AmadanNaBriona

Re: Damage Classes of Weapons (ranging from personal to shipboard)? Both lists above are good representative samples... As I mentioned in the discussion on MDC in the Rifts hero thread, I did most of the nuts and bolts ironmongering for our old ongoing starhero campaign, and I quickly came to the conclusion that there needed to be additional factors at work, so I came up with a fairly simple 1 to 5 scale for both Tech level and legality. then I tried to factor things so that the lower damage weaponry had SOME attractive features (for example... I used the Parker carbine from Steve Perrys Matador series as the main millitary long arm... small caliber, not a lot of damage, but a linked secondary attack from the explosive projectiles, a really high rate of fire, extra levels to increase the number of projectiles that hit, and 500 round magazines. Its main purpose is crowd control). I then dreamt up a goodly number of interesting HTH weapons so encoursge close in fighting, as well as a very martial arts oriented world setting, and a very Traveler inspired general understanding that high powered weapons in space can equal explosive decpompression and subsequent badness (interior bracing accounts for a lot of the strength of ships hulls, by my reasoning, so the defences are a LOT lower when hit from the inside), thus encouraging hand to hand skills. Another idea I took from my starships was the idea that personal defence screens were built as MP's, with FF, Damage Reduction and Missile deflection to represent various deflection settings. Thus, on a deflection setting, combined with active defence (missile deflect) you could escape most of the REALLY nasty damage. If you were on a straight FF setting tho, and someone hits you with a high tech level, millitary only legalityl heavy shoulder arm like a plasma rifle, Charged Particle beam, or Powergun (from Hammers Slammers...yeah, I stole from EVERYWHERE) you were probably a candidate for a long stay in a regen tank if you were still mostly whole. And speaking of Regen tanks... they are a lethal GM's friend. There is plenty of justification to even include the ressurection adder as long as you define it right, perhaps with head related limitations (you need some grey matter to work with) Both daage lists would have fit nicely in my campaign at the middle tech level... NuSords is about Civilian/Police Legality(Law 2-3) , while Outsiders is closer to Military(Law 4), but not toally restricted/ Black ops/black market only (Law 5). Law 1 was for non lethal civilian weaponry, BTW to round out the list.

Re: Storn Art from Idea to Full Picture Year 2 A few years back I was gearing up for a Dark Champions campaign and my ex came up with a concept that I'd love to see Storns take on... Street level female vigalante who was basically a Boston irish punk/rivethead/ semi goth who becomes an Avatar of the Morrigan after being jumped by a gang one night and left for dead... Battle Madness/Death/Precognition related powers, lots of flocks of ravens and the like as SFX, Celtic knotwork/spiralwork tattoos, typical punk industrial scene leathers/fishnets/ spikes along the Iron age style (early Irish goddess...maybe I should say Bronze age ) leafbladed shortsword, maybe a bit of chainmail for accent, redhead (natch) probably shaved on the sides, perhaps lots of little war braids... Thought it might be an idea y'all could run with *edit* afterthought... Possible names are rife in mythology... Badhbh (bav) :Rage/fury/violence Macha (ma-ka) :Mighty Neamhan (Nee-van) :Venomous were the three we were considering

Re: Rifts HERO So my never played Rifts character could punch something and conceviably dump 80,000 joules into the target? I must have missed the day they were teaching us that trick at the dojo.

Re: Rifts HERO wow...nice to know that i hit pretty close even pulling numbers out of my ass... Goes to show a few of the problems with space travel, and the normal Hero Damage scale if you're going for "Realistic" levels for starships

Re: Rifts HERO Well... It stems from game play effect rather that a study of Joules (as I'd never done conversions to Joules for Hero...that was always reserved for Morrow Project and the various Tri Tac games that more or less required it) but if you want to work things out scientifically go for it. As a baseline starting point assume any ship operating in real space (as opposed to some form of warp or hyperdrive) will be operating at say, approximately .95 Light speed (as an average cruising speed). Then figure out how many joules an impact with a, say, 1 kilo meteorite would generate. Even assuming Deflector screens defined as Missle deflection are the default defence against such things, you still have to account for the failure rate occuring often enought for a standard hull to be able to sustain such impacts. That would need to be the resistance level of your basic run of the mill civilian starship. Then determine what levels of hull armoring are considered acceptable and legal for civilian use, determine power levels for civilian craft operating within regulated space, and what levels are acceptable for craft who go back and forth outside of regulated space. Then determine what power level military grade weaponry should be, figuring that they should be at least somewhat nastier than the civilian equivilents. In our case, it wasn't just pulled out of my butt, there was a logical progression through a wide variety of common weapon systems, including various sizes for each system. The 16D6 version was one of the larger weapons that didn't require a spinal mounting. A lot of it was worked out systemically.... as in, given these defences, how much damage do I want this system to inflict on this class of target.

Re: Rifts HERO I've always had issues with Palladium system... Its an excellent example of a entire company dedicated to an ancient and inherently flawed system. Its a shame, as some of the writing is quite creative. I still have my original paperback comic book sized Mechanoid Invasion books, and used a minorly modified version of the Mechanoids as the Big Bad back in my original Star hero campaign. That campaign started with us using Hero during the Champions 2/Espionage era, so we had to do a fair bit of fussing with the system to make things work out, and we ran into similar problems to the MDC concept. Basically, the situation is this... Starship and SciFi Tech level heavy weapons HAVE to pack a wallop. The hazards of space travel mean that even an "unarmored" starship needs to be fairly massively built. An impact with a fist sized nickle-iron metorite at relativistic speeds is WAY nastier than most of the Hero system attacks. After much messing aboput to see if multipliers were appropriate, we went with the path of least resistance, adapted to include rules that hadn't existed when we started the campaign, and wound up with Starships and most spaceborne constructs and any heavy surface craft or emplaced positions designed to toe off with them including, as part of the build, "Frame reinforcement" Damage Reduction (with limited effect vs some SFX), "Surface Hardening" (Hardened X2 on defences), Minimum DEF for various applications, and generally high defences, not to mention things like deflector sheilds (Usually Missile deflection linked with forcefeild). Made Hard targe ts very hard. And made Heavy weapons and Shipboard/emplaced weapons LETHAL. Wouldn't work so hot in a Rifts game where folk are paying points for inborn abilities. A shoulder fired 3cm Powergun (ala Hammers Slammers) packed an 8D6 RKA, Double AP, with Scour (A custom advantage we worked up... for +1/2, it removes Def from the target equal to the Normal body rolled on the dice, stopped by hardened defences, "recovered" with maintainace and repair) A shipboard Particle beam cannon might very well be a 16d6 RKA AP, Penetrating, Scour, Continous . Constructs were built with modified Base construction rule, rather than vehicle rules, so we could vary DEF and body by hex, and assess damage the same way. this required a rough map of starships, but with a little time (and a lot of classic Traveller materials) it wasn't much of an issue, and ended up with very dramatic space combat. Also very lethal. Its a problem with doing anything of the sort even vaguely realisticly. Certainly promoted Fear and Loathing In Space. Anything less than full MI style Power armor was TOAST against an attack. Characters surrendered. Often. Or died. Also often. With Regen Tank technology and strong personal defences (and a modicum of GM mercy) most characters didn't get fragged out of hand unless they did something dumb, but even so....its just hard to mix that level of offence with standard heroic level and have anything resembling game balance. For my 2 cents, I'd say any attempt to recreate the MDC aspect fo Rifts is probably doomed to fail. Unless you really like playing games where you have a 150 point hero playing in the same party as an 800 point Glitterboy. Hell...the one time someone tried to convince me to make a rifts character (never played) my character could do some sort of unarmed Ki enchance martial arts attack that did 1d4 MDC. Which is just barely above useless against MDC constructs... and would flatten SDC houses and reduced unarmored soft targets to a fine mist. Nope. doesn't work for me.

Re: Iron Age Champions campaigning I don't think that the point totals need to be any higher, but the AP/dc limits should be. And moderate levles of damage reduction (especially Body only) can replace a lot of the more conventional defences... Heros bleed more, but don't die all that often,

Re: What is it about Champions? Actually, ours often didn't, but the occasional foray did occur... luckily, our Gm's were good enough to cater to a variety of folk, and we had a diverse set of players... this was back when VtM first came out, so it hadn't gained the "Only Goths play THAT" Stigma yet. During a several year span of playing time, I progressed from ruthless amoral bloodthirsty killer, to vampire (The only character I've ever made for Vampire who started with a 4 humanity.. and my immediate thought was... thats WAY to high for this guy) to effectively Defender of the mortals of San Francisco. The character never gave a shit about all the infighting, and was prone to becoming very annoyed when other dead things started throwing their weight around. Basically, his theme was "Leave the f**king city alone" It was a good campaign, and I have fond memories... but If I keep on talking, I'm going to trap you in a room and tell you about my character (Loose 3 levels)

Re: What is it about Champions? *apologies for helping derail the thread* My favorite Vampire hunters were the ones in the book Vampire$ by John Stakely (which the movie John Carpenters Vampires was loosely based off). Basic SOP was simple... Find nest, wait till high noon, demolish building with high explosives, remove rubble with crane, wait for vampires to burst into flames, and occasionally pin one down with a pike long enough to let the sun do its work. My main Vamps GM eventually asked me to bring in a group of my guildmates to guest in his LARP as vampire hunters so as to put the fear of god, technology and tactics back into his rapidly munchkinizing players

Re: What is it about Champions? This made me laugh my ass off... In the one big VtM game I was in, when it came time for me to express my displeasure with the new Prince who had walked in and declared SF his own, I preprepped for a couple of weeks by planting charges all over the city connected to gas mains and the like. The Prince threatened me, I sneered back (sneering is required in Vampire) He ordered me killed, I pulled out a detonator with a deadman trigger and went *click* "you want this city, you come through me. Send your flunkies and you'll be Prince of a smoking pile of rubble. Choose" I never could do the whole moping around in the dark brooding over my lost humanitas thing very well. And Louis was a whiny ponce. There is no problem so great that it cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives.

Re: Mind swapping I'm not trying to get into a sniping match here, but you still haven't addressed how a simple application of a power in the game that is supported with an example in the book of the exact power you are looking for is more complicated and difficult than trying to build a tricky construct out of mind control? Rather than playing the "This makes Hero needlessly complicated" card, why not address WHY you hate using transform attacks? (I already understand your dislike of XDM, and agree with you)

Re: Foriegn Captain America's I have had a few ideas for an Irish Flagteam... I'm thinking Fianna Na Erinn (Warriors/Defenders of Ireland) as a team name. avoiding the Captain Celt thing is a good idea, but ignoring historical inspration is just as foolish. I'm mostly trying to avoid Republican sentiment (despite personal feelings) as well as Northern Unionist as theres still buches of bad blood that'd be better suited for the "misguided villan" types. I'll note right now I'm partial to Gaelic for national team members..apologies if my gaelic is off at all...I'm a bit rusty on my spelling (much of which is from studing the 16th century anyway) possible team members... Riastrah (Battle fury) the term for Chuchulains warp spasm... I'd go for a berserker brick type, like a more controled Hulk Ildanach (Many Talented) A jack of trades, probably Batman gageteer/superskill type Buanna (Solider... alternate meaning bully) Nick Fury type or power armor? Sluaigh (Host, as in group or force) Duplicator Lurachas (Surpassing Beauty, gemlike woman) Gem based Energy projector (female... its a feminine word) Sealgair (Hunter) super archer or gunman type I could come up with others, but that'd be a good start. I suppose you could add one more... Amadan (Fool) Madness inducing egoist

Re: Mind swapping So whow do you deal with a new Hero Player who wants a long term to permanent effect mind control power? Do you direct them to a rather simple to build Transfrom BOECV (like the sidebar example IN THE BOOK), or do you direct them to some massively cumbersome Mind Control , Persistant, 0 End, uncontrolled, with a linked Ego Drain that only works vs that particular power? Ah to heck with it... this is basically the same rant I posted before. I've introduced more than my share of players to Hero myself. You don't score any particular special points for that. And y'know what? There have been a few I've steered away from Hero, because they never could grasp the system. Of course, these were the ones who couldn't do Jr Highschool level math with a calculator.

Re: Quirks and disadvantages we've played with quirks for some time, with the understanding that they are worth 1 pt each, and that you may have a maximum of 4 pts worth. Basically, they function to let characters fill in the odd extra points that sometimes (or often) crop up. I don't see any significant problem with them...I figure that a 1 pt disad is probably about as disadvantageous as a 1 point familiarity is useful. Who says a hero might not hesitate blasting an agent holding a next to impossible to replace beloved item? Does anyone remember the part in the Amber series when Brand decides not to murder Corwin because he doesn't want to get blood on a favorite rug? How about a "Loves Pasta" quirk? Well...it may narrow down the search if a hunted is looking for him. Of course, I'm biased... My old campaign used to allow a higher number of Psych Limits than the other disads to encourage players to take psyches, because they add to charatcer definition and roleplaying *EDIT* Ok...I misread that "Dislikes Pasta" lets see...roleplaying opportunity best bet...OK... so its not a combat disad...It's 1 freaking point...make his DNPC's mother serve linguini when she takes him home to meet the folks

Re: Mind swapping Personally, I have been using Transform for "semi permenant" mental powers for quite a while, and I really like the Body/Mind/Spirit distinction added in Fred. I still won't use most of the obscure XDM powers that folk occasionally pull out to simulate uber effects... My rule of thumb is that XDM should move the character to, well, another dimension. I do realize that "Close paralel dimensions" is the justification for most of these tricks, but it just doesn't scan for me. I liked an example I saw somewhere here on the boards... use the power and *poof* your character is now happy off in the alternate dimension where the power has worked. So much for your contimued participation in the game. In any case, in HERO, transform is the default "Make it permenant" power... and it often has similar SFX to other exisitng powers. If I use a high powered laser to burn your retinas off, I use Transform instead of Flash. If I want to write up a "Bad Luck" curse, I use Transform instead of a messed up jumble of negative skill levels and odd powers all useable on others persistant uncontrolled oend difficult to dispel. If I'm going to effect someones head long term, I'll use transform instead of a mental power. Why? Because it works, its a simple write up, its legal, and its a reasonable build in the system. In pre Transform days, I tried to write up several badguys with long term mental powers and the writeups had to be huge cumbersome monstrous power constructs that I'd NEVER let a character have. And even then, they didn't work so hot. Mental Powers are written in Hero to be temporary, and not all that hard to bust loose from. When you add the appropriate Advantages to turn your Mental Group Transform into a Mental power it ups the cost enough to keep it from being a casual power. That should balance things out fine. Remember the Transform logic... if you're inflicting enough BODY to kill the target, you might as well be able to turn them into something else. Hell... I've even used Transform in place of an RKA for a Death touch power... Either it kills you, or it doesn't. No STUN damage, no resistant defences, etc... Writing up an effect with a power straight from the rules doesn't make new players fear HERO... its trying to build massive unweildy power constructs for what should seem to be a simple effect. That and GM's who insist on things like the point cost of a spoon....

Re: Timestop Quite slick. Haven't checked the legality yet, but even if it ends up a bit iffy, still quite slick. Seldom do I see a build this tricksty, even from myself. Repped

Re: Variable Power Pools.. Again Another option for the weapon modules is to adjust the MP to a similar feel as a VPP. Just add a set of limits to the multipower... "May only have X # of slots available", possible a RSR to change available slots, can only change available slots in limited circumstances. Could even be Independent, if the character can't replace modules (possibly a way to drop the XP cost of the occasional new slot... representing experimental and irreplaceable technology... buy off the Independent to represent learning how to construct the module in question) A lot of this popped into my head thinking about Modular Man from Wildcards

Re: Mind swapping Look at the source material.... Jumpers basically ARE broken, game balance-wise. Which is why they were such uber badguys for so many of the wildcards books. I have to agree that a MASSIVE transform is the best way to simulate their power. Don't even get me started on the guy who has the Transform attack that makes the Jumpers....

Re: Point/Power levels in your game Almost all of my heroic level games have been at 250 total starting points... We did 100+150 disads in 4th ed, and I'm currently converting my main fantasy hero campaign to 125+125. I find that this is a VERY good level for the types of games I run, which tend to be very genre heavy and influenced by literary and cinematic characters. They also tend to be fairly quick campaigns, with fairly limited accumulation of experience. It can encourage muchkinism however, so you need a fairly mature and experienced set of players, or at least enough GM intervntion and peer pressure to encourage building functional characters rather than pure gaming constructs. Its all about character focus.

Re: Psychic Wars This is a GREAT genre for gaming in... one of my all time favorites. I remember way back in the day we HAD a "Psi World Hero" campaign just shortly after the FGU game came out. Like a lot of folk, we decided that the system was broken, but the setting was good. For my .02, I want to add in my voice in support of the Julian May books. Her classification of psychic powers is one of the best and most "gameable" I have ever encountered. For most campaigns, I'd actually recommend starting with the Intervention series (which is basically a modern setting), followed by the Milieu series(more the sci-fi setting).The Saga of Pilocene Exile is a bit less smooth in its writing, and is a time travel/crossworlds semi fantasy-sci-fi blend (its still wonderful, and another of my ATF's). Her classification system (nonmetas, latents, semi operant 'wild talents' and operant metapsychics) works into HERO beautifully, as do her descriptions of the disciplines of psychic powers. she breaks them down as follows... Coercion - the ability to overwhelm anothers will (mind contol, mainly) Redaction - healing or long term manipultion (Transforms, mostly, as well as Healing and some forms of Aid) Farsensing - Remote viewing, seeking, and mind to mind contact (Mind scan, mind link, telepathy, some detects) Telekenetics - pretty straightforeward TK.. strength at range (TK, flight, some defences, etc..) Creativity - psychic extension of the more common ability to imagine something then create it. ranges from illusion spinning to actual matter transformation. Also seems to include many of the "kenesis" forms that involve particle physics as the breaking point seems to be the ability to perceive the subject. For example... setting something on fire usually involves creativity, as most Psi's would simply "imagine" the target bursting into flames. To perform tha same act with TK, one would need to be able to "see" the molecules(using deep sensing farsight) and then deliberately speed their motion with TK (This is the biggest catch all power set, and can be covered by a WIDE assortment of powers) A few other disciplines are discussed, including Prolepsis (precog/retrocog) and Teleportation, but they are considered unpredictable, hard to quantify, and rare abilities. Additionally, she discusses many techniques and technologies for enhancing the effects of meta abilities. Its a system that lend itself VERY well to a Talent and Power skill based VPP psi system. I pretty much ganked this system lock stock and barrel for my Star Hero campaign when we went into a story arc that involved actual elite trained government backed Psi's. Which also involved the introduction of a NPC, code named Fenris, who was a former elite Black ops psi who was suffering from major post traumatic stress disorder, and who had fried his neurocircutry with long term use of Psi drugs and mechanical enhancers (built into his power armor). and yes, he had a bad case of the shakes... I had waited YEARS to base a character on Veteran of the Psychic Wars (Yes Bonedaddy, I too have Fire of Unknown Origin on vinyl, and remember BOC playing at the Keystone Palo Alto as Soft White Underbelly). To make a campaign off this sort work out, I'd probably add a global X1 1/2 vunerablity to mental powers, possibly with a "Strong willed" talent available to remove it. In our 4th ed campaign, I handled the extra power levels with Aid powers to get the appropriate OOMPH. Needless to say, I'll be keeping my eyes open for this one.

Re: Question about "DANGER SENSE DODGING" I REALLY like the Change Environment approach top this one... it seems to fit very well. I've used variations of the Images idea, but I've always built it as a form of active defence... basically, the speedster is having to move around , with momentary pauses to let his "image" resolve... works similar to the old Displacer beast from D&D.. If a non AoE attack is made, they have to roll Per to try and determine which one is the "real" target. Other wise, I usually have them roll the attack at 0 ocv to represent a chance at a lucky hit.

Re: Unarchetypal Heroes Funny... I was going to mention Durnik as a great example of a "unarchtypal" hero that would be a breeze to do in HERO, but a nightmare in D&D

Re: Where'd this base come from This thread is amusing me, in many ways... You do kinda have to wonder if there is some kind of Super real estate listings, so that your Fortress of Ice isn't within sight of Doctor Demented's HoverCitadel... Perhaps this isn't as funny as I think... On the "they're my points" side topic... Thats why I designed our teams base. Most of the points were mine, I was playing the team leader and gageteer. Really, tho, the only big bias was the team computer. That was entirely my points, so I got the "controller benefits", of which the most useul bit was the structural analysis scan linked to the display in my characters goggles... the addition of find weakness to martial arts/gaget boy freed up enough of his VPP from sheer firepower to let me start carrying more "team" oriented gear.

Re: Question about "DANGER SENSE DODGING" In our campaign we've had a couple variations of this power concept roll through, and in final design we've always used Damage Reduction, for the reasons The Real Lemming has already stated. It seems to fit the feel of the intended power better, and works well to increase the survivability of high DCV/low defence characters withut removing the inherent danger posed to them by bricks and nasty KA's. and I have always had issues with RSR vs. activation (with level based on another roll) because of the situations lke this one where you get more effect for your points from the activation roll, while at the same time having a better chance of success.

Re: Yet Another "Name This Character" thread. why not Cobalt? I've always thought it was a great name for a hero, nice and stylish without actually describing his powers at all. I used it as a street handle for a Cyberhero "Brick" character I once wrote up... he got the name from the blued finish of his soviet millitary cyberware