War Admiral

Hmm, I've always invariably been the GM so I don't often get to be a "mere" player, therefore one would think I'd vary my style somewhat when I do get to play... but I don't! When I play, my characters, although often different classes/archetypes, do tend to follow a certain pattern. I like to play confident, assertive, self-reliant, take-chargey types of guys. It's kinda weird. oh yeah, I like to fly too.

Everything I've read about the upcoming Revised 5E sounds pretty good to me, but I will add this: One of the things I like most about the current edition is its sturdiness. The thing can take a handling and a beating. I seem to recall reading some time ago that Fred got his hazing by being thrown in a laundry dryer for half an hour or some such. I've never tried that with mine, but it sounds pretty tough, and all I can say is that I've carried the bugger around with me for over about a year and a half now in three different cities across the U.S., in rain, snow and shine and it still looks good. Granted, the cover is nicked up a bit and the whole bottom edge of its pages are a little warped from my dumbass leaving it sitting in my bookbag in a pile of melting snow for two hours, but damn if it doesnt still look good. The spine is nice and strong still. I like that a lot (ahem, cough, cough to all you game companies out there that make a book that's all style and no substance and can't hold up to real-life gamer usage). And that brings me to the paper itself. I love this stuff! You guys definately need to keep this paper going. Like I said, mine suffered some water damage, but it's nothing compared to the fate suffered by other books of mine in the past (something about my books and water, just cant' seem to avoid it). Plus, and this is another important point to me, the paper is perfect for colouring on with coloured pencils. So, what am I really saying when I say that? Let's have more artwork in 5ER that's worth colouring in! I'm serious! Hell, include a coupon for a free set of coloured pencils or something in all copies sold at major bookstores (Borders, B&N, etc) to get all the non-gamer types who might be looking at the book for the first time more interested in it. For that matter, let's see the book sold at some of those major retailers. I think seeing this book in stores outside just the gamer-specialty shops might go a long way towards recruiting new players. There are a *lot* of so-called "mundanes" out there who would really dig the excitement of gaming if they had a chance. So why not include a little appendix or something giving some advice and guidance for the new folks on how to find more about the game, how to set up their first session with their friends, something like this. I don't know. Something that someone casually browsing through the book would see easily. Maybe it'll help a couple people who might not buy the book because it looks too dense or intimidating give it a try anyway. But yeah, I'd say keep up the toughness of the book, the greatness of its paper, more colouring-worthy artwork, and a tad more user-friendly in terms of organisation of information... some stuff seems to be scattered about... I can't think of anything right now to back up that statement, but it just feels that way sometimes. But the index is fantastic and has always come to my aid when I was stumped for where to find something. Thanks for listening

>shudder< ooo, Hermit, that 3rd Mechanon idea (redundant operation disallowed) gave me shivers! That's so evil! I love it.

Your best resource is probably Tokien's "Unfinished Tales", edited and compiled by his son. Lots of tasty background stuff that Tolkien never got around to completing. Somewhere in there is (AFAIK) the only published, "official" names for one or two of the Nazgul (Khamul being one). I"m sorry I can't be more specific, I'm at school and don't have my book with me, but the info in there shouldn't be too hard to find.

I have used this device twice. Once, the player was the son of a former superhero-believed to be dead in tragic accident-only to turn out to be retooled cyborg mercenary/terrorist. Another time, player was son of world spanning evil Cobra/Viper/Galactic Empire organisation. It was all very Luke Skywalker/Darth Vadery. Lots of fun. I love working stuff like that into my own characters' backgrounds, too.

Speaking of artwork, I'm afraid I'm one of those people who is greatly influenced by the quality of both cover and interior art (I'm a very visually oriented kind of person... artistic aspirations and all that dontcha know ). . If the art is poor, I"m less likely to buy the book. And I think historically one of Hero's biggest problems has been ho-hum artwork. OTOH, though, having been away from Hero for a long while and just now coming back with the advent of 5E, I have to say that the art has improved by Hulk-sized leaps and bounds. Storn's work in particular simply blew me away... I didn't even recognise it as his at first! I still feel that 5E could have made some better choices as to the content of it's interior art (p. 195 in particular stands out to me as a "ugh! what the heck were they thinking when they put that in" selection), but overall I'm finding myself to be more and more impressed with Hero's artistick quality. The cover art especially for their books has been exceptional. So, having said all this, and having seen the cover for MMM but not the interiors (no game stores in my area, wah!), I'm looking forward to adding it to my collection, especially if the content is as varied and useful as folks here are saying it is.

Hi all, I might be running a game for my brothers over the Krismas break and one of them hasnt roleplayed in a very long time so I'd like to help him get back into it by building him a character that he can really relate to. Now basically, in "real life" he works at an auto body shop and this boy is a total gearhead... cars, hotrods, motorcycles, RC/nitro vehicles, etc etc. What I"m thinking is to have his character be adept at such things also, only on a super scale. I'd like to give him a transforming suit of power armour... Something like a really hot car (ala knight rider minus the AI) that can transform into a mobile suit/power armour kind of deal. I'm thinking Multiform for the two different aspects bought as a Foci and tie in an Endurance Reserve since it would have it's own power source. The suit will have other abilities too, of course, in both it's forms... sensors, weapons, life support, superior modes of movement, etc. What does anyone think? Am I on the right track?

How does one go about striking objects in combat? Let's say for example we have a group of characters pinned in a corridor by stormtroopers and while they're trading blaster fire, one of the players wants to target a little control panel at the other end of the corridor hoping it will cause a blast door to come down, effectively blocking off the evil stormtroopers. The rules mention something about DCV for objects being determined by size, but I can't seem to find details. Something about 1/2 human size being +2 DCV or else -2 OCV to the attacker and so on, but all the same, what is the base DCV a character needs to hit something?

Peter Gabriel's "Passion"