Duane From RI

I am not trained in any combat arts. I do know that some of them incorporate maneuvers whereby a defender launches his own attack when an opponent has already launched his. I know that this exists in epee (where first touch counts and you don't have to worry about right-of-way) and that Bruce Lee also emphasized this strategy. My question to those people who game and at the same time know a thing or two about combat: 1) Are stop hits a result of readying an action in response to a move you know is coming? 2) If not, would you advocate adding a martial maneuver element as a house rule to cover these? 3) It occurs to me that Trigger is going to be way to expensive, but is that the right approach?

In the fluff of Book of the Machine, Mechanon is in a battle where a speedster is the first hero to arrive. Mechanon predicts that the speedster will try to run past him. He plans to stick out an arm and clothesline the speedster. What are the game mechanics for this kind of maneuver. Obviously fluff doesn't have to match mechanics, but I am building a pro-wrestler style hero. Here are some of my thoughts: 1) The rules are pretty clear that you can't abort to an attack. 2) Is there rules for readying an action? Maybe I missed them. 3) Trigger would be wicked expensive. How about the classic pro-wrestling counter-move of ducking under a running clothesline and flipping the attacker over your back? 1) This could be bought as a STR only to throw opponent attack power linked to a Duck Under defense power 2) Would you have to ignore Martial Arts Maneuvers you may have and have to purchase all OCV and DCV bonuses separately for that

If a character buys a Hand-to-Hand Attack with the trigger advantage, do they also have to buy the trigger advantage for their STR?

I'm building an alien with full Discriminatory on its Smell/Taste. Is that enough for the alien to make out symbols and characters written in fluids that give off a smell (assuming a successful PER roll)?

Discriminatory requires a PER roll. Does Analyze require a PER roll?

Re: Alien Species - Blind/Deaf Alien that shares senses with Dog-like pet The advice here has been worth it. The strongest sentiment I take away is that if the pet is totally under control of the player, than the fact that the pet is lending it's sight to the player does not justify the player selling back his sight. In other words, the player shouldn't get a cost break if he is going to be able to see one-way-or-another.

Re: Alien Species - Blind/Deaf Alien that shares senses with Dog-like pet Well I did some digging in the APG and found the following: "Clairsentience with the Only Through The Senses Of Others Limitation allows a character to use Senses he does not himself possess." I think mechanically Clairsentience used in this way is going to get me to where I want this to feel. Only through pet is at least a (-1/2) and 6E1 even recommends (-3/4) for limited class of beings.

Re: Alien Species - Blind/Deaf Alien that shares senses with Dog-like pet I wasn't overly concerned with the range of the sense bond, when this species adventures the pet is usually pretty close by. I'm very flexible with story. The story for this particular alien is based more on the visuals of the alien and the pet. Any limit on range would add to the "character" of the alien and the inherent struggle of playing it, which I consider a good thing. The pet is as sapient as a chimp (ie. more than a dog), has eyes, ears and heat pits, a nasty bite, and just a little more athletic than a police dog. The pet isn't as slavish as a police dog, but it accepts the bipedal alien as the dominant member of a partnership. The dog isn't self aware enough to figure out why they are exploring space and working with other aliens, but it is self aware enough to know that it likes doing so. As for what happens when the pet dies - that I'm still working on. I'm uncomfortable with the character outright losing the points of a follower, but clearly there will need to be a mini-quest to replace the pet. This is helped along by the way space travel works in the campaign; time does not actually pass for space travelers. Their senses record the passage of time in space but it is strictly a trick on the mind. Physical time only passes for people planet-side. So if one of these aliens needed to get a replacement pet, the physical time that would pass would be based on a kennel master selecting a replacement and getting it on an outbound ship.

I am developing a bipedal alien species for a sci-fi campaign that is blind and deaf. The alien species has a special attachment to a dog-like alien from their world that does see and does hear. The bipedal alien has a psychic bond with it's pet and can "see" what the pet sees and "hear" what the pet hears. Is this best built through Clairsentience? What about limiting Normal Sight and Normal Hearing? Is this a dramatic and common sense case where those should have the (-1/2) limitation applied to them although this is normally against the rules? Curious about other peoples thoughts.

Can a character sell back Voice for 25 points in much the same way they can sell back Normal Sight?

Re: Decoupling PER from INT Hah - it seems I have probably posed a topic that was discussed in 2009 at least. I found the "Seeing in the Dark" thread with its proposal and counterproposals of "Sensitivity Modifiers" instead of plain pluses to PER.

Re: Touch-By Actually I found it - 6E1 156 "However, since his Teleportation Half Move consists of any Teleportation up to 20m, his first 10m Teleportation is a Half Move — if he wants to Teleport back to his starting location, that requires another Half Move (i.e., what he wants to do counts as a Full Move)." 6E2 24 "It takes a Full Phase Action to make a Full Move; a character who has made a Full Move can’t perform any other Action in that Phase." 6E2 24 "A character who’s made a Half Move can perform another Half Phase Action in that Phase (including making a Half Move with some other mode of movement, if desired)."

Re: Touch-By Christopher - you are right. I totally misread 6E 156. Thanks for pointing that out! The restriction on 6E 156 is you can't split a half move.

Re: Touch-By

In another thread Sean Waters threw out the idea that PER should be de-coupled from INT. I have long held that view myself but I'm against turning INT into a 2 points of INT per Character Point attribute. Sean the thread so clearly demonstrated that I need to revisit the way to decouple PER from INT, I simply need to come up with something more better than making INT and PER 2 points of Attribute per Character Point spent. So here is my idea: Perception is an Everyman skill at 11-. The cost of buying pluses of PER is as stated on 6E 211 The masses don't have to have Perception as a skill, they probably only have familiarity or proficiency. Some members of the masses have better visual acuity - give them a talent. The result? A PER roll is to spot a blob in the dark, hear a sound in the woods, smell something different than what you were smelling a moment ago. You have to follow this up with an INT roll complemented by knowledge skills, professional skills and any other modifier the GM grants. This method really captures how I'd like PER to "feel". Thoughts?

Re: Touch-By In Bullwinkles case, the rabbit isn't really in the hat. Nothing is in the hat. He pulls an animal out via cartoon magic. I imagine the Bullwinkle power as a Variable Power Pool, only for the power Summon (-1), Character Has No Choice Regarding How Powers Change (-1/2), Requires Hat of Opportunity (-1/2), Half Phase to change (+1/2), No skill roll to change (+1). My thought is that Bullwinkle decides to pull a rabbit from the hat, he has to push up the fur on his right arm to show nothing up his sleeve. We'll go with a Half Phase action for that. So in this situation Bullwinkle needs to run 6m to the hat, push up his "sleeve", activate the Summon and then continue 6m to get away from both what was chasing him plus what he conjured.

Re: The Cost Seems to be off for my Normal Sight replacement power This I vehemently disagree with. If I can see a blob I can target it. If I can see a blob I can attempt an INT roll to guess what it is. If I see a blob and can try to avoid walking into it. There are so many things I can do once I see a blob. My sense has not failed. It comes down to this: If a campaign has enough moments in it where 10% of the time you are not allowed to make a decision based on what you can see, than light is not very common. If 91% of the time you can decide to shoot something, avoid something, ask "Mary, is that you" to something, reach out to poke something with a finger, or any other of a number of simple actions that themselves could lead to more knowledge than light is very common. Let me sum up - hitting objects is not what I consider that which makes light very common. If we see something and that something influences what we decide to do next, even if that something is stare at it and guess what it is, then light has done something.

Re: The Cost Seems to be off for my Normal Sight replacement power Just because your sight is hindered severely doesn't mean that light does not exist. If you can : 1) Tell that there is a blob in front of you that stands the height of a man and 2) Tell that there are two blobs both the height of a man and 3) Make a PER roll that one is a bandit and the other a cactus then there is light. I sit in my dark room (I have electrical problems that require that I shut the breaker for my room off) and will turn over and see a blob that looks a hell of alot like a man. I have to make an INT roll to remember my suit is hanging on my closet door. But there is enough light to see the blob of my suit. If an actual man were standing in front of my suit, I would see two blobs. I'd have to make an INT roll to realize it isn't just my suit anymore, but I would get a roll. With no light, no roll. No roll to see my suit, no roll to see the man in front of my suit.

Re: Touch-By I like the idea of loosening the Move-By rules to allow an action. Consider a character based on Bullwinkle Moose. He really needs to conjure a rabbit, a lion is nipping at his heels. He wants to move as far away from the lion as possible and lo and behold there is a hat 6m that-way. I like the idea of Bullwinkle running past the hat and pulling a rabbit (or another lion) out of it and then continuing another 6m. Maybe the rabbit runs of in another direction and the lion is distracted. Maybe another lion gets pulled and the two male lions fight. Endless possibilities, but they are impossible without the GM easing up on the Move-By rules.

Re: The Cost Seems to be off for my Normal Sight replacement power I can't navigate my apartment with my eyes closed. I can't navigate a dark alley with my eyes closed. I navigated dark alley ways before in NYC without carrying a flashlight. I can make out things that are knee high. That's a big, big minus to my PER roll but it does not preclude my from making a PER roll. Sewers, especially Victorian sewers, will most definitely be pitch black. But will the campaign spend that much time in the sewer. Just because sewers exist does not mean that have to be factored into the 10% figure of the campaign. It is very simple: If you can make a PER roll using sight, no matter how big the minus, at least 90% of the time that you are going to actually be playing - than light is very common.

How do members of this forum adjudicate a Touch-By. By Touch-By I mean a maneuver where a character runs by one or more opponents and touches them to deliver a No Range attack (or perhaps use a damage shield against them). In previous Rules posts to Steve Long I have discovered that you can do a Move-By so long as you use at least 1 point of STR. That's certainly not enough to add even a half-die of damage, but there is still velocity/10 to consider. A Touch-By using 20 meters of Flight is going to do 2d6 to the foe and 33% of that to the attacker. How about everyone out there? Is it proper that you have to have a chance to take a little STUN from a Touch-By or do most of you hand-wave this? What if your No Range attack is meant to be entangling or transforming and not meant to do damage (maybe you want to fly-by a Shelby Cobra and entangle it without scratching the paint)? NOTE: Caroll Shelby recently passed away so he is still on my mind. Love the Cobra.

Re: The Cost Seems to be off for my Normal Sight replacement power I disagree entirely with the concept that night has no light. I walk around my dark apartment all the time and I see shapes just from the the bare light of the moon coming through the windows. How about this concept - stars. We can see those at night. That's light. For light to not be very common we would need to spend at least 10% of our time in pitch blackness. Pitch blackness means we wouldn't see a cactus even if it was right in front of our nose. The campaign specifically would have to be 10% or greater pitch blackness. One trip to the desert on a moonless night in the entire campaign does not count as 10% of the campaign. I've been in a closet in the dark before. I've also been a member of the Order of the Arrow, and we conducted numerous ceremonies where I had to move about without a light source. In the closet - I couldn't see anything. I certainly couldn't see the walls or the door. During OA cermonies, I could discern the trail, see trees and rocks, even it was only the rocks that were over 1 feet in diameter. In a modern campaign near New-Bos-Wash it is impossible to not have light, even on a moonless night with heavy cloud cover. The glow of the urban areas is enough to make the clouds themselves discernable. That count's as light. Again, the key is the campaign and the concept of pitch blackness. First it has to be night. On average (entire course of year) this represents 50% of the campaign. This number goes down because of predawn and dusk. Let's be conservative and say a conservative estimate of night during a campaign is 40%. A completely moonless night is roughly three nights out of 28, that's 10.7% of what is only 40% of the total hours for a total of 4.28%. Now you have to have enough cloud cover that no stars are visible since they count as light - you can navigate by them with just a little bit of knowledge. On earth complete cloud cover like that is going to depend on region but it is also very, very seasonal. Let's say the entire monsoon season is spent in complete cloud cover. 25% of 4.28% is 1.07%. My estimation is that a campaign in prehistoric malaysia is itself going to have no more than 1.07% pitch blackness and that's assuming they haven't invented fire. Since 98.3% of the time this campaign is going to have light to see something - that sounds like very common to me.

Re: The Cost Seems to be off for my Normal Sight replacement power Regardless of how much of the elctromagnetic spectrum that light takes up, to say it isn't very common is to say that at least 10% of the time we have no light. I would tend to say that campaigns that take place on surface Earth in any era that includes man, light is very common.

Re: The Cost Seems to be off for my Normal Sight replacement power 10 Point Detect includes in the definition of Large Group anything that is very common. I would say Visible Light is very common. Another thing I noticed, I don't see anywhere in the rules that you can turn a detect into group. In other words can anybody point to a rule in the book that says I can define a Attitude Sense group and put Detect Motivation, Detect Fetishes, Detect Fears, Detect Hangups, etc..? I think instead it would be built as a single Detect: Detect Personality with Discriminatory and maybe Analyze. So I don't think the 35 points for Normal Sight is built with the double cost "for the group" modifiers. I suspect 35 points is a "feels right" number.

Is the following mutipower construction "by-the-rules" under normal circumstances: 30 Interdermal Nanites: Multipower, 30-point Reserve 6m 1) Integrity Mode: Resistant Protection (20 PD) 6m 2) Energy Dissapation Mode : Resistant Protection (20 ED) 6m 3) Bio-reinforcement Mode : Resistant Protection (20 Power Defense) 3m 4) Eardrum Reinforcement Mode : Resistant Protection (10 Hearing Group Flash Defense)