ghost-angel

You don't pay the END cost of reverting when knocked unconcious. And depending on the special effect of the power it may not be as simple as "turning the power off".

I ran a game to a soundtrack at one point.. the logisitcs of getting the right kind of music at the right moment were a bit of a pain - but thank the Gods for MP3s and laptops! Combat consisted of various tracks from the following list: KMFDM, Atari Teenage Riot, Die Krupps, Disturbed, Static-X, Anthrax (Caught In A MOSH!), Fear Factory and Bypass Unit. Non-Combat ranged all over the place from Future Sound Of London (awesome for city-scape backgrounding, esp ISDN) to any random heavy metal track (some of my favorite being Megadeath, AC/DC and old Metallica) to just stuff. and Iron Maiden, always had a Maiden track in a session somewhere. Also, I fit songs to the locale, if in a club I pulled out some 80s Club Remixes, a bar I varied from basic rock to blues to country.

unless they act in the same phase in which case DEX determines order, regardless of SPD. If a SPD8 DEX13 and SPD4 DEX23 Character go in the same phase the DEX23 guy goes first. SPD just lets you go more times per Turn. Most characters will have at least SPD3 or 4, so they will go by Segment 3, unless you've got Super High SPD ppl they will only get one action before the lower SPD character on average.

You need Usable On Others to give the person you're "throwing" the flight. As for MegaScale on STR .. not sure that's something you can do.

Instead of waiting for the revised pick upSidekick, it'll have the basic rules to help you get into 5th and explain the new effects of Change Environment in brief. All of the above are good builds for the end result, you just have to decide what the Despair really is.

Just the other day I was making rules for skateboarder-fu. small world. Also buy Skill Levels with the movement of the bike to decrease turning modes.

Depends entirely on special effects... can be difficult to put the trip wire back on a land mine, but taking down the trip wire with a skill roll once it's found, or by the person who set it, should not require an additional advantage on the power. In other words, depending on what the Trigger is, you should be able to take it down for free, or at worst require a skill roll.

One of the things I did when running my cyberpunk games is force player to spit out actions without any pause. i held the following rules: For character talking in combat 0-5 words = 0 phase 6-10 words = 1/2 phase 11-15 words = full phase 16+ words = I moved onto next person mid sentence. When I spoke your name you had to give me a one sentence description of what your action will be, then soliloquy, then roll, then done. next. I ran this method with a bunch of new-to-Hero players, though not new to gaming in general. most of them were OK at best roll-players. To my surprise they cooperated with me rather well and combat hummed along. I ran a full 2 Turn combat in fifteen minutes flat with basically newbies (3-4 SPD characters, so not very many actions per Turn, but enough). One of the things I notice people forget is that a Phase/Segment is 1 second long. Time yourself talking and see how many words you actually get out in 1 second or what you can really do. Realizing Hero is Heroic this can be bent a little, but still - 1 second is a very very short time. Hammer it into the players brains that their Phase is part of a 1 second Segment. Ive had games where entire conversations have taken place in a combat that would normally take fifteen minutes. Bad mojo. Bad combat. Bad GM for not stopping it.

Mind Control could easily work .. just make your Mind Control effect to tell the opponent "You will only fight at half effectiveness because you are very very depressed." which should be interpreted as they will only use offensive powers at half power level, should not being trying as hard to hit or dodge (1/2 OCV&DCV), and might even lower their defenses. This would be a Mind Control at EGO+20 at the very least, EGO+30 on the average. If you preface the Mind Control with a PRE attack that might make them think twice about attacking you it might warrant a minor bonus to the MC roll. I would say a PRE+20 would give a +5 to the MC roll at the most.

Also, sometimes it just makes sense for a shapeshifting power to not shift back when the character has been knocked out. The rules say no under strick interpretation, but any reasonable GM might allow a character to remain in the shifted form unconcious. It really comes back to which would make more sense for the story, regardless of the mechanics.

This has all sorts of issues with it that would make most people I know balk. First being everyone having a 6 spd. One of the best elements of HERO combat is you can have Speedsters and Normals and the in between. Forcing eveyone into the same SPD immediately removes those options and makes it like every other rather boring game system. Not to mention all the other problems you will incur since the HERO system is based around 12 1-second segemnts per Turn. Next is END. Since you mentioned the need to wait for your turn here's what I do: figure out what I want to do and subtract my END before I even go. Adding and subtracting small numbers cannot be that time consuming. Buy a calculator, pen and pad of paper. On that note.. once you have the pad and paper have everyone make a dozen combat rolls, write down the roll and use them in combat instead of rolling right then. Just go down the list. Basically, it can come down to what you do with your "dead" time - do you sit and wait for your name to be called, or do you start number crunching and come up with a plan and when you do get to go you're ready.

pg 69 - "Persistent powers never cost END." To me that reads that a Persistent power will never cost endurance, no matter what. HD won't even let you purchase Persistent for "Cost END only to change." - and considering Dan's adherance to the rules I'm going to use that as the defacto ruling. Even Multiform, which is normally Persistent becomes "Constant" when the "Cost END only to change forms" limitation is applied - and specifically states a character will return to their base form when knocked out. (pg 138.) You want it Persistent, it has to cost no END, ever. But then, like I said in my answer to 1. above - GMs can change things as they see fit.

PRE attacks have to be made in order for them to apply. In mass combat you can either take the "constant state of PRE attack" in place or you could simulate it like this. This isn't a bad construct and isn't reliant on a PRE being made by the enemy, it just is. As for HERO not being a war game .. why not?

I would move it down to 2" of swimming with those limitations. no need to buy all that movement if you can't actually move with it.

I no longer play with people of that nature .. if someone is going to, or does, throw a hissy fit over something of that nature then don't play with them. A good player will roll with the punches, deal with mistakes and get over it. A bad player will stomp/whine/moan and bitch their way through the whole ordeal and cause more issues than they could ever possibly solve. If he quit you're probably going to start having sessions that a more rewarding, enriching and overall better. Of course, I've noticed I'm turning into a bit of an elitiste as I age .. I don't like immature players and I don't like two-dimensional players. Unless I'm GMing oddly enough, in which case my tolerance level goes up quite a bit - probably because I know I can smite the bugger at whim.

I agree with Dust Raven here, this is one Psych Lim with varying degrees of severity dependent on situation. I might make it a 20 pt Psych Lim depending on the campaign. Or possibly depending on the soldier, a green would have a 20 pt Psych Lim, a Vet a 15 pt, and a Seasoned Vet a 10 ot. Psych Lim - with actual reaction based on how much the EGO roll was made/missed by.

Here's one possibility: Use RKA or EB as you see fit, and fits the campaign - some are more lethal than others. First Attack is a special effect Cold and does some damage, Second Attack is a special effect Heat and does some damage, Link them so they go off in the same attack, then add a third power into the link that is Hypothermia (damage from quick changes in temperature), linked to either (I don't believe you can link it to both) of the previous Attacks with the additional requirement that BOTH the Cold and Heat attacks needs to do Body damage to the target or it doesn't do anything. Under fifth edition you would use the Compound Power structure.

1. Usually, yes since you're changing shape again. (I say usually because GMs change things occasionally.) 2. Yes, check the rules on Constant Powers FREd pg. 69 for further clarification. 3. To buy the power persistent it must cost 0 END. Rules for Persistent powers are also on pg. 69 last, yes a revised edition will be out, according to the release schedule, in 2005.

I see this as a sort of case by case basis,Always On only works if it is ALWAYS on, Not "When I'm talking", or "When I blink" but All The Time, can't turn it off no matter what. If if were a conditional power that can't be controlled and triggers when the condition is met (the Bore's Drain INT when talking) that sounds like a variation of Always On, or a rather odd limitation. Maybe: Drain: 1D6 INT, Limited Power: 0END (+1/2) Always On, only when talking (-1/4). [AP: 15, RC: 12] Always On is normally -1/2, I'd let you make it conditional in this instance since to turn off the power you simply don't talk - learn sign language or write notes to communicate. Since there's a way to easily prevent the power from working I wouldn't give you the full Always On limitation. But it is worth something since you end up using against your friends as well as enemies.

Another thing to keep in mind is just because it's not on the character sheet doesn't mean you can't roleplay it out and/or have a particular psychological quirk. The ones on the sheet are usually the most prominent or the ones most easily used against you (hence, the Disadvantage label). sometimes you can have psychological limitations that are there, but aren't very exploitable or just define personality. In which case just go ahead and another disad worth no points or just write it down. there's nothing saying you can't have more psych. lim.'s than "allowed." Take as many as you see fit, your GM will decide if you get points for all of them. One of the reasons I see for limiting the number of points from any one disadvantage counting is to make you diversify a bit. Sure, I could come up with hundreds of points of Psych Lim's for characters, but only having 50 to work with makes me think what else the character might have that is disadvantageous to them?

there's no way I'd allow No Range on an RKA, that's what HKA is for. I think you want Beam on these. RKA: 2d6, AP (+1/2), 0 END (+1/2), OAF bulky (-1 1/2), Beam (-1/4) AP: 60, RC: 22 or to better represent a conitnuous rate of fire that doesn't turn off for 12 phases: RKA: 2D6, AP (+1/2), 0 END (+1/2), Continuous (+1), OAF Bulky (-1 1/2), Beam (-1/4), 1 Full Turn Continuous Only (-0). AP: 90, RC: 33 At least, that's my take on it right now. I might have a better idea after sleep.

You know... we run into this all the time, apparently our GM is under the impression the battle hasn't gone well until one or all of the PCs have been stripped by an explosion of some kind. I finally made a character who that can't happen to: Instant Change: Clothing - Triggered to "Clothes shredded to less than 50% coverage by attacks." Just set the trigger when I go into battle and voila, the character stays in clothing.

I'm attempting to create a SH setting, though very very slowly, really slowly. Almost stalled kind of slowly now that I think about it. The point being .. speed. How fast can each culture get any given distance. I started with the 20ly by 20ly Sector and asked myself, how fast does the average merchant, cruise and other common vessels go from point to point? Then I made engines. Once that was decided I picked a Sector as a Middle Point and made it completely. And once I figured out how fast one can go from sector to sector on average that gave me a rough idea of how far out to go in mapping sectors in detail, then I just simply named sectors beyond that point with rough outlines up to twice the distance away (If I'm going 10 sectors out in detail, I go another 10 in vague detail), beyond that the game would decide which areas get further time/detail. How far out you go can be defined by how far out the players can get in a reasonable time. And if they insist on just travelling outwards stop them every half sector Star Trek style and force them to deal with a problem, should give you a few sessions to map something out.

Ideas ... sourcebooks give me good ideas to start from. And personalities, it's good to have characters made by other people to use since they're created from a different frame of mind than I have. As for Bases needing Life Support .. if the base is in Downtown City and running to the grocery store when you run out of Cheerio's is an easily accomplished tash then it is extranious. When the base is located a hundred forty seven miles above the planet then running out of Cheerios won't be an issue until you run out of CocoaPuffs and LuckyCharms and soon you've got a team of superheros staring at a box of stale Grapenuts going "I thought YOU went grocery shopping." THEN Life Support becomes important because it tells you how long before said super-team resorts to fighting over stale Grapenuts. It's also good for StarHero to represent getting stuck in space with no engines and wondering just how long before the food runs out... Of course, YMMV.

no, that pretty much covers it in the simplest form. Detect: Dead People defined as Sight and Hearing Groups. (two detects, one for each.)