Black Rose

In the "MMM - what would you like to see?" thread, someone sad they'd like to see the atlatl used by some race or other. Now, for those who don't know this tool, an atlatl is a length of wood with a very slight angular bend about 15-18 cm from one end (seving as a handle) and a cup-like socket or notch at the other end, facing back up the shaft. The purpose of the atlatl is to give more oomph to a light hurled spear, by placing the butt of the spear in the cup, laying the atlatl along the arm and over the shoulder, and using it to extend the "length" of one's arm for the purpose of acceleration. Hopefully this picture wll illustrate... The question I have is, how would you represent this in HERO terms? My thought is, either define the atl atl as having X STR Min and then a higher damage level than would be assumed, or let it add to the damage of a thrown spear. Any other ideas?

Dr. Restorer, you mean. The man who saw that the world would be destroyed by the nuclear proliferation of the superpowers and became a guerilla peacebringer to the word, mounting (relatively) bloodless attacks on missile bases and weapons labs? hmmm, I like this guy. Now to see if I could rewrite the good doctor in a benevalent format. Now, this would be scary. I think, to make it work "right", you need at least three Foxbats trying to claim the Oneness; the generic Foxbat, one more Black Harlequin-y, and someone more sane, who acts insane to throw people off of his real Master Plans.

Depends on the SFX of the Detect Invisible. Is it based on some sort of EM spectral analysis that can detect even the faintest shift by someone warping light to conceal themselves? Is it some means by which the user can pierce the veil of mental clouding that hides the invisible one from being percieved by those nearby? Am I strange for wanting pretty exact SFX for just about everything, in defiance of Silver-Age conventions?

Historical reasons I can't give, but I would think the studs would give a little more protection from slashing and glancing attacks. My tuppence.

What's wrong with furries? I mean, I can understand if you're not into the Omaha the Cat Dancer/Genus-style stuff, I can understand - everyone's entitled to their own preferences, after all. But I happen to enjoy furries, if only because they add something different to a fantasy game. I'm sorry, but elves and dwarves have had too much air time, IMO. Granted, animal-human crosses are a bit stereotypable, but it adds something different without making the players Evel Keneval (sic) their way through mental hoops to get a grasp on the races. Besides, I happen to like cat-girls with repeater crossbows hidden in their hair.

Clairvoyance I think Adam Warren's version of Kei and Yuri's "psychic abilities" was more amusing - they read up on some cons and scams using mindreading and precog, and wore low-necked outfits for the interview with the science boffins at the 3WA. Then again, the AW Dirty Pair are much more over-the-top than the original - though, sadly, not enough Yuughi for my taste.

Looks to me, an IDHMBIFOM, that you'd have to send them to another dimension. OTOH, that would just infect another world with Unity, wouldn't it? What happens if two Unity groups meet?

While I don't know the "Gwendolin" reference, I like to consider myself a Gutter dweller, and this lack of pervy knowledge pains me greviously. Could you expand on this point, here or privately?

Then convert the Negabolt into the Goodiebolt(pending)! Turn all of the KA dice into Transform, split equally between Mental and Spiritual, and have the change be "target into target who is basically good and decent." Whatcha think?

Win.

If each spell is a KS, then you buy Scholar, you end up with 11- for 1 point. Then you can add Skill Levels. OTOH, I do wish there were more gradiation in skill levels. It's the only thing I really miss from GURPS. Heck, if I could import the skill system from JAGS into HERO, and have it work halfway decently, I'd be a happy little kitten.

I'm in the process of reading American Gods (if you haven't, do so as soon as you can) and I just ran across this particular passage. What I'm wondering is, how would you go about reproducing this in Hero? I know Telepathy, but where do you go from there? You don't want to know what they're thinking, exactly, but more like little details about them, the stuff that they know. Bartleby does this in Dogma as well, and it drove me nuts then, too. Any help out there for a poor helpless gamer?

Eh, I don't know. I think he's icky, but no worse than, oh, every damn character in Kult. Any game that casually assumed physical/psychological/sexual abuse as a matter of course.... Then again, I like a little dark in my games. Now if this guy were supposed to be a PC, I'd be worried.

If you consider that many of her "Billion Dimensions" have loooong since been assimilated by her empire (by like hundreds of years), she probably doesn't need that big an armed force internally. Washington D.C. doesn't bother posting troops in Atlanta to combat the Leeite threat, y'know? Her superbeings might serve primarily as a cross between the Federation and the US National Guard - there to maintain a visible presense for order and to lend a hand when needed for disasters and such. I have to admit, I really like V'han - I'd like to see what people would do when presented with such a offer. She offers peace and plenty, and won't really affect the day-to-day life of anybody. I'd love the chance to play in a world where one of the bigger superteams was composed (almost) entirely of her emissaries - preventing natural disasters, defending the people of earth from supervillians, etc. etc., all while showing the advantages of being part of the Billion Dimensions. Could be fun.

-grumbles- Well, bugger. I was hoping it would be buyable at the SD ComiCon (July 17-20). Now I have to wait almost a half a week after that?? Darn you, Steve Long! Darn you to heck!!!!! Seriously, this is good news. While not soon enough for my taste, at least it'll be out before August. -rubs greedy little hands together- Oh boy oh boy oh boy....

All those in favour, say 'aye'.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bejita So.... in a one-on-one fight between the Kayli and Vegita, who would win? My money is on Vegita, but only because he is far cooler than anyone else in the setting, with the possible exception of #18.

Okay, I don't know if this is going to sound very obvious or not, but here goes.... When you are running your campaigns, do you have a single major plot arc going, with minor, character-focused arcs in the background, or multiple major plot arcs? To give an example of what I mean, say each character has their schtick (powered armour, mystic, martial artist, alien, etc) and there is (probably) something happening in each session for each of them, completely (or partly so) unrelated to the other arcs in progress: The powered armour guy is trying to track down a new criminal threat using man-portable weapons that have the same energy signature as his Concussion Cannon . Where did they get them, and how many more are they? The mystic is hunting down a pack of messy vampires, encountering both assistance and opposition from the mystic community. The martial artist has learned of a new body of techniques that allow the user to manipulate chi to purge the body of poison and disease, and reenergise the body, restoring youth and vigor. Other martial artists are after this as well; most shouldn't ever get their hands on it. The alien is searching for clues of a fleet resupply ship that crashed here several decades ago, in the middle of the southwestern quadrant of the North American continent. Unfortunately, there appears to be a well-established military base right near the crash site. Surely they must have harvested the ship for parts, but why doesn't he see any of the obvious effects in terrestrial technology? Would you ever try to run all the arcs at once, and if so, how would you go about it?

Got mine yesterday. Got to wonder what is in Steve's brain that lets him think up such wonderful stuff. My only complaint is that the Darkness powers section is kinda scanty - I'd come up with variations of most of them. Guess I'll have to actually get creative and try to add to the online USPD.

I didn't want to hijack OberonGX's thread, so I decided to start one of my own. I got a question for all you HERO gurus; when it comes to creating Templates (forgive me SJG for my theft), how much is too much? In modern settings it's different (at least I think so), but in fantasy settings you would be justified in having three templates; racial, occupational, and cultural. And in each of those, you could get even more detailed;give them facets that the basic concept doesn't have. What I want to know is, how much do you put into your templates? I like mine to be pretty detailed, but sometimes this means that they get pretty point heavy; skills and perks cost, boys and girls. I'll search through my stuff and try to find some of my templates to give y'all an example, but for now I just wanted to see what I could get started.

IMX, Cap has been one of the better "agile-quick-talented" fighters in Marveldom for quite a while. Sure they bring up that whole "human, pure human" stuff, but it doesn't stop him from doing darn near anything he pleases if it looks cool. Actually, the NCM doesn't mean you have to stop there if you're a "normal" - it just means you have to pay more. I'm not saying that Bats is a Dex 36 or anything, but I think his multi-decade career has made him, well, "more human than human." The guy is really good, Stargazer; almost scary good, if you see my meaning. You're right, he's not as dexterous as Spidey - at least, not natively. His obscene agility comes from training, and lots of it - same as Batman. Now, there are two ways to represent someone who has less native Dexterity than Spiderman, but is trained up to near his level; give him truckloads of Skill Levels, both Dex-based and Combat. This will represent that his Dex isn't where he gets this ability from. Or, you can simply make his Dex high enough to do it, add some Skill levels for flavour, and mention the training in his Background. Whereas I would say Cap has a Speed of 5 with a bunch of Lightning Reflexes, or a 6 with less LR. And Bats would be a hair behind Cap. But he would be craftier, so he'd still kick his butt. I think that's due to playing this system for so long that we tend to see things through the system. When I went to see The One, with Jet "kicked all your asses" Li, my first thought when he started to run after his counterpart and was beating the cars to him was "Oooh, his Speed and Run just went up. Can't wait for the other Aids to kick in." :D I still think it's due to having a system that allows us to replicate damn near anything we want - you start to use it for everything.

I like Chart 1 myself; while I think that increasing immunity to damage should cost, I think Chart 2 is too pricy for the value. Though I would add that 100% Reduction should have at least three Stop Signs (like anyone needed to be reminded of that).

Well, flexible scheduling anyhow - I used to work in a related field, so I know a bit about the "other side" of the job. Provided you can call in, your time is your own, though. Only if you're really hot, or fairly hot and come across to the marks. OTOH, it's a great way to justify any strange money levels - all the dancers I knew spent money like water. You're right about the "no real qualifications" part - heck, you don't even need to be a great dancer. It's a good way to meet your contacts, too.

So how about some more details on it? Like a name maybe? I like this idea.

Granted, I come from a deendee background, but I always said "diemon" myself; comes from my Latin classes, where "ae" is pronounced "long i". Though I can see "deemon", too.