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nexus

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Posts posted by nexus

  4. 6th Edition Question: New Powers?

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: 6th Edition Question: New Powers?

     

    Standard Superheroes are 400 Points with 75 Points in Matching Complications (or to use 5e terminology 325 + 75) with a maximum of 40 points of one type of Complication.

     

    High-Powered Superheroes 500 Points with 75 Points in Matching Complications (425 + 75) with a max. of 40 points of one type of Complication.

     

    Why the terminology Matching Complications?

  5. 6th Edition Question: New Powers?

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: 6th Edition Question: New Powers?

     

    New Powers:

     

    Barrier -- expansion of the Force Wall power that can create real walls

    Damage Negation -- reduces DCs of damage

    Deflection -- lets you block ranged attacks at range

    Reflection -- reflects attacks back at firer or other target

    Regeneration -- recovers BODY faster - cost based on how often you regenerate a BODY point

    Resistant Protection -- replaces Force Field and Armor

     

    Thanks, much obliged. :)

  7. Organized crime in a world where "vice crimes" don't exist--what do they do?

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Organized crime in a world where "vice crimes" don't exist--what do they do?

     

    Those are all pretty good. This is a setting with commercially available androids and "replicants" (kind of like an organic version of an android, with a programmable brain), human cloning(the only legally permissible variety falls into two categories--cloning of select tissue/organs for replacement parts, and cloning of a "blank slate" to have the consciousness somehow implanted in, in the case of death--very expensive, only available to the ultrarich--think "The 6th Day", though possibly someone filthy rich could actually get an esper to transfer their unique consciousness into the clone), space travel, aliens, etc.

     

    Maybe there's an underground market for human blood (vampires here and there), or one for "programmable" clones of human celebrities(the ultimate form of identity theft, I suppose)? Maybe someone wants to eat something on the endangered species list?

     

    There might be good side money in figuring out ways to get/keep metacriminals out of jail, too.

     

    You may want to look at the setting for GURPS: Transhuman Space particularly Broken Dream if you haven't already. It's sounds like your setting is very similar except of the addition of superhumans and other fanciful elements. There's some good information on crime and how it might adapt in such a setting.

  10. Silly Question: Rita Hayworth's COM?

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Silly Question: Rita Hayworth's COM?

     

    I think Bogart's appeal is more due to PRE. It's not his appearance that causes the impact...

     

    (Though of course, you could always give him Striking Appearance anyway if you wanted, defining the SFX in some appropriate way...)

     

    I'd lean more towards Presence in Bogart's case, 5th or 6th edition personally. Pre and/or Interaction skills with Reputation.

  13. Sixth Edition Showcase #8: APG Goodies

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Sixth Edition Showcase #8: APG Goodies

     

    Well, adding characteristics is already trivial in the current version of HD, so I doubt that'll change.

     

    I don't find it trivial but I am not a technically minded person by nature. What I would want would be a simple point and click interface for handling it. If there is one I confess I've missed it.

     

    Removing "Striking Appearance" should also be pretty trivial, as again that kind of change is already pretty trivial in the current version.

     

    Removing it is not a biggie for me. Even when you use Com, such a talent might have uses. If not don't select it.

     

    Adding Figureds back in might be a different story.

     

    That's the big sticker right there.

  17. Sixth Edition Showcase #6: Defense Powers

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Sixth Edition Showcase #6: Defense Powers

     

    Since there is now a Resistant Advantage I do wonder why Resistant Defense was kept as a separate Power. Players could get additional PD, ED, MD, etc and get the Resistant modifier and any others needed to fit their particular sfx. I'm also curious if the "Protects carried objects" adder will still be available in some form.

     

    re: Sue Storm style Force Walls

     

    Not having seen the Barrier Power, I'd WAG you could do it by getting a Continuous Barrier with 0 Body the required Concentration and caused Feedback (as a Side Effect?).

     

    *clears throat*

     

    :)

  18. Sixth Edition Showcase #6: Defense Powers

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Sixth Edition Showcase #6: Defense Powers

     

    I have to imagine that it is there because we're not supposed to put characteristics in power frameworks.

     

    We aren't? ECs are gone and the only rule I recall about Characteristics in Multi Powers is they have to have No Figs chars which are also gone. There are several published characters with Chars in Multipowers too.

     

    Resistant Defense falls into a similar situation, where many people find it easier to grok a separate defense power than buying it all as characteristics.

     

     

    I personally like it because it causes me mental discomfort to write "26 Forcefield: 15 PD and 15 ED, resistant(+1/2), visible(-1/4), costs END every phase(-1/2)" on a character sheet.

     

    Honestly you can say the same thing about Armor and Force Field. The division between them is "artificial" but comfortable and simpler to write on the character sheet.

     

    Lastly, I'm not sure how adjustment powers are going to work, but I imagine it is helpful to have separate power to work with for building a force field disruptor.

     

    Now that could be a problem but then I've always felt Adjustment powers should work on SFX not Game Mechanics by default. I guess you write it up as Drain ED/PD and limited the sfx that it can affect.

     

    It's not really a big deal for me either way, I was just curious why the line was drawn where it was.

  19. Sixth Edition Showcase #6: Defense Powers

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Sixth Edition Showcase #6: Defense Powers

     

    Since there is now a Resistant Advantage I do wonder why Resistant Defense was kept as a separate Power. Players could get additional PD, ED, MD, etc and get the Resistant modifier and any others needed to fit their particular sfx. I'm also curious if the "Protects carried objects" adder will still be available in some form.

     

    re: Sue Storm style Force Walls

     

    Not having seen the Barrier Power, I'd WAG you could do it by getting a Continuous Barrier with 0 Body the required Concentration and caused Feedback (as a Side Effect?).

  23. Confedrate Comics

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Confedrate Comics

     

    I apologize for running off at the mouth here but I've thought allot about this subject. I've summarized by basic point afterward.

     

    How long would slavery have lasted in a victorious South or a "CSA"? It's extremely difficult to answer a hypothetical like that. I think the best thing we can do is examine trends of opinion over the decades leading up to the Civil War. When the Constitution was ratified it was generally held by opinion leaders in all parts of the country that slavery was dying institution, but that attempting to abolish it immediately would place undue social and financial stress on the areas where it was most prevalent -- the south. It's worth noting that at that time there were slaves in New York and Pennsylvania, for example, but not many. The use of slaves even in the deep south was uneconomical and for that reason it was generally believed that the institution would die in and of itself over time. While some northerners were diehard abolitionists even then, the majority both north and south felt that slavery, while morally repugnant and corrosive to both slave and master, was not an issue sufficiently grave to stand in the way of the unification of the country.

     

    This changed radically as the Industrial Revolution took off, and primarily with the invention of the cotton gin, which was the first time in human history that we had a way to quickly and easily remove seeds from cotton. Prior to that time cotton was a pain in the ass luxury crop grown by a small percentage of farmers. With the cotton gin, and with the huge steam-powered textile mills going up left and right in places like England, cotton suddenly became a MUCH more valuable and practical commodity. However, it was VERY labor intensive, and so the planters in the places where cotton could be grown (the south) began to use a ready supply of labor -- slaves. Slaves themselves began to me more valuable and the institution began to actually grow and expand as opposed to shrink and die as had been predicted.

     

    Naturally, as inevitably happened when people's economic interests are at stake, what was once viewed as a necessary evil to be tolerated gradually became seen as a desirable institution. By the 1820s and 1830s you begin to see preachers in areas where slavery is commonplace preaching that human chattel slavery is ordained by God and necessary for human civilization. As profits increased so did the level of justification of the institution which made those profits possible. During the 1850s there were a series of crises that threatened to blow the country apart along sectional lines, and during these crises Southern attitudes toward slavery calcified even further such that by 1858 it's entirely commonplace to hear of prominent Southern thinkers proclaiming that the South was the last true bastion of Christian civilization BECAUSE, rather than IN SPITE OF, the institution of slavery, and that slavery was entirely beneficial to the enslaved. Naturally these opinions became solidified after hostilities commenced.

     

    I'm deliberately painting with a broad brush here both for the sake of brevity but also because there's a lot of validity at this point in saying "Southern opinion." Culturally America was then much more aristocratic, for lack of a better term, than it is now. Across the South, and across most of the north as well, both opinion and policy was driven almost entirely by the "best classes" of men, the wealthy and the educated, who were the only voices that mattered. That these men in the South were the same ones that owned slaves means that opinion and policy could really only develop in a single direction. To point out that the majority of Southerners didn't own slaves is true but also entirely irrelevant, as the masses of people both north and south were politically inert and exerted little or no impact on policy.

     

    It's equally a canard to point out that in many cases slave owners worked in the fields alongside their slaves. It's true enough -- the richest Mississippi planters like Jefferson Davis were men of that stripe. But it's entirely false to equate that with moral equivalency or kinship between the two. At the end of the day the master went back to big house, ate of silver plates and slept on fine beds; the slave went back to a feculent cottage, ate sow bellies field greens and slept on a straw pallet. The master could whip, sell, or kill a truculent slave at his discretion and no one could gainsay him; the slave did not have the same prerogative when dealing with a cruel master.

     

    So, would slavery have died out on it's own given these facts? I have a difficult time believing it would have. While it may not be unprecedented for a people who have just been victorious in a long, difficult and sanguinary war to voluntarily forego the very privilege they fought for, I think we can all agree that such instances are extraordinarily rare across the span of human history. I find it difficult to believe that a Georgia gentleman in a CSA of 1920 would have said anything but, "My ancestors fought and died for my right to own n*****s and I'll be dead myself before anyone takes them away." I could be wrong of course, hypotheticals being what they are, but I think the weight of evidence leans that way. Would this extend to 1976? IMO, probably.

     

    tl;dr: As slavery became productive and connected to wealth and privilege, it grew into a identity, not just fiscal aspect of Southern culture and society. Such things aren't given up easily particularly after they are hard and violently fought for even if perhaps they have grown impractical.

  24. Confused about 6th edition

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Confused about 6th edition

     

    Okay...I still don't get it. The 2nd post says at first that 6th Edition will come in two books: Characters...and Combat & Adventuring.

     

    Then the post goes on to talk about two rulebooks: basic and advanced. So are there four books or what? How does the basic and advanced rulebooks fit with the Characters and Combat & Adventuring books? Is there a basic and advanced version of each (by each I mean Characters and Combat & Adventuring)?

     

    Here's how I understand it

     

    There will be a Character Creation book and a Combat and Adventuring book and later an Advanced Player's Guide with extra and more optional rules that weren't considered important enough to include in the two core books

     

    In addition there will be slimmed down "basic" book similar to Hero sidekick with somewhat simplified rules. I am not sure when it will be released. I think at about the same time as the two core books.

  25. Champions: Why did you stay/return?

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Champions: Why did you stay/return?

     

    I detested the Damage Save.

     

    It's a major turn off for me. Some people love it but I just can't bring myself to like it. I think its one of the major points that keeps me from looking deeper into the game.

     

    Recently though, and hate to admit it, two pieces of new have drawn my attention: M and M now has an anime/manga supplement and that supplement also has a social conflict system; two things that interest me.

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