Lord Liaden

Re: Intelligent/Sentient Weapons AI Characteristics are the basis for the official guidelines for creating sentient weapons and the like; but they're elaborated further in the Fifth Edition Fantasy HERO genre book, under "Sentient Artifacts," p. 279. However, you can view several such weapons written up by the estimable Michael "Susano" Surbrook via this webpage: specifically, the swords Grospolina, Stormbringer, and the Sword of Kas.

Re: Suggest a Name? If your magician has a sizeable ego, I recommend "Adam Kadmon" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Kadmon

Re: Help me build this Disad: I was thinking along the same lines as csyphrett. I think I'd also take a cue from the Side Effects Limitation for Powers, where the value of the Lim is less if the character's surroundings are damaged by the SE rather than the character himself. If building this as a Dependence, I'd probably reduce the value of it by 5 or 10 points for that reason.

Re: Speed! There's also a nice little spreadsheet on this page in the "Free Stuff" section of the website, under "Utilities." It calculates velocity based on a character's SPD, base movement, NCM and MegaScale, for several movement types simultaneously.

Re: Asian Bestiary- Opinions?

Re: Knowledge Skills in the Future Or somebody captures you and takes away your wrist-computer. Or you're in a region/planet/etc. where you can't pick up a signal. Or you're in an area of massive EM interference, or have been subject to an EM pulse, and your cybernetics are scrambled. Or... well, you get the idea. I'm not saying that your postulate about the increasing dependence on research instead of knowledge isn't likely; it's probably inevitable. But IMO it's rather like reading and writing skills: as electronics do more of the thinking for us (spell-checkers, people communicating via audiovisuals or shorthand jargon), jobs requiring fluent reading and writing will likely become fewer, as will the folks who can do them; but those jobs that really require fluent reading and writing will be considered skilled positions, and the people with those skills will be paid accordingly. Increasing specialization tends to reduce the need for a good generalist, but makes the generalist very valuable on those occasions when he is needed.

Re: Knowledge Skills in the Future This distinction seems valuable to me as well. Anyone can find out information on a given subject on the Internet; with good research skills they can find a great deal of information. But to understand what info is pertinent, and how it fits together, is very much dependent on a good working familiarity with the subject. OTOH having a greater knowledge base of the details of a given subject can be invaluable for an adventurous lifestyle (which is after all what our games try to emulate), where there can be dozens of reasons why you may not have access to any online resources at a time when you really need to know something. One thing I've noticed is that as our society becomes more dependant on technology, we become more lost if something happens to take that technology away, like a simple power failure. Under those circumstances the people who can do without tech are the ones who tend to take charge. Besides, being able to pull obscure facts out of memory at need is good for impressing the bystanders.

Re: How a team fits in its world (team types) The Theme Team. A group that has strong similarities in powers, backgrounds, motifs or motivations, such that those elements are immediately identifiable with them. Examples include teams of mystics/supernaturals, martial artists, gadgeteers/technology users, superpatriots, "new gods," etc. Crosses over somewhat with the "common origin" and "common goal" teams, but the theme is much more visible.

Re: can't think...all available mindpower focused on that tiny little organ Well, there's another Final Fantasy thread on this very forum with some helpful material. For a great deal more FF HERO stuff, click on the link in my signature, below, and scroll down to the FINAL FANTASY listing.

Re: Transformation IIRC the USPD II has a category for "Spirit Projection" Powers. I haven't picked that book up yet, though, so I can't speak to what the examples are.

Re: New Player Hates All The Dice

Re: Mediaeval 2-weapon fighting system - trawling for suggestions Here's a well-researched translation of authentic medieval weapon styles into HERO martial arts which may offer something useful: http://surbrook.devermore.net/herosource/medievalma.html

Re: Heroic vs Superheroic Well, what I do (at least for Fifth Edition books) is follow the groupings from the Our Products listings here on the website. I start with "HERO System Products," then the "Ultimate" books. That covers eveything that's applicable to all genres. Then I put all the Champions books together, so everything related to supers is in one place. Then follow it up with everything for each other genre. I'm not aware of a specific list such as you describe, but perhaps someone else has come up with one.

Re: Have you used anything from the Asian Bestiaries? I've long wanted to run a major Champions plotline I have in mind featuring Dr. Yin Wu, so I very much desire the AB I for the Doctor's army of supernatural Chinese monsters. Unfortunately I've had unexpected financial demands lately, so my game purchases have been curtailed. I'll let you know once I get it and have a chance to peruse it.

Re: Gesture/Incantions The Fifth Edition rulebook descriptions of both Gestures and Incantations suggest that "This Limitation is primarily intended for use in Heroic campaigns." That's as strong as it gets, and considering genre conventions overall, it's a reasonable guideline.

Re: Curiosity about chances of rolling...... The "Free Stuff" section of this website has an XLS spreadsheet which calculates the percentage chance of rolling any number on any total of d6s. You can find that here, under "Utilities."

Re: New Player Hates All The Dice

Re: New Player Hates All The Dice

Re: The Earth as base: statting out phones You know, I've seen a lot of people here discuss or ask about various elements of or approaches to gaming. Some of these I didn't agree with or see the need for, as far as my own games go. That's not really the point, though; any endeavor that gives people pleasure (and doesn't hurt them or anyone else) is inherently a Good Thing. If Robyn enjoys this sort of mental exercise, I'm not inclined to say that it's wrong, despite the fact that it's a world away from anything I would try. Whether Robyn can get other people in a gaming group to actively buy into it is another matter, but in this case that may not be the point either.

Re: A couple Questions from a (semi) old herophile

Re: A couple Questions from a (semi) old herophile Hey, Insaniac, good to see you back! Hope your new group works out well. The Free Stuff here on the website is definitely worth a thorough perusal. It's grown considerably over the past year, in ways that aren't always reflected in the titles of the links to various web pages; so I recommend checking out what's under each one. On the subject of freebies, if you haven't seen it before you might want to look up Franklin W. Cain's massive list of Background Skills, alphabetized with notes as to pertinent category, related Skills, and a description of what the BS entails if it's not obvious from its name. This can be very helpful for people who don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of every past, present or potential future science or profession. Mr. Cain has also provided links to his house rules for using Skills in HERO, which are worked into some of his Skill descriptions; but even if you don't use them, the Skill List alone can really help you flesh out and define your character's abilities. Here's where you'll find the list: http://fcain.tripod.com/h5skills/background_00.html

Re: The Earth as base: statting out phones I'm impressed, in the abstract. It's a remarkable approach to actually costing out, potentially, every manmade effect on Earth. It's also far beyond anything I would ever want to apply practically to any of my games, and rather too esoteric to engage me on a purely intellectual level; so I'm afraid I have nothing pertinent to add.

Re: New Player Hates All The Dice Another suggestion I've seen for large dice rolls is to use Standard Effect for all but the last three or four; those are rolled normally. Much faster, but still adds some randomness to the result. I haven't tried this out myself, though.

Re: Alternate SPD Chart While I also love the Speed Chart, I've played in games that used a method kind of like what you describe. I don't think you have it quite right, though. If your speed is 6 and you roll 6d12, that's potentially 72 Segments. You may be thinking of another common alternate method, in which each player rolls 1d12 every Segment and compares the total to their SPD; if they roll their SPD or lower they get an Action Phase that Segment. What this brings to the table is, of course, unpredictability in the order of player actions, which some players prefer to the ordered Speed Chart method; while still making the points invested in SPD valuable. I found this to work pretty well. While you might think that an extra die roll would slow things down, eliminating consulting the Speed Chart more or less balances the time required once everyone is used to rolling. There are a few things you need to deal with to translate some of the standard mechanics, though. One of these is how to handle Aborting and Held Actions. For our group the motto was, "keep rolling." If we Aborted we automatically got to act without rolling the d12, but then the next Segment you succeed in your roll is used to pay for that Abort, so you don't get a Phase on that Segment. For Held Actions the player Holding would roll d12 on a Segment that they decided to act; if they chose to use their Held Action on a Segment where the roll succeeded, they didn't get to roll on the next Segment. Another issue is post-Segment 12 Recoveries. In our game everyone got one of those who rolled a "natural" 12. I say "natural 12" because of another adjustment to the die roll that we found necessary. Due to the vagaries of random chance, someone could keep getting bad die rolls Segment after Segment and never get to act, especially if their SPD is relatively low. If a player blew a d12 roll on one Segment they got to add +1 to their roll on the next Segment, cumulatively, until they succeeded. After that the roll would reset to their raw SPD again. BTW the "post-Segment 12" and "+1 to roll" ideas came from the article I first saw this method described in, by Steve Peterson in Adventurers Club.

Re: New Player Hates All The Dice All I've ever done with the dice-phobic in my games is cut the number of dice rolled in half (or to one-third for really big attacks), and multiply the result, e.g. 10d6 becomes 5d6 x 2. Add one separate die for odd numbered dice rolls. The bell-curve for results becomes a little flatter, but it's faster to count and, apparently, less intimidating.