Tae Kwon Dan

Re: Aborting to a non-created VPP power?

Thanks Derek as I thought about it more that was my conclusion as well, but it was the kind of thing I like to put before the board.

I don't have my book in front of me so this might be covered in it and I didn't want to bother Steve it was. What are the rules on aborting to a non-created VPP power?

Say for instance my character Vagabond is a Green Lantern rip-off, but without all of the training. He can create powers through his power ring with a half-phase action, but still has to make a Power Ring skill roll to get his powers to go off. Would you allow him to say abort to attempting to create a Missile Deflection through the ring? Even though he might fail the roll and thus get nothing out of his aborted action?

My first inclination as a GM would be to only allow to abort to the VPP if it was Cosmic, but that's really more of a flavor ruling than a balance one since there is the possibility of the action failing the skill roll + no guarantee that he could pull off the Missile Deflection after that. So I'm not certain if there is a good balance reason not to allow this or just a straight up rules reason that I don't recall.

This hasn't come up in gameplay yet, but it could so I thought it was worth putting before the boards.

Re: Two ways but which do you prefer.

I've always seen it done as number 2, but I'm guessing where you're going is that his reflexes are faster because of his heightened mental acuity.

If that is the case then just give him greater SPD in general. Or am I not understanding where you are going with this?

Re: Sky High The Movie

To begin with' date=' it's Disney . . .[/quote']

 

Yeah, but after Pirates of the Carribbean they raised my expectations some.

Re: Sky High The Movie

It looks interesting, but I thought they passed up a great story opportunity by having the son NOT develop super strength, but some other kind of much more subtle power (like a mixed bag of mentalist abilities or even Franklin Richards level reality powers.) Something where he is actually much more powerful than anybody else, but since good old Dad is from the direct school of "whack it; it fall down" he isn't very supportive of.

You could even go farther and have mental powers be something just generally looked down upon by other heroes by their lack of directness and since the son has no confidence due to this he isn't as powerful as he should be. Until Super-villian X (something sort of Doomsday'ish) shows up and mops the floor with the standar heroes and young son must step in and gain confidence enough to defeat him.

While I think the movie will be fun, I just think it could have been better and with a better message for children about being different not necessarily being bad.

Re: Straight up easy question . . .

Because there's always at least a half-dozen approaches to any given task?

Actually yeah and that each of them is about as viable as the other. I'm an engineer by education so stuff like that is fun to me, because you pick a path and go down it, but you hopefully end up at the same place despite the differing paths.

Re: Straight up easy question . . .

This is why I love this system so very very much.

Re: Straight up easy question . . .

See I was thinking more as a VPP since wrestlers always seem to find creative ways to turn various parts of the cage into differing weapons and effects.

Re: Straight up easy question . . .

That's right. I'm laying down the gauntlet for Internet Triple Cage match. I have no idea how this would work logistically, but it sounds cool.

Besides we're HERO players. We'll have to spend at least 3 weeks and 20 pages arguing over whether or not we should build the Triple Cage using an EC or a VPP.

Re: Straight up easy question . . .

People keep saying how friendly the HeroGames boards are compared to the rest of the internet.

 

We don't want to come off as whussy.

Look I moderate at another gaming website. You guys have a long way to go.

Mortal combat doesn't even come close.

Re: Straight up easy question . . .

Way to go in converting a group to HERO! Rep. I just got a hint from the GM of a group I play with that he might be ready to try Hero too (he runs a 2nd ed. AD&D campaign and says he'd rather convert it to Hero than 3rd ed.)! I'm going to lend him my 5E since I just picked up 5ER' date=' and I may GM a couple sessions to get him and the players into it.[/quote']

 

My DM has determined that everything he has from 2E converts into HERO much easier than to 3E. So that's while we'll be going there with him.

 

The guy running Dark Champions is an Actuary. He has a degree in Civil Engineering and then went back to become an actuary, because CE didn't involve "enough math." (That is a direct quote.) Saying that HERO has appeal to him is like saying I like smart, rich, women, with big boobs. It's just sort of a given.

 

The other guy just wants to run Star Wars in the worst way that can actually have Jedi and still work. The old West End Games stuff comes pretty close, but we feel that HERO balances it out more.

Re: Why should I play HERO?

Tumbling' date=' spring attack and huge movement - never take an attack of oppportunity, and they can't get close enough to retaliate.[/quote']

 

And you'll never hit anything, because your BAB is mediocre and you had to ditch your best stat into WIS and then maybe DEX, because you're a close combat fighter made of paper mache' who can't wear armor. But hey can use flurry of blows to miss more times as a full attack action if that's what melts your butter. Not to mention all of that is negated by a spellcaster with Fly going. I hope you have some magical sling stones handy.

 

Folks the Monk is straight up ass. Seriously he spends his day thanking the design gods that somebody wrote the Bard so that he's not the absolute biggest bag of suck in the game.

Re: Why should I play HERO?

i felt that by about lvl 11 the wizard/sorc was a more powerful pick and that gap only widdend as they proceeded in lvl.

Other than the Sorceror part I'm in complete agreeance here. Without house rules there are basically 3 classes you should ever play in D&D right now Cleric, Druid, or Wizard and the Druid basically wins at all things by like level 12. 3.0 and 3.5 completely break at levels 11 and above.

But a sword at lvl 11 is doing 1d8+2d6+10 maybe, for an average of 21.5

vs. the Fireball doing 35 damage on average (10d6) (albit with a save)

You're wasting time if you're casting Fireball at 11th level when you have so many other juicy cheestastic things you could be doing. You have Greater Planer Binding at this point which can summon multiple things that cost Fireball at will or you could just force Efreeti to give you wishes. And an appropriately min\maxed fighting character should deal exceedingly more damage than that, but he'll always lose to the Wizard and his pet Outsiders.

Knock beats lockpicking most of the time, lightning bolt and disintegrate or ethereal travel beat the other 19% (with 1% of the time you really do need a rouge)

 

got traps? use summon monster.

 

Etc. I really does tend to be a problem

Oh don't knock the Rogue too hard if the spellcasters weren't so biggidy-broken he would be pretty swank. He's about the best balanced class in the game and can go in several different directions in terms of character concept. He also has the distinct honor of being the only other base class besides the Druid where your friends shouldn't punch you in the mouth for taking all 20 levels of instead of going into a PrC or multi-classing. (Not even the Cleric or the Wizard have this honor. Trust me there are a couple of PrC's that you pretty much should always take with those guys just to take your kick buttedness up a couple of notches.)

Besides he's the party master of Diplomacy and as written that Skill trumps like everything.

Re: Loop model of RPGs and why long chargen is okay

Exactly what I believe Fox1 was saying. Rolemaster has a very small, but dedicated following from what I have seen at the Con scene. And like I said it could be a fun exercise occasionally or for a one-off adventure, but it's much more of a subjective choice than folks would think.

Re: Why should I play HERO?

The guidelines for creating new base classes were called Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Sorceror, and Wizard. Remember 3.0 and 3.5 were based on the, exceedingly faulty, 10 levels of Class Y is equal to 10 levels of Class X is equal to 5 levels each of classes Y and X. Of course their design team failed miserably at this, but it was a guideline. Usually I based new classes on the Rogue as I felt it was the best balanced 20 level class in the game.

The same applies for PrC's, of course the balance issues became even more disparate between the PrC's depending on requirements and the designers. I'm not calling these good guidelines, but they were there. WotC was fairly close lipped about their design guidelines, because they hadn't released those as open content. But I know plenty of experienced D&D players that have had no problems making their own classes, PrC's, and spells.

It is not as easy as HERO(part of the reason I made the switch), but it's not as hopeless as being painted in here either.

Re: Loop model of RPGs and why long chargen is okay

I have never played it, but isn't Rolemaster almost completely random in terms of CharGen and involves tons of charts?

Re: Why should I play HERO?

Spell level x Caster level x 1,800 GP if the cloak is Command Word activated.

Spell level x Caster level x 2,000 GP is the cloask is Continuous.

We're not exactly splitting an atom here guys.

Like I said, I can't stand D&D, but let's hold up some actual faults here. The stuff listed so far is not that complicated.

Re: Loop model of RPGs and why long chargen is okay

I personally prefer total control, but at the same time getting a grab bag of abilities and then trying to turn it into a cogent character could be quite fun as its own exercise to me. Not something I would want to do every weekend, but I could see it being entertaining.

I think there's a cavalcade of Rolemaster players out there that agree with this standpoint.

Re: Straight up easy question . . .

All I want to know is when the face off between Tae Kwon Dan and tkdguy is going to take place.

 

Two men enter, one man leaves!

 

No .45s allowed!

 

Better than Pay-Per-View!

Gah, here I am asking a simple question and folks are already calling for mortal combat.

Re: Straight up easy question . . .

Just have your character pick one up at a sporting-goods store' date=' and save the character points. [/quote']

 

He's doing that very thing, but I'm building weapon tricks (Naked Advantages) related to these specific weapons so knowing the correct cost of the item still matters in terms of character points.

 

Actually it also matters because we're using Resource Pools instead of money for weapons so those couple of points could still matter.

Re: Loop model of RPGs and why long chargen is okay

IMO' date=' I don't think that this is a given. It also depends on whether "new player" means "someone new to roleplaying" or "someone new to the RPG in question".[/quote']

 

Excellent point! HERO was only somewhat daunting to me, because it moved out of my comfort zone, but when I really started learning it about 2 years ago it helped that I had been gaming for 10+ years at that point. However we have a guy we're trying to add to the Dark Champions group we're getting going that has really only ever played d20 and even then we've had to help him out a lot as he's an RPG newbie. HERO was much more daunting to him, but even then that wasn't entirely the systems fault. The guy trying to explain character creation spent more time on how different CharGen is in HERO from other systems then going with a comfort zone of how similar it is to any CharGen system.

 

Personally I think folks forget that there is a large variation in scale between most starting HERO characters and starting characters in other genres. A 350 points super is more like an epic D&D character than a starting one. I would argue that fleshing out a 25 level well multi-classed D&D character is just as much of a chore as making a solid 350 blaster or gadgeteer.

 

I think this holds true at lower point totals as well. 150 point fantasy HERO characters shouldn't take too much longer than a well thought of 3rd or 4th level D&D character either. A 75 point normal shouldn't take much longer than your Call of Cthulhu character takes in the Chaosium system.

 

If anything I think I spend more time on the fleshing out my idea for HERO, because I know I'm not trying to make classes fit my concept, but instead just making a concept.

Re: Straight up easy question . . .

There another element you may wish to consider when buying firearms. The additional limit for "STR Min doesn't add damage" on something (RKA) where STR doesn't add damage in the first place. The GM may wish to drop a limit that imposes no additional limits.

Interesting, I saw that available in HD while making the character and figured it was just a mistake since RKA's don't allow for STR to damage anyway. I'll forward your website on to our Dark Champions GM for his perusal.

Re: Why should I play HERO?

Let me preface this by saying that I have completely ditched d20 in favor of HERO and see no reason to go back. I was also a long standing poster on the WotC boards so I've spent my fair shair of time debating d20 product before going completely to HERO. You're making a good choice if you move to this system as the flexibility in and of itself is part of what excites me about.

However I have a long standing quest against misundestandings and thus must drag something up from earlier on this thread.

 

Most systems do no such thing. d20, especially, provides no guidance on creating new spells -- let alone new magic systems

Untrue. Unearthed Arcana gave an attempt at both of these as did the 3.5 DMG. Now, if you want to tell me that they didn't provide any good guidance on how to do this then we have reached a concord.

-- and most especially impossible in d20 is to create your own classes or "prestige classes" for a given rules set.

Well to be fair they don't know what makes for balanced classes within their own design team. Remember this is the group of folks that keep pushing that a Fighter 10 and a Cleric 10 are of equal party value. However, there are some rough guidelines on making your own and you can reverse engineer a lot of the design philosophy (however flawed it may be) with minimal effort.

Remember just because the guidelines suck doesn't mean they aren't there.

I didn't want to bother Steve with this so I'm posting it here. I've been GM'ing Champions and have managed to get almost my entire group hooked on HERO (score one for TKD). So now my old D&D DM is converting to HERO for his new fantasy campaign, one of my friends is looking into making a Jedi campaign, and the farthest along of the secondary campaigns is going to be Dark Champions which I started making a character for. I want my guy to have .45 caliber revolvers as his primary weapon with some naked advantages, but I can't get the cost of the Peacemakers in ReFREd to work right.

All I see is a 2d6-1 RKA (25 points) with the +1/4 advantage of +1 Stun Multiplier. By my math that comes up to 31 AP, but it's listed as 34 (which doesn't work by any math that I can come up with). So am I right that it's actually 31 AP or am I missing something?

It doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but any points I can save can go into some characteristics at this point which always nice.

Re: Good D&D style setting to use to bootstrip?

Eberron

Definitley fits a lot of your criteria. Especially the recent war idea and it does try very hard to have some versmilitude about a world where magic has always existed.