CorpCommander

break old designs?

Will the revised edition just be corrections and expansions or will Hero be making the leap with some fundamental changes?

I'd prefer no significant rules changes but I know others have been begging for some big changes on these boards for a while.

How much would you value an extremely low rate of fire as a limitation?

For example the main gun on a tank typically fires 5 rounds per minute with a trained crew for about 5 minutes before they get tired, then it degrades to around 3 rounds per minute.

In effect I was thinking of a limitation as follows: "Only on Segment 12 for first 5 turns, then only on segment 12 every other turn. 5 minutes of rest to return to normal rate of Fire"

I think this is worth about -2. My reason for this level of limitation is an activation roll of 8- is also -2 and thats about equivalent for something that operates at SPD 3. Though a Full Turn activation is worth -1 1/4 and an additional turn is 1 1/2 so perhaps that is an appropriate level of limitation.

What do you think?

Psychological Impact

That was actually briefly discussed and I found I didn't have to say much about it but acknowlege what the party already assumed would be the case.

In either case they are on their own seeking treasure and their enemy now. Their steam powered boat will face uncertain perils next Wednesday. I'll come back to this thread with an update.

Going back

I have a copy of Champions 1. 1st Ed. I think going back to that might help. Things were simpler then. ;-)

Seriously though, you are talking about a grand unified theory for everything - the String/Membrane theory of the universe in gameable format. I think Hero has been trying to be that for decades - and its been doing a good job thus far.

My only warning is you will never please everyone. Its going to be hard to get a majority of people to accept this. DOJ in particular made it an aim of 5th ed. to NOT too terribly break old character designs. In the few places where they did that, there was much griping and moaning.

Thats not to say this isn't worth the time or effort.

ok lets try this on for sizeI think this is better:

The Battle Continues

Ok we finally finished it.

The boat had 3 crew and 1 player vs. 4 Swamp Thralls. The entire crew went down but not killed leaving 2 thralls on the player. The scout player seeing the rogue in trouble on the boat turned his rifle on one of the thralls, and while not killing it, weakened it. Pushing every advantage he could, disregarding safety in exchange for offense the rogue managed to kill off the weakened thrall in time for the crew to start to wake up and help deal with the last one.

The party was starting to go low on endurance but they were getting the upper hand. Even though thralls were regenerating they managed to rebuke enough of them for a turn (turning spell from the priestess) that they could concentrate on the others.

It ended up being a very close thing. The outpost "mayor", if you can call him that, had been working to set up his Still Cannon (basically a large moonshine flame thrower). He and another Swampie pushed it out of the shed and yelled clear. It was obvious that something exciting was going to happen and two characters near where this thing was pointing aborted their next action to jump out of the way. Woosh! 2 more dead thralls. Mayor and flunkie began working the belows again. This was not a rapid fire weapon!

Long story short the final thralls were offed and the party priestess went around healing the wounded. Only she found one of the adult swampies wasn't wounded she was dead...

DEX Check.

Priestess fails a dex check and is surprised when the dead woman arises as a swamp thrall! It lashed on to her. The Ogran Martial Artist leapt in, and while normally being into subtly and mastering his craft, saw no other choice but to grap the newly risen's arms and, using his 30 strength, pull-them-off-crunch! The Priestess had a mini-heart attack she thinks!

The battle was over, one of the outpost members was lost and there was a sense, not of accomplishment, but of shared survivial among all there. The Swampies were upset at their loss but they'd seen it before. The party members were angry though. This attack was launched by their arch enemy, and while it was aimed at them, it put all the swampies and their children in harms way. They had an idea where their enemy was going and, after some rest they'd be heading upriver to deliver an ass kicking.

Good Questions

Expendable - that was a mistake. Probably should take that out.

STUN - it seems a reasonable effect. I can't imagine you can do much while the weapon is trained on you.

However if we don't think it would leave people laying in the streets unconscious whats the alternative? A massive presence attack? That could be reasonable because it would cause people to obey your command to leave the area.

Maybe it could be bought as mind control of a sort...

I'll redo the numbers and pick one that seems better suited. thanks for the comments!

Think about the plants

Do the plants have any aspect in the game? Is the character using the power to destroy crop land? If its just a special effect of the character and doesn't actually cause a story related effect then go with Distinctive Feature.

If, however, it has an effect or a major effect then buy a power. Its a severe disadvantage by the way. The person can be tracked by it much more easily than someone who leaves only foot prints.

Just saw this nifty new Non-Lethal Weapon on CNN. Its a sonic cannon of sorts for crowd control.

Troops get high-tech noisemaker

NEW YORK (AP) -- U.S. soldiers in Iraq have new gear for dispersing hostile crowds and warding off potential enemy combatants. It blasts earsplitting noise in a directed beam.

 

The equipment, called a Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, is a so-called "non-lethal weapon" developed after the 2000 attack on the USS Cole off Yemen as a way to keep operators of small boats from approaching U.S. warships.

Here is my write up on it. It has two modes. The first mode allows it to broadcast pre-recorded messages. They can be in the local language. I am sure they are happy messages like "Disperse or we'll fire", "This city block is off limits until Hazmat Teams clean up the spill." and "Have a Nice Day - Don't Throw Rocks."

The second mode is an AOE NND sonic blast. You can survive it if you have extremely good ear protection on. Now, it is possible that this device puts enough vibration in the air that ear protection is not enough but the description seemed to indicate the pain comes primarily from ear drum over stimulation. We can adjust this later if that turns out to be the case.

END use comes from the vehicles END Reserve.

Striker + Dirtside II

I am a huge GZG fan, but Dirtside II is a slow game because of the nifty chits. I like the fact that there are a few software apps out there that mimick that though - makes it a lot easier.

Striker is a great idea gone totally wrong. I think the system had two strikes against it. 1 - no books detailing vehicles or anything, you were on your own for designing stuff. 2 - far to complex for combat to be fun as a game. Now, if Chadwick were to turn Command Decision IV into a sci-fi game he might lure me back. I am still miffed at Chadwick because something happened where he got credit for my groups mega-game of Operation Market Garden at the "Fall In" historical minis convention (so therefore I am biased!)

A friend at BattleGroup Boston, Nick Ciampa, wrote a great set of scifi combat rules but never published them. I may have to wrench a copy from him and PDF them.

--Pete

Originally posted by Grimwyrd

It's fairly easy to make characters too darned tough without strict control of the Speed attribute by the GM.

I would go so far as to say that any attribute, power or advantage that isn't vigorously checked by the GM can be unbalancing.

On affects desolid there are many many ways to explain this and not coming up with one just shows you aren't trying. Usually the description of how desolid works in your world is enough to figure out a way to affect something.

In the Rokugauan setting (pardon my spelling, don't have any materials in front of me) Jade is the perfect weapon against the bad nasty creatures from the Underworld because Jade exists in all dimentions where as other substances do not or only have a shadow in the other dimentions.

I think the power I am most leery of is Transform, closely followed by Detect. Transform is the lazy person's way out of figuring out how to do something right. Detect is so easily abused it's absurd.

However, just because I don't like them doesn't mean I don'tuse them. As GM I take the responsibility of checking character design quite carefully and making sure that play balance is ensured for 90% of all situations and allowing for dramatic, heroic unbalance the rest of the time because its fun.

Book suggestions

For some books to mine ideas from try the following

Empire of the East - one of my favorite trilogies. I've written about it before on this forum so just do a search to find it.

Silverberg's Majipoor books. Great stuff.

Jack Vance's The Dying Earth books. Written in the 50's but fresh today still. That's saying something!

--Pete

Originally posted by TaxiMan

I really like the ideas! How do you handle the Unluck? At the Minor level, they gain that disadvantage until they could heal back 15 Body - OK. But how do the Usable As Attack forms work? What's their duration?

The unluck is used like the luck talent only in reverse - not like the unluck in the case of the disadvantage so it doesn't have to be "healed back" - just roll the dice and if any come up ones that sets the level of unluck - as GM you just apply it! Level 1, lose a half phase or something minor like that. Level 2, a critical button/buckle/etc. fails and a piece of armor falls off or your current weapon falls out of your hand.

Since luck is personal only I had to make it useable as an attack so it could affect someone near by. The 2" radius is enough to get nearby party members most cases! It will also affect enemies as well if they are close enough but wizards usually hang back (as they well should!)

I will probably rearrange the chart so that every thing that is simply annoying is in the center and everything that could cause pain and suffering is at the edges. The cosmetic transform is one I can't wait to apply.

very interesting

I am not sure the coaxial vrf gauss gun is really eligible for the limited arc of fire. It is in a turret afterall. The hull vrf gauss gun I can belive because of the limitation of navigating the body of the craft. Still, the turret is mainly for the pulse laser so perhaps I am being a bit to hard nosed.

The thing is big (size 10) and fast. Its a freaking flying BUS!

Winnebago of Death, more like!

You could play some cool battles with this using miniatures and a map or terrain. Got any more designs?

--Pete

Here it is ready for the boards

Zhodani Z-80 Grav Tank

Player:

Total Character Cost: 399

Base Points: 200

Experience Required: 199

Total Experience Available: 0

Experience Unspent: 0

If you are really evil...

...don't tell the players whats on the chart. And when it goes wrong but the effect is not obvious (such as the -10 on next die roll) don't tell them what happens. Just say, you know the spell failed but you aren't sure where the energy went...

Then grin. Evily.

Players hate that. <-- VEG

Ok, been working on this all day today. Why am I up so late? Duh, I love this game too much. Well if I am going to burn the midnight oil I might as well let you all benefit from my deep night tinkerings. I present you with a Side Effects for Spell Failure table.

In my game I am enforcing that all arcane and sorcerous type wizards/witches/spooky types all have a chance of having spell's fail. RSR + Side Effects are mandatory. 18 is always a failure on the PS: Casting Skill roll so no matter how high the player has bought this skill up there is still a chance for failure.

I tried to make sure that the caster would not, most likely, be killed by spell failure, but there are a lot of things that will cause actual harm. When going against the caster only natural PD and ED or inherent defenses apply. defenses in focuses never apply. If the effect is area of affect it affects everyone near by (friend and foe alike). Some effects aid the foe. If there is no foe around then something magical happens but its confused/distorted and bleeds off into thin air.

If the effect affects foes or friends they get to use all of their defences.

That is basically it. I will attache the PDF file. Let me know what you think.

--Pete

Fear Not!

Next Wednesday or there after I will give details on what happens next!

Your game sounds like fun. Is your world your own setting or based upon a published book or game system?

Ok, I've been GMing (DMing? Reffing? Hero Mastering?) an Iron Kingdoms world. Lots of fun. We are in the middle of a battle that's been quite fun to run.

It involves a swamp outpost with 15 'swampies' (7 adults, 8 children) and 5 Heroes. The outpost consists of a small quay with the party's boat and a competant crew of 3. There are a about 3 buildings locally and a bonfire (not like a Texas A&M sized bonfire but a reasonably sized one). The outpost is thus surrounded on 3 sides by swamp/jungle and on the last by a river.

The party's main foe wants to off them and sends 20 Swamp Shamblers after them. A swamp shambler is basically undead (no stunning), with 3d6 of regeneration and a nasty habit of turning those that kill it into a fresh swamp shambler 3 minutes later. The shamblers have raking claws that do 8d6 normal damage. They have a CV of 4 so aren't too tough but there are lots of them.

Its been fun because the players can't take a lot of risks like they are used to . If one of the shamblers get through to the children it will kill the child and also create a new shambler. It has 8 potential victims to do this to.

The fact that they regenerate 2-4 points per phase also makes it interesting as they most likely event is they will out last the adult swampies. Needless to say the party has pulled all the stops on trying to kill off these things. The Priestess has been trying to turn them, the martial artist is trying to tie up 3 of them in hand to hand combat and the others are looking for every method available to them to make sure they stop twitching.

Its definitely been a tremendously fun game.

The point

the point of Everyman skills is that these are skills that any boob would know. I wouldn't personally give my party a useful skill like paramedic. However common languages should be known. Certain basic skills should be known as well.

Just because they are adventurers doesn't mean they all know how to swim for example.

Consider your group of friends. What skills do you all have in common? Fluent in English? I can't claim that - some of my friends speak Southern but understand English! Knowlege of basic rules of the road? Knowlege of basic public services (Government, police, library, social work, etc.)? One guy has PS: 3D animator but no one else has anything even resembling passing familiarity with that. One guy has PS: engine room mechanic. Those are specific from their back ground.

I think the 10 point limit is a guideline. The characters should get whatever is basically well known. If its very useful in game terms its probably not well known.

Originally posted by PhilFleischmann

In my campaign world, if you want more combat strength, you want fighters, not wizards.

I love it, that is what makes this game so damn good. Each GM can tweek the game anyway they see fit to tell the story they want to tell. Your view point on real/3 is just as valid as proponents of it.

I am using both types of system in my world. Perhaps in 6 months I'll be able to say if the difference between the two systems is significant enough to be a factor.

It saves me a lot of money

I GM to save money.

I have deep, psychological scars. They are well ingrained and would require years and years of therapy to excise. Worse, untreated they could lead to halucinations, manic/violent behavior, a disconnection from reality and so on. Treating them would require lots and lots of expensive therapy and weekly visits to a board certified shrink and perhaps lots and lots of pills and expensive perscriptions.

But why bother will all of that? Why not put them to work? GMing is very similar to deep psycho analysis - you put your crazy ideas out there, the players listen and react, this causes the subconsious of the GM to respond in kind and the next thing you know you have a game going. The players think you have the greatest adventure all planned out when in reality you as GM have no control over the process and its the damage and the disease taking over for a few hours each time.

The benefit is that the demons are quieted and in fact quite befuddled. My sub-conscious has no idea why the conscience is asking it how many XP that last freaking nightmare scenario was worth. Thus feeling a bit cornered the sub-conscious comes up with a number, any number, and slinks off for a while... only to return in time for the next gaming session.

Anyway the voices are telling me to get off the internet and go beef up the rPD and BODY on the giant squid. My work never ceases...

Its working for my game

I offered the Grimore version as an alternative and of the two magic users one went for it.

The new system has the following limitation - no power frame works, must have a required power roll. The advantage real cost / 3. The end result for the character that opted the new system was a lot more spells with chance for spell failure. Its made it a lot more interesting actually! There are a couple of spells I need to revisit as they don't have any endurance costs and are basically zero phase actions to activate. One is a +3 overall to up to 8 party members. So long as the caster keeps making their rolls (11- in this case) the blessing kicks off.

I think it was well thought out and the fact that Hero Designer v2 supports this is a huge boon. Bravo to Steve and company.

another wacky idea...

build a magic VPP for the familiar. Here is how I did arc nodes for Warjacks in the Iron Kingdom's setting.

Arc Node: Variable Power Pool (Mimicry Pool), 75 base + 22 control cost, Cosmic (+2) (186 Active Points); Character Has No Choice Regarding When Or How Powers Change (-1); all slots No Conscious Control (-2), OIF Bulky (-1)

This costs a hefty 97 points and is limited to 75 point active spells. You could up this to be more powerful for more points of course. There are probably more limitations you could use and at least one you don't want. Get rid of the OIF - that doesn't make sense for a familiar. Add Spells Only (-1/2), add limitations on need for LOS or perhaps the familiar has to be within X proximity to caster, add extra time to get spells off via familiar, etc.

What do you think?

I am trying to help a player in my group reconfigure his gadget pool in a steampunk fantasy setting. He is going for aquatic adventuring! So we are building a bulky aquanaut suit for him. We have flippers with a backpack steam screw that gives some extra swimming. We have some incidental advantages such as flash defense for flash attacks not directly in front (but also he has a limited view).

Its a 75 point pool with 29 points spent. Just need a few more ideas. Being the GM I know what is ahead and am hesitant to suggest anything too useful!

So far this has been the most fun configuration to think about. I don't need writeups as much as ideas for things that sound like they'd work and be fun in a world where steam powered mechanika and alchemy are as powerful as arcane magic and divine intervention. A world where AI exists in mechanika/magical cortexes that power fantasy robots...

All suggestions and silliness will be accepted!