Solomon

Re: Musings on Random Musings One million Euro would have been close to two billion old Italian Lire if they were still around. Given how prone our old currency was to speculation, I think we're better off with the Euro, but I miss the old Lire bills. They had some very good art, one of the prettiest currencies around if you ask me. As for shopping in Stockholm, care to suggest any good Swedish RPGs? Not that I could get much use out of it, but who knows, the fancy to learn a new language might strike me at any time.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Sure enough! A year's worth of HERO books for every registered poster, at the very least!

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Weirdness at work today. An elderly lady buys a cup of coffee, then looks at me with glazed eyes and in a slow monotonous drone says: "I am Countess Maria von Falkenberg, wife of the esteemed Marquis Alessandro Grimaldi. You have been very kind... I'll tell my husband to visit this cafe and leave a one million euro tip". So, here I am, waiting for this Marquis. If you don't hear about me for a few weeks, know that I've been busy spending my humungous tip on some faraway Carribean island.

Re: A Game Of Questions Are you hiding something?

Re: A Game Of Questions Who else?

Re: A Game Of Questions Are you homophobic?

Re: Musings on Random Musings You have my condolences as well, Lemming.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Ditto. In case you need to vent or something, feel free to.

Re: Answers & Questions Q: What did King Ghidorah's first head say to the other heads after they got drunk and french kissed each other? A: The President took my backpack.

Re: Which supers movies were better than you expected, which were worse? Rated by "Previous expectation" / "Actual score" Spiderman I & II: Expected them to be good, liked them. 8/8 Hellboy: I had read ravish reviews - I still liked it but if fell a wee bit short of my expectations. 8/7 Punisher: I expected it to be bad, I found it to be utterly worthless, except for some (possibly unintentional) comedic value. 5/3 Incredibles: Everybody on this forum praised it highly. I had such high hopes for this one, I was almost afraid I would be disappointed. Instead, it was every bit as awesome as I had expected. 10/10 X-Men I & II: Found them to be better than I had expected. 6/7 Hulk: The Incredible Drek. Split screen was Ang Lee's idea of a comic-book feel, I assume? 7/4 Daredevil: The first ten minutes or so killed it for me. Eventually it got better, but by that time I coudn't care anymore. 6/5 Fantastic Four: I was afraid it would stink. I found it decent. 4/6 Unbreakable: I had no expectations, I'd never seen any other Shalayaman movie. I loved it. 6/8 Batman Begins: I was expecting no better than the Joel Schumaker bat-garbage. Instead, I found it enjoyable. 4/7 Shaolin Soccer. Does it count as a supers movie? Ah well. At first I didn't plan on seeing it. Then a friend showed me a clip with the final "Spinning-Dough-to-Flaming-Puma" attack... and what it did to the opposing goalpost and goalkeeper. We ran to the cinema. The movie was even better than that sequence implied. I hadn't laughed that hard in years. Too bad the dubbing was awful. 8/9

Re: He's twice the man you are! What is 2x normal STR? SPD? DEX? I think those turn of phrases only mean what you want them to mean, and that depends on your campaign's specs. Blurb like "faster than a bullet!!!", "proportional strength of an arachnid!!!", or "peak human potential!!!" is just hype, it's meant to catch a reader's attention and it usually isn't an accurate portrayal of the character's abilities. When I'm statting a character, I'm less interested in what the author says about the character, than in what the character is shown to be able to do.

Re: Real-world rPD just went way up Depends on how many points the armor is, but not much of a limitation anyway. Compare it to, say, a 1/2d6 KA as a side effect.

Re: "Radiation Accident" in my email?.. "Blast through limitations, with zero effort"? Hmm... A Zero END EB with no Limitations? Gimme, gimme...

Re: Real-world rPD just went way up

Re: Who Would Win: Deathstroke the Terminator vs. Captain America, Sentinel of Libert

Re: Most Powerful Member of the FF? I'd say Sue, just because Doctor Doom said so. You can't argue with the Doc.

Re: Stacking Armor Eh. I've been trying not to get crushed in OGame. Of course you can, that's the point of it. It looked better when I could center the image, though.

Re: Stacking Armor In an heroic campaign, the main limiting factors on wearing armor would be cost, accessibility, opportunity and encumbrance. Since the first three are mostly campaign-specific, little generalisation can be done about them. Now, about encumbrance. As per the "real mass" rules, an armor's weight doubles every +2 DEF. This ties in nicely with the way phisical power doubles every +5 STR. Basically, every doubling of the armor's thickness stops all the BODY from an additional Damage Class, but on average still lets through some STUN. Under this logic, wearing two identical protections (assuming this is possible) should result in a +2 to DEF. So, I'd rule that, if you stack two protections, you get the highest DEF, plus a bonus based on the lowest DEF. If the two DEFs are very close, say off by 1 point at most, you get +2 to your highest DEF. If they are within 2 to 4 points, you get a +1. If they're 5 or more points apart, sorry, no banana for you Cheetah. This is assuming it is even possible to stack such armors. A case might be subdermal or innate armor plus artificial armor. Other cases would be theoretically possible, but practically unfeasible, and should warrant stark penalties if you're dealing with munchkins who doggedly insist on wearing three kevlar vests at once. Yet other cases would be flat-out impossible (layering rigid, segmented armor). Of course there are extremely good reasons why no-one wears layers of armors in real life, just like there are good reasons no-one ever used double-headed flails.

Re: Why does STR vs. STR use Normal Damage Body? If there's something VDM's logic is not, is "poorly presented". Besides, in this instance he was talking about personal preferences and he clearly said so. No need for snark. Now for some number-crunching: a STR 8 character has less than a 10% chance of escaping a grab by a STR 10 character. So, VDM's statement that "even a marginal difference can make it impossible to break out" is pretty close to being factually true, especially in heroic-level campaigns. At least it should be easy to see how this high level of predictability doesn't suit everybody's tastes. I've been using opposed STR rolls too. Of course YMMV and all that. Another advantage of the "opposed STR roll" approach is that it works equally well for superstrong bricks as for normal humans, and even works for negative-STR characters. Whereas under the "roll BODY" approach, a STR 20 character has a lower chance of escaping a STR 20 Grab than a STR 40 character of escaping a STR 40 grab. No "logic" in that. Moreso, a STR 2 or lower character can never escape a Grab, not even by a character with an even lower STR. I have been considering a middle ground approach: a single roll, patterned after attack rolls. Like, roll 9+(STR differential)/5. This would give about the same chances of escape as the "roll BODY" approach, scale equally well up and down, and be more predictable than "opposed STR roll" but less than "roll BODY".

Re: Is Punisher the problem? I never had a game balance issue with free mundane equipment in a superheroic campaign. To me, game balance is in actual gameplay, not in a number at the bottom of your sheet. Groups with widely differing character point totals work fine, as long as each player feel he's getting a fair share of the limelight. More to the point, I have had game flavor issues with free equipment, but that was because I was trying to run a Silver Age game with a player that didn't really like or even understand the Silver Age feel. Image a Hulk clone, except Bruce Banner is stark raving lunatic and armed to the teeth. Anyway my rule of thumb is, characters only pay for unusual equipment, super-tech or signature items.

Re: Comeliness: Yay, nay or indifferent I'd rather have it handled like a Perk, but it's a very low-priority thing.

Re: Person of Steel, Significant Other of Tissue paper Unless a player took a disad or limitation (such as Always On) or specifically sked for this aspect to be played out, I'd assume most powers take a conscious effort to activate and/or can be easily controlled. So, a brick woudn't risk hurting his/her SO, not even during a moment of passion. His reflexive actions shoudn't be affected by superstrength.

Re: Character to Critique - Savage! You're right - I stand corrected.

Re: Character to Critique - Savage! I like the concept, and I look forward to reading more of its backstory. This looks like a very interesting character. However, if I was submitted this character sheet for my own campaign I'd probably require a few modifications. 1) "Only in Hero ID" and "Focus" should not be both applied to the same Power. The fact that the character might be occasionally caught without his powers is already subsumed by the Focus limitation. Adding OIHID on top of that doesn't limit the character in any way and shoudn't be worth any points. 2) Focus accessibility. This depends on campaign parameters, but unless your character is going to routinely face opponents with STR in eccess of 100, I woudn't let the Focus being defined as Accessible, since it's held in place by the TK. Actually, unless the character reverts back to normal ID when knocked-out, this power makes the amulet harder to remove than most Inaccessible foci. Yes, he's paying points for that, but he's also nullifying the effects of several Limitations. And generally speaking, most GMs frown on buying Lims and then powers to offset those Lims. 3) Indipendent on the Amulet's TK. This is probably inappropriate for a Superheroic campaign and not really limiting. I'd also remove the "No Range" and "Affects Whole Object" as they're subsumed under "Only to hold Amulet". 4) Longevity OIHID is a bit weird, but then again I can see it working as a defense against aging powers and the like. 5) The Multipower is bought with "Costs 1 END per 30 Active Points per Turn". I woudn't think that qualifies for a -1/4 Lim. "Costs Endurance" and "Increased Endurance Cost x2" are both pegged as -1/2: an additional 1 END per 30 AP per Turn would increase the END cost of a Power by roughly 5%, not even close to "Power loses about a fourth of its effectiveness". For a -1/4 Lim I'd require something like 1 additional END per 20 AP per Phase. 6) You're also applying END Power Modifiers of opposite effects to the same Powers: increased END on the Reserve and Reduced End on the slots. I woudn't allow that. 7) Characteristic Powers bought inside a Multipower do not provide Figured Characteristics. Thus one shoudn't add "No Figured Characteristics". That may seem like a lot of criticism but remember, it's just how I would do things in my campaign, not necessarily how you should do in your. I hope to read more about your character soon.

Re: Deathstroke Didn't Deathstroke have some sort of immortality factor too?