Lupus

The game I'm planning, all characters have their own hook. The central character is a recently-manifesting superhuman with spirit/magic type powers, who's going to be tainted by some very black magic. So she'll be needing to find out what happened and deal with it. An older character, a mage, will be charged by the Trismegistus council with helping her (and keeping an eye on her in case she goes bad). Another guy, with a manner of cosmic danger sense, will arrive with the sense that something BAD is going on and he has to help fix it. Fourth character is just basically hanging out. Do-gooder type who hopefully will just be drawn into the plot by her own action.

Sheesh. Not just privacy implications - I wanna know what the health implications of routine body-scanning X-rays are! I think those problems should keep some scanners out of regular use. It could also be used as a reason why these machines aren't deployed in MC - something to do with routine exposure to the fields potentially causing health complications.

Played with a ninja with stealth 24- once. That was pretty obscene. Guy was constantly pulling -10 stunts like disappearing in plain sight and that kind of stuff.

*shrugs* This is HERO system, the land of much bookkeeping. The idea of taking a phys lim and buying stats normally sounds to me like less bookkeeping rather than more, anyway.

There's also the 'War' option. PCs taking part in war actions, or, if powerful enough, doing it themselves. The how of it depends on power levels and power types. A group that's capable of flying in space (either by powers or vehicles) could take part in fleet actions. I ran a short-lived game of this type a few years back. Had the brick tearing gun turrets off capital ships, for instance. Can be very important that the GM make definite decisions about what kind of game it's going to be. If the game's centered around fighting in space, then the super-martial-artist is gonna be left behind unless he spends a lotta points on getting, say, a fighter of his very own. (And that's a LOT of points.)

ONE OF US! ONE OF US! (What anime have you been watching, if I may ask?)

Yeah, good points. I'd still be tempted to assess penalties for people without a weapon. It still means you can do the Bruce Lee thing and kick the hell outta people who aren't as good as you. Or he could buy a couple of penalty skill levels. But good points.

In the film, with swords on planes, it looks more as though it's just legal. The Bride isn't the only one - a guy sitting near her has his sword by his side, too. It looks almost as though there are sword-holders attached to the seats. Some more ideas for making melee king: if someone has engaged you in melee (usually by moving next to you and attacking), you can't disengage from combat except by beating them in a skill contest - mostly DEX vs DEX, but Acrobatics could possibly be substituted. Also, if you shoot at someone who has you pinned in melee, any weapons larger than a handgun get a free block attempt against them, which takes no action on behalf of the melee attacker. If you use a handgun, that can be blocked normally (with an abort) or dodged. Perhaps also assess a penalty to DCV if you don't have a weapon in-hand to block with (rifles count, but take damage when used to block and may break). I'd assess this penalty (possibly at a reduced rate) even if the opponent is skilled in unarmed combat - unless they Dodge. Even in Jackie Chan films, when he's faced with someone with a sword, he has to duck and weave until he grabs something to block the sword with. Having proficiency with improvised weapons, however, will negate the penalty, however, until the improved weapons are destroyed. And, of course, high-quality weapons can give substantial bonuses. All of this means that Armed Melee Combat is King.

I wonder if you could build all the eyestalks as separate characters. Give 'em mindlink and some physical limitation to reflect the fact that they can only move with the main body. That way, they can all take independent actions, while mind link at a high enough level means they share perceptions. You can also kill eyestalks independently of each other.

Which I still say is an argument agaisnt blindly applying scaling rules without actually looking at the results and saying 'hey, why haven't nuclear tests blown up the planet yet?' There are points where any system breaks down, and an 86-BODY planet is a prime example. Hell... a machine-gun could destroy the planet!

I have one thing to add to this list of exceptional points. Probably the most important thing, I've found. AS A GM, YOU MUST KNOW THE SYSTEM BETTER THAN YOUR PLAYERS DO. If you have a player who has a better knowledge of the system, they can run rings around you as a GM, and snow you under with bull. Or remember rules useful to them, but conveniently forget the bad ones. Actually, you don't have to have a /better/ knowledge of the system than your places, but you do need to know it well enough that you at least know where to look something up. Otherwise, it just takes too long to do that during a session. But I'd recommend that any GM, especially new ones, do not run for players who know more than them, unless those players are very, very good and very helpful and actually act as an aid to the GM. Even then... it messes with power dynamics. I feel my position as a GM is undermined if I'm not the absolute authority on the rules. So - make sure you know the rules before you run, and have a working knowledge of the book so you know where to look stuff up. Also get the resource kit. That GM's screen is handy with all its tables. It's also double-sided, so the same tables are on each side. The li'l maps are handy, too. (Oh yeah... if you get into HERO, make sure you have a nice fat bank account. You'll end up buying a lot of stuff for it.)

All I can say is: my time-travel plot featuring a 27th-century fighter wreaking havoc with 8d6RKAs suddenly doesn't seem so scary.

*dies laughing*

Or buy up strength, 'only to reduce strength minimum.' I'd place that as... prolly -1/2, same as HA. If it proves to be abusive, say -1/4. Two-handed weapons can, after all, be used in one hand by increasing the strength min. Polearms one-handed seem a little dicey to me, though, without the user being huge. But whatever works.

I also like turning Find Weakness into a non-persistent power (will go away if stunned) or making it an attack action. Or both. I'd probably reduce the value of the power if I did that, though. And I'd never allow it as part of an EC, regardless of concept, and definitely' enforce that if you switch away from its multipower slot, you lose the effects. That means you'll always pay full price for it.

You can also be affected by poisons introduced to your system by darts, claws, stings, etc. Or eaten in food. Disease can, too. A suit will give you immunity to SOME forms of disease. Not all.

Oh, yah, I wasn't saying that to you. Was more about Steve's ruling on the HERO System Rules Questions board. That if an automaton is vulnerable to mental powers of any sort (including machine class), it should take a physical limitation to reflect that. I just don't get the 'why' of it.

Personally, I can't see why automatons aren't vulnerable to mind control, against 'machine' class of minds. If you can mind control a toaster, you can mind control a robot. Just don't see why making something self-mobile means you can no longer affect it. *shrugs* And if the 'machine' class of mind doesn't count toasters... what on earth DOES it affect? Standard rules, AIs are vulnerable as the 'human' class of minds. That said, I also count AIs as the machine class of mind, and not vulnerable to ordinary mental powers, regardless of their intelligence. Different brain waves and all that. Same reason why aliens and humans are two separate classes.

This isn't necessarily bad genre, of course, particularly for darker games. 20 or so skilled agents is a lotta points value, after all. And the +2 OCV from M-16s really does help. However, any halfway decent superhero in that kind of setting is gonna be able to bump their DCV above 10 while attacking, unless they have the PD to suck it down. And even bricks with 40PD? Yep, they can get stunned - bullet hits them in the eye, does no damage, but makes them go 'Ow!' and grab their eye for a bit in pain, losing an action. That's con-stunned. And generally, if less tough heroes get hit by bullets, they often just go down, unless they have armoured costumes. And then, they'll often be stunned. However, bullets end up being more powerful than energy blasts in a few cases, and that's bad genre. They should remain dangerous, unless you have the stats to ignore them, but they shouldn't be /better/ than blasters. For me, the problem here is not the stats for guns, but the stun multiplier. I hate the 1-5 stun multiplier. In superhero games, I use a flat x2 multiplier for killing attacks. If you wanna stun someone, use an energy blast. Some other GMs use a x2 or x3 stun multiplier, decided by a 1-3 or 4-6 roll. So, an FN-FAL does at most, in my game, 39 points of stun (+1 stun multiplier, 13 damage maxed out). This'll do some BODY damage to a regular not-tough hero, and even a buncha STUN. But in a game where the average defences are 25 or so, a high-CON hero won't even be stunned. Not unless there are coordinated attacks, that is. Which you could expect if you get a special forces group going after heroes. But that 39 STUN is a rare thing. An average result (8 BODY, 24 STUN) would bounce off an average hero's defences. So, under half of the attacks penetrate, and prolly well under half of the attacks hit... so suddenly, only 5 of those 20 troops are actually doing damage to the heroes. Whereas 8-10d6 blasts will be a lot better.

Get 'em hooked young, I like it. "No, Billy. Only the first session is free. You have to clean your room if you want another one." How do your kids do actually? Just interested to know. Didn't get into gaming til late high school, myself. Intrigued by Gamer Tots.

And it all gets busted open when some 12-year-old hacks a password and gets a crate delivered to his house. "Hey, let's go play 'paintball' with the bullies!" Okay. Was I the only one with childhood fantasies like these?

But... but... can't I fix that by going back and killing my childhood friend Teddy? Or was he an alien?

Re: Re: Protean Form I agree with -1 1/2. You don't protect against damage (-1) and you can't pass through solid objects (-1/2). It adds up. In my games, if your desolid can't protect against damage, then you don't need to buy Affects Real World on your attacks. ARW is needed normally to stop people who are desolid from attacking with no risk to themselves. But if you don't stop damage, then that's unnecessary. Note, this only applies to characters whose desolid renders them vulnerable to all attacks. If you're normally vulnerable to magic while desolid, then your magic attacks still require ARW. I do make an exception on some SFXs - a magical desolid character can hit another magical desolid character, for instance. In short, -1 1/2 sounds perfect to me.

Fortunately, your evil triplet ends up being killed by your son from an alternate, dark future. So it all ends up okay.

Note that the RKA is NND (with no defence listed in the power writeup). I wonder if, despite taking the damage shield effect with no defence, Stellar has a defence that applies to the NND, thus rendering him immune. Totally illegal, but it would be TERRIBLY cheesy. I wouldn't put it past a PC to do something like that.