Tasha

This is why I ALWAYS have my Egoists have a Dex and Ego that are the same value. That way there is no wierdness on the speed chart. Besides DCV is always useful. And ECV's on most characters usually hover around 4 anyways. Tasha

Nope, I use minis in my games. I even make sure that everyone has their own figure. I haven't found software that is easy to use for making maps. So I end up drawing things out on a Mega-mat. Tasha

Hand-held computing devices- up to and including hand-held AI devices (like Box from StarCops). AIs and computers need more coverage in a book soon. Tasha

Re: 10. Curiosity – Why An 8-point Combat Skill Level It exists for people like me who don't want a character who has a +1 with everything. It gives me the ability to build the character I want instead of a character dictated by what is more "Cost effective". For different characters I use different level costs based on what they know. ie Perhaps I am running a character who is a combat expert but not one who is good at every thing she does. Also some GMs don't allow 10pt levels. These GMs believe that Overall levels are too powerful for the cost. Tasha

I fear Egoists most. They are the ones that can make you attack your teammates or your teammates attack you. I hate it when I am not in complete control. Drainers can be annoying, but it is just a different kind of damage. Both kind of characters get my biggest and best attacks to take them out quickly before they do even more damage to the team. Tasha

Re: Re: Re: Not Overpriced 1) P 137 FReD states that "Other than Grab and "punch" (Strike) a character cannot use TK to perform any other Combat Maneuvers. It does go on to state that at "GM's Option" that it is possible to use maneuvers that the character paid for (ie Martial Arts Maneuvers) So in many campaigns this wouldn't be true. 2) True 3) See #1 this is at GM's option only 4) True 5) Open to interpretation, but yes if the TK character can see the Driver of the car then they could be attacked through the windshield of the car 6) I would personally rule that this one is more of a suit of armor than a vehicle. It could also run into the can't see the pilot then can't use TK rule. Also see above again for using Maneuvers with TK Tasha

If you want Magic Res D&D style then Supress and Damage Reduction doesn't cut it. In D&D it is an all or nothing sort of thing. So IF I were going to right up MR then I would do it this way. 8d6 Dispel Magic 0 End Persistant Continuous 0 Range, Self Only It's kind of expensive, but it does give the feel of D&D style all or nothing MR. I kept the dice down to make it less of a sure thing against 30pt effects. If your campaign has higher power levels or your critter has higher MR then up the Dispel dice accordingly. Tasha

Re: DeMunkining Forgotten Realms I currently run a Forgotten realms Game. I run it using D&D as I cannot get my group to use FH. I can understand that you are sick of Drizzt clones, but it can be fun to break Stereotypes by playing heroic Dark Elves. Just tell the players that they can't have any of the special abilities besides the Darkvision. It was a part of Drow lore that they lost their powers when away from the Underdark. I take the 7 Sisters and Elminster and just assume that their Attension is elsewhere. There are rumors of what they are doing, but no one ever sees them. They are like the President, you may be lucky to see him in your lifetime, but it is possible that you would never see him in person. BTW the gods haven't walked Faerun in years, so there is little chance of the players feeling left out. I love running the Realms they have lots of detail and humanity. Faerun does have some capacity for munchkinism, but like many games that depends mostly on the players and GM. I don't believe that it is built into the world. Remember in the books we are always seeing the view point of the PCs and their supporting characters, not the regular people. Just my 2c Tasha

Re: Re: Fry's good service!? Toot away, They are a great store. The service is top notch. Tasha

While WAY out of date this is my favorite Fry's article. http://www.gshotts.com/HUMOR/BreakfastAtFrys/breakfas.htm Since that was written, the Sunnyvale Frys moved about 4blocks away and now has a Museum of Technology motif and the Fremont Frys has moved under some scary, big, buzzing high voltage backbone towers. It's motif is Electricity, of course. Here in the Bay Area Frys is renouned for their attension to Ad errors, Long lines, and Clueless Salespeople who ignore you. Tasha

I recommend starting slow. I would suggest taking a character out of the Champions source book (Ironclad pg 184 is good) and run some battles slowly exploring the different maneuvers. Looking up all of his powers and seeing how they work. I would then mix it up playing different members of the champions against each other seeing how their powers work. Then after you have played in a few battles, then I would attack the character generation rules. Again the Champions are great for figuring out power levels and what powers go together. Don't worry about making complex characters, that will come with experience with the system. Welcome to the Hero System! Tasha

The series as a whole really made me want to run it. It really brought me back into gaming after not doing it for 4 years after a messy game group breakup. I ran a game that brought together people who hadn't played any form of hero for that whole time. They loved the new setting so well they suprised me by demanding that I run it using Fuzion. We ended up bending Fuzion some so that we could build more complex characters. It was fun. The book that made me fall in love with CNM was Alliances. That was the book that brought it all together for me. Villians that were just so much cardboard in 1-4 ed Hero were suddenly brought into 3 dimensions. I could understand their motivations, I could see how the characters thought. You are right 1st person narrative isn't enough, there has to be good material there as well. The funny thing about CNM is that it seems that Marvel has caught up to it with it's Untimate series. The whole Reinterpret all of the characters, Blow up something that is a fixture of the game world. Have many heroes and villains that you don't like be in the blast. If you need them to come back write a good backstory about how they escaped the disaster. When I finally run again, I will probably use CNM. With the "official" Champions campaign city being Detroit, I just don't see being comfortable running a game in a place that I have no real context. Running in the Bay Area, gives me home field advantage. I understand how the Bay Area works. I also enjoyed many of the characters in CNM. I kind of found Team Defender somewhat annoying, but still a real inventive concept. It was also jarring having him be such a novice after being used to him being competent in 4th ed. I liked Quantum from that book more as well she felt more 3D with a better background. BTW the Comics inside of CNM (1ed Hardbound limited ED) make it quite clear that she is African-American. She may be blonde, but her skin is dark. Behemoth was a neat brick/metamorph. The kind of person who is always fighting their nature to do the right thing. Solitare. Not a girl anymore, but a competent woman. And no silly widget kludgy focus excuse. Seeker: now more gritty and not a punching bag. Looks really tough. What the 4th ed Seeker should have been from the start.

Re: curious Actually I suggest just this when the Champions universe was in the being thought of stage. IMHO the current characters feel cold. The CNM versions had more heart due to the fiction in all of the books. I especially liked the bios that were written in character. They really made the characters feel real to me. In CNM allies they took villians that I always thought of as lack luster and through the biographys made them living characters. I guess that shows that 1st person narritive is much more powerful than 3rd person narrative. tasha

Re: Re: Just give guidelines I guess what I am trying to say is that there are many different approaches to fantasy. My FH games have never felt like champions games set in a low tech past with magic. Again, many players are coming into this game from playing D&D. That is nothing new D&D is the breeding ground for Hero players. I have found however that it is quite a culture shock to go from a game that will let you have your pick from hundreds of spells that you can cast a few times a day to a Game system that allows you a few spells that you can cast as often as you have end. Now with 3rd Ed D&D you have players that want to have their characters do all sort of wild things. So, I am finding it more interesting to go with that flow. I also like to make characters that break stereotypes. So, I let my players have fun and blaze new trails. Even without NCM penalties, that dex 20/str 20 halfling will have spent a lot of points on her stats. That is 6-7 points that they could have spent on skills. I tend to run a talking heads heavy game. There is combat, but I really enjoy character interactions. Having a deep skill list is a real plus in my games. Also, if I had a player who wanted to run a character like that, I would talk to them and see if they would pick one niche or the other. I think that Speed and Dex inflation comes more from the GM not making sure that the players have good solid niches than anything else. Unusual characters make it easy to come up with a hook early in the character's life. If I have the 30 str/20 int Ogre, what would she be like. How would others have treated her when she was young? I still say having good guidelines are better than NCM. I would rather have that than concrete limits with penalties for going over the limit. I would like to think that my players are grown up enough to make decent characters that are fairly balanced. They also know that I look over every character and will strongly suggest changes that need to be made to an unbalanced character. There has always been an issue with races and NCM. The bestiary doesn't make the animals take NCM. It seems like a strange thing to make a PC Awakened Dire Wolf take NCM when the NPC one will not. It is consistancy, that is why the 5th edition was originally needed. To provide a consistancy to the rules that was not really there in 4th edition. It is really like the "Special" rule on healing as it applies to Regeneration. I hate exceptions, they make for a more confusing rule set. Tasha

Just give guidelines I sometimes really hate this "you have to justify everything your character has with story" mentality that some people have. Hell, if I want to run a 20 str Hobbit Barbarian. If it's fun, why not? Sure it can be fun to come up with excuses for excessive stats, but it shouldn't be required. Not everyone likes that style of play. BTW many people come to this game system from D&D where at 1st level you can have a 16 str Halfling/hobbit. I always tell my players that I love Hero because we can make any kind of character we want. Here is one way that we artificially limit that creativity. Just let the player have fun making the character she has always wanted ot play. I just usually give guidelines with the average and the highest ever seen for that race. If someone wants to play a high stat character, fine. Just make sure that the character has some skills or she will feel really left out when we are not fighting something. If there is a skill for it and your haven't purchased it, it doesn't matter how high your stat is. Your roll is 8- at best I have always run with NCM, but keeping the points given at character creation and experience low you shouldn't have much of a problem with running without. GM participation in character creation is the best way to prevent unbalanced characters from slipping through. Tasha

There is an Advantage that covers that. It is called Invisible Power effects. I would limit is someway so that only the specific power is masked, not the attack streaking to the target. Tasha

Sorry guy, I don't really have an opinion about the letter. I wasn't really ignoring you. Please feel free to jump in again. I remember the post, but there have been 133 posts since February. So, please join us. We will get back to the plot line. We just need time to bond as a team. Tasha/ Fury

IMHO powered armor should be able to effect what ever stats that the player wants it too. As far as I am concerned if a player wants to give me the ability to take away her superhuman stats for an adventure that is quite fine by me. Con= on board medical systems that provide instant injections of medicine to keep the operator alert. You could also say that those internal dampners also keep the armor temperature at a constant level, and have the entire thing be totally insulated from electrical attacks. BODY is from thick armor, the ability of the suit to take punishment. Dex could be from detectors, leads and sensors that attach to the brain through the skull, or through a data jack. Speed can also be from the same things as DEX. In the Champions games that I played in we never had much of a problem with any stat inflation due to competition. We always knew what the acceptable ranges were. The Dexes were from 18-33 (23 being average. Speed being from 4-7 (5 being average). We always played that Bricks had lower Dex and Speed, Martial Artists and Speedsters were at the top and Energy projectors were in the middle. It all seemed to work out. We used teamwork on villains that we couldn't just hit one on one. It wasn't until I recently started a champions game with a new group that these assumptions came into question. The players all wanted to have a huge dex and speed. Kind of frustrating as I really like to run a game that is lots of roleplaying (talking heads and character/ plotline development) punctuated with at least one combat per game. It keeps everyone happy, especially me who doesn't really like to run combats. Tasha

Pretty cool. Too bad I can't talk my players out of 3rd edition... BTW the Dark Blue on Black is really really hard to read. Tasha

Just to be picky. In 3rd edition D&D a Masterwork sword is +1 to hit. No other bonuses are possible unless you enchant the blade or make it from one of the special materials So the idea of +1 OCV would work perfectly to simulate a D&D style Masterwork weapon. Special materials: Mithral: the Weapon is 1/2 weight Adamantine: DC 1-3 base weapon = 1DC & 1 OCV added; 4-6 dc weapon 2 dc and 2 OCV added. (This is also not dispellable as it is the material and not a spell) This one if a little harder to mess with. It does feel like it is in the spirit of D&D rules. Though it does kind of feel like it is on the brink of being too powerful. You really have to careful with magic items in FH as they can quickly mess up the game balance. just my 2c, Tasha

Actually you are thinking in AD&D terms. In 3rd Ed Drow keep all of their abilities, they just start at a lower level to compensate for their powers. So no more stupid "you lose all of your powers when you leave the underdark" I seem to remember that Drizzt could use his Levitation and his other Drow abilities in the other books, but usually didn't for some reason. I say this as I remember times in the latter books that he would suddenly use his levitate (during the drow invasion for instance). Also if you are going to use a dispel to represent his Magic Resistance you would have to make sure that you make it 0 end, Continous, Persistant and inate as it cannot be dispelled. It is really expensive in Hero. Tasha