mr_nau

Also as a RL practicer of ML (Jow Ga, Tien Shen Pai, Tai Chi, some Wing Chun, and Kendo) I find that the MA rules are in general pretty good for normal abilities, but find the more impressive abilities of a martial to be very costly, especially with weapons. What I typically do, and it has been suggested earlier on is buy your martial arts techniques as normal, but for "special maneuvers" buy them in a Multipower. Each technique is another slot. I usually limit them to 45 active points with the limitation of restrainable. For weapons techniques I usually require the OIF limitation or OAF limitation, OIF if it many weapons (a martial artist carrying a spear, sword, and chain whip), or OAF. This allows you to attach attacks to modifiers fairly cheaply. For example, a rapid attack on the opponents surrounding you with a weapon... 1D6+1 HKA (20) AOE Radius (+1) Selective (+1/4) 45 Active Points Restrainable (-1/4) OIF (-1/4) Can't Do More Damage than Actual Weapon (-1/4) 26 Real Points in a fixed slot it only costs 3 points. So that makes easy to fit your special techniques into a cheaper framework. Just my 1 yen. mn

For Hero games I like to have a set base of 40 and a floating base of +10D6. By using the +10D6 the heroes all have slightly different stats but are still within a fair distance of each other, and it is very rare (a 1.654 e -8 percent chance) to get a maximum roll (or a minimum roll) and even in those cases the characters are between 50 and 100 points. This works well because it gives a sense of "natural" birth randomness to the game, but keeps it so that no one is significantly better or worse than anyone else. The 40+10D6 creates heroes around the 75 point mark (40 + 10*3.5). Anyway, I hope you find that useful. mn

just add a requires skill roll to the power as another limitation. Then based on how good the character was the power could have more skill levels added on. mn

I thought it might be cool to see some gadgets and equipment for various games that are being run. I guess I should probably start it off, but I'm not very experienced quite yet, so mine will be fairly simple. Also, I figured we could follow the idea of the character posting game and issue a challenge at the end of the post. First Aid Kit - This is a complex, yet small device. A diagnostic computer runs through the necessary treatments and applies them to the target. 4D6 Body Aid (20 points) Only raise to starting values(-1/2) Independent (-2) 6 Charges (-3/4) Concentrate (0 DCV) (-1/2) OIF (-1/2) extra time (1 Turn) (-1) I'd like to see a mechanical suit for construction with the same spd and strength regardless of who is using it.

I would say to dodge bullets pick up Desolidification with the disadvantage cannot move through solid objects, or some such, ends up being only 27 points. Of course if you wanted to also attack while not solid you'd have to take that advantage, still it is easy enough to accomplish without a high dexterity. mn

Thanks for the reply, though just typing it out to read gave me some ideas... Do as you say, design the AI as normal, giving it skills/powers, make some of the powers usable by other (those powers which the wearer can implement), others are just controled by the AI, and then link it to the armor, or have the armor link to it. Then create the other powers, such as infrared vision, etc and link them to the armor as well. It isn't quite a multipower as all the powers are available at full strength all the time, so I wouldn't be able to use that, but perhaps an EC might work. mn

I have an interesting idea about a power but once again I don't know exactly how to express it. The concept behind the hero is this... Theodore worked hard on the programming, perhaps he wasn't smart enough to create the AI himself, but he knew how to modify it. He had worked on the subroutines long enough to know how to work with them, he made sure they met the specifications of (governmental contractor), but they kept changing their minds, kepts saying that it didn't work. The suit did work, but it didn't fly, it couldn't go under water, but it could everything they wanted initially. The AI could monitor 360 degrees, could even fire the small independent weapon system, using that same program it could increase the accuracy of the wearer. The armor could stand up to a burst of automatic weapon fire, filter the air, see infrared. Its servomotors added great strength to the wearer, but apparently it wasn't good enough so his company scrapped the project, and in turn (governmental contractor) pulled out of the deal sealing his fate. Luckily he had managed to get a hold of the body armor, and with the companies colapse no one even knew it existed... So basically a subcontractor has been working on this suit of armor for some large government contractor. Basically its an integrated weapon system and armor, that is coupled with an AI that runs certain functions that are not controled by the player, but some of them can be. The armor is OIF, other than that I don't know how to go about doing this.

A little off subject... fur face, Thanks for your suggestion. It prompted a discussion amongst my friends and I about realism and point representation. We sort of decided that point totals don't necessarily indicate a level of realism. For example, my Sifu, I would consider to be a fairly high point character, Masters in EE, Been doing Martial Arts now for 40 odd years and is still fast as a whip, not supper strong, but he knows how to use it. Incredible accuracy and endurance. Also owns and runs/cooks at a Chinese resturant. The number of skills to represent this realistic person would I think be very high, mostly due to the vast number of skills. Most of them aren't at a particularly high level, but they are more than 8- (slightly less than 50%). So we were discussing conventions on that front and decided that realistic limits on characteristics were okay, and that a 250 point character could easily be realistic if powers and abilities were watched carefully. It would be, obviously, very important to the GM and players to want to constrict those abilities to go with the feel. Since this is a modern type of game, our access to resistant defenses is very low, making KAs very lethal, and fighting multiple opponents is very dangerous, especially if they have a gun and you don't. Thank you very much for the suggestion once again. Oh, and also, I looked at some sample characters from the genre pdf file, which gave me a better idea of what levels realistic characters were at, at least as far as combat values. mn

Lord Lianden, Thanks for the suggestions. Doug, the reason it would be Area of Effect is because the power is an attempt to clear an area around the character, however, if someone happens to be hit by the attack, the attack stops. Basically imagine some one with a sword or spear whirling it around their body. A sane normal person would want to get out of the way, but if they failed to do so, the attack would stop at them because a normal human whirling something around their body, doesn't have the strength to completely slice through another body. Now for a further question, this whirling technique is only one of many of the basic weapon syles, others might include, an AOE selective attack (this represents a martial artist being able to strike at targets all around him), an Auto-Fire attack (rapid attacks to a single target, this is more representative of a dual weapon style, but would also work for rapid jabs using a staff or spear), and perhaps either an armor piercing or penatrating attack, ( a precise attack ). I was examining the information in the Ultimate Marital Arts and initially I wanted to buy the advantages to the martial arts techniques, but the cost was a bit prohibitive for a realistic game, especially since neither me, nor my friends are 150 point heroes, but we can still do a fair amount of this, and still do other things. To fix this, I was thinking a Multipower for weapons, but was a bit confused on how to construct it fully. I decided that a 2D6 HKA would cover any weapon I would want to use (the highest being a chiang at 1D6+1), the next part was reduced Endurance 0, then OAF (which is debatable since it is to be used with the martial arts the character is trained with. However, since it is fairly difficult to walk into combat completely loaded with chinese weapons... any way, i was thinking OAF or OIF depending). Then a small limitation suggested by the UMA, can't do more damage than the weapon would normally do (-1/4). So here's the base set up with OIF 26 Real Points 45 Active points (30 + .5 for 0 END) Kung Fu Weapons. All the slots would be fixed slots, but this is where I'm stuck, I know that all the powers are confined by the initial constraints, But if I do the AOE selective 1D6+1 HKA that's 31 points after everything involved. Any suggestions on how to go about setting up the multipower. I'm a little bit confused as to where I'm limited, by the Active Points of the Multipower control, or the real points of the multipower control. Once again any suggestions would be appreciated. mn

I was just recently introduced to the Hero System by picking up a used copy of 4th Ed. and some supplemental material, notably Ultimate Martial Artist. However, before this occured, my friends and I were having a discussion of what we would be as heroes in a modern distopia, where the dollar had fallen and a depression worse than the "Great Depression" had descended upon the US. Then I picked up said Hero System material and thought, what if I used the Hero System to model our described heroes, and off I forged, still yet a newb, and then I ran into problems. See, me and several of my friends do martial arts, and well, ultimate martial artist is great for representing basic techniques, but some of the more complex techniques, weapons techniques in particular, I was a bit confused on how to emulate them. For example, Jow Ga has 18 weapons forms, but each of those weapons forms is based on basic techniques, and so they share very similar abilities. Yet, some of the shared abilities are difficult to mimic to my yet unaccoustmed mind. For example, a great attack to clear out an area would be a spinning spear (AOE radius) only affects one target (representing the fact that once some one is actually hit, a normal human does not have the strength to continue the attack) This attack can also be done by a sword, a chain whip, a three section staff, but each of the weapons have different statistics. Also, this is a heroic setting so weapons are bought with money. The power merely represents techniques that can be applied to weapons. (A whirling fist isn't nearly as effective as a spear, that whole physics thing). I was initially thinking a cheap multipower, but I wasn't sure about how to set that up to represent the fact that it would be affected depending on which weapons would be used... should it be 2D6 HKA Only does as much as weapon normally does, and if I take that limitation does that mean I can't add the STR bonus? But then how does that work when I'm using a Chiang, does the +1 OCV still take effect as well as the stretching, but the 1D6+1 HKA displaces the 2D6 HKA? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'd like it to be fairly realistic, as that was the idea we had for the game in the first place, but the cost to add advantages directly to martial arts techniques was very cost inefficient. Thank you very much for your assistance.