIPER Agent? The Hulk, Thor, Thing, etc., DO NOT move at the same pace as lowly agents. Please. Look at linemen, linebackers, and Worlds Strongest Man competitors. They are proof that big and muscular guys aren't slow and plodding. In actuality, they are very fast.

Re: Re: Interesting... Never played with limits, either. Never had a problem with stat races, either. Even 20 years ago when we were all 13-14 year olds. I suspect stat escalation it has nothing to do with rules problems, its more of a player/GM maturity problem.

Sounds like you might be following the OHOTMU too closely, my friend. The strength levels in the Handbook for the upper echelon guys are pure bunk. The Marvel Editors-in-chief for both runs have even admitted as much. All the big Marvel heavy hitters have easily lifted things in the couple hundred ton range (and more) many times in the comics. You can pretty much assume the weight limits for anyone stronger than Spidey in the Handbooks are way off. Just FYI (now I've veered even further off topic:eek: )

You assume we don't have perspective? I would say thats pretty narrowminded. I'm sure most here are comic fanatics to one extent or another. I've been reading them 25+ years myself. At one point, I had over 10000 comics before I downsized. The largest portions were Avengers and Thor. I won't argue isolated incidents. I could go in the opposite direction as yours and bring up the time Cap picked up and threw a motorcycle with one hand. My perspective comes from examining the character as a whole, and what they most often can do.

I think that about sums it up. Brilliant.

Yes, excellent points. I have said this repeatedly in the past. Look, Person A wants to make a DEX 11 Spidey. Fine. Person B wants to make a DEX 50 Juggernaut. Fine. Person A plays one way, Person B plays another way. Fine. That argument is neverending and, frankly, noone is REALLY wrong. HOWEVER, in order to argue them logically and present them in an open forum as realistic, you have to have some kind of overall baseline to go from. That baseline HAS to be the 100+ characters given us by the gamemakers. I see no other plausible solution. I think everyone can assume, for example, that Nighthawk is a clone of Batman (for all intents and purposes). Well, more specifically, Batman-lite. It is just not acceptable to me to make Batman himself weaker, slower, and clumsier than Nighthawk. I say again... gamewise the Superheroic genre ignores NCM for a reason. There are no normal humans and 30 is maximum human potential in the Superheroic genre. Base your arguments off that.

Agreed.

Re: Re: I'll Try The Quote Function This Time. Lucius, I am honestly perplexed as to why you contiue to act like your opinion of "me" is relevent? Can we perhaps start a thread titled 'what we think about tesuji" so that those who want to rant about me can do so and the ones who want to discuss gaming can avoid this? snip.. Well, FWIW, I was trying to play moderator because I want the thread to continue. Certain posters stand out to different people. You are one of a dozen or so that stand out to me because of your insight. Based off of the posts I have read of yours (not just here) I feel you also can be condescending. I did not intend to add to the continuation of a "Let's get tesuji" thread and I could care less if you 'insult' HERO. I have seen others respond with annoyance or anger at your posts. You seem to be convinced that its 'what' you are saying. I feel it is 'how' you are saying it. You respond with basically 'so what?, the thread isn't about ME'. However, you apparently post here because you want your opinions known. I was merely offering 'advice' on perhaps why some people react badly to your opinions. Basically, your opinions will have less and less meaning if you gain a rep as a 'bad egg'. I've seen it happen twice in the last 6 months over in the Non-gaming forums where brilliant people pissed others off to point where ANYTHING they posted was just scoffed at by many others. One decided to leave altogether over it. I'll offer an example: say I have a brilliant college professor. If said professor constantly screamed his teachings right to my face day after day, then pretty soon I could care less what he said. I don't know about the others here, but that was the point of my post. I had no intention of attacking, just a friendly reminder that how you say something can be as important as what you say. It is also reason enough to (briefly) go off topic in my opinion. That probably sounded like a lecture, I just didn't know how else to say it. Feel free to discard at your leisure, I won't disrupt the debate again.

Re: I'll Try The Quote Function This Time. I've followed many of tesuji's posts here and in the General Roleplaying Forum. I don't see any deliberate harm in his posts. I do believe there is an inadvertant condescension in the way he writes. Basically, he talks down to people. I don't think he knows he does it though. Perhaps that is what you (and others who've responded similar to you) find annoying. However, the reason I've 'followed his posts' is because I believe they are very insightful, detailed, and well thought out. He has a unique and clever way of viewing things. I think his advice should be heeded.

In my opinion, yes. However, you were the one who offered the 38 DEX Cap. I wouldn't use 38 Dex Cap either, but I think it FAR less unrealistic than a character with an average of 16 CSLs.

-Without meaning to offend, the only thing here that I see that could be construed as 'childish' is that you naively assume nobody else has thought of the things mentioned in your first paragraph. Many other players here have up to 2 decades of experience with the system (including myself and possibly you). Most everyone 'gets' your point, but personally I think few agree with you because you have taken the use of CSLs to an unrealistic extreme. I think most see it as a balance between DEX and CSL's. -The DEX race has never impeded on my concept or anyone I've played with. The importance stressed by concept and specific team archetype always eliminated the DEX race without having to go to extreme measures. For the record, I think use of NCM for the Superheroic genre is an extreme measure. As with many systems, its more how the players and GM interact and work together that makes things flow effectively. When this happens you don't have system breakdowns such as a DEX race.

Re: Ack! No, sir. We thank YOU.

It seems clear that Gary's version is the greatly superior one. Another thing to point out is that Cap's general dexterity is very often displayed. His solo danger room workouts show him constantly displaying unbelievable agility. At least comparable, if not equal to, someone like Beast, Nightcrawler, and even Spidey. This type of agility is NOT portrayed well with mere CSL's or Acrobatics levels in my opinion. I'm not saying Nucleon's version absolutely can't work, I just think a higher DEX Captain America is more in concept. This follows with established superheroic conventions and that's why it seems pointless to use NCM for superheroes to me.

My Cap is 612 points. SPD 6, DEX 28. Lay the Smite Down on his boy-scout, candy-ass, Thor!

Re: Re: The Joy of DEX It may work, but 'technically' it isn't in 'concept' in my opinion. Those NCM's are meant explicitly for Heroic campaigns for a reason. If you pay attention to the comics, there are no 'normal humans'. It's just an 'origin concept'. That's all. All those characters, at the root levels, are superheroes and supervillians. 'Normal' applies to none of them. Daredevil and Cap (and others) routinely fight powerful superhumans and do unbelievable Matrix-like (the 'old' bouncing off the flagpole argument)maneuvers. Steve 'got that' when he wrote 5th Edition. Their 'exceptional training' puts them closer to superhuman level.

What! An FR page with no Elminster write-up?