LordQulex

In Star Hero 6e p.190 (and 6e Equipment Guide p.194), a plasma rifle is defined as 12d6 NX. The key describes X as "Area Of Effect (Radius Explosion, assumed to be of a size to give the Advantage a final value of +½)." The Area of Effect table (6e1 319) says 17-32m radius is +1, and explosion is -½, so a "final value of +½" is anywhere between a 17 and 32m radius. That can't be right... Explosions lose one DC every 2m after the target point +2m, so a 12d6 N blast will do damage out to a 25m radius. Granted only 1d6 N, but a 25m radius none the less. To put things into perspective, that 25m radius is roughly 10x larger than the floorplan of an average single family home (so says Google), or 1/3 the area of an American football field. That's BIG for a standard issue infantryman weapon (in my opinion). I just want to make sure my interpretation is correct. I understand that this is a hard sci-fi setting and I can change the rules how I see fit (I'm going to make my plasma rifle 2m radius), but again I want to make sure my understanding of how this all interacts is correct so I can correctly interpret other equipment in the tables. Thanks!

I checked the appendix where the writers show their work constructing talents and size templates, but can't find senses. I've built normal vision as Detect A Large Class Of Things 9- (Unusual Group), Discriminatory, Range, Sense, Targeting, but that only works out to 32 points. I'm betting the extra three points come from a "skill" attached to INT but I'd still like to confirm my suspicion. Is there an official write-up of the senses I'm missing somewhere to help me understand what's going on behind the curtain here? Thanks!

6E2 183 says computers don't come with standard senses for free, "they have to be hooked into sensory systems (like the security cameras at a base, or the sensors on a starship) to give them the ability to perceive, or the builder has to buy the Computer specific Senses (see 6E1 209 for costs)." I cannot find "standard senses" in the enhanced senses powers directory in Hero Designer. Are we forced to use customer powers for this, or is there a way to add/remove standard senses that I'm not finding? Thanks!

I'm reading the Star HERO 6e Warship example (p. 250) and I'm a bit confused about the warp drive multipower. I see that the Costs Endurance limitation was put on the multipower reserve, and then applied to each power slot. But wait, flight already costs endurance as per the power. So this appears to me to be one of those "limitations that doesn't limit the character" situations. Wouldn't the Costs Endurance limitation be prohibited on the multipower reserve because not every power slot costs no endurance, and be applied only to the FTL travel power? This would mean the reserve costs the full 28 points, standard flight cost 2f, and FTL flight cost 1f. Thanks!

Is there any mention or recommendation in the rules for everyman powers? Let's say we're playing in a world where magic is fueled by life force, and sacrificial slaughter has measurable and repeatable results. I'm sure given enough time I can cobble together the power (aid endurance reserve requiring the killing of a creature and dice based on creature size somehow), but I'm also not entirely confident that effort would be well spent - knowing how you want it to work is more important that the active/real points if a) it costs no END and b) everyone can do it (i.e. costs no CP). Do any of you have any anecdotes or experience using "everyman powers" that may be useful?

"This is a good way to simulate magic scrolls whose writing disappears after the spell on it is cast one time..." Ok, I'll bite: Scroll of Fly: Flight 30m (30 Active Points); 1 Continuing Fuel Charge lasting 5 Minutes which Never Recovers (-2 1/2). Real Cost: 8 cp. Depending on speed, that's 1.5 - 3 km which can be useful in a magical medieval society sure, but... what happens to those 8 cp after you use the scroll? Maybe I'm running a superheroic campaign and the player had to buy it with CP, or maybe a heroic campaign using resource points from the Advanced Players Guide, but either way, 8 character points got spent on a non-recoverable charge. Do you get those back, or are non-recoverable charges the new independent? Also, what if (for cost-savings) a non-recoverable charge is put in a variable power pool? "Oh, that charge is used up. I'll just drop that power next time I can swap powers." The idea of a non-recoverable charge just seems so foolish - even at -2 the only reason I'd ever have a non-recoverable charge would be a contingent, upon-my-death AOE KA.

I've tried to do it for High Fantasy, and Sci-Fi settings. The truth is, you don't want a kitchen sink game. In case you don't want to read the rest of my explanation, you'll want to look up the rules for "Hordes of the Things." It's a tabletop war game that separates units into archetypes and those archetypes have costs. They're big claim is that you can play HOTT with any models and it works. I have a friend that works in design and she said to me when designing a game, start from the bottom and build up. If you include every rule under the sun that you love and the game is unplayable, it becomes difficult to decide which rule to exclude. But if you start with a basic idea, and it's playable, you can add rules you enjoy until the game is too cumbersome. Then simply remove the last rule you added and you have a playable game with some mechanics you enjoy. HERO System works as an RPG because I only have to keep track of one character's BODY, STUN, END, ammunition... Even as a GM I tend to fudge these things with minion NPCs because it's simply a ton of bookkeeping. If you're interested in a more complex Mordheim, Kill Team, X-Wing, Infinity, Malifaux, etc., go ahead. You'll be keeping a binder of 8-12 character sheets with tactical level statistics and skills. You can even develop an economics system to recruit new members and give existing ones experience points. I'm simply going to tell you in my experience trying to do this, you will be pitching a lot of the bloat rules in favor of what it is you are trying to do - put minis on the table, and kill them.

6E1 382 - Limited Power: Power loses almost all of its overall effectiveness. (-2) I'm using 6th edition, I just figured that using EGO for the sole purpose of intimidation was extremely limiting. Though when Steve Long tells you that it's Only For Fear/Intimidation-Based Presence Attacks (-1), you listen. ?

So as far as my group can tell, intimidation is a presence attack. One of my PCs wants to improve their intimidation, which normally isn't too rough but in this case, I can't find much in the book aside from the obvious solution of increasing your presence. In a heroic level with normal human characteristic maxima, that's kind of expensive. So I as a stop gap I'm having her buy PRE as a power, with a -2 Limited Power (only works for intimidation) but can only buy as much presence as her character has. This gives her a 5d6 presence attack, which is reasonable in a heroic campaign. Have any of you had a PC that wants to intimidate better? How did you handle it? Thanks!

There are two challenges I would like to overcome before running a StarHero campaign. The first is the constant wrestling match between the SciFi genre and Sir Isaac Newton. I like the realistic movement endurance rule and the realistic space acceleration rule, but I don't believe they combine logically enough for my taste. Sure, accelerating a big ship costs more endurance, but it still costs 15 points to buy 15m of flight. Combined with the maximum velocities per turn that the book suggests, there is no reason why a battleship wouldn't buy the same acceleration as a fighter. This makes interceptors unable to, well, intercept... I'm toying around with a few ideas to fix this, but maybe the community already has one? Right now my leading idea is to enforce an adder on the flight power somehow based on the vehicles size - that way flight costs more on bigger ships, and more endurance. This should artificially cause larger ships to accelerate slower than smaller ones. The reason I believe this works is due to the second rule I am toying around with: Upper limit of vehicle cost based on size. I was talking to a USAF friend of mine about how modern military vehicles are designed. I summation, the #1 restraint of a modern military vehicle is size. Sure, you can make a battleship go 50 knots, but half of its space and displacement will be utilized by engines. If you want a fast ship with limited projection capabilities, great! But most modern militaries would choose a larger radius of efficacy over raw speed, so smaller engines and more space for guns and planes. I was crunching some numbers on the example vehicles, and saw that they all spent between 8 and 19 times more points on capabilities than size. So I set ship class sizes (DD 13, CR 16 etc...) and simply said a ship can only spend 15x more on powers than on size. I think this will adequately represent space limitations on ships. And the starter ship for my PCs it's only 5x or 10x to represent being a run down, old POS ship. Does this approach make any sense? What other tools and mechanics have been used to balance and normalize ships? Thanks!

I'm trying to build your classic chain lightning spell. I've built a blast with autofire, but it just doesn't feel right. I'm looking for something that will allow me to take AoE: Line, and "bounce" my blast from target to target. I can't find any Area of Affect options that allows this, or anything that allows a bouncing attack special affect. Any suggestions? Thanks!

A cleric prays to his deity and his sword is engulfed in holy flames. A mage casts a spell and a sling bullet becomes enchanted. A witch blesses her father's service revolver to be able to damage demons. These are all examples of things I can not figure out how to do in the HERO system. They all have one generic thread in common - how to enhance a mundane item with adders. In heroic campaigns, where above average people purchase average gear with in-character money, how does a hero magically enhance their equipment? . If the cleric is to harm ghosts, it needs affects desolidified. If the mage wants to enchant sling bullets to hit better and explode, it needs range advantages and area-of-effect. If the witch needs the bullets to pierce the hide of a demon, it needs armor piercing. Can the noble and benevolent community share how you have enchanted equipment in your games? I'm looking for powers that give adders to common equipment. Thanks!

I have found this map of stars within 50ly: http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/50lys.html I would like to generate a star system around each of these stars, but the rules are quite lengthy and this will take a lot of time. I am a professional software engineer, so I started writing a program to do it, but the tables are a pain in the butt. Are there any good solar system generators out there that are of the same detail as our beloved HERO System?

There is an old game out there called Escape Velocity - originally only on Mac. Then later there came Escape Velocity Nova, which brough us the vell-os. A sub-race of humans who have psychic powers. One in particular I'm trying to design in the HERO system, and am having troubles. Basically, they can wrap themselves in a force-field and create a 'psychic hull' of a ship that they can fly around and move cargo/passengers. They can also psychically tear a hole in space to enter sub-space for FTL travel (that is the easy power to define). I can't quite figure out how to do the ship though. I looked into barrier, non-anchored and moveable, but the book says barriers can't move other things like characters. On top of that, life support (low pressure, extreme cold, self-contained breathing) usable on others is a nightmare. So then I thought, "**** this, I'll build a vehicle and ignore all these weird rules!" But that has its own problems: how do I represent the fact that it is a psychic ship and I can summon it and dismiss it at my whim? Summon doesn't quite work that way, and I don't want to use desolidify/shrink to represent it... Any ideas friends?? Thanks in advance!

Re: I love me some xenomorphs! 4) This is the only substance they produce that I believe can do this, though I want to avoid the power of using this to bind arms and legs and stuff (I dont remember the power name at the moment...). 5) Yes, excuse me, it isn't exactly blood. 8) It was confirmed in the video and computer games that they use echo-location - as you walk around you hear this chittering sort of clicking sound. This was also confirmed as wayland spoke to you I believe. 10) Confirmed in the video games, specifically AVP on the PS3 recently released (the game that prompted this post ).