Koshka

Last night, in a 2nd edition AD&D game, we were fighting some skeletal undead. One of the players finally got a hit, and then rolled one point of damage. The GM commented "It's only a bone wound".

Any chance of getting a Digital Hero article or webpage addition that gives the Superhuman Survey ratings for villains who weren't in CKC? I'm starting a game with two total newbies, and I'm considering an informal metagaming rule limiting Hunteds to Alpha and Beta class threats. (I may let the one veteran take the Delta-class VIPER, though since he's read the 4th edition book he may not want to see what 5th did .) It's pretty obvious that Mechanon is a higher level threat, but I'm not sure how to rank characters like Devastator or Tachyon.

You beat me to it, Dave. My FLGS still has (as of the last time I went over there) floppies of Ultimate Super Mage and Classic Enemies available. If SOB and (hopefully) future Hero Plus releases were released in both all-electronic and disk versions it might help -- both in getting the word out and for those who aren't sure about their connection staying good for an entire download. I'm not as sure about color art, though. Sure, pretty colors on my monitor doesn't cost Hero anything, but I'm guessing it would be more expensive to get in the first place -- and if SOB isn't selling enough to pay for the non-color art .... Besides, while I can refill the black cartridge on my printer, I can't refill the color cartridge. Since some people in this thread have been complaining about printing costs, I'd think it would be better to stick with a file that's less expensive to print. Oh, yes, one of the original questions -- I haven't gotten it for cash flow reasons, but this paycheck is going to have about 12 hours of overtime. Payday is Saturday, can you wait until then? (And, if no one beats me to it, I'll see if I can write up a no-spoilers or minimal-spoilers review for Pyramid.)

First off, check the library and see when Warren Buffett founded Berkshire Hathaway. Then run back and grab a few shares on initial release. When I get back home, look through all the old BH reports I now have sitting on a bookshelf and pick out some more stocks Warren picked before they got huge, repeat tactic. Now that I'm set for life monetarily, it's time for fun . I don't know if I'd trust myself in pre-WWII Germany (though since I'm a lousy shot, offing Hitler wouldn't be too probable anyway), but there's lots of other time periods that would be a blast to explore.

I obviously shouldn't be reading my new Hero book at work when it's pushing 100 degrees outside (and no air conditioning inside). "Fatal Attractions", the Hall of Mirrors map has a spot marked "1". Where's the reference to what the "1" stands for?

I know the type, believe me. A few years ago, I was in an online Dark Champions game. The original GM came down with burnout, so one of the other players offered to run for a few months. That was when all of us learned that while we were built on 75 points plus disads, his GM-PC was 150 plus disads plus more XP than anyone else had gotten. The substitute GM trimmed the character down to campaign guidelines, but when the original guy was ready to run again it was with super-character. Of course, in that game you only got XPs if you were still online at 1 or 2 AM (my time zone) and the GM decided to wrap up. Since I had to be up at 5:30 AM for work the day after his games, you can guess how much XPs my character ever got.

Another book I recently ran across that might help plan homefront adventures is "The Air-Raid Warden Was A Spy" by William Breuer. Not much depth, but lots of good stories. I admit my favorite was the one about the wounded black veteran who got to ride in the front of the bus in Florida because three white soldiers told the bus driver to let him sit up front with them or be tossed off the bus .

Episode 5 could easily be expanded into a series of Bruneval-style raids -- maybe taking out a secret lab connected to the Nazi superhuman program? In February 1943, a British plane carrying the top-secret H2S centimetric radar is shot down over Rotterdam. The cavity magnetron used in this radar couldn't be destroyed easily, and historically the Germans were able to devise countermeasures based on the captured magnetron. If your team is still in England, how about sending them off to recover the H2S before German scientists can analyse it?

I'd like to see more of the "Day in the Life" stuff -- maybe reusing the character of Corporal Mike Potts from the 4E book? Show us why people join VIPER, how they're trained, how you maintain a chain of command when half your underlings would love to take your place. And tied in with that -- I've always assumed the last thing VIPER would ever be known for is their retirement plans, but how do they deal with agents who can no longer go on missions? Putting someone up against the wall because the Side Effects on that experimental weapon he was assigned left him a paraplegic isn't going to improve morale. Or an even worse case scenario from VIPER's viewpoint, one of their top researchers starts to develop Alzheimers and can't keep track of who's "safe" to talk to, so he's blabbing everything to anyone and anything. Might there be a few "retirement communities" or "assisted living centers" that are completely VIPER-staffed and ex-VIPER inhabited, for those who know too much but were loyal snakes in their active careers?

You know, from the description in the original post, the Bronze Avengers sound like elite Iron Guard agents. Sounds like a perfectly reasonable addition to PRIMUS to me, especially if there's been some scientific advances in your game world since PRIMUS was founded -- rebuiding all the Iron Guard suits would be way too expensive, building only 50 (probably spread out over a few years) Bronze Avenger suits wouldn't be quite as budget-breaking.

When I wrote up a similar sword (it didn't burn, it just heated up to 700 degrees Fahrenheit whenever drawn), I used Damage Shield. It's pricey, at 38 points for the complete sword, but it made sense for the sword to burn anyone who came in contact with it regardless of whether or not it was the sword holder's phase.

Thanks for the link, Shelley! The character in question is Cockney, so on consideration of the other posts in this thread he's probably not low-class enough for a social limitation -- I'll give him a DF for the accent and leave it at that. Now, if I ever figure out India's caste system well enough to write a character who's part of it ....

That's the real question -- is the player of the OGC willing to follow the "new" genre rules? Sir Justin works in the All-Star Squadron because he's not slicing heads off the bad guys. Back in his home time, that would have been acceptable, but not in his new Golden Age setting. A generic "I'm a D&D knight who fell through a gate and wound up in Millenium City" character who keeps the D&D approach to problems (kill them) is going to cause problems, the same character run by someone willing to alter the character's mindset to closer to 4-color will fit in. It's really up to the player whether the OGC is going to work or not.

Given a setting/period with a strong class system (for example, England pre-WWII), would this be a valid Social Limitation? If so, what value would you give it?

Page 102 -- the notes on ARGENT, first paragraph

If you expect a PC to capture and use a weapon, vehicle, or other statted-out piece of equipment, print out the stats on a separate piece of paper (or write it on a 3x5 card). Then, at the appropriate time, hand the PC the paper. It's normally faster than reading out the description and having the player write it down during game, and easier than keeping track of what the gadget can do yourself while running all the bad guys.

I'm using TUV to write up a muscle-powered vehicle (specifically a boat). Is it possible for the crew to push their STR and get a little more speed in those "they're shooting at us!" situations? If so, would they be able to go over the purchased movement rate, or would the boat have to be bought with a couple extra inches of swimming to allow for the push?

Re: CV "Drain" Change Environment only does a -1 to CV at base level, you can buy it up for higher penalties.

... and have a question. I've always heard that if character A has (for instance) DEX 24 and SPD 5, and character B has DEX 24 and SPD 6, in any phase where they both have an action B automatically goes first. According to FRED, A and B have to dice off every time they're acting in the same phase. Do I have versionitis, was this an insufficiently identified house rule, or am I looking on the wrong page?

I've gotten some friends to playtest things for me on several occasions, and this thread reminded me that I always give one certain player the team leader sheet if there's one in the game. Not because his leadership skills are the greatest, but because his wife is part of the group and she has a bad habit of trying to run everyone's characters for them -- he's got the best chance of getting her to shut up and stick to running her own character without starting a fight. I should try to change that next time I run a playtest for them, the trouble is setting matters up to put a leash on the control freak player if I don't use that "Ring of Spouse Control" option.

I don't know if you've read the Lensman books, but they managed to use energy weapons, slugthrowers and space axes all in the same fights. As I recall (need to reread them myself), in a boarding situation personal armor could pull power from the ship's power supplies, in effect hiking the ED value to levels where handheld energy weapons didn't do anything but make pretty energy splashes. Now, if you're boarding someone else's ship, they can break out their "semi-portables", which are energy weapons powered by the ship's power supplies and are capable of punching holes in armor. If that's not the case, though, or someone throws up a shield that blocks power to the semi-portables, you either bring in the water-cooled machine rifles (what can I say, the books were written in the 1930's) or pull your space axe and go hand to hand -- personal armor in those books never had as much PD as ED. (The fact that Valerian troopers were definitely not bound by NCM helped space axe effectiveness as well.)

A previous incarnation of Hero organized a contest (through Adventurer's Club, I believe) to get a character sheet for the villain on the cover of the boxed set. I don't know if Holocaust bears any resemblance to any of those entries, but I suspect he's entirely new. (IIRC, the contest was called on the grounds of no entries good enough. I know my entry in that contest stunk, I can't believe I actually sent it in.)

I know the feeling -- I've kept my AOL account active for personal reasons, and if you count different screen names I could be 7 more people. Quite a crowd for a one bedroom apartment .

OK, no more posting until I get a minimum level of caffeine in my system . At least I had the proportions right, even if I got the direction swapped. BTW, how would people adjust lifting STR for things like suplexes? Between them, Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit have probably suplexed most of the WWE roster, including a lot of people bigger and heavier than they are. They've clearly got good STR scores, but in some cases they're lifting people for a suplex who weigh more than they "should" be able to lift by Hero rules.

Unfortunately I screwed it up -- it's one pound equals 2.2 kilos, so Lardman is (500 x 2.2) 1100 kilograms. That falls between a 25 and 28 STR on the chart, so even if Lardman is helping Cruiser is going to have to push to stand a chance.