Vanguard

A more important question is "Why are all the swordsmen stepping on each other's stchick?"

 

I know that if I were a new player in the campaign and the game already had several swordsmen, then I'd get myself Deadly Blow with longbow and a few Penalty Skill Levels to offset Range and Hit Location with Longbow.

 

Or up my DEX & INT and max out my skills, with maybe two levels of Deadly Blow with daggers, bought as Only From Behind.

 

Or play a Cleric, because the role play opportunities in playing lecherous monk can be hilariously awesome.

I used up my likes for the day but I wanted to give this a +1 because it would be something I would do.

So +1

Hi! So, my S/O is thinking of running a game in her Dystopian Space Opera setting, which features - among other things - soldiers using seriously crazy combat stims that allow for an incredibly high level of performance, and then leave them out of commission for a couple days.

 

She has expressed some interest (possibly at my prodding) in using Hero for this, which is great.

 

Problem: I'm not even sure where to start with these combat stims.

 

Hyper-Man gave you a good starting point and Johnny there gave you a decent starting write-up so I'll just toss this out there . . 

Are the PCs every going to gain access to these drugs?

If so, then you'll not only need the write-ups but you'll also have to decide how to handle the fact that the once the drugs wear off, the users are going to be all but useless till they recover.

Do you really want you PCs out of action for several days?

If the PCs aren't going to have access then you might not need a full write-up but just a general outline of the drugs effects and, since the PCs probably won't be around to witness the side-effects, just not worry about them . . . 

• How did you come up with your 'handle' (forum name)?

First Champions character I created and played.  It's also the oldest character I've played.

• What was the first tabletop RPG you played?

Star Frontier

• What was the first tabletop RPG you GMed?

Star Frontier

• What are you currently playing/GMing?

Nothing at the moment. The one game I was playing in was put on hiatus (probably permanently).

Sorry it took me so long to reply . . . 

Even in more cinematic systems, some random schmoe in the treeline with a basic Parker-Hale rifle is tremendously scary.

Exactly.  Scary and deadly.  And it's all well and good when that scariness and deadliness is on your side but an entirely different story when it's on the other sides.

Like I said, with the 202/20 of hindsight, I can look back on the scenarios and see how we could've handled them but I know for a fact that the players of the time wouldn't have been able to deal with the outright death of an NPC (our GM isn't cruel enough to take one of the PCs out like that) with absolutely no way of stopping it.

I think the idea wasn't that there was a strong connection to the NPC, but rather it was a canary in a coal mine. It provides a clear indication that there is danger and you need to consider changing your environment.

::nods:: I've got ya but the NPCs we usually cart around are all "part of the gang", so to speak.  So that's not really an option.

But, I do get where you're coming from.

No one else uses snipers? That strikes me as a little peculiar .

Like I said, we use snipers.  We just, normally, don't have them used against us.

At least not in that way . . . 

I'm still seeing the invitation, and still haven't taken the plunge.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is in two minds about it

Got the invitation and reserved my free upgrade around julyish . . . (I think)

Then I was a goober and clicked something I shouldn't have and kept getting "you're upgrade will begin in 1hr!".   Luckily, it had a "reschedule" option, which I have used up until today.

Finally pulled the trigger and upgraded.

So far everything's working okay.  Just going to take some time to get used to where everything is at now.

PS: Did have moment were memory was at 92% and CPU was at 100% but a reboot (which seems to take forever now) fixed it.

We've rarely even done #1 as, for the most part, some of the players in our group usually don't form any attachments with the NPCs.  And, if you were to use one of the NPCs they do care about as the "warning shot", all hell would break loose.

So, basically, we've only encountered an enemy sniper when we can use #3.

Otherwise, the GM just thinks it's way too unfair to use a sniper against us.   Not sure if he's doing it because he really thinks that, or just doesn't think the players can handle the stress/etc of dealing with an enemy sniper "in the wild".

I mean, I'm sitting here thinking of all the times we've played and he could have put us against a sniper and, most of those times, would result in the sure fire one shot, one kill of a party member.  Be it a PC or NPC.

Now I'm thinking of ways we probably could have handled it, even without a sniper of our own, but I'm not sure how the players themselves would have dealt with that initial death.

It's a good thing this isn't exactly a news thread, because as usual, I find things a day or more (way more, usually) after the fact, but . . .

 

Wildstar now has a free to play date set: September 29th.

 

http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/news/2015-09-02-wildstar-free-to-play-launches-september-29/

 

In the process of going free to play, they're also making a lot of what seem to be positive changes to the game. (Some are mentioned in the article, some by YouTubers, but I'm not posting those since most of them can't keep from using profanity every three seconds.) It looks like it'll be worth checking out. I liked the last round of changes they'd done when I poked my head in the door during the free trial I did a while back. Hopefully, the new changes will be as good.

Yeah, I managed to get into the Closed Beta test yesterday.

Wildstar was something I was looking at when it first came out but the video card I had then had, um, issues with it.

Upgraded and then found that it was going free-to-play.  Which made me happy because I've been looking for some kind of Sci-fi based MMO for a while.  I'm kind of burnt on the ninety-nine bazillion fantasy mmos that have flooded the marked.

And, yea I know about STO and STOR, but I'm not a big fan of STO (and I've tried it a couple of times) and STOR oddly enough doesn't feel like Star Wars to me. (Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my trooper can't pick up a blaster and use it if he wants but all the cut-scenes show him with one . . . ).

But so far, I'm liking what I've seen of the FtP model and am setting aside some cash to purchase a few of the account unlocks when it goes live.

Yeah I can see him having some skill, its true.

 

Its just his reputation was far outsized compared to his performance.  He was really capable, just not the terrifying ghost we were told he was.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie a lot more than I expected to.  The world was fascinating.

Also remember that he's been "retired" for a while.

It would explain why he's not as "scary" as the hype portrayed him.

As for the write-up. 

Nicely done Hyper.

It has left a lot of people with the notion that taking the Complications in order to get the points is optional.  

 

As I said above; the GM can do whatever they want, but they could do that in every other edition.  

Odd. I've always thought of both complications and disadvantages as optional. Sort of.

You don't have to take them but then you start out at way less points than everyone else so, as noted above, it's basically mandatory without being mandatory.

Complications work exactly the same way that Disadvantages did in 5th edition. They're just presented in a way that makes this hard to understand.

I dunno . . . both seem pretty straight forward to me.

In 5th if it was 75 points with 75 points of disadvantages, you didn't get to be a 150 points character without taking those 75 points of disads.

In 6th, if it was 150 points with 75 points in complications, if you didn't take those 75points of complications, you were just a 75 point character.

I learned something new. Now I know I can haymaker or brace and still have full DCV against ranged attacks!

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Can I take cover behind the palindromedary and brace against it?

Now that's something I didn't think about . . . 

The melee combats in out game just got more brutal . . . . 

A question came up during a game session where one player disarmed the NPC with his rifle.

The Ranged Disarm maneuver gets penalties to OCV based on size of weapon.  OCV penalties that the HtH version doesn't seem to get.

With some research, it seems this is because the Ranged Disarm gets to count the DCs of the attack and then convert to STR, where as the HtH one has to rely on the burliness of the attacker. Relying only on raw STR and/or Skill Levels/Martilal training.

To me it seems the trade off is good due the high unlikelihood of a character resisting a Ranged Disarm. Where as the HtH version seems much easier to resist . . .  

Is this correct thinking?

PS: Sorry if the question is confusing . . . 

I would allow both of those examples to be built as Compound powers and placed in a multi power slot.

Ditto

Way late to the party but here's my two cents.

Along with some of the other suggestions you can also create the weapons with the "real world" limitation.

This means that that hand gun, regardless of the amount of damage it can do in game, just can't damage that tank.

The characters may not like that but that's one of the things that limitation is designed to do.

What those guys said.

Only thing I can really add is to make sure it's alright with your GM to spend Character Points on your personal gear.  This concerns mainly weapons because character created weapons are so much more deadly (versatile too) then RAW weapons.

I would like to know which Hero 6th Edition rules you folks find indispensable for helping to achieve the feel of a horror game done just right. Simultaneously, knowing which rules are unnecessary (or even detrimental) when working to establish a horrific atmosphere is also helpful.

Thinking back on the Horror Games we've played, I've come to the conclusion that we really didn't exclude any of the rules.  Well, anything that propelled the game into the realm of "superhero" was nixed but all the other rules we kept.

We found that it wasn't the rules that achieve the feel of the game but the attitude of the players involved.  If the players don't settle down and become their character, then the genre suffers.

To further explain, I like to use the first (or was it second?) episode of Season 1: Walking Dead.  Where the one guy had his wife in his sights but just couldn't bear to pull the trigger.  You could see the emotions playing on his face and the mind battling with the heart.  And in the end, the heart one and he just couldn't do it.

In our group, with the exception of maybe one or two players, you couldn't get that type of, for lack of better term, drama.  The players would just shrug and go "It needs to be done" and pull the trigger.

I've seen it described as the Battlefield: Earth of the Teens. I won't see it at the cinema, unless someone else buys the ticket.

Yeah, I'm going to have to disagree with that statement.

Channing Tatum looks really bad with a beard.

 

I'll probably have to wait for this one to come out on cable.  If it were a SF story with depth or innovation it'd be high on my list, but everything I'm hearing indicates that it's a shallow, effects-laden, visually impressive space opera, which is kind of disappointing considering it's the Wachowskis.

Eh, I read somewhere that he had to wear a prosthetic to change the shape of his jaw so that might be why he looks a bit off. It also cause him to have trouble speaking, or so they say. I didn't notice anything but then . . . that's why they do multiple takes for scenes.

Not really seeing where the story doesn't have depth. As for innovation, the scenes where the fighters are going at it and the wings are shifting to accommodate the various maneuvers and such seems pretty innovative to me.

I dunno, maybe I just do set my bar high when it comes to the movies anymore but I didn't walk out of there going "Wow, that's 2hrs of my life I won't be getting back".

Anyway, I thought it was a good movie.  I hope the criticisms don't deep six any chance of a sequel but it sounds like they might.

Morning Steve,

I was reading your reply to the other Steve and you made a comment about scaling down MegaScale movement to the point that it was "normal", in essence, choosing not to use the Advantage.

It's been a while since I've read the MegaScale Advantage but I thought that once you bought the power, you could only scale it down to the lowest level you purchased it at?

In case I'm not clear, what I mean is if I purchased MegaFlight at the 1m=1k level, I could only scale down to just the 1k but I could never go lower than that.

To do so, I'd need to by "normal" Flight as another power.

Is this the case or do I misremember or misunderstand the way the MegaScale Advantage works?

Thanks!

Van

I dunno, when we were playing Gate Crashers, with a good portion of the action revolving around gun-play, we still didn't have players maxing out their PSLs.

Still, I can see how it could be a problem but that's when it's up to the GM to step up and go "Hey Guys . . . "

So I assume that no one plays with random hit locations, since those GMs who are foolish enough to will have all their players spending 8 points to get their killing attacks to do 2x body and either 4x or 5x stun?

You assume incorrectly.

We've played with random hit locations before.

In fact, most of our games are Heroic Level were that's pretty much a requirement.

And, in all of the games, we've played, I've never encountered a player that has 8 PSL's.  4 yes as that allows main body shots (and greatly speeds up play) but that's it.

But Character Points in a Heroic Level games are a precious.  Our players usually have something better to spend those points on then min/maxing a combat monster.  Personally, I usually have a laundry list of skills/abilities that I need just to "complete" my character.  So my Character Points pretty much already have a home.  Spent before I even earn 'em.

Also ,you seem to be over looking that it's up to the GM to approve, or disprove, anything on the character.  It's up to him to say "No, you can't have 8 PSLs" and then explain why.

You (general "you" not you specifically) then need to abide by the fact that sometimes you can't have something because it disrupts/unbalances the game.

Another option I would suggest is that a new character is brought in with 80% of the total XP of the lowest number of XP in the current party.  This is how I handle a new player in my game after the game has been going on a while.

 

For instance:  Character A has 10 XP; B has 12; C has 15; and D has 10.  Character B is killed in a game and so they player creates a new character without any extra XP to start with.  Once the character has been built as a new character they get an extra 8 XP to use to flesh out their character.  That is 80% of 10 XP.

 

It works pretty well.  Plus in my game I we use Obsidian Portal and I give XP for writing up interesting adventure logs and helping to flesh out the campaign world.

This is how we usually dealt with characters dying or being forcibly retired.

I think we did something like 15 xp less than the character with the least XP.

The GM also gave out XP for logs etc but had to stop as it started to get out of hand.

As for playing two characters at the same time, that never really worked out well for out group but it might for another.

As I've never players MHI or anything, is it really more lethal than the "regular" hero? I find hero to be pretty non-lethal and that you actively have to work at making it lethal.  (This is something that I mentioned in the other thread about hero's "superhero roots" coloring just about every other genre you try to play with the core system itself).

You are correct.

Although "Sticky" probably isn't what you'd want.  It might be more appropriate to stick a Side Effect limitation on the power.

Not much of a fan either. I am having a blast, but the fresh coat of paint is starting to show wear now. It is my curse with MMOs. I hate grinding. I'm more of a story experience guy. Everything in STO is grinding. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between the grinding missions and the story missions. I also want a ship that is only available through the C-Store so that means I'm farming (grinding) dilithium every day. SW:TOR taught me the foolishness of paying real currency for their micro transactions.  Now I exchange dilithium. It is a slow process. Very slow.

I don't mind grinding as long as it doesn't feel like grinding. I did a lot of it in WoW.  I do like a good story and it's why I hardly grouped and didn't like grouping with one of my friends. I liked/needed to sit there and read the quest txt and all he did was click "accept" and then run off to complete the quest.

WARNING! Slight Tangent! - Interestingly enough, I logged in one day to find him swearing up a storm in Guild chat because of this quest he was on.  Apparently, he'd just died like the 15th time and couldn't defeat the quest mob.  After I asked what quest and he told me, I asked "Did you pick up and use the Hammer?" His response: "What hammer".  I told him where it was and how to use it. I also told him that if he'd read the quest text, he'd have known what to do.

Yeah, still not sure why I spent $10 on SW:TOR.  It's just not Star Warsy enough for me.  I do think I spent some money no STO, not sure how much or if I even did since it's been that long but I just can't bring myself to download it and start it up again.

And while I know I can get most of the stuff through converting dilithium, when I did it before it felt like I was doing a job and not playing a game. (Also one of the reasons I don't Raid or join Raid Guilds. I don't feel I should have to fill out an application as I'm playing a game, not interviewing for a job).

 

I have just as much fun playing lower level characters as higher level ones with one exception; Sector Alerts. Dropping in to say "Hi" to the Borg pretty much demands the best ship you can muster with all the bridge officers configured correctly, the duty officers set up just right, and the right equipment loaded. That said, my Escort can dish out a fair bit of punishment when the need calls for it. Not the most by far, but still respectable. The most powerful I saw was this giant Romulan ship (the one from the recent Star Trek reboot) firing all of its forward weapons with a couple of buffs. Absolutely awesome to see it open up on a Borg squadron and watch as two spheres, a probe and half of a cube's health just disappear. Fastest sector alert I ever played. When we got to the boss, it was dead in under 15 seconds.

I think I tried a Borg Sector Alert once.  Got creamed as I was very low level.  I went to another one and just hung back and watched the fire works.  The animations/space battle was an awesome sight to behold.

PS: Hopefully my reply makes sense. It seems a bit disjointed to me but I'm not sure how to fix it.

How is the Dex below average. in the book it says average is 10. I i did the same for skills

 

Oh I did not think about adding the file I thought the pdf was enough. 

I think Tasha already pointed this out but just in case.

That average of 10 is usually for "Normals", not super-heroes and definitely no PC Super-heroes.

I've never played in, or seen a PC  from another supers game, that had a Dex of 10.

Even the characters I've played, and played with, in Heroic level games never had a 10.

Sounds like what you're describing is a "Plot Device" and not something that needs to have an actual write up.

You can just write out what the virus does, how it's transmitted, any cures/resistances/immunities (if any) that exist and then go from there.

And it sounds like Lou_tennant said pretty much the exact thing.