OddHat

Re: In your Universe ... There's a sequence in Astro City (iirc) where a comic book publisher is attacked by a Supervillain angry over his depiction in the book. Later the publisher, along with the entire company, is abducted and presumably killed by a Galactus class entity. I treat these as "real" events in my setting. I also include cases where media companies have been sued and boycotted for outing Supers. Additionally, the same laws that protect the identities of undercover Federal Agents also protect the identities of registered Supers (which is one of the incentives for registering). So, while there are occasional "outings" of Supers, they remain rare, and are most commonly associated with Supers whose adventuring careers are already on the decline and who are trying to move into celebrity or political life. The media company is risking lawsuits, federal charges, bad publicity and physical attacks by Outing a Super; if they can't be fairly certain that the Super wants to be outed, and isn't an active law enforcement officer, most companies won't touch pictures revealing a secret identity even with someone else's hands. "You believe that our employer, one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, spends his nights dressing up as a bat and beating up criminals? And it is your plan to blackmail this man?"

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far It's a case (imo, of course) of what's fun and worth going into detail over in a given game. In a Superhero game set on a global stage, whether you can fix a leaky faucet just isn't often going to be that important (until that one adventure with the Sewer Urchin). PS Plumber should cover everything you really need (or throw in a few other skills for fun or to tell the GM you want to use them). In a game set in the exciting world of plumbing, PS Plumber is only the start, and you may need a long list of other skills to really get the job done. In that setting, PS Assassin may really be all you need to pull off an assassination; after all, like PS Plumber in a Supers world, you're just not going to need to assassinate folks that often in Plunger Hero. Universal Toolkit or not, in some games or settings, some game elements just aren't appropriate, and others may need to have their costs tweaked. It's not a bug.

Re: The Emergence Of Superhumans I use a timeline not unlike McCoy's, mostly because we draw on many of the same sources. Superhumans have been around as long as there have been humans, with the number of really powerful supers going up and down in waves. Roughly one Human in 10,000 has the genes to manifest some sort of Fortean Talent or Talents under the right circumstances, and through most of history the number of active and powerful Superhumans stays at around 1 human in 10,000,000. Sometimes there are clusters of Supers, and sometimes the population leaps for a while and then crashes (most active Supers are sterile, though not all). Those numbers don't include Aliens and users of Mad Science. The years since WWI have seen the largest increase in the Superhuman population in centuries, mainly because of the number of programs for activating Talents that went into motion in the war years (though there are other factors). The Timeline is Here.

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far Got him.

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far It's the adreneline in real combat more than anything else. Fine motor control goes to hell for all but a tiny percentage of the population, even with training. If we were being "realistic", OCV with ranged weapons and with things like pressure point strikes and many types of fine holds and locks would be halved or worse. Some people learn to deal with adreneline in certain specific situations (such as sports matches), mainly through experience. To make things worse, there's not always cross over from one situation to another, and an unexpected change can take someone who is used to coping with a given type of confrontation and leave them flailing around and making bizarre decisions. You could simulate this in Hero with something like a Veteran talent that gives +X levels, only to offset stress penalties in a given confrontation type, but that would move us pretty far from the source material in most games. Action Heroes and Super Heroes almost never sit there firing wildly and hitting nothing just because they've never been jumped by ______ before.

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

Re: Multiform a la Carte? Actually it can. Just use a Multiform Only VPP, with the "Powersuits Only" limit for -1/4, and "Pre Defined Equipment Only" for -0. Now you can have any imaginable combination in any form. Or you could just sink 40 points into Multiform doublings for 256 forms; that should cover every reasonable combination of equipment. I'd still go with a big gadget pool, or both multiform and a gadget pool, but whatever.

Re: portable computers - too much? For a more serious response, there are balance issues when allowing a character to buy any of the 1 for 5 discounted perks (Vehicles, Bases, Followers), more so when 5 point doublings come into play. As the GM, you do need to think about what you're willing to allow. Still, many concepts really do need those toys (many classic Silver Age homage characters for a start). I usually tell players that I consider skills purchased through followers at the 1 for 5 rate to be more under my control than the players. As GM, I might decide that the Follower's discount KS or SS just plain doesn't cover this, or that the Wrist Computer was wrecked in that last explosion, or just that the batteries are low. I won't do this all the time, but I will bring it up now and then, especially if someone else in the group purchased their skills directly. I see that as the price the player pays for the massive discount he's getting. If that doesn't appeal to the player, he's welcome to use another build. It hasn't been a problem in the time I've been GMing 5th.

Re: portable computers - too much? You can have any computer you want, but the operating system is out-of-the-box Vista.

Re: End: Should he go the way of Com? I'd kind of like to see Stun, END, and BOD all merged into Hit Points, which are then burned every time you take an action or use a power, as well as being burned when you get hit. Long term damage would be reflected by Hit Point losses that take longer to Recover, going in steps down the time chart. Crippling injuries would involve taking more than X% of your Hit Points in a single blow, with each hit location having being able to take only so much. Crippling injuries to the Head or Neck would be fatal. I expect to see this change in Hero shortly after Steve releases The Book of Naked Clowns.

Re: Multiform a la Carte? If points are an issue, you can always do a Multiform with a Gadget Pool shared by all forms. So, you get the basic form with the MF, then trick it out with items from the Gadget Pool.

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far Latest news not actually from Steve: 1) Whisky shots will replace dice rolling as mechanism for determining damage in combat. If you're still conscious, so is your character. If you are conscious but unable to take another shot, your character is "Smashed" (replaces "Stunned"). 2) Whisky choice may be made by group, but Midleton Very Rare 80 Proof will be standard. 3) Skill Success will be determined through Hotdog eating. Target number of hotdogs is 1 for a Simple Task, 2 for a Challenging Task, 4 for a Critical Task. Doughnuts may be substituted for Hotdogs with GM permission. Contested skill use will be resolved through an eating contest between GMs and Players. 4) Nudity at the gaming table is now mandatory.

Re: Kamarathin at Amazon Great news, Maya!

Re: In your Universe ...

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far Or the Pulps. Or modern action. Or Fantasy. Or Sci Fi. How often does our Tough Guy Detective / Super Spy / Heroic Barbarian / Square Jawed Captain get knocked over the head, knocked out and taken to the villains lair or a jail cell? Every other episode? Every third? The realistic effects of injury leave only a very tiny percentage of people able to stay active for long in professions where daily violence and injury are part of the job. There are some who (amazingly) manage it, but they are the rare exceptions, and not the ones who spend much of their time dealing with serious head injuries.

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far See above. Sure. That something like reality is Heroic Fiction.

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far Yes it does. Heroic fiction. It's right there in the title. Depends on the person, the door, and the wall.

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far Great quote. Just getting people to agree about the Real World is an incredible pain. Humans are not reliable observers of their own experiences; throw urban legends, lies and hearsay into the mix, and you might as well be talking about fiction.

Re: In your Universe ... I once had Rush Limbaugh as a were-Elephant, Newt Gingrich as a were-Gator, and Michael Moore as a were-sloth. A few more I can't remember. Wasn't as funny in game as I thought it would be.

Re: The Genesis of Captain Patriot Dark, but interesting. I assume that the "Sister" became a Hunted or NPC?

Re: In your Universe ... Never really did the "Turn celebs into Supers" game as such, though one trope I do use is that Supers become Celebs, and many retire from their Super careers into acting, TV hosting, etc. As far as real world celebs turned supers, at the moment I can only remember a few: Nikola Tesla was pretty much a Pulp mad scientist with Heroic goals in my campaign, and is still in theory out there in a mechanoid body. Almost all saints, occultists, and others who claimed unusual powers as part of their public personas actually have them in my campaign. Tom Cruise is both a dupe and a super weapon of an Alien controlled cult (his power set is exactly what Scientologists claim their training can give); David Icke really is warning the world of the Reptoid menace, and some of those he believes to be aliens actually are; Sylvia the Psychic (of American Self Help fame) really is a psychic; Deepack Chopra is a powerful (and sinister) mage feeding on the worship of his followers. And so on.

Re: Order of the Stick

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far I know where you're coming from. My GM Answer is that I don't charge for things that probably won't show up in play, unless and until they do. If you want your character to be Ambidextrous, and I don't think that will ever be important, I'll ask you to note it on the sheet and then not charge points for it until the day comes when you need it. At that point, we'll work something out, probably with unspent XPs or a Power Skill roll. My Old School Player feeling is that damn it, I want it on my sheet, and I want to pay the points, because this character is living in my head and the points make him real! I try not to tell that to family members, because they'd make me see a therapist.

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far I allow COM to be used as a complimentary skill roll for pretty much any interaction skill where it's appropriate. I've even allowed a COM Attack, a PRE attack based on COM rather than PRE with more limited utility. I've also seen campaigns where no Interaction skill use is permitted at all, because the GM believes such things should be role played without mechanics. I'm not happy to see COM go. However, it's my hope that having more clearly defined mechanical utility for the Striking Appearance talent will be some compensation.