AmadanNaBriona

Re: Opinions Sought: Limitations that great additional function Howzabout the classic "holy aura" type power... Ya know... say a 2d6 RKA, no range AOE radius continuous, Only vs "Evil" creatures (-1/2 to -1, depending on definition)... A pretty classic paladin/angel/holy avenger type power... with a fairly stock limitation that gives the player a point break for a limitation that effectively combines the useful parts of selective, personal immunity and a detect.

Re: Drain Leaping is a definite YES in my book... its an exertion of the stat, not a figured aspect of it. Same as damage dice... if the target is weaker, he can't lift as much, hit as hard, or jump as far. Mental Def is debatable, but due to the way that its figured, I'd say that no, it's not drained. The formula is very similar to a figured stat, and you'd effectivly gain extra value for your drain against opponents with Mental Def, which doesn't quite feel right. AS to the original question... Yes OCV, DCV, and order of action would all be affected by a dex drain.

Re: Hitting things with Thrown Things Hmmm... a potentially groovy way to handle this issue in a campaign just sort of popped into my head... its easy enough to make additional "optional" combat manuvers with the martial arts rules, and WF: Clubs is an everyman skill IIRC. It'd be easy enough to write up a few "brick trick" manuvers that are expressly intended for improvised weapons... Must think on this more when I have my books handy...

Re: Question: Compound NND I can see uses for a limitation like this... I'd probably call the limitation "Resistable"... good idea there... I might mess about with this repped

Re: Name This Hero "Ha! That'll throw a wrench in your plans!"

Re: Does wearing armor need a skill ? I've done a fair bit of fighting in real life in various forms of armor and using various weapons and combonations and I tend to agree that PSL's for removing armor penalties are the way to go. As for sheilds, they should require a WF. I've fought with them, I've fought against them, and given my experience they are more help than hinderance unless you have the experience and practice to use them right. In a FH campaign, I'd call the WF part of Common Melee familiarity, but in modern I'd put it as an unusual (not nearly as many folk outside of the reenactment/LARP communities ever learn how to really use a shield right). A lack of familiarity should inflict some DCV harm, which kinda messes with the system, but would be realistic...If i'm facing a fighter who's never used a sheild before (assuming a medium "target" sheild), I see a guy with a huge opening on his off side(from the shield base to the ground), a hard part to avoid, and a potentailly great way to convince him to blind himself or tangle up his own weapon. A well trained "targeteer" (to use the 16th century term) however, can do a lot of things to make life hard for someone using a two handed weapon (I tend to bastard sword, greatsword, and greataxe as my prefered weapons, with the occasional dirk on the side)

Re: The Stormtrooper Effect Of couse Vader spun off into space... Look how weird the control surfaces are on a TIE fighter compared to the sleek rebel ships... Oh, wait.... Control surfaces don't matter in space My bad *tounge firmly planted in cheek*

Re: The Stormtrooper Effect This is the reason why I like the Blazing Away/PRE attack combo. My players have always been pretty good sports about being on the receiving end of PRE attacks (the trade off is that I let them use PRE attacks with impunity...if they pitched a fit they'd be more restricted) It does a good job of simulating the "Run the Imperials are here!" effect while letting me write them up as superior soliders without instantly fragging the PC's

Re: Relinking Figured Characteristics Generally I'm pretty happy with the figured characteristics, but one idea that popped up on another thread that I really like is the idea of dropping STR from STUN calculations and using EGO instead. it makes Str every so sligly less useful, and makes EGO a bit more valuable for non mental characters.

Re: The Stormtrooper Effect Thanks for the enthusiactic support. It came to me in the shower one night after perusing the boards... thinking about it, I realized that the first thing anyone usually does when the stormtroopers show up with blasters blazing is either cut and run or immediately head for cover. Sounds like a logical resopnce to a PRE attack to me. From there it was easy.

Re: The Stormtrooper Effect I've thought about this before as well... I remember reading a GURPS optional rule called "The Imperial School of Marksmanship" or somesuch that stated to simulate this effect the "mooks" always miss their first shot. A HERO and movie friendly way to do the same effect is really quite easy. Have your stormtroopers (or similar agent types) always launch their starting volley as "Blazing away" for a presence attack. It even makes a certain tactical sence to try and break their opponents morale, especially when you add in their rep. Its always easier to shoot insurgents in the back while they're running from you than to take them in a stand up fight. Another good rule for this kind of effect is Suppression Fire. After fairly serious pondering of the rules, suppression fire became almost the default attack mode used by my Confederation troopers in my old Star Hero campaign. Unless a PC was dumb enough to be standing out in the open in plain view shooting at them...in which case a trooper or two would focus on the PC in question and usually render them into a puddle of protoplasm.

Re: James’ rules for ‘realistic’ Hero gaming. I've had a few morethought since last night.... On the Block vs. Dodge thing, I can see your point. Why not make dodge use the same mechanics as block only with a DCV vs OCV contest rather than Ocv vs OCV? Should work great. On the various Stun/shock/adrenaline things... instead of using EGO for stunning, use Con as usual, but require an EGO roll to recover from being stunned. makes Stunned a FAR more dangerous condition, and makes some real world sence. Then the negative penalty for wounds (optinal pain rules) can affect how long you are stunned for. Shock, I realized, is largely handled with the Disabling?Imparing rules, but there is another system that could be modified to reflect it as well.... Unconciousness rules. When at negative Stun, you are in some degree of shock. require characters at negative stun to make a CON roll at the begining of each phase to remain awake, and an Ego roll to act in any fashion other than recover. I haven't gotten really crunchy on this yet, but I can see it work with some tinkering. This lets Negative stun act as "Long term" stun, or Shock. The increasing intervals for recovery when negative seem to work well to reflect that the greater degree of injury, the deeper in shock you go and the harder it is to act. Adrenal responces are harder to do. Its partially already figured in with roleplaying as mentioned above, as well as in the X2 stun from suprise attacks (this is reverse engineering...it implies that the "in combat" character is already in a fight or flight condition and thus harder to drop) Other adrenal effects seem to be, in game terms, boosting Ego rolls, boosting initiative, boosting movement, boosting or taking a free Recovery, decreasing CV (most of the time). Some variation of the current "hurry" rules might work... trading CV and (probably) END for a proportionate boost in one of the bonuses. More on this probably later tonight...my girl just got home, so we're going out

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what? Well... if doing the Earths Body in damage leaves it "Broken", then I recon you would have to buy LS so you could eat and breathe Don't know about the aging thing tho... that probably shouldn't be in the Earths Write up as a Base, but rather in the Universe write up The joy and occasionall misery of this system is that it CAN do anything. What's happening here is that every person has his own spin on the topic. So we're devolving into semantics here.... the geek version of I've got a bigger **** than you do I tend to agree that in most games the planetary scale really doesn't have much game effect, but in some genres (cosmic supers, Star Hero) it very well may. I think its a crying shame that Steve's responce to Zornwil's inquiry about this was basically "Don't worry, be happy"

Re: Please explain in English about the guns everyone else has covered the cost for ya... my $.02 says that you'll be happier in the long run reading through the rules and getting a basic understanding of them rather than buying every book full of prefabs that comes out. Even if you just pick up a copy of Sidekick, it'll make you more comfortable with the system in the long run. All the gobblety gook becomes rather important to the game, tho if you strictly plan on ONLY playing, and are willing to always follow your GM's lead, then you could probably get by with never learning the system. But you may never really be satisfied with the system. Your opinion may change after you've played for a while. As a good stopgap, rather than asking your GM and fellow players "how" to buy a particular peice of equipment (and then getting a long discourse in HERO-speak) just ask them for a write up, which you can then plug into HD. HD makes character creation easier, but it still presupposes some knowledge of system mechanics. It is possible to enjoy gaming in the Hero System wiythout ever learning character creation, but it takes a particular type of player (Our old campaign had one...a great roleplayer, but couldn't give two squirts aboiut the rules... she'd just tell me what she wanted a character to be able to do, and I'd write it up. Even so, after a couple of years she had a pretty good grasp of the system just from use)

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what? At the risk of pointing out the obvious, AOE attacks are not 2 dimensonal, but 3. Can't give a revised Ed page page ref, but in Fred its on page 159

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what? Sean, I'm with you on this one...except that the planetbuster isn't writen as a megascale AOE... only megascale range, so it can hit from across the solar syatem, but its still only a standard 10d6 AP RKA. which lets it take out a few hexs worth of stone in my way of thinking. More fun/silly examples.... I think, in my quick responces earlier, I may have stumbled on the crux of the problem.... for the exponential mass/damage/body scale to really work right, no attack should ever do additional rolled body after the first attack. To inflict more Body damage on the target with subsequent shots, you should have to hit the target with an exponentially increasing number of shots for each additional pip of Body damage. This would make high mass targets appropriately difficult to take out, and would be completly counter to the rest of the game system as well as the "is it fun?" litmus test. It would however be the only way to model inflicting damage that follows the same rules as the current ones for determining damage absorbtion. And while we're bouncing things around...why are living targets harder to break than inanimate ones? Complex systems are easier to foul up than simple ones, which is reflected already, but biological systems are some of the most complex. hell...a failure in a square millimeter of artey wall can be fatal in the wrong location... but living things are still generically tougher than inanimate solid objects?

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what? I can read too, and know what the book says... I was simply pointing out to prestidigitator that even by his opinion that double a targets body = dead, not destroyed, a dead planet has a lot more effects in game terms than just, well, being there. (Which is what he seemed to be implying)

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what? No, in general I like exponential scales, but at the higher power levels it begins to get very counter intuitive and becomes logically broken. its not the exponential nature of hero that bugs me, its the way it is applied in many circumstances without more rules specifically addressed to the topic. What originally got me thinking about this recently was actually the hero system bestiary. It was the second 5th edition book I picked up, and the write up for the Engine of Destruction spurred me to begin thinking about scale issues. That and the fact that it is specifically written up as a "planet destroying" antagonist. The multipower is called "Planet-Destroying Cannon" and is written as a 10d6 AP rka, megascale on range. Which, to my mind, should do exactly f**k-all to a Earth sized target. For that matter, on the same scale, big frellin lizards are pretty easy to kill as well. The problem with an exponential progression is that it doesn't factor cumulative effect into the equasion. 2 hits from a 10d6 RKA are not equal, in game terms, to one shot from a 10d6+1 RKA, even if the extra DC is supposedly roughly equal to the extra force needed to destroy the extra double mass.

Re: Paying points for Falling damage This is like most of the brick tricks.... If you want it to be quicker and more reliable than the environmental effect, pay the points. Paying for the attack also insures that you don't run into damage caps for breakable impact surfaces and the like. From that perspective, I totally would support a character wanting to pay for it, tho there would be some discussion, as I tend to prefer a bit more "realistic" (hah) game, and if you write it up like this without a lot more thought, it becomes a "Why can Stuka do this to people in a way that they can't defend themselves?" So yeah, I can see this, if the GM and player agree. but requiring it? heck no!

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what? the big problem here is that we have a "never the twain shall meet" issue that CAN'T be resolved by rehashing the same arguements over and over and over. If we go strictly by the rules, we have to think in terms of the earth following the double mass = +1 body progresion, or the wall body chart... both of which make (as proven ad nasueum in this and other threads) the earth pretty easy to destroy. If you approach it from a "hex by hex" basis, which there is ALSO systemic support for, tho not stated as clearly or uncompromisingly, it takes a alot more work, but approaches more realistic numbers. In erither case, its becoming a bit of a pointless arguement. The basic Hero exponential scale is broken in regards to real world mechanics, not suprising as it was originally written for supers to be able to pull tricks that you'd see in comics. Well.. on this one....letsee... if you consider X2 mass = +1 body, X2 an objects body reflects that it is "broken", "killed", or "Defeated", by the tropes of the system that means all powers are now non functional. So even if, by your reasoning, you haven't blown up the earth, just killed it. So you've removed its powers. like Movement (It spins, and rotates around the sun), Life support (breathing and eating, AOE megascale) for the atmosphere and biosphere, summon for the birthrate, attacks for the deathrate (continous small extra time transform living being to dead one, SFX time) and for natural disasters, I'm guessing the core stops being hot (no idea what game effect this is...REC on the Earths END reserve?) thats just right off the top of my head So it's no longer doing... well, er, yeah, quite a lot.

Re: James’ rules for ‘realistic’ Hero gaming. So far I like it a lot. You might look at some of the ongoing threads about Strength, Body, Lifting, mass and the like (If you haven't already) some of the posts could be applicable. my only inital comments, right off the top of my head, are that you shouldn't remove dodge, but rather assume that it has a "doesn't work against high velocity projectiles" modifier. Personal experience dictactes that one CAN dodge thrown attacks and even arrows (tho thats tricky in short range direct fire) and HTH attacks SHOULD be dodgeable. And if you come up with good infection rules I'll be tempted to kiss you. I'd suggest that you model systemically on a transform, and apply it to all wounds, not just impairing wounds. Both of my dangerous cases of blood poisoning came from 0-1 body wounds. And you might bend your brain to the idea of Long Term Stun, to represent shock...I've been working on this one too... And stress induced injuries... pushing can result in bad things sometimes (my spine!) HERO doesn't really have a good model for long term pain effects either other than the impairing/ disabling rules. but in general, it looks great...I'd love to see the finished product! Repped!

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what?

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what? OK, my bad... *note to self... 86 the harder profanity* I usually self edit, but I was posting quickly... editing post now can't change the quote box tho

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what? Just hacking on ya a bit...no worries, and certainly no offence intended... if you're not up on your Epic Norse settings, Midgard is the name for Earth, home of the humans, seperated from Asgard, home of the Aesir Gods, by Bifrost, the rainbow bridge. but YMMV, depending on campaign setting, always

Re: Paying points for Falling damage a "munch" is a particular subcultures slang for a get together of like minded folk in a no pressure, no dress up, no play venue, like a coffee shop or diner. The subculture and like minded people in question? Well... look at my second smiley