Chromatic

Re: Don't be a hater! Well said. To keep this from being a "me too": things that used to be "fun", that no longer are in the 5th edition system: -- players like rolling dice. Mega-skills have a place, but allow for more hand waving. Let them roll dice, just don't tell them what its for. -- players don't like being the supporting cast. The change to high damage, low defense for shorted combat leads to players watching from the sidelines. Typically a PC lasts about 2 successful hits it seems under 5th. -- (most) players don't like having to do math on the spot (not me). By having differnt Meta-rules for various constructions, the rules become less intuitive -- It's my game, it's my "interpretation of the" rules. Steve Long has been dragged far to deeply into making myriad rulings, and then much effort is spent enforcing those rulings on this forum. Step back a level, make a Meta-rule that is appropriate to a multitude of situations and let the GM's interpret. I have more, but I'm done for now.

Re: Advice needed: Which conversions are okay to post? Actually it was updated March 16, 2005......I stand corrected, but I'm fairly sure I had heard rumor of his passing a few years ago....might have been mixed up with someone else (obviously). What do I know, I'm no newspaper obit columnist either.

Re: If You Draw It...They Will Come Looking at the different versions of Doc Power, I have to say it's really amazing what a difference a bit of incorporated background can do. The forest fire image really gives a sense of that heroic "panic, and flee like a screaming little girl". Nice job all around

Re: Memoirs of failed concepts If you take the disadvantage, it should be played as one.

Re: Memoirs of failed conceptsHere's another one. I was doodling on the back of some meeting minutes and came up with the image for an interesting looking robot. The Global Guardians Force Pacific had an opening for a "metal element". I put together a background that would work in that campaign, and submitted Panorama: And here is the follower:

Re: Advice needed: Which conversions are okay to post? Probably any of the ones by Jeff Dees, since he passed away about 10 years ago. I'm no lawyer, even if I do play one in Zornwil's game. But I thought Copywrite ended with death....

Re: UNITY 2010: A New Champions Campaign Don't forget the sharks with fricken lazers on their heads!

Re: Villainy Amok Didn't they do that in City of Heros?

Re: Memoirs of failed concepts The campaign he was written for was based in Rome, and was very Religious (all characters were to be devout Catholics). The character isn't a Cardinal, but one of his contact's is. It was in the background you didn't read As a Priest, he took a vow of poverty, if that doesn't make you poor, I don't know what would. Having a scenario where one might have to commit acts against his belief's (and thus not serving God) could make good roleplaying opportunity. Aside from the fact that it could easily come up at least as often as an OIF in a Rome based game, I see the point you are trying to make.

As a way to share some backgrounds and character concepts, I thought it would be interesting to see what kind of feedback these characters got. All of them were submissions to games that for whatever reason were not accepted. If you see anything glaring with them, I appreciate a comment on how or what to make a change. First up, a character I never finished completely I submitted to the Global Guardians Universe campaign, Knights of Malta. (http://www.globalguardians.com/campaigns/knightsofmalta.php) I'll post another one in a day or two.

Re: PBEM - RDU: The Mavericks - Example & Discussion Encore! Encore! Please post more Neil. Excellent read, and seeing the results of your initiative system has me intrigued to the point of attempting to use it in my upcoming game.

Re: Need help with military rank titles It seems that a lot of this is just for background gameworld flavor, your players aren't going to be in competition to achieve the rank of Grand Marshall or Field Marshall are they? In that case, I wouldn't obsess about. Most players in a game sent in the Imperium would be most concerned with just two things: Does this guy have to salute me? and Do I have to salute this guy? So just white wash the whole thing: Such and such npc has a chest full of ribbons and medals, his rank is so much higher than you that even if this was the Mirror, Mirror universe, you'd need an entire arsenal to get his position. So shut up, salute him, and pay close attention to the orders he's going to give you. trying to be helpful. really!

Re: How can an Napoleonic Era frigate fire a broadside every 12 seconds? Nah, he just wants to show he can be pig headed, and and idiotic at the same time. From reading the opinions in this thread, and historical evidence, clearly the broadside per one 12 second turn is wrong. Not only due to the number of steps needed to fire the cannons, but also due to physics: the cannons would overheat if fired that rapidly, to the point that they couldn't be reloaded without setting off the powder. Brass just doesn't have the thermal capacity to cool off. Switching between non-combat and combat or allowing your 4 speed pc's to do stuff on the ships between volleys (not just carry dead/wounded, but perhaps prepare boarding hooks, or put on armor, or run from the bow to the stern of the ship) makes a lot more sense than making a turn take 5 minutes and still only giving the PC's 3 phases of action. The drama will certainly be a lot more cinematic as everyone prepares for the next volley of cannon fire coming up in 3 turns, now 2 turns, now 10 segments...... GM: ok phase 6 you move on dex 20, the cannons are going off on dex 11 this segment. What's Long John doing? LJ: using my perch on the crow's nest and the grapling hooks, I'll delay till after the cannons fire, then swing over.

Re: Background on Cyber Ninja Pirates in Space I don't know what all it entails, but I call dibs on Ninja Ooogity Boogity. It just sounds cool

Re: YOUR FRIENDS: Cost You Points, or Get You Points? Hmmmm. How much does it cost to be someone's SFX on their skills? Does that mean that by correlation, I get those skills too? Do we save points by making friends SFX on disads as well? disad: 5 : spouse hates rpg's (sfx: gamer buddies taking up all weekend free time) happy to be Lemming's sfx for extra time on knowledge skills

Re: What's the most ridiculous PC you've ever been subjected to? Meh. we prefer duct tape.

Re: Rewrite your PC(s) as Iron Age Villians! Chromatic Dragon Seriously injured in an experiment with the Ninja-tron, he funneled all assets from his cheesy kung fu movies and scientific achievements in bio-chemical advancement into offshore accounts. Knowing that he would never be able to compete again in the Ultimate Fight challenges, CD used his sleuthing skills to create a false identity and built a giant island fortress where he could seduce leages of wanna-be martial artists to be his willing minions, and create the greatest medically enhanced kung fu army the world had ever seen. Sadly, CD would have to control everything from his Gameboy, as he was still bed ridden. Hamlet Laughton No change. He's already on the way to becoming an evil mastermind overlord..... Coriollis Secretly, the CEO of the powerful eco-energy conglomeration WindPower, Coriollis uses his control over the winds as well as his financial might to crush the would be defilers of the ecology. Running his corporate structure with an iron fist and ever flowing tongue, he spends most of his time as a lobbiest in Congress tuning the art of the Filibuster. There is a rumor that the vast fields of energy supplying windmills are also fitted with mindcontrol devices that beam subliminal messages at the same time as electricity. This rumor is entirely unfounded and obviously the libelous attempts to corupt the throne of power Coriollis rules from. Allen Richmond, the Unkillable Man He's dead. Ate some bad herring.

Re: So why do you play Hero? I'm sitting in the movie theater watching [____________] and as the characters on the screen are performing amazing feats, in the back of my mind I can rattle off things like, "hmmm, he grabbed that guy and held him in the air with one hand, easily a 23 strength." "oooh 4 thugs a the same time? sweep maneuver has modifiers, he must have at least a 20 dex, probably 3 combat levels too" "that sword sure is sharp, must have done 20 body to that poor sod" "hmmm the train has at least 5 cars and is full of people, plus it s moving like 60 mph, if the entangles are 5d6, and he's obviously pushing, he needs to have a 45 strength to stop the train if 4 webs broke"

Re: Solving for Speed That's only because you are calculating damage and movement based on inches per turn, but still charging based on inches per phase. In the above example, Char 1 should either have paid for 200" per turn, or he is actually only moving 2" a phase. Char 2 should have paid for 30" per turn to get his 10" a phase. Years ago we played around with inches per turn movement as the base cost, and calculation for speed/velocity. It worked something like this: Joe Normal has speed 2, 6"/phase or a total of 12"/turn. If he buys up his speed to 3, he now has 4"/phase movement. Since everyone is on the same chart, standard Hero costs for movement powers are fine--its an even baseline. Superagent Man has a speed of 6, he wants to move more than 2" a phase, so he buys up his base running to 42/turn giving him 7" a phase for a cost of 10 character points. (6 speed remember? so 6x7 == 42). To really "flesh" this out, everyone moves on every segment (based on move/turn) so Superagent Man would move 3 1/2" every segment, and get to make turns or velocity changes on his phases. . . . . Of course the counter argument to all this is to say leave the speed chart as it is, figure that everyone moves simultaneously over the course of 12 seconds, and faster characters (higher speed) get to have more panels on page of the comic than slower characers. The "staggered" movement hasn't really been an issue for role playing and story effects in my 22+ years of experience with Hero.

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Clearly its a shoemaker and his barefoot children thing. I say someone makes him an avatar, the forumites vote on it, and then gang up on Storn and make him use it by force.

Re: Alternatives to 3d6

Re: Idle Scalability Notion In games where my characters have rolls over 20-, I've joked many times that I'd like to take my skill rolls on 4d6 instead of 3d6 as long as a failure was only considered absolute on a roll of 24. rolling a 14 instead of 11 still lets the "world's greatest detective" succeed by +30 on his forensics, and if he rolls poorly and gets a 21 or 22? No matter, its still by half..... So far no GM has agreed that this is a good idea. Maybe, the right way to go about this is to make it an advantage to bump up from d6's to d8's or d10's. For the obscenely compentent it makes sense. Lets see, Ubermench has all his sciences on a 27-, he pays 3 points for Scientist, has a 53 Int, and +10 to Science skill rolls, all his sciences are now 2 points for an Int based roll. He opts for +1/2 to make his science rolls on a 3d8, 23 & 24 are the critical fail, to do this he paid 5 points for Scientist, 45 points for the 10 science levels, and 3 points for his sciences at Int base. Kind of pricey to just avoid the 18 on 3d6 (which although considered a critical fail, is actually making his roll by 9). Maybe make it a +1/4...... . . . . When you only play in games where 16- or 17- is the peak skill capability, I don't see how this would ever come up and be an issue. But when you spent 1/3 of your hero's points on skills and end up rolling an 18 which fails in that important scenario which would have made the needed skill roll on by loads, its a bit annoying. Humorous to be sure, but annoying.

Re: Should END be more? Was 2nd Edition essentially right? Yeah, but then we'd have to help her with that Rikti mission....

Re: Biggest whine about HERO But I'm not complaining......

Re: Biggest whine about HERO hmmmm, falling from the airplain 25,000 feet to land at terminal velocity...on the Church steeple (so that he both took killing damage from the spike, and didn't land on anyone in the crowd). Then getting shot with by the evil baddie with her massive auto-fire laser gun (at least the wounds were cauterized immediately). Setting off the anti-tank mine, only to be blown into the field and setting off a second (and then a third, and a fourth). Then getting smacked with the giant nuclear warhead missle (by a member of my own team no less). I think that came to over 350 body taken in one adventure (that's with 3/4 damage reduction for most of it). The missle hit actually would have killed my character if it had happened a phase earler (post-12 regen), as it was it only brought him to -78 body and he was stunned (but not out!) . I seem to recall we were using broadtip markers and drawing thermometers to track the body being dished out. Frankly, it's a record I hope to never see repeated.