Gary

Re: Too balanced Well, the trouble is that the average result in game of someone being run over by 25-50 tons is that the person suffers broken bones and survives with immediate medical attention. And that simply doesn't happen in reality. As proven by the vast majority of cases of people run over by tanks. Now you can certainly change a few rules around such as doubling body done for crushing damage, but the rules as they stand don't mimic reality and really weren't meant to.

Re: Tactical Principals

Re: Too balanced The trouble is that if a tank rolled over even a tough soldier (4 PD 13 Body for example), that soldier should be dead instantly rather than merely with a few broken bones and a 100% survival rate if given immediate medical attention. It's a game mechanic necessary to make the game work, but don't pretend it's the least bit realistic.

Can someone use Images to conduct a Presence Attack, assuming the target fails a Perception Roll? And what level of Presence Attack would be possible? Can someone use Mental Illusions to conduct a Presence Attack? I would assume that if possible, the maximum Presence would be equal to the total on the Mental Illusion dice, but could the Illusion conduct a Presence Attack in addition to a normal attack, assuming the mentallist has enough effect to pull it off? Ie, a mentallist rolls 55 on his Mental Illusions vs a 10 Ego target and has Dr. Destroyer show up and blast. Would he get a 11d6 Presence Attack in addition to a 11d6 Energy Blast? Or does he have to pick and choose?

Re: Too balanced

If you make a Presence Attack while Desolid, do you have to pay for +2 Affects Solid World on your Presence? And if you get situational Presence Attack bonuses, do they have to account for that +2 Advantage before adding to your Presence Attack?

Re: Tactical Principals Nice work as always. One thing I would disagree on would be holding your phase 12 action until phase 1 just so the target doesn't get an immediate recovery. That always struck me as 'gaming' the system in a non-plausible way.

Re: Too balanced When 'realism' and game balance conflict, I would err in favor of game balance every time. The whole purpose of playing a game is to have fun after all. Besides, true realism would dictate that a crushing weight does damage every segment, not every attacker phase. And that would be far too great of an advantage for a brick with density.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? 1000 sticks of dynamite would be a 1004d6 explosion under FAQ rules. That would be enough to kill the Justice League, the Legion of Superheroes, the Avengers, the Defenders, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Justice Society, the Teen Titans, etc and still have enough damage on the side to wipe out Galactus and Darkseid. Who needs heroes when you can simply throw dynamite at any would be world beater...

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"?

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? It's pretty obvious that the system is FAR closer to exponential damage than to linear damage (with the noted exceptions of the velocity rules and apparently explosion rules). The fact that we roll dozens of dice for large attacks rather than millions or billions of dice prove it. Damage generally seems to be +1 DC per doubling, or perhaps +X DC per doubling depending on the attack, where X is some single digit number. This is entirely consistent with the time chart where each step is theoretically 5 times as much time, but in practice it's anywhere from 3-7X as much time per step on the chart. This may or may not have been the designer's intent, but it's the reality that the game system has left us. Where did I say 'solely mathematically'? Game balance in a comic book universe is where a character like Superman can survive ground zero at a nuclear bomb. That would be impossible under your system where a nuke starts at 100d6 killing and can reach 1000d6 killing. I think I prefer a game system that models what happens in the actual source material unlike you.

Re: SPD Standards

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? None of these objections apply when it comes to the simple case of dropping a weight on a target. By definition, the character who is 5 pts stronger will drop twice the weight on the target, but does only +1d6 damage with that weight.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? That was why my example was with a bullet proof vest that stopped the actual bullet, but transmitted its energy to me. To avoid this entire issue and leave just the energy part. And this objection doesn't apply when dropping a 3.2 ton object on me compared to a 1.6 ton object. The shaped charge gets Armor Piercing. The regular explosive gets Explosion. The energy is the same, but the energy applied to the single target is obviously different. Thus more damage is done to that single target with a shaped charge. Depends on what you mean by game balance.

Re: Heroic level characteristics ramble 2 hexes noncombat, or 4 meters straight up.

Re: Heroic level characteristics ramble A suggestion I had previously made for those who have problems with 'breakpoints' in Hero. Give graduated bonuses for each stat rather than all the bonuses at the key breakpoints. For Str: 1 +1 stun +1 damage 2 +1 PD +1d2 damage 3 +1 stun +1/2d6 damage 4 +1 Rec +1d6-1 damage 5 +1 stun +1d6 damage 6 +1 PD +1 damage 7 +1 stun +1d2 damage 8 +1 Rec +1/2d6 damage 9 +1 stun +1d6-1 damage 10 +1d6 damage For Con: 1 +1 stun +2 end 2 +1 ED +2 end 3 +1 stun +2 end 4 +1 Rec +2 end 5 +1 stun +2 end 6 +1 ED +2 end 7 +1 stun +2 end 8 +1 Rec +2 end 9 +1 stun +2 end 10 +2 end For Dex: 1 +1 general Dex rolls 2 +1 OCV or DCV 3 +1 OCV or DCV (must be the opposite of 2) 4 +1 Agility skill rolls 5 +1 OCV or DCV 6 +1 OCV or DCV (must be the opposite of 5) 7 +1 general Dex rolls 8 +1 OCV or DCV 9 +1 OCV or DCV (must be the opposite of 8) 10 +1 Agility skill rolls For Int: 1 +1 Perception with 1 sense 2 +1 Int skill rolls with up to 3 skills 3 +1 Int rolls (non skills or perception) 4 +1 Perception with all senses (not cumulative with 1) 5 +1 Int skill rolls with all int skills (not cumulative with 2) The advantage of this system is that it allows for efficient characters with 21 con or 17 int or 22 dex instead of most characters having 23 con, 18 int, and 23 dex. You won't have the problem of every character clustering around the key breakpoints. The disadvantage is slightly greater complexity.

Re: Spiderman Writeup I thought it was common knowledge in the Marvel Universe that Spidey had webshooters. As for the missile deflection, I've seen him stop attacks cold with web shields. It doesn't happen as often as the Flash or Entangle, but it does happen often enough that he should purchase the ability rather than depend on the Power skill.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? Yeah, the explosion chart is a bad call. A 155 mm tank shell would be about 8d6 killing explosion in Hero terms, or about 24 damage classes plus explosion. And I assure you that a 155 mm tank shell has FAR more explosive power than 20 sticks of dynamite.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? You're right that the system isn't internally consistent due to game balance issues and the fact that the writers never intended it to be. But I assure you that if a doubled (heavy) weight dropped on me, I'd take double the damage, not +1d6 in real life. If I were wearing some sort of bullet proof vest that would stop bullets but would transmit all the impact damage to me directly, then a .50 cal bullet would do FAR more damage to me than a .45 pistol, which would do FAR more damage to me than a .22 bullet. Far more than what the system's damage progression would suggest. The Leap and Throw is a complete game balance kludge, but if you want a 'real world' explanation, leap depends on not only Str, but also how long your legs are and the material strength of the surface you're leaping off of. Short (man sized) legs simply don't give you time to accelerate yourself the distance you should be able to based on your strength. Someone with 50" legs might realistically be able to jump 2048" with 60 Str if he jumped off an Adamantium surface. And such a character should logically purchase lots of noncombat multiples with leap to fit his character concept. But in the end, it's a game balance issue.

Re: New Advantage: Painful The big problem of course is when you have Advantage Stacking or with a nonstandard attack. A 5d6 NND Painful would be 62 pts, within standard campaign limits, but would Stun anyone with less than 35 Con on average. A 4d6 Ego Blast Painful would be 60 pts and Stun anyone with less than 28 Con on average. With Standard Attacks, Painful isn't a problem due to the way defenses in Hero operate.

Re: What would you trade for wealth? Ok, a more interesting question is whether anyone would sell off a characteristic for a 1 time payment rather than a yearly amount.

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? With the very noted exception of velocity rules, damage in Hero System mostly seems to follow an Exponential progression. Here's one way of looking at it: A 50 Str Man dropping a 25 ton object on a target would do 10d6 damage A 55 Str Man dropping a 50 ton object on a target would do 11d6 damage A 60 Str Man dropping a 100 ton object on a target would do 12d6 damage etc. By definition, the energy of the impact of the object dropping on the target is doubling with each 5 Str, and +1d6 is being added each time. And this thought experiment avoids the entire question of whether twice the lift actually means twice the punching power.

Re: SPD Standards 30 Str is only 1.6 tons, the weight of a small car, and Spiderman can routinely lift that easily over his head. He can even throw cars if he wanted to. That's too little for what he routinely does. So a 40 Str seems appropriate to me, and 50 Str for a mature Spidey with experience. That's because Champions Str is defined as what you can barely get off the ground and stagger and thus would be greater than Marvel Str which is what you can lift over your head. As for Spreading, Spidey definitely shoots out more fluid when he webs multiple people or covers an area with his webbing. There seems to be absolutely no decrease in the Body of his Entangle when he webs multiple things compared to one thing.

Re: Working With RedPen and AP

Re: Working With RedPen and AP The chance of NOT getting any Body through is 5/6 per shot. So the chance of not getting any Body through in 2 shots is (5/6)^2 or 25/36. And thus the chance of getting at least 1 Body through is 1-25/36 or 11/36. The average would still be 1/3 Body though, since there is a 1/36 chance of inflicting 2 net Body with a roll of 6,6.