Jump to content

Hugh Neilson

HERO Member
  • Posts

    20,305
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    22

Everything posted by Hugh Neilson

  1. It doesn't hurt at all. But the skeleton can probably function a lot better with a shattered foot than a shattered spine.
  2. Well, at least they can talk to the invisible character once his presence is known. But the EMTs won't see him lying in the debris.
  3. I don't see an issue with any character that paid for all abilities to be 0 END selling back END. They may regret that should they be attacked by Mental Paralysis, though. I would ensure that CON rolls are encountered with sufficient frequency and impact to justify a 10 point savings if a character sold back its 10 CON. This is no different than a 10 point Complication.
  4. Do your teammates have area effect attacks? If teammates can't see you, they can't help you.
  5. Unless I misrecall, the CE itself has to be ongoing for the "being stunned" effect to be ongoing. That's a lot like taking continuous damage.
  6. Note that Martial Arts adds DCs, not dice. AP AoE on Strength will reduce the dice added with +2 DC. See 6e v2 starting on page 96. Page 99 discusses adding damage with maneuvers among other things.
  7. As LL says, read the early stories. He has trouble with enemies including: - an old man with a flying suit; - a pudgy scientist with robotic arms; - a cowboy, a bulky thug and a midget who knows martial arts. Just off the top. If you write Spidey more powerful, some enemies can be scaled up, but others don't make as much sense scaled up to match SuperSpidey.
  8. The defenses are the key, in my view. If these characters are tossing around, and soaking up, 12 - 18d6 Normal damage routinely, I'd expect that they have defenses in the 30s or higher. A 15d6 Normal attack averages 52.5 STUN. Normal defenses of 30 will block all BOD from a terminal velocity fall. BOD from a 20d6 Normal attack is not going to get past those defenses, so there is nothing to double from a head shot. Making the doppelgangers identical and then adding all the advantages of automatons means that they are massively more powerful than the heros, especially defensively. If they are identical copies (not automatons) and can be knocked out, then the heroes will have to knock them out, then carefully and meticulously bypass their defenses to murder the doppelgangers. Forcing the heroes to demonstrate their heroism by diligently slaughtering their foes seems a little odd. We had a Supers game with an alternate earth scenario some years back, and realized very early on that we would eventually be fighting ourselves. By the time that happened, it was a bit of a cakewalk as we knew the best tactics as a team to take down an identical team.
  9. I dislike viewing this as a "player can just stay home for the next several games as their character is gone" complication. hmmm...What other complication could see a PC captured/mysteriously vanish, and drag in his teammates to investigate and assist? Is this actually "Hunted: MicroDimension"? That may be the closest comparable. Emphasis added. Now the issue impacts the team (in all likelihood), rather than splitting one character off from the rest or removing one player from the game for a period of time. In fiction, switching back and forth from the MicroVerse to the real world, or having a few issues without MicroMan and then a couple focused enytirely on MicroMan is not a big deal. In game, it's a much bigger deal. For an NPC, it's much less of an issue - the character just vanishes. Maybe that's "move on to next scene". Maybe it's a story hook. But it's not a "split up the PCs" event.
  10. All labour or direct labour? The ingredients for that burger had to be created and transported, for example. The suppliers have to pay their staff too, and they have to recover those costs. There is also the simple law of supply and demand. Throw more money into the economy and people spend more. They want more. Unless supply goes up to match demand, prices rise. That's pretty basic economics. Why would someone assume additional responsibility for no additional compensation? Shouldn't a more efficient, experienced employee get paid more than a brand-new start who is still learning how to do the job? Or do you expect 75% of the workforce to all work for minimum wage? $50 is pretty substantial for an hourly wage in California if https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Hourly-Rate-Salary--in-California has its numbers close to right, although that seems to exclude salaried employees. Oh, here we go..https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/--in-California still makes $50/hour look pretty spectacular. Actually, I was surprised to note that there was no minimum wage in Denmark (linked above). They have powerful labour unions, though.
  11. If we triple everyone's wages, we triple labour costs. Delivery of services requires labour. Manufacturing and shipping of products requires labour. How do we triple wages, but only see a 50% increase in costs? How much gets absorbed by other workers? I recall minimum wage rising way back when I worked at a McDs. Everyone not already making minimum wage got a raise. Many 2-year employees lost two years of increments and were now paid the same as new starts.
  12. I find international comparisons have more variables (not that there aren't plenty of variables within countries, especially larger countries with numerous states/provinces). Interestingly, Denmark has no minimum wage according to https://wageindicator.org/labour-laws/labour-law-around-the-world/minimum-wages-regulations/minimum-wages-regulations-denmark#:~:text=There is no statutory minimum,rates at the industry level. The Big Mac prices are discussed at https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/big-mac-cost-denmark/ so that's cited. Beef is also more expensive (not a lot more) in Denmark according to https://www.globalproductprices.com/Denmark/beef_price/. There's an article at https://jacobin.com/2021/09/denmark-mcdonalds-labor-unions-strikes-wages-benefits on the power of the unions in Denmark. The US has a lot more McDonalds per capita then Denmark does. I assume that means they are larger, and further apart, than in North America. Maybe not further apart - much higher population density. I wonder whether they have McDonalds in small towns or just major centers. Something is more expensive - https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/cost-of-living/united-states/denmark More data at https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Denmark. You can compare by city (say San Fran to Copenhagen). Average salaries, down at the end, are surprising.
  13. In 1968, the California minimum wage rose to $1.65 (https://www.dir.ca.gov/iwc/minimumwagehistory.htm) and a Big Mac cost about 49 cents (https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/what-the-mcdonalds-menu-looked-like-the-year-you-were-born/). Today, a Big Mac costs $5.11 in California (https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/big-mac-index-by-state). Minimum wage in California is $16 (from that article above). Wages haven’t quite kept up with Big Macs. Would you suggest that tripling the price of beef would not increase the price of a Big Mac? When the costs rise, it always creates upward pressure on prices. Obviously, Big Macs are not the only price comparison that would be needed to assess how wages have kept up. McDonalds also has a lot less workers then I remember when I was in high school back in the '80s, although the locations are also smaller. EDIT: A Big Mac is $3.91 in Mississippi and $3.95 in Arkansas (same state by state page). Minimum wage is $7.25 and $11 respectively. Not lockstep (nor would I expect it to be - McDonalds has costs other than low-pay workers), but a pretty strong correlation, I would say.
  14. Because, of course, businesses can just absorb extra costs without passing them on, so prices don't rise when wages rise, and businesses don't cut staff. These discussions never seem to include the mix of employees, self-employed persons and unemployed people living below the poverty line (or living wage line).
  15. Looking at likely damage taken and likely damage inflicted still makes sense to me.
  16. The Spellsinger series provides a "not fully controlled and never understood" magic. The main character generally gets a spell effect from the song he chooses, but it's often far from what he expected. The game problems with magic of this nature have already been drawn out above. Players like to know what their characters can do, and want some narrative control over the results. The latter can be implemented if the player exercises some (or full) control over the results of the magic, despite the character being unable to do so, but this will also break that "magic is a mystery" vibe. A GM would have to think on their feet to have results that vary every time and are fair to the character (neither overpowered nor underpowered). Part of that challenge is that there will be a LOT more spells in-game than need to be in the books. Imagine having to dream up a different result several times in each encounter in a typical fantasy game. Magic is typically used more sparingly in the source material. Duke mentions Conan - the wizards he battles aren't blasting off a Lightning Bolt or Magic Missile in response to each of Conan's sword slashes.
  17. How different would this be from the Mutants and Masterminds approach (emulated a bit, I think, in Champions Complete) of providing template characters. The main difference I perceive would be taking this one step further to package up "upgrades" and "compromises" as pre-fab packages, rather than making the player hunt around for +2d6 Blast or -1 SPD. I think this would be another example of a "game powered by Hero", as it requires setting campaign defaults, maximums and even minimums (assuming each upgrade and compromise can be taken only once, or only X times). Games, not just a game design system, are needed to attract new players and GMs.
  18. Firewing holds a place in our Game Legends for the game where he was expected to distract the hero team. Until the (massively) overconfident Brick called out "Hey Flame-boy. You and me. One on one. Or are ya CHICKEN?" In Phase 12, the player asked for the penalty to his EGO roll to bring himself to Dodge in the hopes of getting a PS 12 recovery. He insisted on an Ego roll. He succeeded, and Firewing missed by 1. The Brick lasted another half a turn. Meanwhile, the rest of team stopped the real opposition while he kept Firewing busy.
  19. To me, this is another area that comes down to more or less granular resolution systems. A game focused on hockey or baseball needs a granular resolution system for the games themselves. But a fight can probably be resolved with opposed skill checks if combat won't be a major factor in the game.
  20. Not to defend Clown specifically, but the possibility of challenges that cannot be resolved by violence seems quite appropriate for most games, especially Supers games.
  21. If a Triggered power won't go off after the character who set the Trigger dies, land mines seem to have an issue...
  22. It would not be that unreasonable to expand the destruction to both Windsor and Detroit. You can look north across the river from Windsor and see Detroit. If it were not for the international border, they would likely be one city already. A high-tech city in two countries would make for some interesting politics.
  23. That was the initial build, however a mechanic has to come from somewhere. I started from a different angle, being the ability to hit multiple times without needing a new roll to hit, with an Uncontrolled Constant attack. So how might one buy a single fire and forget action that keeps attacking, but has to roll to hit each time? That's less limited than what the OP wants, so how do we drop that down? Normally if I want to use something that takes Extra Time, I have to wait the Extra time. One example using levels is a rifle scope. Applying the rules in that way, your model provides a considerable advantage in that the attack could hit without suffering from the time delay. You are also applying a limitation to 2-point skill levels, which RAW does not permit. As the linked thread shows, there's no simple Hero mechanic for this. As well, most power-based builds end up on the pricy side when I could just buy extra OCV and be more likely to hit with no delay every time. The added OCV simulation also supports the use of an adder rather than an advantage, as skill levels would be a fixed cost. For +4 points (+2 OCV with one attack), I could have been more likely to hit with every attack, so one extra chance to hit on (say) my next phase should cost less than that, or at least no more than that. Perhaps a 3 point Adder for one followup attempt, +2 for each doubling of the followups would be a reasonable price. One thing the OCV bonus analysis shows is that this should not be an expensive ability, given how cheap it would be to just have a better chance to hit with the initial attack. Still liking that Uncontrolled without Constant +1/2 for an attack that keeps trying no matter how many times it succeeds, though.
×
×
  • Create New...