Sylevus

Re: The Problem with Even Characteristic Costs IMHO the template only significantly matters for normals. If I want to display a normal of that race, I slap on the template and there you go. For PCs in the HERO system, its not as significant except as far as how it compares to the norm for the race. The gnome with an 18 str, would get comparable response from gnomes as the human with 20 str, but when he bebops into Human town thinking he is all that he finds out different. Now, since characters don't exist in a vacuum, and he may have run into a few bull humans before, maybe he works all the harder and walks into town with that 20 str. With shifted normal characteristic maxima he just had to pay more because of the limitation in the package to be competitive with other thick neck ruffians in the game. With the nature of point buy in HERO, he did not have to do it, but if its important to the concept that the toughest gnome on the block does not get out armwrestled by the average human blacksmith, then he will spend it. The point is.. the concept determines the significance. The story highlights the difference. The average GM may not recall that an 18 dex is way above average for a cloddy orc, but a good one will play it up when dealing with other orcs..

Time based character, would like disadvantage to be that use of his powers causes him to age faster than normal. Thinking maybe a social disadvantage of looks much older than his age might cover it. Considering submitting this character for a teen hero game on HeroCentral though, so starting out this would not really be the case.

Re: Wanting to make a character, need advice. Thinking some more she will need two hero names. Ragdoll and magi-tech armor are not that obvious a connection and its a little too obvious pointer to the migit genius for those inclined to look for a connection. To refine your concept, what you really have here is a genius character who creates/maintains his own armor. Thus a gadgeteer with magi-tech as your special effect. So the meat of your character is what type of magi-tech does she go in for? Stealth suit? Battle suit? Super utility belt? If you don't want to get away from the RagDoll connection, use that as an acronym for the suit. RAG-DL1 or something would be easy for the media to pick up on.

Re: Wanting to make a character, need advice. Only nitpick I have is with the organization A) brutally murdering her team, expecting her to work for them, and C) Giving her leeway to do it "her way". I would say pick any two of the above and you got yourself a great concept... A + B = She hates working for them and fears for her life, given a chance to get away clean she would do it in a heartbeat. Maybe has dependent NPCs keeping her chained to them? A + C = I don't like this so much, but if you want deep manipulation where each thing she does is really a part of their bigger plan and she is really doing big bad things unknowingly. B + C = work is shut down by big organization. Everyone is mind wiped to forget the research, but her. Without the mass murder involved she would be more likely to work with the group, especially if they expose her to more interesting avenues of research... Just my two cents worth.

Thinking about a trainer campaign for myself, wife, and two kids. I would like to take them from the early days of basic training, through a spec ops career and end up with some Hudson City vigilantes. I kind of like the progression because I can gradually add in rules and build the characters through the basic training process and on up. Can anyone give some suggestions for a novice group starting up, maybe some resources that would be useful for this?

Re: Help the noob: powerplaying Don't get me wrong.. I clearly stated play how you like. If that includes players vs gm warfare knock yourself out. Your tone sounded like you wanted to avoid that... sort of. So I gave my two cents worth. (-:

Re: Help the noob: powerplaying I don't get where you are going. You want to avoid power play on the part of two of your players, then you crow about popping NPCs on them that are power played. Feel free to play the game the way you enjoy, but I think the solution to your problem lies more in how you relate to your players than how a player is going to use the rules. For example. If I had a DM chuckling about beating me over the head with an NPC built on half the points, my reaction next time character gen comes up is to follow that example and not be so "stupid". Anyhow.. the solution to your question is really player trust. They have to trust you to build a character around a concept without worrying about the twink factor. To avoid the worst parts of abuse, set some guidelines for character creation and review each character coming in. Something along the likes of no combat monsters without equally big weaknesses. (I.e. superman has kryptonite). Everyone should be capable of living and participating in a society along the lines of ... list some social elements you plan to include with the caveat that a player not able to relate in these areas will lose large amounts of screen time.. Twinks only work if your playstyle plays to the twinks strength. And if your solution to a twink is trying to outtwink em, the problem never goes away.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? So the question maybe should not be are the people inherently evil. But is the society weak enough to allow acts of evil to go unchallenged. To allow evildoers to reward each other and go unpunished. Does the society enable bad people to gather together and use fear to control the actions of those around them? The evil orc chief does not control each and every orc. He controls ten orcs who control ten other orcs, and within the community of orcs there may be 100s of individuals who COULD stand up to him, but do not because they fear that they will do so alone and face the tens of tens all alone. The systems and rules of this society do not encourage people to stand together, for the sheer reason that they are put in place to KEEP people from standing together against the leader. So we try to make the orcs morally equivalent to the elves and what do we get? One society that would rather not fight, but has to for their survival. And one society where the best and the brightest see the only opportunity for reward as pushing the aggression. Assuming the elves can talk to the orcs, what are the chances of finding the 100s of dissatisfied just want to get along orcs, and not one of the tens of tens networked throughout? The inability and lack of willingness of a society to deal with evil is a problem for that society. We have people in America today telling us we should not confront others because being judgemental is wrong. More wrong somehow than the killing and maiming of innocents. More wrong than removing the source of power for an evil man to allow the 100s of people the opportunity to stand up and reject his evil. Yet our results are not what we hoped for. The people are not culturally strong enough to repudiate the evil and stand up against the elements who are now trying to redefine the actions of the US as something less than what they are. There are individual of course who are the exception, the brave leaders willing to risk their own lives as part of the government, but how many are there as a stepping stone for their own advancement only? How many in the army merely to feed their families, but not to provide order and security. The terrorists walk free in most communities. Able to cause fear because the community still does not reject these types of behaviors. So yes. A race can be prone to evil and evil actions. The culture can allow, encourage, even foment evil actions. And you can not separate these actions from the people willing to let them happen. In our games the heros are supposed to care. They are supposed to belong to a side that is willing to stand up to the very physical AND spiritual presence of evil. I know playing shades of grey is an interesting topic of debate. But at some point you have to step away from the intangible and see what the results are. The orcs may not be desirous of hurting elves, but they allow it to happen. They allow their anger to be directed that way. THey buy into the hate. And even if the elves Kill Chief Ugror, there is still another Ugror waiting in the background for his chance to lead, and another and another. So what choice do the elves have? Do they hope removing one Ugror gives the orcs the chance to change? Do they show the better example by retreating from his advances and refusing to offer conflict? Do they allow the destruction of their homes and forest? You can argue shades of grey until you are blue in the face, but at some point in your life when you are faced with the actions of evil men... what will you do? What will you tolerate? How much will YOU excuse? All this debate paralyzing people into inactivity because they doubt their ability to make a difference is a joke. Its a weakness in society that encourages the terrorists to act. Osama bin Laden pushed, and pushed, and pushed again to the point he felt America was weak for the taking. And he is still half right given the amount of people willing to equate our actions in Iraq, and the deaths involved as being equivalent to his actions against New York City. Misguided or not, our presence in the Middle East has always been intended to protect our economic health and hopefully to be a broker or mediator for peace. Unfortunately we exercise our power only through words, and the cultures in the middle east have a long history of playing with words. So instead of a shield against violence, we become the crutch used by people to commit violence. I believe the Israelis want peace. I believe the leaders of the Palestenians do not. They use our freedom of speech to bandy around nice speeches about wanting peace while planning attacks against civilians and fomenting racial hatred of their neighbors. The US in the name of peace and regional stability forces Israel to hold back, and honestly forces the neighbors to stay out of the debate... directly. But money and hatred is supplied in no short demand by the neighbors and the willingness of people to stand up for others wanting to take things from those who have them instead of building things better for themselves. At some point in our times we need to call things what they are and hold people accountable for the results. If the Palestenians want peace, then the Palestenian people have to demand it of their leaders and repudiate those committing acts of violence. The Israelis need to be strong and willing to negotiate, but not torn apart by weakness, hestitance, and a lack of unity. In short they need to show a strength and willingness to do what is right so that their neighbors are willing to do what is right.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? If I place evil gods vs good gods in a battle for the universe, and mortals cater for the favor of one side or the other and allow themselves to be manipulated as part of a greater battle, how is this plain jane vanilla stereotyping? If Ugror the Orc pledges his life to Gruumsh and commits acts of violence and rage against civilized lands for the promise of power, wealth, or pleasure.... then is it not fair to say that Ugror and his people are evil? I am sure if you catch Ugror in a position where he does not have the upper hand he will be ever so much more reasonable and accomodating, but that is only so long as he believes you have the upper hand. Should you believe every excuse he makes for his behavior? Should you go out of your way to invent excuses for his behavior? Or do you stand up to it? If his being nice is only a matter of momentary powerlessness how do you trust him for the future? Can you? Should you? When your descendants are cursed with his actions and hate will you then regret your mercy? Will his ability to beg off of his actions and claim to want to be better, while all the time building himself up stronger embolden others to stand up the same? I hope you can see an interesting parallel here.. Good people must be strong to stand up to evil people. Once you have identified them, you must find a solution to the problem. Greed, jealousy, religious hatred... all of these things are in our face at the moment. Giving wealth will not give respect, instead it just gives power and strength to people obviously willing to use it wrongly. So I for one will make sure that evil is shown for what it is, and reward the heros in my campaign for being strong enough to stand up to it!

Re: New to HERO and looking for advice on some issues... Not at all thinking of it as an exp stepping stone, Just looking for meaning of the numbers, to match character concepts better so to speak... I could care less about wasted points, but I need to be able to explain things to a ten year old.

Re: New to HERO and looking for advice on some issues... Thanks for the responses and please keep them coming... The breakdown on attributes and why each is important is a good start! For the min/max minded, since my gaming group is home grown (wife and two kids) I have some nice luxuries. We are all learning it together and I have ZERO problems with someone trying to game the system and pull one over on me. So my only challenge in teaching them the rules is to Grok the concept of why a particular attribute meets their character concept needs. Following that we have the challenges of understanding the spd/damage/defense combinations well enough that the character concept intended actually performs appropriately. Coming from many years of games using initiative I AM having a hard time buying into the dex moves first mechanic. Would a 1d6/2d6 + dex initiative roll be meaningful? This would reduce the emphatic nature of 21 always beats 22 to the punch, while still maintaining a breakpoint separation between characters of significantly different dex's. For the idea of adjusting dex down when someone holds an action, have you put that in play? For how many phases? Does acting at the lower dex in his next phase allow him to reclaim his advantage for the following? Anyhow.. thanks again for the feedback and please keep it coming. I really want a discussion with people, so please try not to rehash old arguments.... We just want to make the most of our investment in HERO...

For starters I love the idea of HERO, and I greatly admire the quality and quantity of work put out by the company. (Especially in comparison to what could have been my favorite system in Exalted) Concept hurdle wise I am having some trouble with the following ideas and looking for some discussion about them from veterans.. 1. Attribute granularity. How do you make 11 int meaningful as compared to a 10? Without talking in terms of possible drain? Its easy to quanitify it with str, but not so easy otherwise. Would it be possible for SteveL to give us a table of benchmarks (ala Marvel and DC heros) which would give more meaning to the attributes for character concept? (As opposed to the nebulous .. "psst... I am smarter than you" followed by an equal chance roll metagame.) Someone mentioned in a related thread on rpg.net that you could drop figured characteristics... how and why would this work? 2. Rule of X troubles. How do you handle average attack vs average defenses in a way that makes each character feel different and special? Without getting into a bland set of 'must have' attack levels and defenses? 3. Most important question relates to the speed table and order of actions. I like the concept of initiative being a reflection of more than physical speed. For me ideas like awareness, luck, state of mind, etc all factor in to your ability to act. Has anyone added an initiative factor into the Dex order of actions? For the experienced, how do you handle situations where you are playing a character who is at a disadvantage SPD chart wise, yet has to abort actions for defenses, to only end up with fewer defenses than the attacks coming in? We playtested some combats at home and found out that 'just take it' and dish back does not usually end up with a long term good result, i.e. most combats do not last the round in that scenario. 4. All of these issues 'feel' more significant when looking at the HERO FANTASY options. Comments to the above points with a nod to Fantasy would be appreciated..

Re: Is this Munchkinish? What about an EB, Indirect with a -1/4 limitation that your hand is really there? Then things like a damage shield or an entangle in the area could come into play. Just my two cents worth.

Munchkinism is a two edge sword. On one hand the munchkin player can show how the concept is great and fun for HIM, and on the other hand the GM can show from his experience how it can make the storyline NOT fun. I.e. the "if you are always going to win", what's the point syndrome. There is a place in Champions where it talks about min-max player choices and the consequences of them. I think the one thats the best example is when a player is so tough defensively that the GM has to bring out guns so big that they end up harming the group more than intended.... So while I am all for individual creativity, you also need to make sure that you discuss with the player WHY you think the combination is gamebreaking, then offer alternatives that will get close to what he wanted without breaking the bank. And the attitude about winning is a huge point. If you create Mr Wonderful (tank) and his opponent is another tank, players will usually be happy. On the other hand, if he is constantly being manipulated by Dr Sneeky (PSI), players will call foul and get upset. To avoid that you have to build trust with your players, an interesting story, and most importantly you have to give him that wonderful moment when he comes up on Dr Sneeky unanwares!