Michael Hopcroft

I seem to recall an old thread I satrted (but can;t find now) about how to model a character whose main superpower is a 1400 MPH fastball, turning an ordinary baseball into a projectile capable of blasting through brick walls, steel plate and people in power armor. I'd like to see how the attack would be written up so that I can write up this character and submit it. other than his pitching ability, he's mainly a skill-based villain who is essentially a "free agent" killer for hire. How muich damage would a 1400 MPH fastball do? If it missed, would it do the same damage to whatever it did hit (It's got to hit SOMETHING)? Can it be Missile Deflected like a bullet? is it an EB or a RKA? To be useful in combatm woudl fastabll have to develop some other "pitches"? Most importantly -- can a baseball survive being thrown at that speed?

The Daleks have always been built around the hovercraft principle -- Daleks were rising out of the Thames as early as the second season. Only the original Daleks from the very first stroy they appeared him had limited movement, which was because they were dependent upon electricity beamed from the floor of their city. This proved their fatal weakness, which was corrected in later adventures (because the Daleks turned out to be such popular villains). The only reason we didn;t see Daleks climb stairs in particular before was that BBC effects technicians had not yet figured out how to move the bulky, heavy suits up a staircase. The real-world BBC Daleks had a very small driver inside the shell, which he moved by pedaling something akin to a very small, very cramped bicycle all the while manipulating the arms, turret and lights. (At least that's how I THINK Daleks worked in real life. Terry Nation's whole idea for the Daleks was to make creatures whose movement was utterly alien, and that seemed the most logical way to manuver the shells). When a Dalek had to get upstairs before the McCoy era, it would simply do it off-screen where they didn't have to manuever the shell. the McCoy-era Daleks climbed stairs by camera effects (jncluding some early CGI). If the series were being made today, of course, Daleks would be 100% CGI and could probably hover three or four feet above the ground if they wanted to. And just imagine plugging a Dalek into the back seat of a starfighter....

Sailor Moon's Tranformation Symbolism Given that Sailor Moon's element is Purity and the Soul, this is entirely apprpriate. And Usagi Tsukino is in efect "reborn" when she becomes Sailor Moon, going from clueless junior high school student to the savior of the world. Remember, she regularly does thjings like purging individuals of evil influences that turn them into monsters. And she won her greatest victory not be y destorying her foe, but by purifying her spirit. "She's my WHAT?" = Usagi, concerning Chibi-Usa "Shes' my WHAT?" -- Lune, concerning Diana.

What if you find a character in a villain supplement that you especially like, but who you think would be even cooler as a hero than as a villain? Several characters from CKC come to mind. I'm surprised nobody has ever run Foxbat, for example, as a loony superhero rather than a loony supervillain. instead of constantly losing by overraching himself, he constantly wins by sheer luck (and his Rouge's Gallery is equally wacky except for one ultra-serious Dark Foxbiat-type who is deadly serious, ultra-competent, and does not hesistate to kill heroes if it suits his purposes). I also wonder if it is possible to create new superheores by working from the stats of a mfamous CU supervillain and supplying your own background. Your players never need to know that the mysterious emntalist who aids them in their times of greatest peril uses Menton's character sheet., or that the ultra-experienced power armor hero who shows up as a Deus ex Machina is a retooled Doctor Destroyer....

I havent; seen the VIPER book yet. Does that organization still organize its agents into "five-teams" to more efficiently combat both supers and normals? And if so, how effective are they in real terms?

Underwear? Underwear? Sinc ehwen has Sailor Moon's trnaformation shown her underwear? It usually doesn't show her wearing anything at all for about ten seconds until the parts of her costume start forming around her -- and, in the last season, her wings sprout. "If God had meant Sailor Moon to fly., he would have given her wings! Wait a minute -- what are those feathery things on her back?":D

Another note IIRC, Miraclo turned out to be an addictive drug that did long-term damage to Rex tyler's health to the point that his doctors advised him to stop taking it. One way to balance the power of the pill in a homage is to add a STUN drain so that when the hours is up, the character is completely exhausted until he spends some phases on recovery. An hour can reflect an entire combat and then some, but if you can only use it in one of many comabts during an adventure it bomecomesd a serious tactical challenge. maybe the ingredients of Miraclo are so expensive or difficult to obtain that you can only carry one pill at a time and have to manufacture another one between adventures, and it becomes impossible to stockpile a mass of miraclo pills for emergencies. Keep in mind also that the bad guys are also going to want the forumula for Miraclo -- even if it is dangerous in the long-term,most suervillains don;t care about their health or the health of their henchmen). Even worse -- make Miraclo addictive or make it cause a psychological high effect. Every organized crime kingpin in the world will want to formula so they can manfuacture it as the hot new street drug.

Pirtacy in a fantasy setting is usually associated with the high seas, but wouldn;t it be interesting if there were priates/raiders in your fantasy game who traveled by air. Whether by magically-powered dirgibles, "fiftwood" ships, or on the backs of a group of dragons, airborne raiders could do a lot of damage to civilized settlements and become very rich. This makes them a perfect target (or occupation) for PCs. One could also do fantasy campaigns where the air was a battleground whenever kingdoms or principalities went to war. Maybe the king has an 'air fleet" to fight in sky battles or transport troops to areas they can't reach on foot or horseback. How would you manage a Mass Combat battle involviing airships, and what happens to the characters aboard when an airship is "shot down" but doesn;t explode or do something otherwise obviously fatal to all aboard?

Daleks and Stairs One of the classic scnees in the Sylvester McCoy era of Doctor Who involved Daleks and stars. The Doctor had found a Dalek "transmat" pad in the basement of Coal Hill School (which happened to be where his first companions taught all those many years ago, although the story took place in 1963!) and a Dalek suddenly appeared. Naturally it recognized the Doctor and went after him. "The Stairs!" cries the Doctor and he and Ace scramble up the basement stairs. The door is locked, so the Doctor turns around and is horrified to see the Dlaek pulling itself up the stairs by its hovercraft-style bottom panels.... It is a common misonception that Daleks can't climb stairs. Even the Doctor had been lulled into complacency, and barely got out of the situation alive. (Naturally it was a cliffhanger!)

Speaking of peasant revolts..... What kind of farm tools frequently seen in fantasy worlds can be used as weapons? How difficult would it be tolearn to ifght with them as opposed to cutting down and threshing wheat? The insights into the medival world are interesting. I can't help but wonder what magic would do to the medival requation. If there's enough magic going around like priests blessing crops (to protect against disease and ensure a good harvest), healing spells available to anyone when they get injured or sick, magically skilled midwivesto ease the pangs of childbirth.... You get the idea. peasant life might be a lot less nasty, a lot less brutish, and a lot less short unless the local lords were REALLY cruel and tried to deprive the populace of these benefits.

Not to mention distinguishing two or three fighters among a party of PCs! If each of the fighters in yoru party trained in a different style, then you get a lot of added flexibility, and a lot of roleplaying possibilities on the side as well (martial artists can always be counted on to dispute the superiority of their particular styles.) Now I wouldn;t dream of starting a FH campaign without also hacing a copy of UMA to give me ideas. Make a few changes and you can get Eli\vish Archery as a martial art conmplete with manuevers, or a set of manuevers for knights in armor, swashbucklers who manuever a longsword with the deftness of a rapier, eschewing armor in favor of deft dodging and an uncanny ability to parry incoming blows (including arrows!)....

Spells with no END cost go against the grain for HERO. They make mages almost infinitely powerful,m especially if they can cast spells as potent as a superhero's attack. If you can cast an unlimited number of 12d6 Explosive Fireballs, then you're pretty much unbeatable unless you have some pretty potent Limitations on the spell. And I don't even want to think about the same spell with Autofire.... No END attacks are unbalancing enough in Champions. In fantasy HERO, they're devastating. You want to provide SOME incentive for a player to play a character other than a mage....

One of my favorite subgrenes of anime and fantasy is the stories of people from our world who are drawn into a different one for any number of reasons. They can be ordinary people, but posess abilities they do not know in the other world -- they don't think they're hero material, but somehow they are. How would you work this trope in HERO? The very nature of HERO System character design prevents you from designing a character with powers he or she doesn't know about. But how would you play a character who has mystic, superhuman, or strange powers but doesn;t even know it in a system that encourages you to know what your character can do down to the last detail?

You may not knwo this, Tempuswolf But you may ahve just hit on the perfect cross between the plot of Superman, the plot of Jurassic Park, and the plot of Sailor Moon. Will you write for me?

In some medieval worlds, there is a ruling noble class and a massive peasant underclass who are little more than slaves. This has enormous potential for social abuse, as the American experience with slavery demonstrates. If the local lord begins to abuse his priveleges by doing things like killing peasantry at random, claiming the first night with the new bride of every single marriage in his manor, or making serfs fight to the death for his sport, what can the peasantry do to bring him back in line? Historically, peasant revolts always failed (but occurred frequently) because the rebels had much poorer training and equipment than their opponents. But if some peasants knew a little "hedge magic" and craft skills to make good weapons (and disguise them as something else), maybe this could give them enough of an advantage that they stand a figthing chance. Of course, the best policy after defeating a manorial lord is to flee to another kingdom ahead of the royal army that is certain to be headed your way....

It's a matter of balance at times. A few good martial maneuvers can help a swordsman hold his own in a world with monsters, magic and amrored knights. Swashbucklers who attended fencing schools definitely are martial artists. Knights who have trained for battle from child hood are martial artists. The best mercenaries (not the rabble) are martial artists. And peasant classes might well develop unarmed martial styles, not just to settle disputes violently among each other but in case the armed nobility gets WAY out of line.

If I wanted to build a sword that would be worth building an entire campaign around acquiring and weilding, just how powerful wuld that sword have to be? And what sort of power? I believe earlier on these boards I mentioned a sword that could eb only weilded by the high king. What if ownership of the sword meant that, int eh eyes of the peop,e you WERE the High King? The sword was lost three hundred years ago in a quest and thet land has been in chaos since then. The only way to save the realm from self-destruction is to find a worthy weilder for the sword -- but first the sword itself must be found. What is more the sword chooses who can use it to full effect -- not based on royal blood or anything liek that, but on its own standards of worthiness to lead and rule. Like Excalibur not letting just anyone draw it out of the stone, maybe this sword won;t let just anyone unsheathe it. And what is the person it chooses is from common stock? Imagine the intiruge that would ensue if the sword were found by the PCs. Maybe the fighter in the party -- or the wizard! -- is the one the sword chooses. Since few advebturers are the distant kin of royalty, everybody -- na di mean EVERYBODy -- will be trying to take that sword away from them before they can claim the throne of the High King -- if they even WANT the throne!

Is it pracxtical to base a superhero entirely around Skills? His characteristics would be normal, and he would have no usperpowers other than minor eqipment 9like weapons eh absolutely has to pay for) but the bulk of his CP are spent on skills -- combat skils, scientific skills, social skills, medical skills, etc. what would this character need to be able to fucntion alongside other superheroes?

I should also point out that this style, while common, is not universal. Many anime/manga artists prefer a more realistic style. An example of such a manga would be the high school drama Great Teacher Onizkua. There is also a rather extreme drawing style called "super-deformed" that is mainly used in comedic cut-scenes, although there was an entire seried of SD Gundam. This style is characterized by very small bodies and very large heads. CLAMP is notorious for their SD versions of themselves that appear in the afternotes of many of their manga.

On the other hand, there is nothing preventing a craft the size of a jet fighter from carrying a weapon that can vaporize planets. You might not want to do it that way, but it's entirely possible.

No focus might be the way to go. That way the attack is always there when you need it. You could put a Misellaneous Limitation that restricts when the sword or other weapon is available. Only When enraged is a nasty one,or (in the case of Highlander) Only When facing Another Immortal in Mortal Combat (in neitherthe movie or the TV series did the hero use his sword against normals). On the other hand, the various macLeaods were always wearing coats long enough to hide those whopping great swords is they were slungbehind the back and drawn under the shoulder. This would be Concelament coupled with Distinctive features (always wears trenchoat-length coats no matter what the weather).

How would you guys try to recreate the Final fantasy VII style of tehcnofantasy game (where the character start out somewhat above average and, as they adventure, become world-shakingly powerful). besides, I'm wondering how you can possibly carry around that whopping great sword without attracting all kinds of unwelcome attention....

I try not to think about that setting. It rmeinds me of an roleplayer having a temper tantrum.

Wizards in fantasy fiction are able to extend their lifespans 9without becoming liches) by hundreds of years. Elves never die unless killed, or unless they wil themselves to die out of ennui. And so forth. What are the practical effects of immortaloity on a campaign world? Can the same person rule a kingdom for hundreds of years as King Eternal? And how does that change the politics of that kingdom? If the Court Wizard has been serving the royal fmaility for hundreds of years, does he effectively become the government? How powerful can one get in a thousand years?

Or you could be the mages who called up the typhoon.... For a japanese Mythos game, you have to take Shinto into account. What are the typical powerrs of a Shinto priest or shrine maiden? And do Buddhist monks in a fantasy setting learn anything approaching divine magic? Of course you can;t have a Japan fanatasy game with masterless samurai trying to perfect their swordsmanship skills until they can perform quasimytsical feats of swordplay.