Chimera 12

Re: Dragon-Trainers and Dragon-Riders Mmm. It's true that the Melniboneans basically ruled their world for millennia, the decline they're in when the Elric saga opens notwithstanding. As to whether anybody else could easily imitate that... I'd say it would come down to two factors, possibly three. First, just how powerful is an individual dragon? The more destructive they are, the fewer of them a nation (tribe, kingdom, whatever) needs to be a threat, especially if they have a monopoly...but the harder the dragons may be to control in the first place. Second, logistics. How much in terms of food, nesting space, and other maintenance does the average dragon need on a daily basis? Do they get to hunt for themselves, and if so, what's their usual prey? And, for that matter...how quickly do they breed? If only the king and his twelve paladins can even afford dragon mounts, that makes them very impressive as individuals, but for a professional 'air force' of any sort it's still only a pretty small group. And third, of course, the usual concerns about social status and such. Clearly, not everybody can be a dragon rider...so, who chooses them, and who does that authority think can be trusted with the position? If a single dragon can wipe out a small village in a couple of attack runs, that's a lot of power to put into the hands of only one person right there...conversely, if dragons are basically just scaly flying warhorses, they'll be that much less impressive but you can probably afford to hand out the privilege much more freely.

Re: Sandstorm

Re: Top 10 Insupportable Premises in Comic Book Universes

Re: Weaponmaster of the Knife

Re: Dragon-Trainers and Dragon-Riders I think it's a bit hard to answer this generically. Pernese dragons are different from those of Krynn, which are different from those sometimes ridden by the dragon lords of Melnibone, and none of them are necessarily what a medieval peasant would have considered a 'dragon' had he the leisure time to stop and think about it...what are your dragons supposed to be like? I think we need to know something more about that before considering their riders... Beyond that, the one bit of advice I can think of giving is to caution against "superstitious fear". Most people living in or near this dragon-riding culture will by necessity already have a pretty good idea what dragons really are like; they may not necessarily always get quite all the details straight, but the dragons will not be mysterious beasts of myth and legend to them the way they are to us. (Foreigners from distant lands who see a dragon for the first time in their lives are on their own, mind. )

Re: Quick Question from a New Hero Flight is assumed to include the ability to hover by default; if a character with Flight can't hover, that's a Limitation on the Power. Since Skeets can, in fact, hover, just buy his Flight normally and you're done already.

Re: Top 10 Insupportable Premises in Comic Book Universes Let's not forget the entire "secret identity" conceit. Let us assume for a moment that costumed figures with more-than-human powers popped up in the real world all of a sudden and proceeded to engage in highly visible acts of heroism, villainy, and all-around grandstanding. How hard could finding out who such lunatics are when not hiding behind a mask really be, assuming sufficient interest (pretty much a given) and a reasonably competent team of investigators(*)? In the face of serious effort, how many superheroes could still expect to remain anonymous, say, about three or four months into their career? (*) Granted, most comic book universes do seem to suffer from a certain dearth of those. It's probably part of why they need superheroes to help fight crime in the first place...

Re: Sandstorm

Re: Weaponmaster of the Knife So...would you argue that somebody who throws a knife doesn't get to add their STR to damage with it anymore, either? Since that simple act apparently does magically transform it into an RKA after all, in which case STR should no longer apply...

Re: Science Fiction League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Data probably wouldn't fit well into an Android/Robot League the way I see it, anyway. The character's main purpose is to be one of the 'token outsiders' among the mostly human crew of the USS Enterprise and provide a contrasting alien viewpoint every so often; put him into a group of other mechanical lifeforms and you lose much of that, and once you look past his...well, Pinocchio complex, I guess, he's actually somewhat bland as android characters go. Give me poor old confused C-3PO as a prospective member over Data anytime, your all-machine team is going to need somebody who can handle contact with the various organics they encounter in any event.

Re: Weaponmaster of the Knife Actually, that's not strictly true. What the Weaponmaster talent does say is that you buy it for either HKAs or RKAs -- but if you stop to think about it, a knife remains a HKA even when thrown. It doesn't magically turn into an entirely different base Power just because it has been purchased with an Advantage that lets it be used at range. Frankly, I'd have no problem with letting the Talent apply to thrown knives as well as to ones used in melee. Then again, I'm the kind of person who doesn't see much point in having separate Weapon Familiarities for every single possible way the exact same weapon can be used, either, so maybe I'm just the tiniest bit biased there.

Re: So....the Universe....Discuss! I'm going to assume my tried-and-true "wait and see" stance on this idea; if there actually is something to this theory, I'd expect it to convince at least some other experts and eventually catch on to the point where I hear about it again. I'm nowhere near good enough at higher math and theoretical physics to even try to check it for possible errors myself, I fear. (From a mostly-layman's perspective, mind, I agree with the comments on that site that state that this model just shifts the question from "where does our universe come from?" to "okay, so where did that other universe come from?". Even if shown to be plausible, it's not the Final Answer to the Great Question of the Ultimate Start Of All Things.) Not sure how I'd use this in a game just yet, either. The concept is a bit too, well, big for most conceivable groups of player characters to really interact with in a meaningful fashion.

Re: Icons - The Costume and Superpowers Store The first idea that popped into my mind when reading that suggestion was that of course the 'villainous' Tailor would run his (identical-looking) store under the same name...because of course he'd be the 'heroic' one's literal or figurative evil twin deliberately pretending to be the same person for maximum confusion and mayhem.

Re: Science Fiction League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Re: How would YOU apply this attack? It does. How difficult those are to pull off and how much time they take up depends a bit on the edition in question. For example, while in 3.X making multiple attacks usually required the Full Attack maneuver (precluding movement save for a single five-foot-step in the same round), in D&D4 it's decided by the precise power you're using to make the attack and is usually a standard action either way, though the number of times you can pull it off in a single fight or even in a day may vary. Older editions did it differently yet again, but it's been long enough that I can't coax the precise differences between "multiple attacks for player characters" and "multiple attacks for monsters" out of my tired brain anymore.

Re: Icons - The Costume and Superpowers Store I'll say this: While the idea of everybody in the world getting their superpowers from a particular Mysterious Store That Wasn't There Yesterday does appeal to me on some level, I honestly don't like the "you're all puppets on strings that can be cut anytime" feel of this particular implementation. Thus, if I were to use something like Icons, I'd make one key change: once the shop has granted somebody powers, they can not simply be revoked. They might revert to the 'inventory' once the current user dies or voluntarily gives them up...but neither the Tailor nor whoever might be behind him has the power to simply snap his/her/its fingers (or whatever) and revert a customer to their previous unpowered self just like that. Doesn't mean, of course, that the shop can't make trouble for recalcitrant customers in other ways...for example by 'powering up' other people specifically to do so. (Instant arch-nemesis/rogues' gallery!) And the secret could still be kept fairly easily -- whatever process actually grants those powers effectively is already doing a pretty drastic rewrite of the customer's notional 'character sheet', so adding a Physical Complication: Cannot Mention Icons To Outsiders (infrequently, barely impairing) as it goes about its job shouldn't really be all that much more difficult.

Re: In Future, Car Drive YOU The problem isn't going to be the car that drives itself. The problem are going to be all the people who still insist on driving manually. Because the dumbest human can make mistakes that even the smartest computer can't easily anticipate and compensate for.

Re: Icons - The Costume and Superpowers Store This setup makes me kind of wonder how many customers come to bad ends because they decide to use their powers to investigate who's really behind Icons and what that person/entity/organization/whatever really gets out of the deal. Because, let's face it, the people who'd make the best superheroes and -villains as we think of such just happen to also be the kinds of people who'd keep prying into these things. I disagree with Log-Man here, I think. If Icons is supposed to remain a permanent fixture of the setting (as opposed to something that one day vanishes as mysteriously as it appeared), the truth about it will have to come out eventually.

Re: The best Superpet? Under the circumstances we've been given, I find it hard to blame Prestige's GM for ruling the way he(?) did. I'd probably have done the same if I'd thought of it in that situation. It's only a dog, after all, the idea is easily funny enough to be worth the minor effort of working it into the game on the fly, and it's not even all that much of a strain on the old suspension of disbelief -- if the animal is treated well enough, and it sounds like that would be the case here, it might just decide it wants to remain the character's pet even after the control wears off eventually.

Re: Death Touch Going off on a bit of a tangent, I'm suddenly wondering how any resulting fractions from that "half effect" rule should be rounded. See, on closer reading the rounding rule on 6E1 12/13 doesn't really seem to concern itself with anything but Character Point costs, so it's not necessarily clear that it can be generalized to also apply to damage/effect rolls. And even assuming it can (which isn't really that much of a stretch, granted), the fact that it tells us to round fractions of .5 in whichever way would be "best for the character" could easily inject a dose of subjectivity where it's least wanted, namely in combat. Say you do have a 6d6 Drain BODY and roll 21 on the dice -- does that now mean that you drain 11 BODY if your target is a legitimate villain, but only 10 if you accidentally hit a teammate or innocent bystander? How does your power know the difference? (For that matter, if you use an armor-piercing attack and the original defense before halving is an odd number, do you round in favor of the attacker or the defender, and does it depend on whether or not either character is a PC?) Mind, it's always entirely possible that I'm just being obtuse here. I assure you that it's not deliberate, though.

Re: Umm is this legal? On further reflection, it could be argued that for many creatures sight and hearing already have Transmit. For sight, the 'transmissions' would be such things as gestures, body language, and facial expressions; for sound, anything that can produce meaningful noises to communicate with obviously can 'transmit' as well. Not that I've looked at the notional point costs for normal senses closely enough yet to tell whether or not they actually account for that, mind.

Re: Umm is this legal? The main reason I don't think that just slapping Transmit on the bird's sight would work is that adding Transmit to a given sense or group "allows a character to transmit information similar to that which he can perceive" (emphasis mine). Regular old sight doesn't let you perceive radio waves, so even with Transmit added it shouldn't be able to send them either. Now I do suppose that adding Transmit to sight could be used to model a creature that 'talks' in light and/or color rather than or in addition to sound...but it's certainly not what I'd use for a long-distance video feed.

Re: Science Fiction League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Just another reason a lot of people reportedly hated the character, I'm sure. That said, he could certainly be considered 'extraordinary' in his own way. I don't suppose...? ... Naaah.

Re: Hit Locations in Super-Hero Game?

Re: Hit Locations in Super-Hero Game? Hmmm, true. I also can't help noticing, mind, that whenever the STUN multiplier for killing attacks dropped from the 1d6-1 I remember in 4E to the 1/2d6 that 6E uses the Hit Location table was apparently not adjusted to account for this -- you still get x4 and x5 STUN from just hitting the right spots. Makes me honestly wonder if a better mechanic might not be "roll BODY, roll STUNx normally to get base STUN damage, determine location, and then apply the BODY and N STUN modifiers for that after defenses"...