Steve

The beta for Udio ended this week, but there is still a free option available upon sign up. As a participant in the beta, I got a bunch of free credits I’m going to use first and then sign up for the $10/mo option.

I started late to the http://udio.com party, but I've been having a blast making all kinds of music. It looks like making an original campaign soundtrack is now within easy reach.

Yeah, this is not news. Disney already screwed it up in the latest specials they put out, and the new Doctor is driving off even more of the fans.

I sense new combat maneuvers for heavier characters. Not just in superhero settings. An ogre falling on a character from even a modest height sounds like it could cause quite a bit of damage. A giant would be far worse. Remember the scene that happened in one of the Hobbit movies? I guess you could even create a martial art based on this: Throwing Your Weight Around. I leave it up to others to contemplate potential maneuvers that would fit the theme.

I’m starting to wonder if it could be a type of Ego Attack that doesn’t actually cause STUN damage. The dice are only rolled to see if the target is Stunned from the pain.

Maybe they are all a type of primate?

I like the idea of it affecting the Concentration Limitation or adding a roll to an existing ability to use it. I suppose it could also act as a bonus to the Interrogation skill. I think the Cruciatus Curse from Harry Potter got used that way in the books, but I can’t remember for sure.

Examples of what caused my initial question: the Agony Box from Dune and the agonizer from Star Trek’s Mirror Universe. They caused pain but didn’t seem to cause any actual damage. EDIT: Add in the Cruciatus Curse from Harry Potter that inflicts pain but no long-lasting damage.

How would you model an attack that causes pain, but it doesn’t actually do any damage? An NND? A Drain vs STUN? Something else?

I wonder if that could allow a further Limitation on Damage Negation (-1/4?) if it doesn’t affect knockback.

It sounds like a section of this should be the background, likely Millenium City, so some sections of that sourcebook would be good to have here. Just enough to bring the city more alive.

Imagine a super team that specializes in fighting kaiju, either by using giant mecha like in Pacific Rim or by all of them being able to grow to kaiju size. The latter could perhaps be done with a serum derived from the first kaiju that were defeated. Body horror issues might be a campaign subplot.

The plan appeared to be OGL 1.1, then ditching their print business to save costs like warehousing, followed by a transition to the VTT and micro transactions to get the cash flowing. Things didn’t go as planned. I heard they are down something like 30% in sales over the past year or two. Now Warhammer seems to be following the siren song of self-destruction, but that is another story.

WOTC began imploding on her watch, after her boasting that she would turn D&D into a billion dollar brand. They had a plan based on getting out of book publishing and moving to the VTT. The debacle with the OGL was the first major step of the implosion, and it just went downhill from there with failure after failure.

I vote for Howler and Oculus as an odd couple of supervillains working together on a bank robbery. Their origins could even work together.

I’m wondering if this is something that could be a subset of Unluck. That would explain why Spider-Man gets sick, but other superheroes don’t seem to get the flu.

As tempting as many of the choices are, Kaiju Hero and Pulp Hero get my vote. Victorian Space and Isekai Hero get an honorable mention from me.

Having a cape is a cool style, but it also offers a vulnerability to getting it grabbed. How might that work in combat? Perhaps long hair might also offer some kind of vulnerability like this?

Any character that does not have the proper Life Support ability to resist colds or the flu can get sick. The only instances I can remember of this happening in the comics involved Spider-Man, who seems to get sick almost every winter, especially when he was a teen. So, your character has caught a bad cold, the flu, or maybe even COVID. How does that affect their abilities? Do they hide out until they recover or keep struggling to keep the city safe despite their illness?

I’m honestly not looking to rebuild the whole damage and defense system, but the issues raised in this thread have been very interesting. I just want to tune damage and defenses into a setup I can present to my players without overloading them with math. I get that damage is on a curve, but I’m trying to break it down into simpler chunks for build guidelines: damage classes, PD/ED, Damage Negation, STUN and BODY. So a typical character is doing 12d6, has a 14 PD and ED and six Damage Negation dice (STUN only). If they want their character to take eight hits before falling over, then they need around 50 STUN and probably a recovery in the 8-12 range. Tougher characters would do more damage or maybe have a bit higher defenses or both.

Since Damage Negation is the outlier at -1/4 for Nonresistant, moving it up to -1/2 would seem to bring it in line. Spending five points per two dice would make it more tempting for martial artists and two-fisted adventurers, I suppose. That said, I’d be okay with repricing the resistant effect at 1/4 due to the change in the damage multiplier die roll for killing attacks, as was mentioned earlier in the thread. This would require a lot of repricing in defense abilities so probably better to leave alone. That must have been looked at by the group involved in making 6th Edition though. So, if I have an 18 CON, 14 PD and 6 dice of Damage Negation (STUN Only), a 12d6 attack would do 7 STUN and no BODY on average, but could cause 10 BODY and 22 STUN on maximum damage. A rare event I know. Changing that to 4 dice of DN increases the average damage taken up to 14 STUN and no BODY, so still workable. By adding Damage Negation to reduce the STUN taken, CON can be lowered to more reasonable levels. A 16-18 CON would seem okay. However, Hit Locations complicates this. Maybe extra Damage Negation that is limited to certain hit locations? A tough chin as opposed to a glass jaw.

So as far as I can see, the only defense powers that can be limited to "STUN Only" are Damage Negation and Damage Reduction, which I didn't know before. I thought PD and ED could be limited that way as well, since it seemed to make sense. I would be inclined to change the "resistant" advantage to +1/4, which would bring it in line with the -1/4 limitation shown for being nonresistant in Damage Negation. The use of Damage Negation would need to be limited by other allowable defenses to make them playable. In a 12d6 damage campaign, having a cap of 14/15 PD/ED and up to six dice of limited Damage Negation still allows some modest risk of BODY damage. Something like PD/ED capped at 125% of damage dice and Damage Negation capped at 50% of damage dice. As Damage Negation also effectively limits Knockback effects, would Damage Negation that doesn't affect Knockback be worth something like -1/4?

It looks like I made a misstatement on my comment earlier. If a character has any resistant defenses, then the added PD/ED versus STUN only doesn’t need to be made resistant. It would apply as-is if there were other resistant defenses. So 6 active points of STUN only PD/ED would be four points, plus two points for 6 active points of Power Defense versus STUN Drains only (if I did my math right). A total of six points. Or I could buy a die of Damage Negation, limited to STUN only for three points. Using Damage Negation is a simpler, cleaner build, and it has added benefits beyond just resisting regular or killing attacks. It would take a little math at the table to apply it to advantaged attacks, but that isn’t a deal killer.

As I mentioned earlier, the dice can be rolled with a different color to see if any ones or sixes show up. It’s possible to pick up a fair amount of BODY on a good roll. While i could see just buying extra PD/ED that only affects STUN, seven active points of PD (Resistant, STUN only) is five real points, so is a very poor buy compared to Damage Negation dice as the latter also affects Killing Attacks and Drains versus STUN. It’s also a simpler build than buying PD/ED, applying advantages and limitations, then also buying Power Defense. Everything I’ve suggested doing with it is RAW, so it is really just a matter of finding the right base level of defenses to go with it. In a 12DC campaign, buying 14 PD/ED and then adding six dice of DN gives a decent amount of damage soaking and a chance of stunning if CON is kept under control.

That's kind of my idea. Anything that could be expressed in a physical form would be built as a normal character, with mental characteristics bought down to zero. Then a package of skills and abilities that could reflect the character's learned things would be layered into it. Sleeves would have different abilities: normal humans, gene-enhanced, bioroids, etc. I'm not expecting a lot of body switching going on among PCs (unless someone gets their sleeve killed), but it would be important to have the ability if they decide to resleeve for a cover ID or something.