OddHat

Re: [super Team] Young Titans - GenCon 2007 Bump

Re: Suppress CSL Sounds about standard for rules questions. I don't recall anyone objecting to a Transformation Attack to make "heroes" into "normals". It's within the rules. The SFX is odd, as a highly skilled character is a "normal" in most comic book campaigns, but your campaign, your business. If you want it to be short term, declare that the healing condition is "Heals after five minutes", or whatever length of time you like. As to the meat of the comment, "it's against the rules" is a fair cop on a board discussing an RPG. You can change the rules as you like in your campaign; that's your call. Just be clear about it with your players. 3)Other methods don't have the right special affect for what I want. To make a Meta (temporarily) more normal: Drain dex: disproportionately affects the bricks and the speedsters/martial artist. Doesn't normalize them in any meaningful way. So use the Transform. Why shouldn't it target cops as well as skilled Heroes? Skill is skill, unless the specific SFX of the character say its a power. However, you can always pop on a -1/4 limit "Only vs Metas" and then decide as GM who's a "Meta" and who isn't, based on whatever criteria you like. Again, them's the rules. You can change them in your game if you like; your players will let you know how they feel about the changes.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Re: Suppress CSL Exactly. Power negation's story telling purpose is to demonstrate why Batman is tougher than Superman, and that Superman is still a hero even without his powers. It's not there to take Batman down a peg. To do that, you drug him, which is among other things a Dex and SPD drain.

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts No, I acknowledge your point of view, while noting that it's one of several ways of looking at the issue. Again, there's something to be said for the above. As GM you have a responsibility to make sure that use of KS and Deduction / Tactics / etc enhances the fun of an adventure, rather than reducing it. On the other hand, they are valid skill choices for the Player who wants a Character who's smarter than he is. If a Player wanted his Character to be a skilled surgeon, scientist or military officer, I wouldn't require him to have the knowledge to perform those jobs, and from your earlier responses I don't think you would either. If that Player wanted his Character to be a suave ladies man or a brilliant detective, I wouldn't have any problem letting him buy and use the stats and skills needed to play someone more charming or smarter than himself. If I wasn't willing to let him play that character, I would tell him up front that those skills meant nothing in this campaign, rather than let him piss away points on them. We could larp to simulate combat, with sparring, paintball guns and padded swords. We generally don't, in part because simulating a character stronger, faster and more skilled than ourselves doesn't work that well in a sparring match. (Also, grown men shouting "Magic Missile" and throwing things at eachother look ridiculous. ) So we use skills and stats to represent the characters, roleplay our choices based on those skills and stats, and use dice to resolve the conflict. You don't have to do the same thing with social or intellectual conflicts faced by your players, but the system does allow for it.

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts That's pretty much what the Deduction and Tactics skills are for; a successful roll allows the GM to pass knowledge to the Player which the Character can then use, allowing the Player to play a Character smarter than himself. Some GMs dislike "buy a clue" skills for pretty much that reason, and therefore discourage their use, but they are part of the system.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Not so far, though there were clues in many of the books. The missing piece, imo, was the connection (if any) between the star children and the stones of power. The common links seem to be: 1) Alternate groups of disembodied star children take physical forms on alternate Earths, inevitably dividing into pro and anti human factions. 1a) At least one of these groups holds the secret of dimension travel, and chooses to use it to cultivate magic on various alternate Earths, attempting to maintain those alternate Earths as magic rich natural resources. 1b) Interbreeding between Star Children and Humans results in bloodlines on multiple worlds with psionic / magical potential. Some of these humans, the most powerful, become as powerful as the Star Children. Most are limited to astral projection, clairvoyance, minor telepathy, and limited TK. Rituals, herbs, and communication with spirits can enhance these talents. 2) The Stones of Power fall to Earth, stones that can activate psionic potential in humans and effectively grant wishes, within limits set by the size and power of the stone and the imagination, skill and will of the human user. The pure Gold stones are exhausted by magic working. "Feeding" them with the blood of the living re-charges the stones, but also corrupts them, causing violent emotions to overwhelm the user. These stones are used to found a single ancient Atlantean civilization, which discovers dimension travel. Dimensional gates cause 'great flood" events on multiple worlds, ending that civilization. The survivors use the stones to achieve practical immortality and play the roles of gods, heroes and villains on multiple worlds. 2a) At least two alternate ancient Avatar civilizations learn the secret of manufacturing weak stones of power, charging them either slowly with sunlight (pure stones) or quickly with blood. At least one of these alternate civilizations gains the secret of dimension travel, apparently only using it once. May somehow be linked to the origins of the true, Sipritsi Stones of Power (speculation). 3) The Source of All Things is always the same in all alternate worlds, and is analogous to the Judeo-Christian G_d. His prophets are generally analogs of Biblical prophets. 4) At least one group of humans, linked to the Star Children and possibly to the Atlanteans, is patrolling the alternate time lines and trying to push the histories of certain worlds in certain directions, for unclear reasons. It's a great meta-setting. I'd love to see his wife's view of it.

Re: Suppress CSL By the rules, he can't suppress or drain skills. It's too point efficient. If you don't want to give him a DEX drain to make heroes "normal", use a change environment to drop OCV and DCV. Pretty much by definition, the guy who sunk his points into skills rather than powers is the "normal" of the bunch anyway.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Stormrider completes it, more or less. Never liked Swords of Night and Day as a coda to the Drenai books, or the last Waylander book. I was OK with the last Shannow book. There were probably points earlier in each series that I'd point at as "better" ends. OTOH, I never read a single book of his I didn't like enough to re-read; they all had something.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? I'm a Red Dwarf fan myself. Rewatched the videos many times over the years. It gets better as it goes along, probably peaking around seasons 3-4.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... It's a tricky issue, as it's a departure in many ways from his default story telling style. The mythic themes are closer to the surface, and doesn't neatly fit the boy-to-man or old-veterans-on-a-last-ride arcs that Gemmell loved exploring in his other books. So, if that is what you're looking for, it might not click for you. OTOH, I thought it did a great job of showing his craft, and the world itself was well conceived. No law says you have to like Shannow.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... The Drenai series, as a series. The early books showed hints of the talent he had and established a very compelling setting, while the later books (later written, not later chronologically) built on earlier characters and locations without excessive rehashes. A few of the books weren't up to the standards set by the best in the arc (particularly The Swords of Night and Day, which was a let down), but overall it's probably my favorite fantasy series. The Stones of Power series starts off on the wrong foot (imo) as an Arthurian tale mixed in with Gemmell's Atlantean mythos, but once Jon Shannow shows up it becomes outstanding. The Greek books are excellent, but they're more one massive novel split into two volumes than a series. Echoes of the Great Song is probably my favorite Gemmell book, but it wasn't his, and isn't a fan favorite.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... The Rigante series itself is not my favorite; the fourth book (Stormrider) was a let down after what came before. Sword in the Storm, however, is a classic, brining in Celtic myth (and hints of the Arthurian cycles, another Gemmell favorite, which he expands on in the sequels), Scottish, English and Roman history, and nods to his own work. Sword in the Storm, Midnight Falcon, and Ravenheart are all very good reads. As a gamer, they're also excellent examples of how to integrate magic into a gritty semi-historical setting.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Troy, Fall of Kings. David Gemmell's last, completed by his wife. Just amazing. We lost a fantasy great when Gemmell passed. The story itself is a first rate re-telling of the fall of Troy, with some nice nods to biblical events and characters (Gemmell enjoyed dropping those in a few of his books), some of his signature death scenes, and a nod to the Roman take on the founding of the Seven Hills. Also includes a touching, only slightly cloaked tribute to Gemmell from his wife. A must buy if you were ever a Gemmell fan, a fan of historical fiction, or a fan of history based fantasy. Makes me want to re-start my Imperium Romanum campaign.

Re: Max Human attributes in Street level vs full Superheroic scales Probably best not to think of him as having paid any points at all. Sure, gamers generally use point totals when modeling comic book characters for a campaign. Writers don't worry about point totals (or, sometimes, continuity) when actually writing the adventures of a comic book character.

Re: Max Human attributes in Street level vs full Superheroic scales NCM isn't, imo, the way to model this (if it needs to be modeled at all). Look at Superman in his solo stories vs the generally much wimpier JLA Superman, the nerfed Specter who shows up in JSA books compared to the Uber Specter who shows up in his non-team member stories, etc, etc. If you really want to model the Solo-Character vs the Team Character vs the Temporarily Evil Character, I'd suggest at least three character sheets, one for each type of appearance. So, Batman gets one sheet for "Gritty" adventures, one for BatGod adventures, and one for an adventure written by Miller where his psych limits include pointless child abuse. Comic book characters are so wildly inconsistent from title to title and story to story (or even, in the hands of some writers, from page to page) that character sheets are a rough approximation at best anyway.

Re: Suggestions needed: Animal super villains It can't be posted on the boards. PM me if you want it sent along.

Re: Suggestions needed: Animal super villains The Gun Bunny - Obvious, really. That Bear! Remember the joke about the hunter and the bear? With the punch line "You ain't here for the huntin' are ya, boy?" That bear.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I don't want to go to work. I want to spend the day working out, reading, and writing. My value system is flawed.

Re: Se7en Write-ups Depends on your campaign standards. The CU allows ordinary, human martial artists to get up to SPD 7; Mike Surbrook gives Bruce Lee a 6. The Dark Champions sample protagonists are 3s and 4s, but there are more 4s. The point being, what SPD means in the setting in which the character exists is what's important; it's an abstraction, like most Hero stats, and only really has meaning when compared to a standard. Besides, if you have to buy up several things (running and DCV) to make up for a stat you're lowering (SPD), you might as well not lower the stat. IMO and all that.

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts This point makes sense to me. To potentially fix it but still take a more dice based approach to Interaction skills, a GM could come up with a series of die rolls needed to achieve a desired social result. For some really interesting weirdness, give a character Mojo (Social Body) = (Ego). Cool (Social Stun) = (1/2 COM + 1/2 PRE + Mojo). Groovy (Social Rec) = (PRE/5 + COM/5). Funky (Social Defense) = (PRE/5). Wit (Social CV) = (INT/3). Roll your Wit +11 or less: the number you make it by is the Wit you hit. You do (PRE/5)d6 damage, +1d6 for every 2 points you make any interaction skill roll by (the skill in question determines just what you're trying to do; complimentary skill rolls may be permitted by GM's permission. Subtract (the total rolled on the PRE attack dice - Funky) from the characters Cool, and (the Body rolled on the PRE attack dice - Funky) from the character's Mojo. If your Cool=0, you give in to the other character this once. If your Mojo=0, you are socially dead, and must give in to the other characters demands until you receive therapy or otherwise recover your lost Mojo. Cool is regained at a rate of Groovy per turn. Mojo is regained at a rate of Groovy per month. There, a very Hero solution.

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts It's worth noting here that, by the rules, Persuasion Conflicts with NPCs are generally resolved by a roll of Persuasion Skill vs EGO. See 5thER, p.67. Guidelines are included for a variety of circumstances, and can easily be expanded into a full social conflict system for the GM who cares to. It may be more profitable to ask why so many GMs and players have no problem mixing dice and role playing to resolve violent conflicts, but flinch at the idea of doing the same to resolve social conflicts.

Re: No robotic love? Had some fun for a while playing AI Gai. He was an AI housed in a light bee, flying around inside a hard light hologram. SFX and much of the power set borrowed from Red Dwarf. The hook was that he really didn't have emotions or think as such; he just had a long list of scripts allowing simulated behaviors, plus a limited capacity to learn. Some good RPing opportunities there. Campaign fizzled, but it was fun while it lasted.