Lord Liaden

Well, at the time he said it, things looked pretty good for them. It was not an unreasonable expectation, all things considered.

I've been so busy this week, I completely forgot what day this is. I went out this evening to pick up some milk and bread, only to find my neighborhood grocers closed. Luckily there was an open convenience store -- stuff was more expensive, but at least I have it. I hope everyone else's Easter was pleasant, whether you had to work or not. 🐰

Thing is, the trial Trump is mouthing off about now is a criminal trial, not civil. Penalties for violating those orders, and/or contempt of court, is not fines. It's jail time.

There's a, for want of a better word, bias toward balance in most mainstream media when it comes to political reporting, even today. It's a legacy of the days when they really did want to inform the public and let them make up their own minds. And in America, a legacy of the days when political parties just had different policy positions, but were otherwise relatively rational and responsible. It's a pretty new thing in the US for one of the major parties to be -- and I know I'm risking the Wrath of Dan for saying this, but I can't express it any other way -- actively promoting evil and insanity. I imagine it takes most decent reporters a while to wrap their heads around that also being something the public needs to be informed of. They're doing that a lot more often recently, though.

Generally speaking, the best way to start building a character in Hero System is to decide what you want the character to be able to do, e.g. its physical and mental Characteristics, Powers, etc., then find what in the system matches those specs best. In your case, you should also consider what you want the character to be like in the powered armor suit, and outside it. Is the suit a part of him, like a modular add-on to his body? Or is it a completely separate, self-contained thing? Does the suit have any independent volition? Is he ever without it? Any difficulties putting it on or off? If you could describe how you want all that to work, it'll be easier for us to suggest appropriate ways to model it.

I knew that clown would get mentioned before long. I'll just point out that he became powerless when people stopped being afraid of him.

Anybody else ever feel like giggling when you hear, "jumbo shrimp?"

Oh yeah, there's parent of the year material...

I'm truly saddened to hear that. For my part, if there's a choice between laughing or crying, laughing generally leaves me feeling more positive. American right-wing politics is a clown show right now, but not all clowns have to be Emmet Kelly.

I don't normally put up videos by Trae Crowder the "Liberal Redneck" because his language is usually NSFW in spots, but this one is relatively tame, and I think we could all use a little leavening of American politics with unique humor. (2:52 - 5:04 is sponsorship.)

Sadly, a little too large to use as a hockey puck. Curling rock, though...

I don't think you have to have steroids to cross that 20-point line. They only give someone the endurance and energy to push themselves to train harder. You can already get closer to your inborn potential if you have the motivation to train that hard. Hero players often question super characters like bricks with DEX above 20, "more than an Olympic gymnast." For one thing, I would say the way a gymnast trains could reasonably raise their own DEX higher than 20. OTOH gymnasts train for a narrow range of athletic Skills, and one could argue that their feats are the result of achieving high Skill rolls, rather than making themselves excessively agile. Along the lines of power sources, the manga/anime character Saitama, known as "One-Punch Man," has an interesting origin. He was an ordinary guy who wanted to be a superhero, and began training himself obsessively. In so doing he somehow broke his "limiter," the boundary of what any living being can physically achieve. Thereafter Saitama's strength, speed, durability, and endurance began increasing exponentially, eventually reaching astronomical, terrifying, ludicrous levels. It's not so much that he stopped being human, as that being human stopped being a restriction to his potential power.

Of course. And I was just responding to your questions with one guideline for what Characteristics should go above 20, and by how much.

The 20 cap is for purposes of Normal Characteristic Maxima, beyond which each Characteristic costs double its normal price. It was never intended to represent the maximum a human could achieve. The 6E Champions genre book p. 72 presents a table of all Characteristic scores for six progressive named categories of Normal humans, and a seventh for when those Characteristics cross over into Superhuman, as applied in the official published Champions Universe. "Legendary" is the highest range a human can achieve without some extraordinary justification. The upper Legendary range is probably where to place the physical likes of Captain America, Conan, Tarzan, Doc Savage, as well as intellect like Mister Fantastic, charisma like Batman, and so on. Below is a rough transcription of the table (to stay within Fair Use). Char Weak Challenged Average Skilled Competent Legendary Superhuman STR 1-2 3-5 6-10 11-13 14-20 21-30 31+ DEX 1-2 3-5 6-10 11-13 14-20 21-30 31+ CON 1-2 3-5 6-10 11-13 14-20 21-30 31+ INT 1-2 3-5 6-10 11-13 14-20 21-50 51+ EGO 1-2 3-5 6-10 11-13 14-20 21-50 51+ PRE 1-2 3-5 6-10 11-13 14-20 21-50 51+ OCV/DCV 1-2 1-2 2-3 3-4 5-7 8-10 11+ OMCV/DMCV 1-2 1-2 2-3 3-4 5-7 8-10 11+ SPD 1 1-2 1-2 2-3 4-5 6-7 8+ PD, ED 0-1 1-2 3-4 5-6 7-10 11-15 16+ REC 1 1-2 2-4 5-6 7-10 11-13 14+ END 2-4 6-10 11-20 21-26 27-40 41-60 61+ BODY 1-2 3-5 6-10 11-13 14-20 21-30 31+ STUN Running Leaping Swimming 3-4 1-2m 0m 0m 7-11 3-6m 1-2m 1-2m 12-20 7-12m 3-4m 3-4m 21-27 13-16m 5-6m 5-6m 28-40 17-20m 7-10m 7-10m 41-60 21-26m 11-22m 11-18m 61+ 27m+ 23m+ 19m+

I debated putting this in the Politics thread, but I think it fits better here.

I subscribe to Plato's distinction in his Poetics between what is possible, and what is probable. Something that may be impossible in the real world, may be probable in a world with different assumptions. Rationality itself doesn't change, but it may be operating under other expectations. Most comic-books universes are like that. They have conventions affecting biology and physics which don't match reality, but with long, consistent repetition, become operating conditions we all accept as probable for the sake of a story. But other conditions typically remain recognizably the same: human nature, emotions, motivations, social interactions. Those are things we tend to expect to be conventionally rational even in fiction, and straying too far from them becomes jarring.

Sure. I fully appreciate the motivation behind the series. But I fully admit to liking rationality.

Sounds like you missed out on a lot, including some of the most ground-breaking music courtesy of the Beatles.

Is "Geddy" supposed to be pronounced like "Jedi?"

The rationale gets a little muddy when you have "mutates" as well as "mutants." If someone's DNA is reconfigured to give them powers, how do you justify distinguishing between those who inherited and were born with them, versus those who acquired them later? Your detectors would almost need to be able to distinguish things in mutates that aren't in mutants, like the Hulk's gamma rays, or Captain America's super-soldier serum. IMO the detector convention is easiest to justify in a single-source-powers campaign, in which all super powers derive from one factor which can be remotely identified.

People frequently confuse "I don't like it" with "It's bad."

Genuinely disturbing.