Solomon

Re: Pregnancy I'd say that the ability to choose between becoming or not becoming pregnant (ie self-regulate ovulation or somesuch) would be a power. Being sterile OTOH (regardless of gender) could be a disadvantage in some campaigns. I think, however, that characters only need to acquire those powers and disadvantages that are relevant to the campaign being played. So fertility should not be represented unless there is a reasonable probability of child-bearing becoming an issue in actual play.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Re: Robbery Thanks for the sympathies. It's unlikely the thieves will be caught, but one can always hope. And to think I was looking to have a surveillance camera installed shortly. A day late etc.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Nice! I assume you just got it? I like the paw prints!

Re: A Thread for Random Musings So, my shop was burglarized. Tonight, someone broke into my cafeteria during closing hours. They forced the iron grating off a back window after climbing to the first floor and crept inside. Judging from the narrow gap, must have been a small and dextrous person, likely a kid. They smashed the cash and several coin-op games and dispensers, plus they stole pre-paid telephone cards and a lot of alcoholic drinks. And a small Coke. Stealing makes you thirsty, I guess. Meh. EDIT: Burglary, not robbery. Darn moonspeak.

Re: Opinion Fluff: Knockback I go pretty much by the book: KB in Supers campaigns, no KB in Heroic campaigns. I've been idly thinking about making KB distance exponential in high-end supers games (while keeping KB damage linear), but since I've never actually GMd such a campaign, I haven't thought too much about the ramifications.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Lord Liaden's new avatar creeps me out.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: Padawan Pamela, are you sure you need a Protocollar Droid on this mission? Besides, why did you have it customized with such an... unusual... attachment? A: It was a dark and stormy night.

Re: Pregnancy I do agree with your sentiment, game rules should not overshadow dramatic rules. Of course SS mentioned it was his player that specifically asked for it, and from a theoretical viewpoint I'm very interested in seeing how he will pull that off.

Re: Pregnancy Going by source material (eg comics) I'd say superpower-genes are dominant. Every single son or daughter of a superhero/heroine seems to be able to manifest powers. And there are instances of characters who inherited a Focus power or a training power. This angle would be interesting to explore in a "legacy" campaign. Say, one might run a pulp-era or Golden Age scenario, then fast-forward to the Silver Age, to the present, and maybe to the future.

Re: Pregnancy It's an Owl/Squirrel we're talking here. Well, the Owlbear is a mammal, Gary Gigax says so!

Re: Pregnancy

Re: Your PC's might be underpowered if... Don't mess with Ewoks, they're scary critters! Now, losing to an Imperial Stormtrooper, OTOH...

Re: Old vs new: Obsidian vs Ironclad Going by the writeups, I'm afraid Ironclad would mop the floor with low-end Obsidian, and battle high-end Obsidian to a standstill. Which is a shame since I feel that Obsidian got a better concept, more striking looks, and a cooler name to boot. And I second LL - the concept of a superpowered alien race is a lovely comic book classic.

Re: Your PC's might be underpowered if... If HERO rounding rules work to your disadvantage...

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Don't mind me, this is just an experiment.

Re: Was watching Superman TAS and wondered about Mxyzptlk I for one would pay to see a DC/Marvel Mxyzptlk/Venom crossover, possibly ending in mutual destruction. That's all I have to say on the subject.

Re: Resizing Weapons & Armor

Re: Resizing Weapons & Armor Of course real-world physics might or might not be of concern in any given campaign, let alone a Fantasy one. I'm not arguing pro or against scaling Armor DEF - just saying that I would base such a choice mostly on game balance. HERO is a game, not an engineering treatise. If the need to scale Armor DEF is felt, I'd use +/-2 DEF per Size step as a general rule of thumb. This is consistent with wall thickness (+2 DEF per doubling) and Real Armor weight rules (x2 weight for every +2 DEF).

Re: Resizing Weapons & Armor For weight, I'd keep it proportional to body weight, so a suit of plate for a 4-meter Giant would weight eight times as much as an an equivalent man-sized suit. Same for weapons.

Re: Your PC's might be underpowered if... Your largest power ranks 5 AP, and you still faint from overexaustion any time you use it.

Re: Killing Attack idea One potential issue I see with your variant KA is that one point of resistant defense would stop three points of damage - two BODY and one STUN. As it is, I feel the official HERO rules already encourage characters to get at least a few points of Resistant Defenses even when it doesn't fit concept. At the same time, it's somewhat unusual for characters, even bricks, to have fully resistant defenses, because you'll rarely need more than, say, 15 Resistant Defenses in a 60 AP campaign. Now, with your variant... on one hand, martialists or other light-armored characters would need higher Resistant Defenses to avoid being KO'd or killed. OTOH, bricks won't need as high Resistant Defenses to be mostly impervious to BODY damage. So I think your variant KA would narrow the range for effectively useful Resistant Defenses. I'm not saying this is a bad thing for game balance - I just feel it pushes game balance in a direction I find as of yet uninteresting.

Re: Ironpaw: Modeling and Practical Concerns Don't know it. Care to tell the story?

Re: Ironpaw: Modeling and Practical Concerns A guy in my town had a dwarf character in a MERP campaign, who lost both his hands to a spell. He had them replaced by prosthetics that ended up in, respectively, an axe head and a warhammer head. They were firmly attached and he could not remove them alone. The other players' characters looked after his needs... from feeding to cleaning. Once he got separarted from his group (they fell from a boat). He had to live for a week or so with his prostethics - and armor - on. Chewing on berries directly from the bush and the like. When at last they found him, of course he had soiled himself in his armor for a week. Your Ironpaw guy might be a tad luckier (and smarter) though. He might be able to put on and remove the pawns on his own - handless people can develop a surprising degree of dexterity in coping with their disability. A regular patron at my cafe suffers from focomelia and I'm amazed by how much indipendent she is - she can eat on her own, take out her wallet and pay without external aid. I do think she still needs help in some delicate matters such as personal hygiene.

Re: Favorite HERO mechanics I think the biggest ones have been covered already, so I'll just repeat: internal consistency, separation of effect and SFX and point-based build is what I love the most. In other games, it's internal consistency that I look for.

Re: Equalizing Probability Distributions of Different Attacks It could speed up damage resolution. I'm not sure what kind of effect the proposed system would have on statistical deviation in damage rolls. My gut feeling is that this would increase randomness, and I don't think that would be an enterely desiderable effect. It would also allow for a possible disconnect such as large damage rolls netting zero damage (before defenses). Maybe a 50% to 150% (2d6+3 times 10%) spread instead of a 0% to 200% would suffice.