bwdemon

Re: Low-Point Heroic PC's I generally look to other examples of characters based on similar point values in order to determine the basic ranges I need to stay within for the character I want to create. Some concepts just won't fit under a certain amount of points, so they aren't appropriate for lower-point games. For example, the basic UNTIL agent (CU, pgs. 106-107) is based on 168pts. However, 69pts are locked up in expensive standard equipment. So, given a 100+50 campaign, I would start with an unequipped UNTIL agent and spend another 51pts to help impose my concept on that basic template.

Re: Re-Imaged Hero(ines) Yay winner! Yay me!! The next hero for reimagination is... Shadowcat

Re: Normals w/Abilities vs Supers [Offshoot of CSL vs MA] Two posts I'd like to work off of and acknowledge some things in... This is OddHat's biggest concern, repeatedly stated, and I do understand it. I'll answer it with an example and a question of my own: Character #1 uses a mutant concept and Character #2 uses a power armor concept. Character #1 buys "12d6 EB at 1/2 END" and pays 75pts for it. Character #2 buys "12d6 EB at 1/2 END, OIHID" and pays 60pts for it. Character #2 pays less for the same thing. Does the GM destroy the mutant character and render the game unplayably unfair by allowing the power armor character to pay less for the same thing? My next question, regardless of the answer and offered to any who would take it up, is what matter more: concept or point efficiency?

Re: Normals w/Abilities vs Supers [Offshoot of CSL vs MA] I'll throw in some of my thoughts on the matter, but I can't get into replies here or on the other thread for a couple days... 1. Every comic book character has an infinite uncontrolled cosmic VPP that tends to be more active when their name is in the title of the comic and less active outside of it. If the story calls for the untrained human slug to hit the fastest combat god on earth, then it'll happen. If the 98-pound weakling has to knock out the stone-jawed unbreakable monster, it'll happen. When the writer puts fingers to keyboard, anything can happen. 2. Being able to hit someone doesn't show better DEX, it shows better combat ability and/or luck and/or favorable writing. Never forget, you always hit with a "3" and you always miss with an "18" in HERO. Blind squirrels and nuts - you know how it goes. 3. Something from the other thread I saw is that JmOz would consider a person with magic-based or mental-based powers to be within a normal human background. I would consider that a mystic/mentalist background, which brings the character into the realm of superhuman. Anything beyond mere training and natural aptitude has the potential to exceed normal human ability and make the character into an "other than normal human." Again, a disconnect in definitions, but it could make things a little less polarized. 4. In the scenario discussed in the previous thread, a normal human would have to pay more points to mimic the superhuman's appropriately-above-NCM characteristics. This is true. However, they shouldn't try to and don't need to simulate those characteristics. They should have their own schtick and focus their points to make an appropriate character. If they want to be superhuman, then make a superhuman concept. 5. Fairness is very important. That's why I like my Rule of X. The end result in combat is that all characters will be reasonably competent and reasonably similar over the course of a full turn, regardless of how they go about it. They are free to go about it in a wide variety of ways, too. 6. It seems that there is a disconnect on what a "normal" human is and what that means within normal characteristic maxima. Few people could train in anything for the rest of their living days and ever approach NCM in any characteristic. It takes an un-freaking-believable human to hit NCM. To hit it in more than one thing? All that more amazing. A normal human? That's the guy with base characteristics between 8 and 10. 7. A non-superhuman hitting lots of people in a short amount of time is represented by a sweep or an appropriate power (e.g. AOE Selective), not by multiplying SPD out of the range of human capability. 8. I consider it very important for the GM to have near-absolute control over the setting and range of variables in the game. They're devoting a lot of time and effort to the project and they should have fun with it. They are not obligated to allow whatever a player wants - it has to fit into the setting and game that the GM envisioned. That said, players have near-absolute control over their character within those parameters. 9. Batman has as many points to spend as he wants and spending double to go over NCM isn't a concern. He could come in anywhere from 300pts to over 2,000pts. It all depends on whether you want to simulate the widest possible breadth of abilities and equipment he's displayed at the highest levels ever displayed or whether you want to limit particular inputs. In a game, the only person that determines whether an input is valid as a basis for the character concept is the GM. Those are a few of my clarifications and talking points from the prior thread. More to come a couple days from now...

Re: House Rule Question: STUN From Impotent KA's The Force Wall build from UB can make super tough characters totally immune to bullets. You pick a certain level of Defense (13 PD in the 2d6+1 RKA example, 19 to cover everything up to 3d6+1) and it can't do enough Body to break through to the character. An attack that does do enough Body to break through "staggers" the character such that he has to recompose himself (bring the Force Wall back up) in order to use its benefits again. This does a good job of simulating those threats that require a concerted and continuous wave of attacks to bring down. Were I to make a Hulk or Juggernaut build, I would very likely use this method, which would allow him to shrug off those little KAs and attacks that a character like him does shrug off. Very few characters deserve this sort of power, though, so I wouldn't want to apply to every superhero by default through a houserule. As for CON, I find that I tend to make characters with CON closer to their STR score. In most cases, it just seems right. A character that strong usually (but not always) has a similar degree of toughness. I don't make too many characters with STR 80, but if one of my characters has a 60 STR, then his CON will probably be between 40 and 60. This is higher than most and not exactly cost-efficient, but it makes sense to me so that's how I build it. Foxiekins certainly has a point in saying that a character without an appropriately high CON hasn't been built to simulate the effect of avoiding being Stunned by high-Stun attacks. OddHat, I was speaking specifically to JustJoe's build in that post above. I feel the "must do Body" limitation is best used only for those things that have to get into the bloodstream or at least past the skin in order for a linked effect to occur. For example, simulating a drug-filled dart or a venomous snake's bite. In those examples, the killing damage is truly minimal and the greatest damage comes from the linked effect. This is not an appropriate mechanic to simulate something that will have no problem getting through the sole of your average running shoe. I still think the whole KA mechanic should be ditched for an AVLD mechanic, since it removes the Stun Lotto issue altogether, while producing an appropriate effect and homogenizing (and thus simplifying) combat mechanics. From a victim's perspective, there would be some small benefit to increasing resistant defense (since they won't ever face nonresistant defenses), but this is mitigated heavily (if not completely) by the fact that you won't ever see Stun Lotto amounts.

Re: House Rule Question: STUN From Impotent KA's One of the "other things" I mentioned above related specifically to the types of attacks that you're classifying as "must do Body to do Stun." Some of those attacks are just extremely likely to cause Body (e.g. lasers) due to very high dice, Armor Piercing, and/or (especially) Penetrating. Penetrating would take on a much greater degree of importance, because it fulfills the Body damage requirement. Now, granted, I feel that more KAs should use it, but this would perform an end run on your mechanic.

Re: House Rule Question: STUN From Impotent KA's I think you pretty much covered the worst aspect within your own post. The system would be awkward under the best conditions. There are other things that also bother me a little, but the big factor - and the one that seals its fate for me - is the awkwardness of the system.

Re: House Rule Question: STUN From Impotent KA's I think we were all saying the same thing, but I just wanted to make sure it was properly clarified.

Re: Re-Imaged Hero(ines) Got to love the runner's high, right? Run until your body screams so much it snaps and gives up those glorious endorphins that can keep you going for hours. Days? Months?! The first few days worried Ken Mugombe. The former Ugandan immigrant had gotten used to the euphoric feeling, but he hadn't slept or even gotten tired in that entire time. After a week, he thought about seeing a doctor about insomnia, but had none of the detrimental symptoms and his work at the insurance company wasn't suffering. In fact, he felt great. His mind was clear, he felt stronger than ever before, and he'd even gotten a bit faster. The 46 year old had the body he'd only wished for when he was in his early twenties . The one thing that never changed was that, no matter what he did or how hard he pushed himself, he did not get the least bit fatigued. After about the third month, Ken witnessed a mugging in an alley. He ran in to stop the crime and found himself embroiled in a fight with two street toughs. He hardly felt their punches and kicks when they landed and managed to keep his feet under him. He'd only been in a few scuffles when he was younger and was not a fighter by any stretch of the imagination, but his new physique more than made up the difference. The fight was over in less than a minute with one opponent unconscious and the other running as fast as his feet could carry him. The victim had long since run away, but Ken didn't care. He felt something he hadn't felt in a long time: euphoria. Ken took this as a sign that he and his special abilities were needed elsewhere. He quit his job at the insurance company and took up a part-time job as a bicycle messenger. He'd always lived meagerly and saved well, so he knew he could get by while embracing the identity of "Iron Man" - protector of innocents and enemy to the predators of the concrete jungle.

Re: House Rule Question: STUN From Impotent KA's Correct. In my example, assuming the character in question had 5 PD (from 25 STR) and 20 rPD from Armor, the character would have 25 PD and 20 rPD and only 25 PD would be subtracted. It's a sematic issue, but important to avoid misinterpretation. I use my method of stating the issue, because the game mechanics don't talk about subtracting your natural PD, then your resistant PD from damage done. It says to subtract your PD, which includes all powers that may be in effect at the time. If I have a character with 5 PD and 20 PD armor and someone asks what the character's PD is, I say "25" not "5" To further clarify the issue, if a character has 30 PD and damage resistance for 20 PD, the character subtracts 30 from the Stun caused by a successful physical KA, not 50.

Re: New Skills Idea Though I've never really worked on a houserule for skills, here are two methods how I might approach it... SKILL WEB For 2pts, you gain the right to use a characteristic roll, rather than a base 8- roll, to use a skill. For 3pts, you gain the right to use a characteristic roll for up to 3 related skills. For 5pts, you gain the right to use a characteristic roll for all reasonably-related skills.I would only allow this for knowledge, professional, and science skills. I would not allow anything more broad than the 5pt level. Under this system, it would cost me 2pts to get Biology. It would cost me 3pts to get Biology, Botany, and Genetics. It would cost me 5pts to get Life Sciences. Similarly, it would cost 2pts for Psychology, 3pts for Psychology, Sociology, and Linguisitics; or 5pts for Social Sciences. REVISED COMPLIMENTARY SKILLS An alternate system to reduce cost is to be liberal with complimentary skills modifiers and simplify that system. Instead, look at how many points are in skills complimentary to the skill in use and treat it as if the player had paid that much for the skill in use. For example, a character with PS: Biologist (3) + SS: Biology (3) + PS: Geneticist (3) + SS: Genetics (3) + KS: Horses (3) would get an effective 15pts worth of SS: Genetics (INT/5 + 9 + 12) to determine the lineage of a particular race horse. If this seems too great a benefit, you can divide the extra points by two (effectively treating those points as skill levels), which would give (INT/5 + 9 + 6) for the genetics roll described above. Yes, the character still spends 15pts on all of those skills. However, he doesn't have to spend for skill levels or dump extra points into each individual skill, because his complimentary skills significantly and appropriately bolster his ability to make all related rolls. Further, the character no longer needs to make rolls for every single complimentary skill, since this system does away with that mechanic.

Re: House Rule Question: STUN From Impotent KA's Just for clarification's sake, you use PD instead of rPD only if you have some rPD in the first place. You do not add PD & rPD together. A character with PD 25 and rPD 20 would subtract 20 Body and 25 Stun of any successful physical KA (see the examples on pgs. 409-410).

Re: Top Five vs The Unknown Menace! I don't feel like I'm familiar enough with DC to make the greatest use of this list, but... Dr. Strange (magical) Forge (can build anything) Phoenix (mighty) Professor X (mental) Superman (mighty)

Re: Learning Curve? The game does have a steeper learning curve than many others on the market and other factors that can make it scary to new players. I have several friends - all lifelong gamers - who are scared to death of the HERO System, even though they like how it works and what it can do. Here are the two key areas they don't like... 1. Character creation: too much math, too much time, too many options. Nearly every power has its own mechanic and there are tons of powers available. Solution: pre-made characters and/or simplified characters. Yes, HERO allows you to create the super-gadgeteer who can do pretty much anything, but this isn't a good build for a new player to attempt to build or play unless they really want to play with a calculator for a while and learn over 100 pages of powers and modifiers. As a general rule, disallow foci and keep concepts straightforward until players can get a grasp of what's going on. I liken HERO to the Elder Scrolls PC games in that some players will just freeze up when they're told they can do anything they want. With HERO, it's the character creation system. With Elder Scrolls games, it's the open-ended game and massive world. Some players may never get over this sort of paralyzation, so you'll need to make their characters for them or at least help them out a lot with CharGen. 2. Combat: how do range penalties work, why do we start on PS12, movement/turn mode operation, the high-SPD character problem, and - most importantly - length! Solution: be very careful to judge the defense levels for a game appropriately. If the average defense is 30 and the average attack is 10 DC, you're going to have a lot of excrutiatingly long combats. I prefer a 25:12 split, myself. The littany of modifiers and limitations on actions isn't that bad, but the mechanics aren't common to too many other games, so it requires getting used to. The high-SPD problem is especially troubling to those players who are firmly grounded in the you-act/I-act gameplay of so many RPGs. Some people like it, because it allows you to simulate characters that are faster than others and is more realistic. Some people hate it, because they end up watching someone else act twice for every time they get to act once and it smells of unfairness. I recommend a SPD gap of no more than 2 (and preferably no more than 1) between the fastest and slowest PCs as players learn the game. This should be enough to prevent anyone from becoming overly discouraged or bothered by the potential effects of SPD.

Re: Practical Costuming (not quite a WWYCD) Ninja (or other martial arts) outfit, fatigues, various exercise clothes, a balaclava for the face... a lot really depends on the character in question. I'd think many would just go public and not worry much about their clothes (except perhaps who sponsors them).

Re: House Rule Question: STUN From Impotent KA's My reply is that I'd rather have option #1. I tend to think from a "consistency in game design" perspective, rather than a "what gives me the greatest possible effectiveness" perspective. If I want pure results, I make my Rom Neutralizer and all targets go to Limbo (for reference purposes, I don't go for pure results). I'd much rather have consistency in the system than a chance at an aberrant result.

Re: House Rule Question: STUN From Impotent KA's I missed this blurb before. Sorry about that!

Re: House Rule Question: STUN From Impotent KA's

Re: House Rule Question: STUN From Impotent KA's It isn't just a reflection of high defenses, but also a reflection of the other side of the STUN lotto. I've seen plenty of 12 Body/12 Stun 2d6 KAs as well as plenty of 2 Body/10 Stun 2d6 KAs. Barring increased Stun Multiplier, you have a 33% chance of causing as much Stun as Body with a KA. Sure, you can cause up to five times as much Stun as Body, but that's 16.7% of the time. Plus, if you have any rPD (assuming a physical KA), then you get to use your entire PD against the Stun damage. For the hero who has entirely resistant PD & ED, this isn't a big deal, but the guy who isn't so well-protected can benefit a great deal here. So where's the problem? A 2d6 HKA with Reduced Penetration and +4 to the Stun Multiplier costs a mere 48pts. With 6 DC worth of oomph behind it (martial arts and/or STR) that goes up to 3d6. Now, for that 48pts (plus whatever you paid for oomph), you have an attack that isn't likely to do Body to a target with rPD (two groups of 5.25 on average?), but can cause ridiculous Stun (68.25 on average?). The problem lies with the Increased Stun Multiplier advantage, because it is worth more than the +1/4 advantage cost, especially when several are stacked. Should some things have it? Sure. Should they have more than one level of it? Probably not, but the rules already say to get GM permission if you use more than one level of it (perhaps they were too subtle there). You still have the occasional 4d6 KA that wins the Stun lotto. The average Stun will be right around 37, which is just a little behind a 12d6 normal attack (42), but you can get up to a whopping 120 Stun with a "Yahtzee!" roll for the KA. It'll be relatively rare, but it is a gamestopper when it happens. There really is no good fix for this, unfortunately. What I'd prefer to see (should H6 occur) would be a +1/4 version of AVLD for resistant defenses (maybe +1/2?). That way, it'd use the same mechanic as normal attacks and avoid the Stun lotto problem. It'd also recognize that the killing attack is better than a normal attack of the same DC, because it does go against a more rare and often weaker defense.

Re: Your scenario style I guess I'm a long-term guy. I use many smaller plot arcs, with some fraction thereof weaving into the larger plot arc and another fraction being inconsequential to the core plot, with a third fraction setting up things for the future. When I started GMing, I didn't understand the need to have some groundwork laid for continuing the game after the conclusion of the initial arc. I always wondered why games did great for a while and then had a hard time getting anywhere afterward. That's when I figured out that I was essentially running a decent miniseries with nothing to go on thereafter. So I started adding more inconsequential (as fair as the main arc was concerned) arcs and putting some of them together as groundwork for later. Here are a couple quick tips... 1. Eventually, you have to pull the trigger on the main arc and that's where things can get into trouble. Everything goes fine until it's all over, but then you've hit dead space. If you didn't save something over from the prior smaller arcs, you're starting from scratch again and that can be the death of the campaign. 2. I find it important to remember that nothing remains good forever. How many times have we said to ourselves "that sequel never should've been made" or "they could've stopped the run of novels after the third" or "they're giving (insert character) his/her own permanent series?!" Know when things aren't going anywhere any longer and euthanize the game as needed. Some games can last several years without any signs of slowing and that's great, but many won't and it's important to know when to start something new. If possible, find a way to wrap things up with a bang in a short amount of time. If not, then retire the game for a bit until you can build up enough info and desire to bring it back.

Re: How to block the "unblockable" punch? You can dodge 1 Hex Accurate attacks (5ER, pg. 248). Dodge bonuses are added to the 3 DCV for the hex. You can add levels to DCV if you dodge, but you cannot add levels to DCV without dodging. It is harder to dodge (DCV = 3 + dodge modifier + levels), but you can still use the maneuver. If you want undodgeable, then you remove the "Accurate" portion. Under this method, the target can only DFC to avoid the attack, but every potential target in the hex will be hit by the attack. Frankly, as GM and based on the SFX, I would've made the character take the -1/4 limitation "Can be blocked" to avoid this whole mess. If he wanted unblockable, then use Indirect, IPE, or levels to achieve the result.

Re: How to block the "unblockable" punch? I've honestly never used it or had a fellow player/GM use it to simulate an unblockable attack. If we want an unblockable punch, we either throw levels into OCV or use Indirect or IPE. The only time we use AOE (1 hex) is for small explosions or the giant-sized fists/feet of a character with lots of Growth. AOE (1 hex, Accurate) is unheard of, despite its existence in the book.

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play It's not so much a concept I want to see played as a concept I never want to see again: the ultraviolent moody loner. In a 1-on-1 game, then it might work out, but not in a heroic or superheroic multiplayer game.

Re: CHAR: Batman I like it, especially in light of normal characters of his sort in Champions and Dark Champions. I always want him to have NCM, so that tends to bring his power level down significantly. Both methods are certainly valid, yours being more valid for the typical game. All in all, a very good interpretation.

Re: Dazzle Me!! Basically, you're looking at EB, Images, and Flash for her offensive abilities. The main defensive ability would be Energy Absorption (Sonic Only) and probably Damage Reduction (Energy, Sonic Only). I'd set up the EB as somewhat small to start (e.g. 4d6) with +1d6 for every ten decibels of ambient sound. Look here for a table describing general sound levels (such tables can vary considerably). I don't think I'd stat it out any higher than 140db. Do the same sort of progression with Images and Flash and you've got her abilities covered.