AmadanNaBriona

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far

Re: Why the dislike for Find Weakness? I've always kinda liked the idea of Find Weakness, but honestly I mostly do Heroic level games with a full load of combat options and Find Weakness has always been kinda wonky for my tastes when you add in the options. It really only ever worked for me when using the vanilla set of 4 color basic combat rules, and I'm not gonna be too put out having to rebuild it as Deadly Blow RSR, Piercing RSR, or some other construct, so hearing that it's going away isn't a really big deal for me. I'd have preferred that the orphan mechanic get adopted into the toolbox family, broken apart into components, and those components balanced to work with other things in the toolbox, but that's a pretty tall order and I don't mind leaving the orphan out to die instead as long as I can find another little toolbox resident to do the job. Dickens HERO

Re: Star Wars coolness Was I the only one who saw the Hawt Mandalorean Ranger and thought "Total Fan Service character, man!"

Re: Steampunk - Source Material I see Post Apocalyptic Steampunk as another viable sub-genre, as it's easy to postulate a weird science Neo-Victorian culture arising in a less than total destruction apocalypse. Some examples might include Naussica, the webcomic FreakAngels, or Moorcock's Hawkmoon setting.

Re: Killing Attacks vs Stun Lottery I could get behind something like this, and have occasionally pondered similar ideas. I think it might have merit. A lot of the more "hideously realistic" combat systems in other games have used something of the sort Boo Hiss... But seriously, on this same topic, this exactly why I, long ago, have almost universally adopted the optional Critical Hit rules. They function to remove volatility, and top load it, for really good attack rolls. It requires a bit of a conceptual shift, in that you have to start approaching attacks with the basic assumption that this attack may well do it's maximum damage at any time and adjust play and design considerations accordingly, but I've found it works shockingly well over the years (And makes Normal Attacks much more balanced with Killing attacks as a bonus)

Re: My mostly hard sci-fi campaign A just as creepy but lower tech version is the Brain-in-a-Jar approach. With not too far beyond modern tech, you should be able to keep a brain on life support. Tapping into the appropriate locations would allow feedback and communication, possibly even a totally virtual environment all networked into a real "Second Life". This would be a great way to keep critically damaged crew from occupying too many resources until you can get them to full fledged medical facilities, and from there it's not too far to seeing brains transplanted into the bodies of condemned criminals as the ultimate form of recycling. Heck, if you're feeling "humane" you could even keep the criminal's brain alive, being subjected to a therapy "program" to readjust the recidivism traits, before being partially integrated into the dead-net on sort of a work release program (monitor the waste recycling systems or something).

Re: My mostly hard sci-fi campaign I just had a somewhat creepy thought concerning capital punishment. If you have Blade Runner level bio-tech, you could always yank out an offenders brain and replace it with an artificial one. The body is a machine. Why scrap the whole machine when you can just swap out a "defective" processor?

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles While Hydrans were always my hands down favorites to play, Lyrans tied the Gorn for second place.

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles I didn't know that, but it's very cool to hear. I sometimes think more recognition should be given to how much influence the Austin gaming scene has had on the greater gaming community as a whole... Lots of really influential members of the community seem to have been come out of there.

Re: Muse's Inspiration Remember that Transform can add abilities/powers, too....

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

Re: Blocking - What's the point? I almost abused the multi-quote function just to say "What THEY said", but this right here sums it up for me, mostly because my longest running Champions character was a NCM martial artist. Blocking was vital to his long term survival and effectiveness. the only other supporting point I can think of is that against someone with superior enough Dex and CV levels, block gives you two shots to avoid the hit, when simply Dodging might not drop your opponents attack roll low enough to make a significant difference.

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles Fusions take some practice to use well, I concur, but when coupled with Hellbores they make a decent ordinance set. And, IIRC, the power cost is really low, comparatively speaking, so you can get away with overloading them on a more regular basis compared to Photons or Disruptors. The trick to using Hydrans correctly is to stay flexible, use pack tactics, and ruthlessly concentrate your Hellbore fire on any target you can hit that has at least one breached shield. And the Hydran small craft draw enough fire that the capital ships often survive longer than you'd expect from their SSDs.

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Yeah, the IRA (DeValera's faction, anyway) lost a lot of my respect during that period, though it's an ugly confused mess all around.

Re: New Broom Terrorists perhaps the Vehmgericht might be of use. They, incidentally, have a groovy looking secret alphabet

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? That's a really powerful movie, right there.

Re: Steampunk - Source Material The Difference Engine-William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

Re: Never Was Haul site Good group of folk. The "runabout" you can find in their pics was the "steam car" I mentioned watching suffer an explosive deconstruction event on Mayday.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Leader of the Pack -The Shangri-La's

Re: What's Hero System good for? Well, from what I've heard The Ultimate Skill adds quite a lot of depth to the existing skill system, but I've yet to pick it up. I can say, however, that I've been playing gritty low level realistic games using HERO since Espionage! first came out, to great success. The main obstacle to greater skill system depth in play comes with dispensing with an exclusively binary resolution system in favor of a task oriented one, which is more of a philosophical/GM preference/Campaign Style question than an actual systemic one. One easy way we House Ruled it in our campaigns was that in Skill vs. Skill Contests bonuses to the Skill Roll OR Minuses to the Opponents roll (due to rolled level of success) could be swapped ±2/1 for each additional required "Task". I'll try and come up with a clear example, if anyone cares.

Re: Pain I'm in favor of the idea myself, as the exact thing you've described is one of the elements of damage modeling that is a result of injury in R/L but has no counterpart in the system. Optional Long Term Stun rules would solve this nicely, and would also help close the "Why can a person go from comatose to fully functional in just a few seconds, once they actually start getting recoveries" logic hole that currently is entrenched in the system (which is fine for Cinematic/Comic action, but far lass appropriate for Gritty & Realistic genres). Long Term Stun should probably come with associated penalties that can be overcome in the short term with an Ego Roll, which ties in nicely with the Wounding rules. I like the Wounding rules as another core element of Pain Modeling, but I think they need more tweaking. The main reason I like this structure is it increases the function of the Resistance Talent, which I've always felt needed more breadth than just "resisting torture", because I've done a lot of things associated with pain in R/L down through the years and I can firmly say it's a lot more complex than most games ever deal with, and I'd like to see our pet system fill that gap.

Re: What's Hero System good for? Say it again!

Re: sticky electric bolt I wrangled with this problem once upon a time before, and came to the conclusion that, although I'd like to see Sticky able to do this, it probably best fits as a variant of a Area of Effect. I called it Area of Effect: Conductive, and with the idea of variant AoE's being introduced with AoE:Voice it becomes closer to the canon way to do it.

Re: Brainstorming an alternate Europe Hmmmmm.... Interesting, but related, aside. While it is increasingly accepted that the surface treatment of the Hindenburg was likely the main source of fuel for the fire, would a similar disaster be mitigated in effect if the envelope had been filled with Helium rather than Hydrogen (which was an expedient due to war related tensions IIRC)? Granted, The Hindenburg disaster was a bit later on anyway, but I've always seen that as the downfall of the Airship Age.