AmadanNaBriona

Re: New advantage "Scour" LMAO Ok, ok... you may have a vaild point there. And they weren't anywhere near the nastiest weapons in the game IIRC that honor went to an illegal black ops assaination weapon that did a 5d6 NND does body, Invisible power effects variable time delay RKA monster of a hideaway weapon. possession was a capital offence. It was intended as a plot device toy. One player was assigned one for a mission, and used it with the reverence, stealth, and caution it deserved. Another player lifted it off him and proceeded to wreak mayhem with it. Guess which one got arrested and executed by firing squad?

Re: Class in Fantasy This one is an excellent point. I suspect the reason Brehon Law and Irissh culture was so tolerant and enlightened is because they had abundant resources available to them, and fairly low population density. The norse culture was a lot harsher,. but as they spread they mellowed, as they gained access to greater resources and melded in cultural traits from colonized areas (like Ireland and eastern England)

Re: Class in Fantasy well, you can always go for an expanded tribal/clan structure. It's fairly simlar to the feudal model, but because duties and obligations tend to run along extended family lines the lower working class generally was treated better. A common English complaint abpout Scottsmen as late as the 18th century was that even a pauper carried himself as if he were a king. Partially this is also due to vigous attention to lineage, including fosterage ties. You may be a rock farmer, but If you know that your great great grandfather was the brother to the founder of the clan you can still hold your head up in pride. There still may or may not be a slave class, but the slaves are usually prisoners of war or criminals and usually their children were born as freemen. The Celts and Norse both had similar systems. In fact, the pre-christian, pre-feudal celts had an EXTENSIVE legal system that pretty well eliminated most of the gross injustices found in humanity. The Norsemen we're quite so nice, but even so thier culture was a lot more enlightened than most romantic scholars give them credit for. The breaking point is usually when the ruling class beings to see power as a right rather than a responsibility.

Re: New advantage "Scour" very very true. Remember folks... while point costs weren't all that important because it was a heroic level game, I used this advantage in a campaign that lasted some 8 years. there were only a few semi common weapon systems that used Scour (and many of them were AP as well) and they always caused a cartain amount of PC "Whoa... DUCK!" moments. Particle Beams, for instance, had a very disctinct bright green signature that caused anyone with a smidgen of combat experience to hit cover and get real serious in a big hurry.

Re: A new idea for how to handle VPP's I think where hes going is something like this... Gadget Pool 90 point reserve= 90 RP 30 active point maximum Control Cost=15 base points (-1/2)all powers must take -1/2 worth of Focus limitations (-1/2) powers can only be changed at base/lab total control cost: 7.5 points total cost :97.5 points (round appropriately) So you can fill this pool with 30 AP, OIF gadgets which cost you 20 Rp each, and you can have 4 of them in the pool with no other limits, and still have room for another 20 AP OAF. Or you could have 6 OAF gadgets at 30 AP each. And you can always add more limits to your toys as appropriate

Re: New advantage "Scour" OK...so heres another, slightly more "game design philsophy" and less crunchy mechanics.... do you think that, if it was used the way I did in our campaign (i.e. reducing the armor only on the specific location hit), it should be tired the same way 5th does NND, Autofire and the like... Perhaps +1 1/2 normally, but, say +3/4 if applied only to a specific location? (As this reduces the EWWWWWW factor by a LOT)

Re: New advantage "Scour" You've got some good points here. One possible quibble is that the final toatal cost with this write up SHOULD also include the point break for putting the -1/2 Linked limitation on the RKA as well, because if its supposed to model an advantage neither can be used without the other. That drops 15 points off the total cost, which wacks things a bit out of line just a touch. Another ione, whichh I freely admit I may be spacing out on, is that the effect doesn't seem to be tied to or limited by the damage on the RKA. I think I'm convinced that it needs to be a larger Advantage, but I'm still not convinced that the effect is worth a +1 1/2 in practical terms... the same as an attack with NND (common defence) Does Body, which seems to me to be better than this ability. I could see it as a +1 Advantage... It seems in line with Does Body, Continuous, or Useable as Attack in utility.

Re: New advantage "Scour" Part of the reason for the custom advantage was to divorce the effect from Power Defence and tie it to hardening instead. I handwaved this as approximately a net +0. The reasoning behind using suppress was that the conditions for removing the damage aren't time based, but rather condition based. Supresses go completely away. Drains heal. And I still have issues with drain fade rates for permentant effects. like you said... they're nasty. But its a kind of nasty that, like I said, leaves the GM on the horns of a dilemma... Do I let the expensive armor destroying power hose my PC and be worth its hideous cost, or do I let my PC replace his defences between scens or sessions... thus invalidating the massive cost of the drain. Good point and a great catch. If I used the actual construct rather than just building it to compare effect to the advantage I'd definitely change it To clarify my earlier statement. I really like transforms. A lot. its actually really WAY to easy to do almost anything not covered elsewhere with transforms. But as a way of doing a cost comparison to another effect to see if my custom advatage was approximately costed right, it wouldn't work. the problem with the transform approach is that its a bit sketchy. I thought about a transform that gives the armor the Ablative limit, but in play it is clunky, again. The model I was working with, by following the Penetrating mechanism, works rather elegantly and doesn't cause much of an in play headache EDIT: BTW... thanks for the feedback Prestidigitator

Re: A new idea for how to handle VPP's I really do like how "rectangular" this model is (to use a term from Killer Shrikes link). I'm already pondering how it can be used for plot device mages and the like... Huge control cost, wee little reserve, perfect for representing those mighty archmage types who can level armies as long as they have about a week to prepare, tons of materials, the stars in alignment and all that jazz.

Re: A new idea for how to handle VPP's Yeah...I kinda miss the Old Skool Gadget Pools too.

Re: Penalty Skill Levels I completely agree. I'm even somewhat inclined to go directly against the rules and allow some PSL's to work towards DCV... such as PSL's that apply to encumberance penalties. And I've always liked the idea of PSL's with skills to represent someone with superior skills.... good way to pull off MacGuyverisms.

Re: Penalty Skill Levels Sounds like you think the same way I do.

Re: New advantage "Scour" First off, let me explain the Metagame resons I cooked this up. Star Hero, more than many other genres, often leads towards a very high AP value for attacks in order to make them feel "in genre". This usually means that you're looking at rather high defences as well. At the time, I was trying for a campaign where combat "felt" like the combat scenes in Hammers Slammers. While the system already has advantages for bleeding damage past defences (Penetrating) and pucnhing through more effectively( AP), the only systems it has for attacks that can whittle through defences are either on the defence side (abalative) or by using a linked adjustment power. I wanted another power that was effected by, and could help cancel out, hardening, because the way things ended up going, there was a lot of hardneding running around to achieve the combat style I wanted. Scour was designed to help convince characters to keep their heads down, even if they were running around in powered armor or a tank. It increased the dramatic effect of sustained firefights a lot. Heavily armored targets might be able to soak up a few shots, but the more hits they managed to bounce, the more they begin to sweat. I always used hit locations as well, and only "scoured" the location(s) hit. gets that "one more hit on my left panel and I'm dead" Fear and loathing factor. that being said.... I HATE using drain like this. Its clunky, cumbersome, works against Power Defence, which has yet to be defined in any sort of reasonable pseudo scientific way. Power Def has its place mechanics wise, but is the only defensive power that there is almost nothing you can point to in R/L and say... "Look...Power defence!" with the exception of a few things that work against a specific SFX (EMP Sheilded electronics and flame retardant insulators come to mind) I you go the drain route, you're looking at 20 ap for 1d6 of effect against a defence, which you then have to drop an obscene fade rate multiplier on to reasonably represent actually trashing the armor. And even then... We had one character who was a "man out of time" survey scout who was a few thousand years old thanks to coldsleep and relativity effects. So he could, if hit wioth said drain, conceviably hop back in his ship and go to sleep till his armor was fixed. Not that I'd allow such an assinine move, but you see where I'm going with this? On top of this issue... The attacker is paying obscene amounts of points for a (mostly) incendantal effect. So you pay for a every 100 years fade rate on the drain. Bob the character gets hit. now... we have two options. Let Bob buy new armor, in which case MOST of the massive number of points spent for the fade rate advantage are lost. Or you don't let Bob ever replace his armor... In which case the points are justified, but the character is hosed, because after bouncing a couple of hits off his armor, he's gonna have to watch over his shoulder for Ewoks with slingshots trying to kill him. I went with the suppress model for just this reason. Its cumulative, which it needs to fit the design. I avoided Continous because Suppress is already constant, and making it continuous would allow it to keep depleting the armor. (most of my acid attacks using Scour were in fact built with Delayed effect to simulate this). I added persistent because even if you kill the guy who shot a hole in your armor, the hole doesn't go "poof" and disappear. 0 End Supresses require a defined way to remove the Suppress, which works (get new armor, or heal. Healing like it was Body does mean that healing technology/psi powers/magic and what not could help replace the lost power points, so there is some natural armor vs store bought balance) Uncontrolled was a possiblity I looked at, to achive the exact same "how does it come back" effect, but as its required for a 0 END suppress I felt it to be redundant. Adding the appropriate Linked limitation to the RKA to make the two attacks counter dependant on one another would prbbaly get enough points to add the extra +1/2 for uncontrolled if it bugs you. I suppose you could do something like this as a transform, but I''ve been trying REALLY hard not to default every semi permenant effect into a transform. It's a cop out.

Back in the olden days, in the process of doing Ironmongery for our Star Hero campaign (OK.. it was actually our "space game"... Espionage in space), I wrote up an advantage to simulate an attack that damages armor at the same time it does damage to the target. At the time, my reasoning was simple... adding Destruction linked to an attack was cumbersome, especialy to try and tie the two damage rolls together. With the demise of Destruction and its replacement with long term drains, it became even stranger. So I set out with 5th ed to see if it balanced out the way I had it written, realized that Suppress might be my best choice for the construct, and thus... Scour: +1/2 advantage for attacks that use the body count on dice (KA's mainly, tho could be applied to other attacks at GM's discretion), similar to Penetrating. As part of an attack, the "normal body" scored on the damage dice are removed from the targets DEF (rPD &rED). Thus a 3d6 Scour RKA hitting a target for a damage roll of 11 body (rolling 3, 6 and 2 on the dice) would remove 4 points of defence from the target. Contrasted to a by the rules build as a compound power... (well use 3d6 RKA as our sample, as the numbers work out cleanly) 3d6 RKA (45 AP) (will have a range of "Normal body" from 0-6) plus 3d6 Suppress (15 AP) Advantages: (+1/2) vs 2 powers simultaneously (rPD & rED), (+1/2) 0 End Cost (+1/2) Persistant (effect is removed by healing natural armor as if it were body, or by repairs to artifical armor) total AP: 37.5 Limitations: (-0) Standard effect (removes 1 DEF per normal body rolled) (-1/2) linked effect (-1/4) Costs Endurance, at activation only. Total Cost: 21.4 points point cost to add a +1/2 advantage to a 3d6 RKA: 22.5 I based the suppress on the cost of Armor (or PD/ED with Damage resistance) at 3 AP for 2 points of Armor, doubled to 6 points per 2 because its a defence, or in other words 3 points per 1 point of resistant defence, with the advantage allowing it to effect PD & ED simultaneously. The cumbersome 0 End Persistant with an activation END cost was needed to make the effect semi permenant while still adding to the END cost of the attack in the same way an advantage would and yet remaining a legal construct. I have used this house rule advantage for many years in my campaigns without substantially effecting game balance, and it has come in very handy for simulating effects like acid attacks, particle beams that slice holes in armor and the like. What do ya'll think? EDIT: One thing I forgot to factor in to the compound power version is some form of "stopped by Hardened" limitation

Re: A new idea for how to handle VPP's I've toyed around with a very similar idea, and really can see no balance issues with it (anymore than anything else in the system, anyway). Kudos to putting in out in such a conscise and claer fashion, and I hope we see this idea in a future suppliment, edition, or DH article. repped

Re: Penalty Skill Levels

Re: Musings on Random Musings Same reason why there are two Leonardo Di Caprio movies I actually like... Man in the Iron Mask and Romeo + Juliet. His main purpose in each is to be a whiny little bitch, which suits him well Edit: and because John Leguissiamo was SUCH a great Tybalt

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Ever gone out for a drive and stumbled onto a colony of bunnies? Its neat, and the girlfriends love it (Yes, I have always loved Watership Down, and do speak a little Lapin)

Re: The cranky thread I want to take a mulligan on the entire month of May. It began with fun times, immediately followed by the sinking realization that I had broken a very important peice of my anatomy (phlebitis, if anyone is interested), and has gone steadily downhill. My girl moved out to her own place for school, which blindsided me. In retrospect it makes a lot of sence and will eventually solve many of the power imbalances in our lives that were causing a lot of relationship stress, but being alone in bed at night for the first time in years was insanity making. This led to many fights. My general ADD nature makes it hard for me to focus on work when I'm stressed. And then that lack of focus makes me angry. Which makes me more stressed. which makes me less productive. See the trap? Then my jeep was broken into. Again. On Mothers Day, while I was trying to be Superpartner. So I lost the first new car stereo I've had, ever. Whichh was a birthday present from my girl. And had to fix my Jeep. Again. I can now swap out a wing vent window in 45 minutes with time for smoke breaks. Then, to top everything off, my damn cooling system decided to implode the Friday before I was supposed to leave town for an SCA event and a nightclub, both of which I was supposed to sell at. Missed the Crown event, made the club by the skin of my teeth. And now, here I am... I just finished rebuilding my Jeep, and am sitting here nursing a viking tan (Sunburn, for the non fair skinned out there) and reminding myself that if I start drinking again I probably won't stop. And all things being equal, things are actually looking up. Heres to June!

Re: Willing Targets & DCV I hadn't thought about it, but this does kind of raise the question... Why is it easier to hit a suprised out of combat person than the hex that suprised person is standing in?

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Sorry to hear that... my condolences and best wishes to you and your lady. Pets always manage to get past my armor and bury themselves deep in my heart, so I aways take their deaths poorly. Thought I'd share this with you... Deidre's Lament, by Heather Alexander, from Inish'Allah

Re: Herophile Fantasy art Dagnabbit... I had no idea that file was so large... my scanner defaulted to 300 dpi without my noticing. Can anybody explain why I can't scroll over to the right side of the page on oversized images? I can't get to the edit button to replace the attachment

Re: Herophile Fantasy art OK...so I just got to go on a long road trip to a show, as a passenger for once, and I did a lot of product sketches while riding. I inked one to try and play around with coloring it in photoshop to get an idea of how it would look out of the various leathers. This isn't all that pretty... I have a lot to learn about photoshop coloring...

Re: Herophile Fantasy art I REALLY like this one!

Re: Star Wars Hero Question The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of using the Force as a FH style Talent/Skill "magic system", with the level of "Strong in the Force" talent determining how large a pool the character has access to, and a set of "Force Skills" needed to use different disciplines. Thus one Jedi may be very good with Force sences, while another is comparitively weak in them, but may have high Psychokinesis skills. A big way to avoid the "I can do ANYTHING with the force" is simp-ley not to let the players allocate their pools... They state what effect their character wants and the GM determines if they have the ability and how it will play out. Could just be me tho.