baronspam

Re: Proof of alien life? A number of years ago trace fossil evidence was found in meteorites that some claimed was an indication of microscopic life. The interpretation of these finding has been, to put it mildly, controversial. Some academics have held that it is manifestly self evident that extra-terrestrial microbes exists (or at least did at one point) and other equally qualified individiual look at the same rocks and find such claims to be utter nonsense. The unfortunate truth is that just becuase you have a degree in some kind of physical science it doesn't mean that you aren't subject to emotionalism, irrational bias, indefensable pet theories,stubborn refusal to evaluate evidence, and rampant politics. These factors are collectively known as "Academia".

I have been trying to crunch some numbers on the effectiveness of Damage Reduction vs. just buying extra PD. Now, As DR stops a percentage of incoming damage, it is more cost effective in campaigns with larger average attacks. However, for "average" supers campaigns, It seems that DR is break even at best in cost effectivness compaired to just buying extra PD or ED. Some examples: Lets say that the campaign standards are 12d6 is the average normal attack and 2 points per dc is the average defense. That means the average attack will do 42 points, average defence is 24, meaning average damage per hit is 18 stun. Lets say a character takes 20 points that they would have spend to PD and put it in 50% DR instead. So, they hit for 42, subtact this time 4 PD, that leaves 38/2=19 points. So on a strictly average hit, you are actually slight behind just buying PD with those 20 points instead of DR. It evens out as you add a DC or two, and you eventually pull slightly ahead, but by that time you are out of the damage range of most typical supers campaigns. The powers still has its uses. You can layer it on top of normal defences to make someone very resistant to a specific special effect. Its also a way to build master villians so that they can be very tough, but not outright immune to character attacks. But for the most part, does anyone have a good reason to use DR as the "Frontline" defence for a character, rather than PD or ED?

Re: Encyclopedic General Knowledge I got access to a copy of the APG. I think Universal Scholar is exactly what I am looking for.

Re: How Fast an Horse can Go? Persistance hunting is very real, and practiced today in africa by certain groups. That isn't to say it isn't a very misunderstood practice. The key to peristance hunting isn't speed, or even endurance, its heat. Let me explain. Humans are wonderfully adapted at thermoregulation. We have very little hair compaired to most primates, and can cope with high temperatures via sweating much better than most other large mammals. Persistance hunting isn't so much about getting animals tired, its about giving them heat exhaustion. The few groups that still practice this in africa typically do so in the hottest part of the day. They don't outrun animals, but they track an animal and don't let it rest, typcially for a period of 2 to 5 hours. No human can outrun antelope, but by keeping after it, not letting it rest or drink, over time a human can win the battle to deal with the heat The antelope can only sprint away so many times before it needs an extended break to cool down. If it doesn't get it, a hunter eventually can walk up and spear it with no more difficulty than spearing a hay bale. I don't know the David Brin reference you are pointing to, the only book of his I ever read had a talking chimp and Aliens that live in the sun. So maybe he go it drastically wrong, I don't know. But persistance hunting is a real, living practice among extant ethnic groups in africa today, so it certainly is not myth.

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

Re: Encyclopedic General Knowledge I don't have the APG, I will have to start saving my nickles for it. The only problem I see with cramming, no matter how fast he can cram, is that he still needs the material to cram from, at least Rules as Written. Once I can get a look at Universal Scholar, that might be the way to go, or even a homebrew talent based on Univeral Scholar as a guide for point cost.

Re: Human Library I started a thread in the Hero System forum called "how to build Encyclopedic General Knowledge". You can see the details of my question there, but the two main suggestions I have been offered are to use Universal Scholar from the Advanced Player's Guide, or to Conisder Cramming, with a truckload of PSKs to decrease the time required. The only problem with the second method is that the character still needs the materials to study, its not an inate ability.

Re: My Tank Is Fight! Don't expect it to make much more sense than that. They are an obsucre and mediocre rock band who sing mostly about cuthulhu mythos and old horror movies. Yes, you read that correctly. There is a smattering of their work on YouTube, but it really won't help. The song in question was released originally on a cassette tape in the early nineties. I have no idea how the author even knew about it, unless he has a fetish for obscure canadian rock bands who sing about such things.

Re: How To: Magic Revolver I don't have rule books in front of me for the math, but you keep mentioning that the charges are going to be very hard to recover. Be sure to adjust the value of the charges limitation if that is the case. The default assumption is that while it is not possible to recover them in the field (otherwise no real limitation, no real point savings) getting you charges back usually happens either on a regular time schedule (your spells refresh once per day) or by doing a specific action. (you go back to base for more ammo, you rub your ring on your magic lantern, etc). If the character may not be able to refresh his charges without great effort and expense, sometimes not do so at all, make sure that is reflected in the cost of the power beyond the normal cost of charges/clips.

Re: STR Minimum: somewhat overcooked?

Re: STR Minimum: somewhat overcooked? I think Str Minimum represents the ability to pick up a weapon and just brute force weild it without penalty (swing the sword, steady the rifle and control the recoil, etc). A trained user, however, will have skill levels and PSLs to represent their training and practice with the weapon. In the case of a firearm, there is alot of emphasis on stance and posture in shooting training, and techniques for controling the energy of the weapon. These skill levels should overcome the strength minimum penalties even for someone who doesn't have the raw brawn. Also, for someone fighting with a rifle in particular, thats a battlefield weapon, not a street or law enforcement weapon for the most part (other than very select uses like SWAT). As everyone else has said, the strategy of get to cover and then brace is a likely tactic.

I have a character concept for someone who is a cyborg. He has a computerized knowledge base built in. It doesn't really give him skills, ie the ability to do things, at least not well, but he basically has the reference section of a large library in his head. So if a vehicle needs to be repaired, he doesn't really "know" mechanics, but he can visualize a Chilton guide and instructions on auto repair. If you need a map of Ohio or the GNP of the Ivory Coast, he has it. If you need a pot of Gumbo, he can make as good a one as any typical person armed with a detailed cookbook. If you need to know a word in Turkish, the lyrics of the Puruvian national anthem, or formula for a complex chemical he can tell you. He can't read turkish other than word for word like someone with a turkish english dictionary. He can't sing any better than anyone else, and he doesn't know what half the things in the chemical formula mean. Basically, it would be like have a familiarity with everything. Not expertise. Not even really professional compentency, but familiariy with EVERYTHING. Is there a way to simulate this with hero rules? Can you do some kind of VPP for skills?

Re: Encounter Balance And rep to you for teaching me how rep works

Re: My Tank Is Fight! I am such a neurotic I can't let this one go- According to the websight for the United States Army Ordnance Museum- Quote:The museum has announced plans to move most of its collection to a massive, all-indoor museum at Fort Lee, south of Richmond, Virginia, in 2011. The museum’s move from Maryland to Virginia was directed by the 2005 round of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission. As of July, 2010, the T-12 Cloudmaker bomb has been dismantled and removed. Additionally, many tanks and artillery pieces have been removed from their displays. So, not sure if Little David right now is in Maryland, or in Virginia, or some giant warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant and Indian Jones's hat. But I am just Neurotic Enough that I had to tell people that the bloody thing my not be where I said it was, in case someone got in their car and went looking. I really need to relax sometimes.

Re: Encounter Balance While your entire post was solid advice, this checklist is excellent and going in my notebook. If I understood how this mysterious "rep"thing worked I would give you some. How about a cookie instead?

Re: My Tank Is Fight! I know, isn't it an insane weapon. Pretty much good for seige work and giant monsters, but not alot else. Even still, I saw a documentary once that said that the U.S was planning an even larger diameter weapon, a 914mm mortar that they planned to use as a bunker buster in the invasion of the Japanese islands. It never saw actual combat, but its the biggest calibur weapon currently in existance. Known as "Little David", it has been preserved at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds as a museum peice. There was actually an even bigger gun, know as the French Monster, another mortar, that was 975 mm, used in combat in the 19th century.

Re: Encounter Balance I have been thinking about these issues myself lately. Part of the problem is that I have mostly played DnD the last couple of years, and whatever you think about that type of game the fact is they have made 4th edition absurdly simple to prepare combats for. You can look at your group and really feel confidnet that x amount of experience points is an easy fight, x+y amount of experience is a typical fight, x+z amount of experience is a "boss" fight, etc. The math is really wired tight. Baring rare and spectacular bad luck on the dice for one side or the other combat difficulty is pretty easy to judge. Hero does not work that way. There is so vastly more flexability in character design that you can easilty get statistical outriders. Two 400 point characters can have significantly different threat levels in combat, and if a villian is taylored to strongly resist what a character is good at and attack something that the character doesn't defend against well you can always build an antogonist that will pound the hero flat and do it on fewer points. As others have said, Hero requires more preperation and planning. You need to look over the numbers, make sure combat values are in line, see on average how many hits the bad guys can sustain before dropping and on average how many hits it will take them to knock out the heroes. The nice thing about hero using all d6's is that you get bell curves. Far more of your results fall near the middle of the range than at the extreme ends, both to hit and damage. Yes, that 10d6 blast could in theory do 60 points, but it almost never, ever will. It will most of the time be within shouting distance of 35. So look at ED, subtract, you can tell with considerable accuracy how many hits it will take to burn through all of a target's stun. And always, always, compare speed. Even a two difference in speed is a huge advantage. In short, I think just crunching the numbers is probably no more work than trying to make hero conform to a abstract encounter difficulty gauge like DnD has. The games are just too different for that to work here.

Re: My Tank Is Fight! Lawnmower Boy- Please note I said one of the solutions, not "the solution". Clearly there were many facets to the allied victory in the atlantic, including improving ASW technology, improving tactics, and the increasing ability to at least some of the time read the german communications as the war progressed. But my point was the whole "artifical island" idea was moot, they had a real island they could put an airbase on, and instead of one or a very few massive aircraft carriers it actually turned out to be much more praictical to build large numbers of small ones. Most people think of carriers at the ultimate capital ship, and that in WWII we had a handfull of them. Like I said, the American navy alone had over 100 by the end of the war, most of them these small "Escort Carriers". I was trying to provide some context to the giant ice aricraft carrier issue, not a systematic understand of the battle of the atlantic.

Re: My Tank Is Fight! I found a link http://modelshipworld.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?printertopic=1&t=5535&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&vote=viewresult&sid=043779172bdc04c36a7901a1d79a25b3 that has some sketches of the purposed bergship. The HMS Habbukkuk was designed at over 2 million tons displacement, a staggeringly huge vessle. That is roughly 20 times the size of modern aircraft carrier. It would have absolutly dwarfed the carriers of the day. Interestingly enough, one of the solutions to the Atlantic air gap, other than getting Portugal to let us put an airbase in the Azores, was not a giant aircraft carrier, but a lot of really small ones. While the British were designing their floating island, the Americans came up with something called an Escort Carrier. It was built on the same hull as a Liberty Ship, a type of freighter, and carried only about one third the aircraft of the big capital aircraft carriers, but the Americans were able to build them in larger numbers. By the end of the war there were more than 100 carriers in the American navy, most of them these small Escort Carriers.

Re: Brittlizing an Engine A major concept of hero power design is that you can't get major mechanical elements out of a power by "special effect" without paying points for them. A drain on pd doesn't drain body or cause body damage unless you pay the points for that. Even if it "makes sense" that the target would be loosing body, that means the power you have in mind is mechanically more effective than just a pd drain, and you have to pay points to drain the body or add a killing attack to it. In short, there is no such thing as a free lunch. If you want to do the body damage pay the ponts to drain the body or make the killing attack. Otherwise, its is sort of like saying that if my force bolt has a special effect that is should do extra knockback, i should get the extra knockback without paying for it. Yes, it "makes sense', but I have to pay for the mechanical effects of that power.

Re: Something fishy about this My main advice is to run a session where they characters can't just run without totally loosing whatever the game objective is, and then brutalize them, capture them , further brutalize them, and then ask if they want to build some characters who actually have combat abilities. Clearly these guys are idiots. I mean that with love. Many gamers are. But if you tell someone in no uncertain terms that the game you have in mind will feature frequent combat, and they build characters with no real combat abilites, you have the choice of either booting them out or teaching them. Teaching them consists of opening every game session with a combat that leaves the characters bleeding from every oriface in a ditch untill they get the point. Better yet, a few agets with hand gernadaes, and they will have no option but to make characters who can actually fight, while the rest of the group roll plays the funeral scene.

Re: GM conundrum - CSLs Did you write up campagin guidelines before the players made their characters? Beause Hero is so flexable, it is really usefully, probably necessary, to set guidelines for the numbers for your campagin, as to what is expected as to a minimum, average, and maxium stat for various combat abillites. Pushing these numbers just leads to arms races. Higher OCVs just means the badguys need higher DCVs, which mean the players who are not participating in the arms race get left behind in terms of combat effectivness. If the player wants to be a crack shot, you should let him, but that means coming in at the top of the CV range, not beyond it. I think the advice about using PSL is excellent. It lets the character make that shot at exteem range, in the dark, in a rainstorm, etc, but still have a CV that doesn't make a to hit roll a moot point.

Re: Something fishy about this

Re: Something fishy about this What is the rest of the character build like? That sounds like a mind link with a cool special effect, but it really says nothing about overall combat effectivness. Did you create campaign guidelines for things like DCs, OCV, DCV, defences, etc? How do they stack up there? If you are planning a supers campaign with frequent combat and you have two characters whose schtick is "mind link", yes, thats a problem. If they have significant combat abilities aside from their mind link I don't see an issue.

Re: My Tank Is Fight!