Steve

Re: 007 7.0

Re: Casual Presence I'll have to re-read the DH article mentioned. Now I'm curious to think what casual Comeliness could do.

Re: Dark Champions the Anime Series Shinsen released it on the 14th. Really, Susano, try to keep up. So when are the write-ups of Revvy and the others coming to your website?

Re: Dark Champions the Anime Series I picked up fansubs of 16-18 the other night to catch up, and the story is defeinitely moving into higher gear. Things are definitely heating up in the story (pardon the pun ), and it looks like some MAJOR body count action is coming up. And there's still 8 episodes left to go.

With the arrival of the new Bond film, I was thinking about the notion of "casual presence." You've seen it in the movies. Bond walks into a room, and eyes will move to look at him, especially the ladies. I did come across this discussion regarding Presence. One of the ways I was thinking this could be modeled would be as a form of casual presence. A character who could walk into a room, do something innocuous like light up a cigarette, but still get a presence effect going with casual presence. And if you could do that, would a power like this be workable? The name is Bond... James Bond: +30 PRE (30 Active Points); Offensive Use Only (-1/2); Only To Calculate Casual Presence (-1 1/2) plus +30 PRE (30 Active Points); Incantations (-1/4); Offensive Use Only (-1/2); Only To Calculate Casual Presence (-1 1/2). Real Cost: 19.

Re: "Encounter level" I agree with other posters that it can be difficult to judge relative toughness of a group of NPCs to a group of PCs, but I've found it works reasonably well to look at relative CVs and damage ability vs defenses. Differences of 2 or more in relative CV can go a long way to making a big difference in combat, and setting damage equal to 1.5 DCs per 2 points of defense a character has usually works pretty well for me. I've actually found things scale moderately well even at low levels by following this rule of thumb. YMMV

Re: Class systems -- is there no escape? Given a campaign world with a Mage Talent, I suppose one could make a case for using a Faith Talent as well, to allow access to divine magic. Most people could be said to have faith in something, but only a few individuals have Faith with a capital 'F' instead (or maybe name it Channeling as Rolemaster did, or True Faith as White Wolf did), and only those people can call down the divine power. But GA is right in that having such a talent required for magic use does not a Class create. Yes, you could have a burly warrior sort with it, maybe with only a single spell to his name. That doesn't mean everyone will take it, since not everyone is interested in the shiny, sparkly magic. I frankly disagree with the notion that without classes games will degenerate into a group of identical generalists, with l33t ninja/warrior/sorcerers running about. I've only seen that if you put a bunch of power gamers or munchkins together at a table.

Re: Skills a True Hero Must Have Deduction: For when the players are totally stumped by the GM's plot.

For Post-Holocaust, assuming minor mutations (maybe as high as 30 Active Points) are allowed, what would be an adequate starting level? Would 50+50 be too low to start? Has anyone ever done a post-holocaust campaign with superhuman characters? What was that like?

Re: The thing's I've learned playing a Brick... True. That's been about as low as I've seen people go with a Brick though, out of several gaming groups. 15 DEX and 3 SPD just seems too low for a superhuman... even a Brick.

Re: The thing's I've learned playing a Brick... It's cool to be a fast Brick. 60 STR, DEX 26, SPD 5, and Brick Tricks on top of that. Who says a Brick needs to be a lumbering 18 DEX, 4 SPD mass of muscle?

Re: Class systems -- is there no escape? I agree with this assessment as well. A fighter is one who fights, a rogue (or thief for us more "old school" types) is one who picks locks and finds traps, a cleric is one who casts divine magic, and a mage is one who casts arcane magic. It's a pre-defined stack of boxes of abilities, and you gain a box when you level up. With multi-classing available, you can choose to be totally focussed on one of those box stacks, or you take some boxes from one stack and some boxes from the other but not be as good as someone who stacked their boxes to the roof from a single stack. With HERO, you smash the boxes open and can pick and choose from among the pretty baubles inside. There's a granularity you simply can't get in a class-based system. Want to be a fighter who knows how to cast a healing spell, but doesn't want to turn undead or be a paladin? As far as I know, that can't be done in xD&D. That means you can have a player make a fighter type with a single healing spell without being a cleric, or a roguely sort who has an invisibility spell without being a mage. So what? That fighter type has spent points that could have gone to another combat level, and the rogue has spent points that could have gone to skills. I agree with KS that if you want magic to be rarer and known to a more select few, give it a high cost of entry. That eliminates the dilletante spellcaster who only wants to be able to start a campfire without flint and steel or know a single healing spell. If you define "magic" as taking the powers in HERO and requiring certain Limitations be applied to define them as spells or divine magic, that is classifying magic and how it works, not the people who know how to use it. It's defining laws of the universe. How much player ability granularity is wanted in a campaign is defined by the GM. You can set up stacks of boxes that rigidly define abilities that players can have, like magic ability, or you can break the boxes open and let them play mix and match with the baubles inside. I prefer the latter myself, but YMMV. EDIT: Whoa! This is my 666th posting.

Re: Class systems -- is there no escape?

Re: Clockwork Tactics Hmmm... this write-up also requires a Tactics roll at -7 to succeed. It's tough to be a leader, it seems.

Re: Clockwork Tactics Should the Advantage Lingering be added to this? While I like this write-up, it seems like it there should be some way to have it last longer, since it seems a single phase effect as written right now.

Re: Solidification I think you could legally do it by buying off the Always On Limitation as a naked Advantage, then limiting that with OIF. I'm not sure of the points, but it feels about right.

Re: Starting as Normals? I might suggest 25+25 to 50+50 to start, which I believe should let you pick up any racial and professional packages to start. The characters will start out fairly generic and can then customize with XPs. Some groups find that to be pretty satisfying. I've never started below 50+50 though that I can recall. Some things to consider: 1) Allow 25-50 points of Disadvantages to be picked up during game play (whatever would max out at 75 Disad points from starting levels), but only at a rate which roughly doubles (or maybe triples) normal experience gains. This shows starting heroes during the time when they picked up those Hunteds, developed Psych Lims, etc. that higher pointed characters have. 2) Start with less disads but greater XPs (maybe 1.5x to 2x normal). This lets heroes be a bit more "sterling" in nature without as many disads.

Re: Populate a 17th century galleon Wow! I never knew that a ship of that era could hold so many people. I was thinking a hundred to two hundred or so.

Re: Clockwork Tactics Hmm... I was thinking that it took a moment to give out orders, which is why I wrote it out that way with Delayed Phase. The leader takes a second to judge the tactics of the situation, then snaps out some orders before going himself. I took the Extra Time to activate it, thinking the +4 would then work from that segment forward when each character had their phases. Looking at it now, the build seems a bit funny, since a character could get the initiative bonus and then keep it even while out of sight or hearing. Would it work better as something that only works for a single phase? How would you write it up as an extended effect to show the team following orders that would take longer than a couple of seconds to execute?

I was reading through the Stargate SG-1 RPG book, and I came across this feat. Clockwork Tactics: You're the guiding, dominating force within any unit with whom you serve. (Basically, you can increase your teammates initiative by giving orders, I assume is how it works.) Here is my take on it as a Hero System write-up. I suppose I could have gone with Aid, but this seemed an interesting way to do it. Clockwork Tactics: Lightning Reflexes: +4 DEX to act first with All Actions, Limited Range (+1/4), Usable Simultaneously (up to 8 people at once; +1) (13 Active Points); Requires A Tactics Roll (-1/2), Extra Time (Delayed Phase, Only to Activate, -1/4), Incantations (-1/4). Real Cost: 6

Re: Populate a 17th century galleon Hmmm... is this an English galleon or a Spanish galleon? The people on board would tend to reflect nation of origin.

Re: The Future of Small Arms Another thing for the future of small arms is the Gun Kata.

Re: The Future of Small Arms One thing that might change about firearms is the action used could shift to an electric charge instead of the current firing pin model. Firing rates could increase as a result, since it would just be pulses of electricity igniting the primers.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe There is also the notion taken from the Time Wars series by Simon Hawke, that a timestream split was a VERY BAD THING, since that could trigger off a cascade effect of more and more splits, ending in the dissolution of the entire universe. I also liked some of the pseudo-science used in the series, like zen physics to explain the issues raised by time travel.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe I suppose Temporal Inertia could also be expressed as the Law of Conservation of Events. There are certain key events in time that can't really be changed, and doing so simply triggers off a divergent timeline. Smaller changes could fall below a certain energy level and not trigger such a divergence.