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Korvar

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Posts posted by Korvar

  1. The "Armani of armour."

    in Dark Champions

    Posted

    Re: The "Armani of armour."

     

    One of the advantages would presumably be that you don't look armoured, so you're less likely to be shot with Big Guns - or shot in the head. The concealment itself is part of the defence, in other words.

     

    Not sure how well that would actually work, but I'm guessing that's part of the idea...

  3. The best questions you can ask!

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: The best questions you can ask!

     

    I was running a game' date=' and my heroes managed to round up and hog-tie a couple Viper agents. "I suppose we should interogate them," someone said, then everybody had a mass-brain fart and couldn't think of a single question to ask.[/quote']

     

    I cannot tell you how many times that has happened to me, both as player as GM! It's like the presence of a captured agent destroys any questions in the brain...

  4. Dumbest Moment Ever in your games

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Dumbest Moment Ever in your games

     

    Wow, a thread brought back from the dead not once but many times :)

     

    Shadowrun. Near future cyberpunk with magic.

     

    For reasons I can no longer recall, we are deep in Tir Tairngire, the Elven stronghold on the West Coast of what used to be the United States. We have no ID, no money, no contacts, no nothing. We manage to get a couple of assassination missions in return for Getting The Hell Out.

     

    We spend ages planning the first hit. Phrases like "triangulation of fire" are used. We have backup shooters, rendezvous points and all sorts.

     

    When it goes down, my character is up close, pretending to be a Japanese tourist, ready to deliver the letter that has to be left on the corpse in the (hopefully imminent) confusion.

     

    Shot 1 is taken by the newest player, the star of this particular tale. I'd spent the last several weeks explaining every single roll to him, multiple times. It never seemed to take. So I explained (again) what dice he needed to roll, and explained (again) what the result was.

     

    The GM told us that a Bullet Barrier spell suddenly came up, almost deflecting the bullet entirely (only a Light wound).

     

    Now, we all knew that only the most experienced and advanced Mages could make a Barrier spell that came up automatically. Those experienced and advanced Mages can do all sorts of rule-breaky stuff, and are quite terrifying. As the target wasn't a Mage, one of their entourage must be.

     

    I assume we are all dead.

     

    Fortunately the second shot (taken by an equally new, but much better player) does a Serious wound, and the third shot takes the target out entirely. We didn't even need our backup shooters.

     

    Hurrah! I leave the note, and we're all heading out, visions of victory drinks floating before our eyes, celebratory music playing in our ears, when I hear:

     

    "I haven't killed anyone yet. I'm going to shoot one of the bodyguards."

     

     

    And then, our sniper has a choice between two bodyguards; a large gentleman who has reacted inhumanly fast to the shots, who has drawn a pistol, or a slower, smaller, scholarly looking gent.

     

    Okay, he was a new player, but I'm sure we explained that the pistol couldn't even push bullets that far, let alone hit anything. And the big bodyguard is clearly armoured, and clearly cybered. And the wimpy guy? Probably the one who set up that Bullet Barrier. The kind of mage to whom range penalties are minor inconveniences to be ignored. The kind of mage who can break the very laws of physics to blow your brain out your ears from a mile away. But, crucially, much more likely to be squishy.

     

    But he still chooses to shoot the bodyguard, because he's biggest.

     

    So, one minor scratch to the bodyguard later, the mage centres versus penalties, and our sniper is wearing part of his frontal lobes as earrings.

     

    It was at that point if I asked the GM if we still had any of those remote controlled explosives we had used earlier, if we'd given any to the sniper, and could I remember the correct frequency?

     

    We did eventually get away, and even gathered up our sniper, although largely because he was evidence as opposed to any desire to save him. And the Deadly Mental Wound he took meant that his share of the take was put in a trust fund to finance his ongoing treatment for Persistent Vegetative State. We left him in a Tir Tairngire hospital surrounded by machines that went ping, and never looked back.

     

    Good times. Good times.

  5. Your Gaming Group's Jargon

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Your Gaming Group's Jargon

     

    I'm using the "letterbox" concept. I'll probably call it something else. I need something to prevent...

    GM: Standing before you is Doctor Destroyer. He says...

    PC1: CALLED SHOT TO THE HEAD!

    PC2: Feeling a little Jolly, are we?

     

    Hm. Could you not use Presence Attacks instead? All you need is the "hesitate" effect, and he's got enough time to monologue...

  8. Urban Fantasy Recommendations

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Urban Fantasy Recommendations

     

    I don't know how many of you can get hold of BBC shows, but Being Human is Urban Fantasy.

     

    Brief summary: a Vampire, a Werewolf and a Ghost live together in an attempt at a "normal" life. Hijinks ensue. It sounds like the set-up for a sitcom, and it is quite funny at times, but there's also a lot of drama, largely because the Vampires are Up To Something.

  9. Urban Fantasy Recommendations

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Urban Fantasy Recommendations

     

    Ah, I know that. One of the ¨Song of Fire and Ice¨ novels made me so angry at one point I wanted to jump up in the middle of class and throw the book across the room while cursing a certain character to very painful dooms. If you´ve read the series, you probably know exactly what moment I´m talking about. I think it´s even in the first book, but I´m not sure...

     

    For me it was the "Red Wedding". Bastard Freys...

  16. "I can't bring myself to kill, but..."

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: "I can't bring myself to kill, but..."

     

    He gets some' date=' just less. For example, he can't see color. When he encountered Crossbones, he was unable to make out his mask details or chest emblem (one guess what his chest emblem is), which might have clued him in as to who he was dealing with; he'd never met Crossbones and couldn't recognize his voice or scent, but he might have heard the name before.[/quote']

     

    Similarly, he was up against "Typhoid Mary", who has multiple personalities, to the extent that her heartbeat and other indicators were different between the two. Naturally, he fell in love with "Mary" while fighting "Typhoid".

     

    However, "Typhoid" had MARY written on the back of her jacket in large colourful letters - a big clue that he couldn't read, because it was just colour.

  17. Fantasy Art Thread

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Fantasy Art Thread

     

    Heh. Inspired by the Morrach sketch and also by the paper models thread, I decided it was to dust off one of my plans - making a whole bunch of low-poly medieval houses that I can use as background filler for pictures. I've done about half of them at the moment, but I did a test render that I think looks OK - and all those houses render in 2-3 minutes!

     

    cheers, Mark

     

    They look good - definitely enough for background filler!

     

    About the only criticism is that they look a bit samey - the roof angles all look very similar. I don't know if your software supports it, but a simple morph that changes the roof height (literally the two points right at the top) allowing lots of little random variations in roof height and thus roof pitch would add a lot of realism.

     

    Having said that, if they're just background "extras" it might not be even noticeable :)

  22. Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

     

    Batman doesn't have a CvK' date=' but he does have the Psych Lim [i']Loves To Hurt Criminals Common, Total[/i] for 20 points. The first 10 or so issues of Batman had him carrying dual .45's and killing the bad guys. This tendency to kill hasn't stopped him before and won't in the future.

     

    Not so. The character very quickly picked up a specifically stated code against killing. Not as in a Hero System Rules Disadvantage, but clearly saying that he will never take a life. Trying to extrapolate from the first ten issues of a 70 year publishing history is like claiming Superman can't fly, as he couldn't in his first appearances.

     

    The thing that stops him from killing is the neurotic tendency to make the criminal feel the emotional pain he's feeling over the loss of his parents by beating the crap out of them and causing massive amounts of physical damage to a criminal. This can be written up as a Psych Lim of Criminals Must Feel Pain Over Loss of Parents at Common, Total Commitment for another 20 points. Killing the criminal sort of defeats the purpose of the neurosis since once they're dead they can't feel the pain he's suffering. In The Killing Joke and other trade paperbacks Batman has no regrets in killing anyone including The Joker. If a two bit hood bites the dust he rationalizes it away by essentially saying that they weren't the sort of criminal that deserves to feel his pain and Gothom is better off without them.

     

    That's a fairly extreme reading of his character - he has been portrayed as anything from a dispassionate detective to an avenger, but I can only think of maybe two where he shows the kind of deliberate sadism you're claiming here. John Byrne had Batman musing that it was a pity that a particular thug was going to have to spend some time on crutches, and of course there's Frank Miller's "The other... hurts."

     

    I think both of those portrayals are on the edge of the Batman envelope.

     

    Those two Psych Lims make it appear that Batman has a CvK, but it's not a CvK and he shouldn't be considered to have it.

     

    Other than the fact that he has stated he has it.

     

    The only characters that I can think of that would have a CvK is Silver Surfer and Superman. Superman is the ultimate boy scout and will not kill anyone nor allow anyone around him to kill. There were plenty of times when Batman and Superman had teamed up and it was Superman that stopped Batman from killing someone.

     

    [citation needed]

     

    There were, also, plenty of times when Superman would forcibly stop other supers that had no problems with killing from doing so. The other supers weren't in the position to tell Superman no under any circumstances. (Thinks of Green Arrow's attitude towards Superman in The Dark Knight Returns). Superman ripped off Green Arrow's arm after the registration act was passed in order to keep Green Arrow from breaking the law and Superman didn't exactly enjoy it either. The favor wasn't returned and Green Arrow hated Superman for the loss of his arm.

     

    Have the precise events that led to the loss of Green Arrow's arm in Dark Knight Returns ever been shown? I personally can't see how Superman would need to injure Ollie in order to bring him in. Superman has so many powers, and nothing Green Arrow could do could harm him. The closest I've seen is Green Arrow's death (he got better), where he had his hand on a deadman switch, and Superman offered to amputate his arm to save his life. Ollie refused. If there's more detail about what happened to the Dark Knight Returns version of Green Arrow, I'd like to know more.

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