Jump to content

Christopher

HERO Member
  • Posts

    10,559
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    2

Posts posted by Christopher

  1. We all know that Anime/Manga/Video weaponry can be wierd. Stuff like a hammer that has rocket jets. Or a blade that is also a key. Or a blade that is also a gun.

    But as I just learned, they are totally behind the curve in that regard. History one ups them every step of the way:

     

    The problamy most bizare shield in history:

    https://youtu.be/0AIUF6iCPj0

    This explanation was given below in the comments and it makes a lot of sense:
    "I remember this shield. It was specifically designed by "Broma Venschwitz" in the early 1600s. The entire point of the lantern shield was to see the shinny reflection of the deadly pommel throw at night. Once you caught the glinting pommel speeding towards you it was simply up to the master forged shield to stop such an executing blow. "

     

    The oldest "tactical flashlight" or just a new way of saying "no evil shall escape my sight"?

    https://youtu.be/6ikqHAN2ySc

    As for the reason, my best guess is that guy had lost one hand. It tended to happen in those times.

     

    Next up, "Keyblades are so pre-gunpowder":
    https://youtu.be/a5TlMsLT6-8

     

    And finally a longer list of even more weapons. If you thought the Swiss Army Knive was versatile, you will have at least one suprise:
    https://youtu.be/WMG9_VS2hNw
    And yes, most of these weapons do come from Germany and India.

     

    The part where none of those are widely known speaks to volumes to their useabiltiy in combat, particular large scale battles. But I guess not every combination can be a "Bec de corbin":
    spacer.png

  2. On 3/28/2019 at 4:36 PM, Pariah said:

    xkcd does it again....

     

    spacer.png

    We know it will only be a mater of time before someone will latch onto this claim to proof something. Like how the Settlers had to bring Corn Meal, and thus any regulation of wich additives can be in conrmeal is anti-american.

     

    14 hours ago, Old Man said:

    spacer.png

     

    6 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

    Deliberate propaganda by Erik the Red, misnaming Greenland to attract settlers to it. Iceland's naming is more complicated.

    Iceland was icy, comapred to the Norwegian Homelands.

    Greenland was just a real estate scam.

     

     

  3. 23 hours ago, Major Tom 2009 said:

    Here's a new supervillain pic -- one that should tell any aquatic superheroes that it's not safe to go back in the water...

    Megalodon.jpg.0d31404bb205d4ce9dfb219bc0062938.jpg

     

    Megalodon

     

    (Let's see Jason Statham try to deal with this bad boy [:eg:]…)

     

    Major Tom 2009 ?

    Oh, when the shark bites...

    If you think that is scary, you should think about how many monsters are outside the water!

  4. On 3/28/2019 at 5:34 PM, smoelf said:

    I've never been much into superhero stuff, but from my time here on the boards, I've gleaned a thing or two about the genre - particularly the 'speedster' as a character trope. The character with superhuman speed makes a lot of sense (in as much as anything does) in the superhero genre, but I was wondering how people are dealing with variable speed in fantasy.

    Do not allow Diverging Speeds for Heroes. I would fix it to 3 or 4, depending on powerlevel.

    The problem is that in the lower Points of Heroic, every single point of difference is huge. Hero lacks Granularity in those low vlaues. And adding variation to those values only makes it harder.

    5, 6 and 7 are pretty close together action economy wise. 5 has 1/6th less then 6. And 7 1/6th more then 6. +/-17%

    But with 3, 4, 5 we talk about +/-25% compared to 4.

    And 2, 3, 4 or 1, 2, 3 are even worse.

     

    For monsters and adversaries of course, you got a full amount of SPD values availible.

    SPD more then most other values can be used to simualte the Power Level differences. Look at Shadowrun where combat Characters can get up to 4 actions per turn for a granular example. And Hero is propably more combat focussed then Shadowrun.

    A random Guard with 2 SPD is no match for most Heroes with 4. The Hero can abort to both attacks and still act 2 times. Never mind if the hero has the first strike, forcing the enemy to abort. The Hero can get 3 strikes in while the enemy does nothing but defend.

    A "Boss"* has to have more SPD to allow it to challenge a whole group.

    While someone in another Thread mentioned a Superheroic foe that had only 1 SPD, but a really OP attack and defense for a interesting challenge.
     

     

    *Single, strong adversary in any form or shape

  5. 15 hours ago, Toxxus said:

    The gaps between the blades also make it likely that the fire would wash through the shield and scorch him. 

     

    13 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

     Actually it doesn't happen in the video, but  with higher pressure flames it  might.  However the  airflow has the most influence on the flame path.

    It does happen. Look at the slowmo in 3:45:
    https://youtu.be/AdibV3MQ2Sg?t=225

     

    And game mechanics wise that mechanic could be any of these:
    - shield is used as armor but a high DC attack still does stun past defenses

    - a high DC attack is harder to block

    - the high DC attack is being spread to increase the OCV, making it harder to block*

     

    *There is technically not a rule for this. But that is mostly because the Attack and Defense sucesses are absolutes. In a game that uses Attack vs Dodge Sucess to define part of the damage (Shadowrun, Storyteller), it would mater. And maybe HERO should have an option to drop DC to make it harder to block as well?

  6. On 3/28/2019 at 10:52 PM, specks said:

    What's been your experience with the Hunted disadvantage? How have the PCs used it? How does the GM use it?

     

    As a Player:
    Cheap Disad Points if you got a Villain writeup and Motivation for the GM to use.

     

    As GM:
    With Group adventures no Complication likelyhood is quite as high as the value indicates. Very Frequently would mean a Complication comes into play every other Adventure. If you got 4 Characters with "Very Frequently" then you would always be dealing with 1-3 of them.

    Personally I do not like the mandatory nature of Complications. I think it is better to ignore that mechanic and ask for Storyhooks for the GM-

  7. 6 hours ago, John Desmarais said:

    Is there a way to model them?  Sure.  It’s just points, and you can build nearly any effect if you spend enough of them. That said, actually doing so is not always the right answer - “...just because we can do a thing it does not necessarily follow that we must do that thing.”

    "We Heroites always ask if we can, but we never asked if you should."

     

    Well okay, I sometimes do ask :)

  8. With Episode 11, the causality starts to make sense:

    The Sphere is found by Starfleet.

    The Spheredata lands with control, including all it's knowledge about AI.

    Control evolves and wipes out all sentient life in the galaxy.

    This is a sequence that happens with or without the Red Angel. So they avoided a predesination paradox with this one.

     

    The Red Angel

    Michaels Mother tries her untested timesuit to go back 1 hour, but ends up landing 900 years in a future where Control has already won.

    The timesuit has a design flaw: It can not keep the user in any past for a long time. The "distance" it can travel back is likely also limited. Time will awlays pull the suit and user back. Trying to keep the red angel in the past is "playing a tug of war with the universe - and it always wins". And the anchor point seems to be the moment the timesuit travelled backwards from. So it is a reliable forwards, but very limited backwards time machine.

     

    Futhermore, contact with persons in the past prooved difficult. Only Spock with his Combination of Half Human, Half Vulcan, somewhat Dyslexic mind - and the help of the Talosians in case of higher doses - was able to deal with it. Michals Mother tried her best to keep the sphere data out of controls hands. At first she tried to destroy the sphere, but that prooved impossible with just the suit. The sphere was too powerfull, too robust for her. And she lacked the ability to leave the suit to tell people, without a external anchoring field.

    But then she realized the merits of having spock turn apparently-insane and steering discovery into the sphere path, so they would be who scoops up the information.

     

    Control is the Enemy

    With this it is pretty much confirmed who the future and present enemies are. It's motiviation seems to be around Ultron from the Avengers: Peace/Order through elimination of all sentient life. Except it forgoes the Villanious speeches and actually archives it's goals in the first volley, keeping a low profile and infiltrating until it can fire said volley.

    If it was not a for a certain temporal accident, it would have won. Even with temporal incursions, it prooves very tenacious.

    That really shows us why we should nail down that AGI safety research first.

     

    LeLand has been - in lack of a better term - assimilated.

    It is possible that Section 31 had some prior contact with the Borg to aquire samples.

    But it is equally likely that it is just a inferior tech with similar end results. Inferior, but only in the "Ability to assimilate others" part. He propably could not assimilate a whole ship from a single drone that was overlooked. It is possible the assimilation has to be handcrafted for each host, in direct opposition to the borg. In durability and combat power Control!LeLand is around Data, Bluegill, Borg or Augment level. Wich is a really scary level to fight.

     

    The Red Bursts
    These became even curioser. The Red Angel did not create them. Or at least not the version that still had a working Timesuit. Yet apparently Spock learned of them from the Red Angel.

  9. 19 hours ago, Cassandra said:

    If you have J.J. Abrams make DC Movies you know what you'll get.  Lens Flares!

    He got most of them out of his System with the first Star Trek Film.

     

    16 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

    Boy, that Kathleen Kennedy just wrecks everything that she touches!

    I did find the early Indiana Jones movies, ET, Gremlins Franchise, Back to the Future Francise, Hook and a host of other early films of her pretty good.

    Maybe it went downhill with 2000? But I do not know enough 2000's movies to clearly say it.

     

    15 hours ago, Cassandra said:

    The DC Extended Universe did something no one in the World thought would happen.  They made Aquaman the most popular male character in the movie series.

     

    At least until Shazam!

    To be fair, Aquaman being unfavored was really just a Superfriends aberation. Even his Justice League and JLU Cartoon appereances could not really wipe off that stain.

     

    But then there were plenty of Characters in that show that were just goofy. I mean how threathening can you make Joker, Darkseid or Braniac in a Saturday Morning Cartoon? So if anything, Aquaman was unfairly singeled out here as an example for the whole Show.

  10. 7 hours ago, archer said:

     

    I can understand to some extent stealing from doctors, who are wealthy compared to the general population, and stealing medicines for themselves or for resale.

     

    I have a real problem wrapping my head around shooting undefended doctors and burning down medical facilities which might be otherwise be resupplied with valuable medicines. That just doesn't work well within my personal worldview. 

    Apparently there are some conspiracy theories that Ebola/HIV/other common outbreak was caused by the white people/westerners/generic conspiracy.

    Based on that broken asumption, those Treatment centers could appear as being the cause of the outbreaks.

     

    The usual stuff that happens if we allow Conspiracy Theories to become mainstream.

     

    6 hours ago, Toxxus said:

    I found the murder of Kulak farmers and the subsequent starvation of millions to be a great example of why socialism and communism should be avoided like the plague.

    First you said the cause was a "us vs them" menatlity.

    Now you say it is "Socialism"*

     

    *For me they were at tops Dictatorships calling themself socialist. You know, the usual bleep all Opressive Regimes claim to justify being opressive monsters. For me even calling them socialist would mean I fell for their Propaganda.

  11. I only just learned about this, but apparently players "vote" what kind of Adventures they want to have with their Character Sheet.

    However it is also true that the Sheet design indicates a clear Combat Focus.

    So it is still equally likely that they wanted combat focussed sessions. And/or missread that there would be a high combat focus based on the sheet design.

     

  12. On 3/25/2019 at 2:03 PM, Toxxus said:

    My wife's character has an AoE usable by nearby life support ability vs. poison and disease.

     

    I've allowed her to "heal" sick people by spending a couple days with them with their immune systems being able to eventually prevail while the deleterious effects of the disease were held at bay by the life support.

     

    Made for an interesting RP encounter where the normally nuke happy fire witch was willing to sit with a family of infected villagers for a couple days.

    One way to simualte illnesses I thought about was this:
    A Drain with a long Recovery time (or even just straight Attribute Damage, where the System supports that). NND: Fitting Live Support.

    Now it is not damage over time, but Reaqpplying (A advantage Hero afaik does not have). Everytime it deals damage, it will spawn a new instance of itself that will deal damage later.

    This is repeated until the Immune System develops the Immunity or Immunity is applied from a external source. But even after the immunity was build, the damage still needs to Fade/Heal.

  13. On 3/6/2019 at 8:18 PM, Hopping Vampire said:

    One thing I'm kinda wanting to do is the whole cartoon bit where character can come apart as well. Like if a villain uses a slashing weapon, it cuts off Hopp's head, and he has to spend some time being cut apart like that. 

    Generally Superheroics tend towards the non-Lethal area. Between high Resistant Defenses and Code vs Killing, mostly normal damage will be used.

    Killing Damage is usually reserved against Foci, Entangles and the odd enemy where killing is not a concern (most Toyman Robots, Parademons, generally non-sentient foes).

    But that is only usually and your group might see it differently. Or this might not be superheroic.

     

    There is one way to do this I have theorized: Buy high Defenses against Body but not quite so high against stun. Possibly take some limiation like "only vs BODY" on part of the defenses.

    I developed that idea for Schlock from Schlock Mercenary. His body can be dispersed into pieces incapable of doing anything, but will then try to re-coalesce.

    A waterhose. A Ethanol/low yield fusion explosion. Most grenades. A Elephant stepping into him. Explosive Ammo. Even some turreted weapons. They will maybe disperse his body, but not deal lasting damage. In game terms: They got him to 0 STUN, but did little to no body damage. The time to "pull himself back together was him recovering to positive STUN. The only minor issues is that he still technically has full senses while this happens, wich might cause some game balance issues.

    Stuff like bullets will just pass through him, not even doing STUN damage.

    But stuff like Antimater Grenades or vehicle/ship scale weapons can totally deal body damage (I asume they are build with Killing Damage, Armor Piercing or Penetrating - or just on Active Points beyond his defenses).

     

    Indeed I would build Zombies a similar way. Most people would give them "Takes no STUN". But I would just give them high BODY defenses and have stuff like them "being thrown over" simulated via the Knockout Mechanic.

     

    On 3/8/2019 at 4:52 PM, Hopping Vampire said:

    Yeah we went with a flash attack for pies, and currently a blast attack for the mallet. 

    Character has a 50% damage reduction for Normal and Energy Damage, plus a 15 resist on both at the moment. Then full life support for everything including dismemberment. In a sense, I've become the secondary tank for the team, though my damage output is pretty weak and likely will stay such. Instead I'm going to focus more on status effects on enemies

    Most tanking in Hero (and PvP games) is done via Status Effects and involuntary movement.

    I mean a Brick can punch the target for 12d6 normal damage. Or can hold the target in a 60 STR Grab, wich most targets will find more dangerous. Or can even just try to get into Grab range, forcing the enemy to move or focus on him.

     

    I know of some game Systems that have a "Taunt" mechanic ported from MMO's. They do not actually force an attack on the Taunter. What those actually do is penalize attacks against other targets. "-2 OCV, does not apply when hitting user." or something to similar effect.

     

    On 3/6/2019 at 8:18 PM, Hopping Vampire said:

    Generally speaking, the character with the rest of the group would adopt a more 'non-violence' approach to problem solving. He'll throw pies, use seltzer water, or a number of other classic gags that you see the likes with Bugs Bunny or Rodger Rabbit. If he ever ends up getting caught or in a situation he can't run away, he uses a mochi mallet to beat his foes. (Kinda like into the spiderverse's spiderham)

    There is one Power I think is underused a bit. A power I would put on any of my Superheroic archer Builds: Telekinesis.

    Stuff like "nailing a enemy to the wall" or "tripping an enemy with a sudden arrow in the ground" can all be done on Range via TK.

     

    One maneuver people always tend to forget is "Shove". A lot of people try to build a "move the target" power with a Blast that has lots of Extra Knockback (but not nessesarily damage). I would build it as Shove, applied on range via TK.

  14. On 3/25/2019 at 5:39 PM, Scott Ruggels said:

    I can not really read the answer out of the text, so I thought I ask:
    Does that mean Qunatum Tunneling follows the Lightspeed limit or not?

     

    On 3/25/2019 at 5:39 PM, Scott Ruggels said:

    That effect does not require Magnetic Senses nessesarily. One of the first rules about Magnetism and Electricity is:
    "Where there is electricity, there is magnetism.

    Where there is magnetism, there is electricity."

     

    External Magnetic fields are the primary source of Noise in Electronics. Now our brain is at least somewhat electro-chemical. So it will experience that kind of noise.

    Our brain is also pretty good at filtering out unintersting stuff. It does so on most of our seneses 24/7. So it would propably adapt to counter the Magnetic Field noise. And having literal milennia to adapt to it, it might even shift the Adaptation pre-emptively when we move our head.

    Such a adaptation does not require a Magnetic Sense. If turning the head left means +0.5% noise on the left and -0.5% noise on the right side, it could just work with that.

  15. 17 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

    This is one of the funky powers that I pretend does not exist in most of the builds for most of my games but I have a character in my upcoming Golden Age game where Ithink it is necessary.

    That is both a wise decision and a unfortunate Circumstance :)

     

    17 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

    If someone is desperate he may offer them Sanctuary where they go to the Healing Halls from where the only exit is a small church in the fens of England. 

    This could also fall under Teleport. It is hard to figure out the difference between a really long range teleport and a EDM.

     

     

    The first question I usually ask is:
    "Is this really a power the character should spend points on? Or is it a plot device for the GM, to use or ignore as he sees fit?"

    UBO by nature does not allow the effect to be forced on a target. And you explicitly mentioned that the target of the power must be willing.

    For most characters it will not mater if they are here or there. NPC #1277 being 1 km away with the field medics, 100 km away in the field lazarett or somewhere in the house of healing makes no real difference gameplay wise. He is out of the story one way or the other.

     

    Only with Quest relevant persons does this power mater. Only with them is the Position relevant. And here the GM can simply say "he is not willing to go", for one reason or another. Think "Saving Private Ryan" - the perfect example of where the Quest was to get him out. But he was not willing to move, in part because of what would happen if they left that position. So the quest mutated into a "hold the line" as the GM had inteded for the start of this session.

     

    So there is a decent argument for this being something "Not to spend points on". And at least for me, those unpaid powers have one huge advantage: The GM can just declare them being offline.

    You did not pay points for your JLU Communicators or Smartphones? Guess what, the villains took out or are jamming the network. Nope, disabling the jamming is not really possible. To maybe small disrupters or they just killed all the cellphone towers for a few kilometers.

    So if you can not think of a reason the target would want to stay, you can just declare the power is not working. To much uses lately, fate/god still requires him there, atmospheric interference or whatever.

     

    I guess the only question is: Is this power supposed to work on fellow Player Characters? Generally players should be averse to being moved out of hte adventure zone (because usually the GM has nothing to do for them there). But it might still be useable to secure a McGuffin away from the villain.

  16. On 3/21/2019 at 12:10 PM, Brian Stanfield said:

    Now the nuts and bolts: which parts of the rules are the most important to teach first?

    As I just learned, the Design of the Character Sheet can help you figuring that out:

     

    On the Default Sheet, Page 1: The central parts are teh Vital Information (HTH Damage, Phases, CV, CSL, Pre Attack) and Defenses. It also contains the Hit Location, Combat Maneuver and Combat Modifier table. There is only one part of page 1 that is unambigiously not realted to combat: Experience Points.

    So as I said Combat is a pretty big focus. :)

     

    If you really want a different game, it might even be nessesary to make a minor reorganisation of the sheet.

  17. On 3/8/2019 at 4:18 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

    Aquaman didn't really interest me but I have read it was pretty entertaining if dumb (kinda like Guardians of the Galaxy).  Really I don't want Dostoevsky when I go see a Superhero film, just to have fun and come out happy.

    Comparing it to Guardians, I found the story at least 20% more complex and layered. I mean how many Stories have the Hero solve a riddle via knowledge?

     

    I guess there are some elements that are similar (with Atlanteans being uninformed about Surface Culture), but that is just normal "Fish out of Water" storytelling (pun totally intended).

     

    15 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

    OK this panel includes details on what Zach Snyder wanted to do with Justice League and... well, let's just say he saw the previous films he'd done and thought "wow, those are too upbeat"

     

     

    See, Darkseid kills Lois Lane

    Superman goes berserk and evil

    Darkseid takes over the world 

    The heroes have to go back in time to alter history to prevent that from happening

     

    This is the kind of story you do ten years down the road once you have an audience and built the universe up, it not what you smash fans in the face with two movies in, particularly having already really annoyed them.

    So a Nod to the Storyline of Injustice or the Justice Lords, just using Timetravel rather then alternate Dimension Travel to fix it?

    Those were some pretty good storylines. Also a bit dark, but that just goes with the Thematic.

  18. The EU finally finished their "DIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on copyright in the Digital Single Market".

    People might have heard most about it from the term "Artikle 13" (wich is now 17 in the Final Version)

    And as I am still reading and hearing a ton of BS on the mater and I actually had a hard time finding the actuall thing (too many overlinked news Articles), here is a link to thge PDF version:
    https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593&from=EN

    But anything before Page 23 is just forewords and some stuff on how in interacts with existing Laws and other Directives.

     

    And just to make sone things clear I hear most often (all of this is asuming no huge mistakes in the Implementation by any local government):

    - It does not call for "Uploadfilters". Big Organisations like Facebook and Google threathened to implement it via Upload filters only. Rather then finally getting Licensing agreements or hiring enough staff for this job. Both of wich are long overdue

    - Wikipedia was never affected to begin with. They already deal with all the Licensing Stuff anyway. If someone felt their work was published under Creative Commons in violation of their rights, they could already asked for it to be taken down. It also falls under the "Education", "Cultural Heritage" and "Non-Profit" provisions. They are so excluded, I have no idea why wikipedia demonstrated against it.

×
×
  • Create New...