simplygnome

Re: Crowd control overpowering game I have a player that I let make a mental entangle. Any mook of almost any calibure he can take out of the fight instantly...Good think my mooks come in packs of 25+ with a few minor supers thrown in... Now for my SUPERS, thats another story. The mental character has other devices at his disposal and he knew ahead of time that he was going to be a mostly "crowd control" based character, used at wipping up the extras getting in the way of the big boys...Since he knew this, I have no problem with giving my really big supers extra ego, mental defense (yes, I made him buy the disad), and other forms of mental defense (such as cybernetic brains)..... However, this countermeasure by far makes the character useless.....and balances out the game nicely. (Hey, Im also counter blancing for a goddess with a 36 slot multi power, a speedster with a 15DCV - one over campaign soft cap -, a spd of 7, and an 11d6 passing strike with 30" of movement, and a shadow-magic martial artist equiped with everything from teleport, to darkness, to ranged martial attacks - at roughly 14d6 - and a force field....Really theres nothing fancy the Mentalist can do in terms of sheer power...Each and every character is really a monster, especially for being built on only 300pts. Thats fine by me...It lets the players have fun AND lets me justify building stronger baddies....considering I have a better HERO understanding of all the players, as I was the one who helped them make their characters, I always have an extra trick up my sleeve to keep them on their toes). Theres MHO!

Re: More Amusing Meeb stuff Okay, just checking. It seemed a bit odd to me...Definately nothing I would have allowed, but then again I usually have to keep collars on most of my players to keep them in character, as opposed to power gaming (well, some of them anyhow.) Regardless, the character looks very cool (in stats, story, and artwork). Well done......

Re: More Amusing Meeb stuff Im really sorry for derailing this thread, but I have a rules question on Meebs sheet thats just bugging me. How do you justify buying ALWAYS ON for the Damage Reduction? Its already a persistant power, and I dont see any "limitation" in giving it the always on disadvantage. Even if I can think of a few (ie, skin is so durable, doctors cant pierce it with needles to administer a vaccine), it certaintly isnt worth -1/2 (hardly -1/4). I was just wondering if I was missing something...Thanks.

Re: To agree or disagree with Steve's answer Considering Drains have a huge in game effect against a limited form of defense (compared to PD/ED that is) I have no problem with giving them multiple recoveries. Sure 12d6 damage is a lot, but 6d6 Str drain (using 60 point powers as example) could be game breaking for certain characters (replace Str with Dex or Ego,, depending on character build). Damage is just damage and can be delt with in many ways, but ability drain will continue hindering your ability to fight. If my average martial artist has 23 STR. then one average hit from the drain (18 points of effect) will put him to 5. If hes hit again, he'll be dropped to 0. Certaintly Id let him take a recovery for both. That same 18 points is 36 endurance. A few hits with that and your outta luck baby! Not everyone has scads of power defense lying around, and even with the extra recovery, its still very effective. It all seems to balance for me....

Re: Linking a characteristic decrease to a power Hmm, very interesting idea there too....

Re: Power Build Help Perhaps a Side Effect that limits skill use and manual dexterity for detailed oriented tasks (imagine computer hacking with those babies on!)...most likely just a -1/4. Of course he could just tear them off, but then he'd have to regrow them. Id imagine it hard to grasp something very well or use fine control without destroying the item in question....just a thought.

Re: Linking a characteristic decrease to a power Exactly Devlin. And instead of using those "EXPENSIVE" killing attacks, remember that its more cost efficient and effective to use Extra Dimensional Movement: to a dimension where *TARGET* is dead. See, so much easier... Also, you speedsters, why waste 80CP on 40" of movement? Simply use Extra Dimensional Movement: to a dimension where I am not standing 'here' but instead 'there' AND everyone else is in the same spot.... And personally, I think its better to just put them in one Cosmic VPP so that you can save yourself some character sheet management. Also, you wont have to bother with buying stats...you can just spend the first five minutes of the campaign teleporting yourself to different dimensions where you have 100 Con, Dex, Str, etc.... Personally, the Hero System much more fun if you just get rid of that pesky GM moderation thing...I mean come on, what do we play RPGs for, the experience or the cheap (and by cheap I mean a $50 dollar main book and several hundreds in supplements) power trip!!??? /end complete sarcasm... Im going to have to quote TheRealLemming for a moment.... "In the name of Heaven, please don't let anyone think I'm being serious!" *puts $.25 in TRL's copyright infringement cup....*

Re: Linking a characteristic decrease to a power You can just use the Side Effect limitation. Its a Minor Side effect. Give it SIDE EFFECT occurs automatically when power is used for x2 (so 1/2) and then put a 1/4 less limitation on there saying Side Effect gradually gets larger depending on the effect.... For a total of 1/4. That might not be exactly it but its close... The problem is that the limitation will automatically get higher as the levels of growth increase anyhow, but if just taken it at face value...you lose 15 points of intel, so SOME kind of 1/4 limitation should be used. EDIT --- Drat,...I took too long in typing =P

Re: Character for review:Ran Just something I noticed, FLAT OF THE BLADE appears twice, if Im not mistaken. I dont see any differences between the two... ...there, I saved you two character points...happy =P

Re: Martial Balance Thanks for the info all. I sat down and looked at balance and decided a 14DC damage cap would be enforced, with 12DC being the norm... I found a great way to balance out he Shadow Martial Artist too...I didnt want to just cut her attack down, since I didnt want her "wasting" the 60 AP limit of her MP, so I just tacked on RANGED to her HtH attack. Now shes sitting at 14d6 exactly with 12" of range....Shes even more deadly than before, yet in complete balance with the other characters! Me and her are still talking it over, but she might take another advantage (dropping her to 12DCs) of either indirect or possibly Affects Desolidified, as they both fit her character concept.... Also, for clarification, the originaly unbalancing was not the players fault. This is her first Hero character, and it just ended up unbalanced because of rules confusion....Everythings straightened out now, and its balancing well....

Re: Who is Mister Mayhem? Cool. Get any good ideas from it all? Hope you figure something out...Although I hope youre not too offended when I steal the name Oxymoron for one of the villians in my tabletop game

Re: Who is Mister Mayhem? Check out BLACKJACKS character sheet from the Millenial Men game thats being run on Hero Central. I give props the the creator(s) of this character. Its has several ingenius ideas for the Luck based superhero.... Click here for the Character Sheet.... Another idea you may want to incorporate is to build a super with any abilities you want him to have, just with varying special effects. The EB appears as pipes bursting from out of the ground, the extra Forcefield is nothing more than the debris of the broken building, crumbling and falling all around the heroes, making him hard to hit....Luck and Chaos can be more of a special effect than anything. Also remember Longshot...a bit faster, a bit stronger...definately a heavy hitter at times, who just happened to be lucky as all heck... I hope this helps a bit.... SIDE NOTE: Ohh..comander of chaos huh..I just thought of something...How about a Summon or Altered Duplicate of the player characters, all brought forth from the Chaos Dimension (Like Chaos Duplicate Beam, or something). Meh..just ideas....

I've got two martial artists appearing in my campaign and Im having trouble balancing the two out. The game is set on 200 + 100, with an APPROX. AP cap on powers of 60...ish. Now, one characters is more of a shadow-magician character, with martial artist abilities....And she took a +12d6 HA (a shadow punch, if you will) that will add with her MA and her STR.... (so 12d6 + 2 to 4d6 + 3d6 str = 17d6 to 19d6) The other MA doesnt look like he's going to take an additional HA, but rely on some chi based abilities...he does, however, have his stats a bit higher overall. I dont see him doing nearly as much damage as the others.... The blaster in the group relys on 14d6 normal attacks (70AP) while a punisher/Capt A like character is bouncing around 6-8d6 double knockback powers (energy bullets from his Tech) I know Im missing some basic balance issues here, but how do the rest of you deal with MA, HTHA, and such when looking at campagin power continuity..? We're still in character creation process and I know the player wont mind at all when I tone down the HA, but Im just looking for a better way to judge balance and such....

Re: Where else do you roll down? My only comment is that if rolling low on some rolls and rolling high on others is really off setting to a new player, then I don't think I would have let that player in my game to begin with... The concept is as trivial as second grade math, and if FOR ANY REASON, a player cannot grasp just THAT within two minutes, he will never survive the Hero System anyhow. As someone else pointed out, there are too many differences in the Hero System and D20 for this to make any difference what so ever....Maybe I'm too critical, but I'd much rather not simplify for a demographic that I wouldn't want to play with anyhow....

Re: World In Crisis..Idea help please Thanks for the replys all...theres a lot of good ideas that made it through. Mike W, you hit it fairly on the head. I had a rough sketch of the background and I was focusing a lot on the current setups (government affiliations, group alliances, subtle villian trickery) that I didn't really sit down and flesh out a full background, worldwide anyhow. Both the diety based and the magic based characters were great ideas on the players part, but they saddled me with much more work than they realized. However, I did voice my concerns earlier, and we sat and talked about it. I made a strict rule that if it didn't feel "super-heroy", I'd dissallow it, yet after talking it over, both characters came out VERY well, so I let them in....Theyre backgrounds actually helped flesh out the world a bit...I still havent looked at the origin of some of things, namely Dieties and their place in my world.... Gojira - I'm not using the ready made groups because I don't have enough source material to run a CHAMPIONS game, and I wanted to summon up a slightly different world....I suppose I could have just transposed the groups since the players arent familiar with Champions anyhow...But I guess I wanted a challenge. I sat down with the players and explained to them that the campaign tone should be very colorful. Its very Avengers style (I would say JLA, but smaller to an infinite degree...). I want lots of diversity in character, which I have so far, and lots of heroics. I didn't have most of my players take the "Does not kill" disad...I explained to them that it will almost be required, with no character points given, as that is the type of genre I am going for. I will let those that didnt take the disad do as they might, but they know my feelings toward it and already know my wrath as a GM. In the past, I havent had a problem with these players straying too far off my laid down wishes. We've had about two years of gaming together... Supreme Serpent - Thanks for the concerns as well. Two of the players are major comic geeks of days past. The only debate I have with them is that Im an old DC fan while they're Marvel kiddies... lol The others have enough Supers interest that they should fit in easily enough. I took each of them aside and talked to them about their characters. They all really liked their characters, as I left the origin pretty open. Even the two martial artists felt that their characters were different enough that they didn't mind each other having a similar build, and even worked their storyline together as Rivals. I explained to the players the limitation of their characters inside the genre. Even our one "dark" skill based hero is using mostly non-lethal attacks. He has one, and its not even that strong (in some cirumstances, his Energy Blasts are more powerful due to a multi power with a x3 auto fire slot and an AP slot). I DID have a problem or two at the beginning, but they were shut out almost immediately. One player I have is know to be....a bit flavorful with the adult content she puts into the game, and that started to show through in the character design (Her: "Hmmm....how about a Fertility Goddess..."... Me: "Nope, but good creative idea. It doesn't quite fit my idea for the game, but keep going...Lets think of another!" Her: "Hmmm, how about a good succubus demon..." Me: "Oops! Try again...") Eventaully, we came to a real nice character...It didn't take her too long, and we're both really happy with how the Wonderwoman/Thor/Captain Planet rip off came out. The background (on MY part) needs a bit thought though, and I'm a bit stumped, but I'll work it out before gameday. However, I did already plan to use your suggestion. I was going to run the first game night, and then let them redesign their characters with me at their side, just to make sure they like how he/she plays, and to settle any balance issues.....Also this was going to be the time of discussing any concerns I had with their play styles... MitchellS, I had a few of those ideas already planned, but you spotted a few more that I didnt. Three of your suggestions [the super prison, the crimial with his own continent, and the secret government projects] were also ideas on the drawing board, but nothing I was incorporating just yet. I wanted a good basis to start with before throwing too many things at them. Thanks for some of the ideas....Both the hostile race and the undiscovered civilization never crossed my mind....I have a few ideas now though, but those too will come out at a later date... Thanks for the help folks. Right now Im in the middle of typing up some extended background. Possibly I'll post it in a few days to get some more feedback...Any other suggestions, however, couldn't hurt... PS - Kirby .. awesome idea. In fact, I think I'll steal it! I've got several plots that would be awesome to throw in there....In fact, I might even make it a monthly event (Megatopia Monthly Review)

Okay folks, I need a bit of advice. Shortly I'll be running a tabletop Hero System game in a non-Champions super hero world. The group consists of myself and six players, all of which are familiar gaming with each other. The players have a decent background of gaming experience, but sadly limited to the D20 system. None of them have experience with either the Hero System, or roleplaying in a super hero game.... With that said, I have been impressed so far by the character concepts and rough drafts presented to me. I have sat down with each player and constructed a well made background for each, and Im happy with how things are going....I am also helping them balance their characters, and have run into very little complaint. The problem is, the world, to me, doesnt feel fleshed out enough. It doesn't feel as "alive" (superhero-wise) as I want it to. Certaintly things, are just starting, but Im not satisfied at the moment. Now, I thought I covered most of my bases...Ive got the good government run corporation, CRISIS (the Center of Research, Intelligence Surveillance, and Interrogation Services), who inevitably fights against VENOM, a terrorist organization rooted in biological warfare and espionage. I've got a smattering of other super villians and minor criminals. This along with a few player made groups fleshed out in their backgrounds and such, I've been given enough sources of villany to pull from. I didn't want to worry aobut creating tons of NPC heroes, although a few will be existant, so I set the world in a med to low SUPERS appearance. Currently in the nation, only one unofficial supergroup exists, consisting of three heroes located in a central city (the same starting city as the PCs). I've got a couple other supers I plan on writing up as well before the game starts.... The plan is that the group, for various reasons, will join up with CRISIS. Character backgrounds range from mutant, to magic, to tech, to ...a Thor-ish character (who happens to have a tiara instead of a hammer and a Suceptibility to Toxic-waste...Im in the habit of caller her SAILOR PLANET =P Every time she transforms back into human Im going to whisper "The power is YOURS" just to irk her...but thats just plain fun flavor. Im the gm, Im allowed to irk my players in subtle ways =P) So my question to you hero boards, is why, other than my perfectionist nature, do I feel that something is lacking? What holes can you see in my world thus, and are there any other suggestions. Im sure if I could ever pinpoint the cause of my uneasy feeling, I could correct it....but I just dont see what it could possibly be.....!!!

Re: Can Knockback cause Knockback? So, if Hero A smacks Baddie B with KB and B hits an unbreakable surface, he would then, possibly, rebound back to Hero A? Now, what if hero A had a Damage shield with, say, double KB?? Hero, wall, hero wall, hero wall....? am I getting this correctly? =P

Re: One last, *QUICK* flying dodge question..

Re: One last, *QUICK* flying dodge question..

Re: Player Openings: Knights of New L.A. PBEM Wow, while I really want to play, reading some of those character descriptions almost makes me want to NOT play, just so I can get a look at the other character's roleplaying and storyline potentials!!! =P Im particularly interested in how Ingineuity and his (her?) Gadgets go off, Philosopher's Alchemy, and Tantrums sonic fits... Remedy just scares me, but is equally intriguing. Good work guys, at least on the concepts. Good luck to all of you, and I hope to see you in the game....

After reading BOTH Flying Dodge threads all the way through AND the FAQ (which was reposted in both threads ANYHOW), I do have some questions that I can't find any rules for, but saw MENTION to in the threads. For note, I have FREd, 5ER, and UMA (just arrived in the store tonight...*huggle*) Lets assume chatacters A(ttacker) and D(efender) were fighting each other. A attacks D (hrm, go figure, huh.. ) with a normal fist attack and D Flying Dodges three hexes back out of the way. IF A still had movement left to move that turn (either he didnt move yet, or he didnt move enough to use up his HALF move total), can he "move with" the character. Examples would include a speedster trying to hit a martial artist. The MA flips 3" back, but speedster (who has yet to move...or has yet to use 1/2 his 40" of combat movement) still have plenty of movement left....Why WOULDNT he be allowed to follow the character... That said, what if Speedster was using a Move-By, Passing Strike, or Move-Through and the MA FDed out of the way, lets say three hexs to the left....What simplicity would it be to just follow the target and hit him, with improved DCV that is, considering Ive got PLENTY of movement to spare and I AM doing a full move action....??? For note, this is ASSUMING FD is used as is in the book and FAQ. All house rules used to modify FD and such are noted, but not really targeted with this question. -------- For note, Im trying to debate in this next game wether to use FD as written or house rule it as +4DCV, complete attackers attack, then move.... The problem im seeing in the reverse of above...What if I let the party speedsters have it?

Re: NewCharacter for Review: Hurricane Im just wonder what the average damage you'll be taking is versus the average damage you're expected to dish out. I ask this because it seems to me that at a 12d6, your str damage won't do too much to someone who shares the same defense as you (40 PD/ED), and considering youre not a strictly "brick" based character, one that IS would probably take less damage (like 40 PD/ED with 75% Damage Reduc...ouch. Itll take ages to whittle that down). Now, you do always have the NND....

Re: Ideas for a Hero Games Legendary Product NO KIDDING. I was walking away from my latest gaming store with FREd (which I brought from home) and 5ER (which I just purchased) and I thought I was nearly about to fall over from the awkwardness....! But, as long as no one recognized them as RPG books, then they made me look very scholastic indeed!

Re: Warping Entangle Yeah, but then its completely useless an opponent with just a couple points of intel. Id feel no shame in giving it 2 def....Come on, three extra cp into intel will make this a moot point, so Id feel no shame in trapping the 10 intel brick for a few extra turns....Maybe then he's start going to the library...

Re: Warping Entangle I dont mind the Int based entangle much, but realize we're looking at a +1 1/2 to +2 advantage....After all, Mental entangles BOECV only come out to +1 1/2, and intel is cheaper than Ego, after all, although less common in a standard supers build (because no one expects to be attacked by it....) Also be nice a give it a low DEF so the bricks will have SOME chance of damaging it......eventually. *Pictues Neo in the train station after running Mario-esque through one tunnel and out the other....*