Fitz

(Assume obligatory Elvis-related joke here) The closest real-life weapon I can think of would be the nagamaki, a Japanese very long-hilted sword. Not really a sword, but too short to be counted as a polearm.

Perception roll for the party, or for part of the party if appropriate. I use an average of the PER rolls for all those who might perceive the threat, +1 per two pairs of effective eyes/ears/antennae/whatever in the group, and modified (of course) by the stealthiness of the approaching Hideous Ravening Monster of Doom. If the threat is detected, I determine who sees it randomly or by whim, give them the heads-up (by note if only one or two of the party are in the know) and then start the clock. If they alert the rest of the party there's no surprise, if they don't, then there is.

Hmmm..... maybe a Multiform which doesn't actually change the character's physical form or characteristics? Both characters could have Accidental Change related to, say, having their EGO halved in some way, to reflect a see-sawing of control over the body and a more-or-less constant struggle for command. This assumes that neither consciousness is strong enough to simply wrest control from the other unless the other is weakened somehow. If the body is Stunned or knocked out, a straight EGO vs EGO roll could be used to determine who gets control when consciousness returns. That would allow for more frequent changes in persona than you'd get if you just had to wait for yet another EGO Drain to happen along.

Having some facility with a pen, I tend to draw my "this is what you see" stuff. However, when laziness (or a tight deadline) occurs, I always fall back on one valuable maxim: Never underestimate the power of a fully-functional collection of old National Geographics I pick them up super-cheap from garage sales and what-not, and cut out pictures I think might be useful some day -- terrain, ancient artifacts, cool buildings et. al. Another excellent source of pictures of artifacts are the catalogues from Sothebys and Christies (the auctioneers). They tend to be a lot dearer than old National Geographics though.

Fame at last

A super-duper low level game was one of the most enjoyable I ever ran, though of course much of the credit has to go to the players. Watching a bunch of hayseed farm kids trying to figure out what to take with them from the farm when they went a-venturin' was a hoot -- I'm still not entirely clear why they decided to take the anvil. Or, for that matter, why they thought taking a pony cart across rugged untracked hill country was ever going to work Unfortunately, it's difficult to keep a campaign at that level if you're handing out any experience at all. A month or two of weekly play soon distorts such low-level characters out of all recognition. But it was real fun as a temporary thing.

Something came up in the game I was playing in this evening when one of the characters, being attacked by a huge snakey monster critter, wanted to do that classic thing where one props open the monster's mouth with a stick — in this case, a staff. If you've seen "Return of the Jedi", when Luke was being chased around Jabba's pit by that enormous slobber-beast he stuck a bone into its mouth so that it couldn't bite down on him. That's the exact effect we were looking for. How would you resolve this? I was thinking along the lines of a Block, with the whole "stick in the mouth" thing being nothing more than SFX. But how would you deal with the ongoing effects — in other words, how to determine how long it takes for the creature to clear the obstruction so that it can go on chompin'?

There's a copy on the shelf at Comics Compulsion in Christchurch. I'd grab it myself if I had the spare cash (I like to have a spare copy around if I can -- one for me, and one for the plebs).

If it has to be one or the other, it would be ED since it does damage by directly attacking the molecular bonds of the substance it's in contact with, like fire.

I've been thinking about this same thing myself recently, specifically with respect to feinting in combat, but also in the situation you mention. There's no specific analogy to the d20 Bluff/Sense Motive skill pair (maybe there should be?), but you could use either an Acting roll or a Sleight of Hand roll, depending on whether your attacker is being two-faced or sneaky with their attack. Use it just like an opposed Complementary Skill roll (vs. PER?) — get +1 to your OCV for every 2 over a success.

#1 GM Tip Of All Time: Don't be afraid to ignore the dice. Sometimes the Bad Guys NEED to win to advance the plot; sometimes a player who's had a really shitty run of luck NEEDS to have something go right so that the evening isn't a complete downer. No crucial plot decision should be left to chance (unless chance gives you the answer you want). The job of the GM is to entertain (and challenge) the players. The job of the players is to entertain (and challenge) the GM. Then everyone has a good time.

I've used 2pt STR for heroic games for years. The only time I've ever considered going back to 1pt STR was when I got the latest incarnation of the Hero Bestiary, and I thought that if all the critters I was using were built with STR at a lower cost than the PCs, it wouldn't be fair. Then I came to my senses. In all seriousness, if you don't mind every character in your game being massively strong just because they might as well be, then it's not an issue and there's no need to change. If, on the other hand, you want people to actually start buying STR because it fits their character conception and not just because it's too cheap to pass up for the benefits, then hiking it up to 2pts is a Good Thing. Another thing I've done in my campaign, for the same reason as I increased the base cost of STR, is to increase the cost of post NCM stats so that the cost doubles again for every 5pts over the Normal Maximum.

Does it bother me? Yes. Am I going to give up the Hero System in disgust if nothing comes of this? Of course not. It's just not that big a deal. As far as your point about hex size being based on figure size: that's fine as far as it goes, except that most minis now are closer to 30mm than 25. I can see them getting bigger too; some of the so-called "heroic" scale figures are creeping up to 40mm high. Does this mean we should start using 30-40mm hexes, and call them inches too? There's already a unit based on the (supposed) height of a man -- it's the fathom. As far as I know, nobody uses it any more. Maybe the Navy, but I think even they have finally started using metres as a measurement of depth.

I was just replying to the "Hero 6th Ed Wish List" thread with a request for a change from the basic in-game unit of the inch to having everything measured in metres. Off the top of my head, I can see nothing but good things coming from such a change. What do you think would be the implications, apart from the necessity to update old character sheets, of making a change like that?

I think something I'd like to see is a change from measuring ranges and everything in inches and change the measurments all to metres -- Fear not, metrically-challenged folks: a metre is close enough to a yard for game purposes, so in-your-head conversions on the fly should be easy enough That would have the big advantage of making in-game descriptions directly relevant to real-world units. It would also allow the use of variable hex sizes when playing with a battlemat. For example, if you were playing a wide-open battlefield scenario, you could use a "BigHex" battlemat and define the hex size as 10m (I realise I could do that anyway, defining the hexes as 5", but it just feels easier to do it with metres directly - less brain-hurting conversion necessary).

Yeah, me too

I'd consider allowing a Magic (Power) skill roll, modified by -1/10 Active Pts in the power, to Push an existing spell effect -- just like using an EGO roll to push STR. I'd be reluctant to allow it to create new spells on the fly, though I could maybe be convinced if the character had some xp spare and put forward a decent justification. The example you give of changing the SFX of an existing spell would fall into this category -- if the character wants to be able to vary the spell's FX, I'd be fine with that as long as s/he doesn't mind paying the xp to give the "Variable SFX" advantage to the spell and can put a good case for allowing it. I'm big on getting my players to convince me; I find that insisting on the verbalizing a reasonable justification for their new skills and/or powers helps to mitigate against the tendency to just grab abilities because they think they might be neato-keano. It works more amicably than just saying "No, you can't do that because I, the Almighty GM, say so".

1) Dodge is a half-phase maneuver 2) You can't attack if you're Dodging. Your normal defence is determined by your DCV plus any Combat Skill Levels you have alotted to defence for that phase; unless you're Blocking or Dodging you don't otherwise have to actively defend yourself -- it's just assumed that if you're in a combat situation and aware, you are defending yourself. As you say, an attack ends your phase, so you can't attack and then block (though you can "call forward" a block, thus forfeiting your next phase). 3) Yes, assuming you are aware of the attack 4) Not officially, but it depends on the individual campaign. I've used OCV/DCV/Skill penalties in the past for progressive degrees of damage, but didn't find it added anything much to the game for the sort of campaign I was running. It would be a useful option if you want a very grim-'n-gritty campaign in which combat is somethingt o be avoided if possible.

Thanks

It may be a great utility, but it's not straightforward to find: the http://www.downport.com site just shows a string of 404s to all the download links for the install set.

That depends..... is the campaign a magic-rich environment? Does every man and his dog have a magical skillet for making burned omelettes, or are such things reserved for the super-rich? In my own campaign, the creation of even quite trivial magic items is a hugely expensive, time-consuming affair. However, my campaign's magic is based around a backward-looking "after the golden age" milieu, in which 99.9% of magicians are users rather than innovators. New magical items, or even new copies of old items are rare, though there are quite a few old bits and pieces of thaumaturgical paraphernalia floating about. Before you can make a reasonable judgement about the time and expenditure required for building magical stuff, you need to think about how much magicrap you're prepared to have your players have hanging about. If it's easy and/or cheap, they WILL build useful magic gadgets by the dozen, and that's inevitably going to impact on your scenario creation plans.

Why not just take a Psych Limit "Thinks he's a great gardener" without actually buying any KS or PS Gardening skills. That should take care of both the sucktastic gardening skill and the delusion of greatness. Personally, I would make such a Psych Limit worth about zero points, but other GMs may have a different view

The main alteration I'd like to see is in the generisization (is that even a word?) of some of the powers. The powers list still, after all this time, betray the origins of the system as a superhero genre game. I'd conflate Energy Blast, Hand Attack, and the Killing Attacks into a single "Attack" power which could then be narrowed with modifiers like "Ranged" and "Can't add STR to damage". Similarly, the defensive powers could easily be combined. Armour, Force Field and Force Wall could be simply differentiated by modifiers. After all, what really differentiates a Force Field from Armour?

The spell would have to be built with Variable Limitations, I would say, but it's easily (though expensively) doable.

Re: Book of New Sun and Horseclans I have a copy of GURPS New Sun that I was given it by a friend who was on the playtesting panel. I have read the books a long time ago, but I'm not familiar enough with the series to be able to tell how accurate it is. It looks pretty good from the little I remember. The main chapter headings are: (1) The Posthistory of Urth * the Age of Myth * the Age of the Monarch * the Age of the Autarch (2) The New Sun * Precis of the books (3) Urth in the Age of the Autarch * The Commonwealth * Commonwealth Geography * Ascia (4) Nessus, the Eternal City (5) Urth religion * The Church of the Conciliator * Yesod, the Higher Universe (6) Space and Time * The Universe * The Starship Tzadkiel * Local Stars * Time Dilation * Time (7) Commonwealth Characters * Tech levels etc. * Advantages, Disadvantages and Skills * Character and Racial templates (8) The Arsenal of the Autarch * Weapons and Equipment (9) Thaumaturgy (10) Urth Bestiary (11) Campaigns * Balancing the Epic Setting * Exploring Urth * Campaigning in Different Eras * Mass Combat (12) Appendices * The Urth Cycle * The Incas * Onomastics: the Study of Names * Commonwealth Glossary * English/Commonwealth Glossary (13) Index The layout and graphics are adequate to the task, though not particularly inspiring (features which seems to be common to most GURPS sourcebooks). In places graphics appear to be used for no purpose except to fill up space, and some graphics are repeated elesewhere through the book. Maps, where they are used, appear to be Campaign Cartographer generated. If I were interested in running a game in the New Sun setting, I'd say the book would be very useful. There's enough information given about the milieu that it's not strictly necessary to have read the original books to be able run an effective campaign, though of course it would be a good idea to do so if only to get some of the ambience which tends to be lacking from sourcebooks like this.