Mike W

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Robert Plant and Alison Krauss did an album together called Raising Sand . First thought - seems like a strange combination. Second thought - that's a TON of talent in one room. Man does it work. Best thing I've heard in ages. Hands down. Not that it will ever get radio play.

Re: Personal Sacrifice Well, the initial question by Steve said the power could be re-used every 5 minutes. That doesn't sound like something that would do permanent or semi-permanent damage. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to use it nearly that often. On the other hand, if you WANT it to be such a sacrifice that it takes longer to heal, you can still use Drain and just move the recovery rate further down the time chart.

Re: Decoupling Movement from Speed or Segement moviement I think you've done a good job here of summarizing the difficulty in separating SPD and Movement. The very nature of HERO makes it almost impossible to do without decoupling other things to the point that it no longer feels like the same game. Depending on your point of view, this may or may not be a bad thing, but reagardless of how you feel about it, it REALLY changes the game.

Re: Unique, interesting powers Not really a power, but it's AMAZING what Well Connected and lots of contacts can do to a game. For actual powers, I had a samurai type character with 16D6 of Dispel vs. Fire as one of his sword's powers. Came in really handy a couple of times. Good for putting out fires started by bad guys -or just helping out the local fire department when passing by(never hurts to get some good press). And when the bad guys pulls out his flame thrower - fun to watch it sputter. Not to mention what you can do to "flying flame boy". It was almost an afterthought when I put it in the sword but it ended up being very useful.

Re: Personal Sacrifice

Re: Decoupling Movement from Speed or Segement moviement The world record for the Mile is around 3:35 or so. As for decoupling movement and speed, I haven't had much success with it. The game just doesn't lend itself well to it. About the best I can suggest is to basically figure out how fast in real life(in mph or kph) you want the character to be able to move, work out how many inches that is and then give them enough move and SPD to cover it, then handle chases cinematically.

Re: Help needed, I new to hero system can someone offer me some advice? There are definite mixed reviews on HERO designer among my friends. Some really like it, some really don't. Partly, I think it depends on how good you are with computers(and maybe how good your computer is). For myself, I've never really found a need for it. I tend to be a guy who likes lots of characters. CKC(Conquerors, Killers, and Crooks) is THE villain supplement to own if you want to run in the established campaign world as it has most of the settings "classic" villains in it. These are the ones that have generally been around the most and will most often be referred to in other products and other characters' bios.

Re: Defences against the stun of KAs In some ways a large number of KA doesn't surprise me. If you look through the published characters, especially for 4th edition, it seemed like almost every villain with an energy power had a KA slot. But resistant defenses were less common. That kind of ratio leads to some bloody gaming. As a way to tone down the blood, we basically let anyone buy 8-10 points of resistant defenses as "necessary for survival in a supers game", regardless of anything else. They could buy it natural, call it an armored costume, whatever they wanted. We also used the x3 STUN multiplier and it worked pretty well. The math was a lot easier and having 4D6 for the BODY still left KA with a lot more variable damage than their EB/HA counterparts.

Re: Your Dream Projects For Hero Books I don't remember seeing it. I have "You Gotta Have Character" but that's not the same by any stretch. Can you remember what it's called?

Re: Your Dream Projects For Hero Books 1. An updated version of Normals Unbound, with an extra section for expanded write ups of the "normal, secret IDs" of important heroes and villains like Defender. 2. Around the world in 200+ heroes. One hero(or villain) for each country.

Re: allergy disadvantage? I'd say Susceptibility, probably call it Uncommon unless you can be Susceptible from a long ways away. If you have to be close enough to smell it(in the same hex), it's really not going to be that limiting.

Re: Common Items Generally, in our games, you can have a "one time" access to any item, if you can convince me you would have stopped off to pick it up(and that you carry some cash in your costume). HOWEVER, continued use of the one time pass will mean that you'll lose it and have to pay points for basically everything. There is one exception, however. Everyone can have a "Tracfone" type cell phone as a freebie. They're very cheap, very common, and can really help the plot along. But anything else you better pay points for it if you want to have it regularly.

Re: Time travel in the Marvel Universe Marvel's use of time travel is a bit iffy and haphazard. But then, I've never been much for time travel anyway. List of those who can do it: Mechanical(Time Machine or objects) Reed Richards, Dr. Doom, I believe Quasar's power bands let him travel through time, Kang, Immortus, Black Panther(limited), Nathaniel Richards, I believe that the Eternals have a time machine and possibly the Inhumans as well whoever has the Time Gem of the Infinity Gauntlet(I don't remember who had it after Adam Warlock broke up the gems, I think Pip had it at one point) Powers/Magic Dr. Strange, Baron Mordo, Ancient One(most of the truly world class sorcerers really), Count Nefaria(I think), Franklin Richards could if he really wanted to and could figure out how to do so with his powers. There are also a number of "future characters" or characters who have been lost in the time stream. These are characters who have time traveled to the current Earth 666 Marvel Universe. Generally speaking, they are on one way trips, which indicates that 100 years or so in the future, time travel will become, if not common technology, then common enough that everyone knows about it and can find a way to get to a device(albeit possibly by breaking into some place that has such a device). Phoenix, Bishop. Cable, Fitzroy(are we sensing a pattern here)

Re: Willpower Generally, this equates to Damage Reduction or Armor with a -1/2 Limit, Requires a Skill(EGO) Roll. That character might want Resistance as well.(the talent that makes it harder to torture/interrogate you).

Re: PRE Attacks I tend to only use PRE attacks against players with the following three rules in mind: 1. Try not to use them a lot unless the players do also. 2. Save them for epic/cinematic moments. 3. Only big bad guys get them, not run of the mill villains or agents.

Re: Completely Undetectable There is also the question of what happened to all the people that got replaced? Logic says that they were killed. MAYBE kept imprisoned in some obscure place, but probably not together. And how DO you keep Thor imprisoned anyway? But getting back to the HERO implications, even building Shapeshift with Cellular Imitation wouldn't be enough. Because you would also need to be able to block Mental powers(or more accurately, fool someone trying to read your mind into seeing something else, which is even harder). And you would need to block mystic senses that could identify the "soul" or "aura" of a character as well.

Re: A Comeliness for Every Sense Group I also think that "attractiveness" doesn't really make sense for all sense groups. Does an attractive sound just add to PRE? How do you justify "attractive to Radio sense group"? I think making it apply separately to other sense groups just isn't worth it and would be unnecessarily complicated.

Re: Defences against the stun of KAs I think the fact that you if you take BODY damage , you must take an equal amount of STUN damage, regardless of what DEF you have is an important part of the balance. I think that giving people "full DEF" versus the STUN of killing attacks does two things that are imporant to play. First, it keeps the casualties down. It's not just the fact that only allowing resistant DEF to reduce the STUN damage would result in more people getting stunned. It would also result in more people getting killed, especially PCs since any nasty bad guy who just stunned you with a KA would likely try to finish you off with the next shot. Second, there are cinematic reasons. In a gun battle, can you imagine how important it would be to get the first the shot in? Similarly, how can you have long sword fights?

Re: Completely Undetectable The problem with such a thing is twofold. 1. It isn't terribly logical to incorporate all of them into one power. 2. If it takes YEARS for, say, an entire civilization to develop such a thing, shouldn't it take YEARS for another equally technological civilization to figure out how to undo it? That doesn't make for good story, so that means at some point you probably end up throwing 3 or 4 big brains in a room and watch them miraculously figure it out in a few days. This also doesn't make for very good story.

Re: What is Your Inner Character? True Neutral Elf Sorcerer. I usually play Neutral Good or Chaotic Good characters, but I can buy that.

Re: Balancing various challenges. That sounds about right to me. Most of my campaigns, the average DEF on supers is about 25 and standard agent weapons are 8d6, though I usually give them autofire. Not that they can get multiple hits very often.

Re: Your "rule of X" type character building guides? Generally, I have a DC cap on attacks, usually around 12 or 14. DEF is based on the other DC cap. Generally, 10 points below the average damage on the DC cap, unless you have a heck of a reason. SPD and CVs (based on DEX) I have a range of 4 from the high to the low. For example, a 3-6 SPD range, and a DEX range of 18-27. Anything outside of that requires a ton of justification as does more than 2 CSLs that apply to the same thing and/or 2 overall levels.

Re: Do you use minis? For Champs, I do. Making Minis: 1. Print picture of character(get it off the internet), about 1 - 1.5 inches high. 2. Paste picture to thick posterboard or similar substance. 3. Write name of character on back of picture. 4. bases are small wooden disc available at any crafts store - color coded(blue for heroes, red for villains). You'll need to paint them yourself. 5. Add a "peel and stick magnet" available at the same craft stores to each base. 6. use a binder clip to "attach" each character to their base during game sessions. For the map: Standard hex map. I have a simple set up that uses a long piece of posterboard and a long piece of "transparency" type sheeting(get it at an art store) taped together on one end. slide the hex map between the two, draw on the transparency sheet with a whiteboard marker...

Re: Oerth Language Chart Not necessarily. Aside from the fact that some D&D worlds do have "humanish" they just call it "common" for simplicity, there are a number of fantasy worlds that tend to push all the elves, for example, into one or two corners, so having one language for all the elves is much more realistic. In Krynn, for example, they basically had 3 areas of elves, two of which, Qualinost and Silvanost, kept in pretty regular contact. So one "elvish" language was really enough. Also, the elves in many campaigns tend to be very long lived and very isolationist - which is a combination ripe for cultural/linguistic stagnation.

Re: Balancing various challenges. A bit, but grunts, to me, are generally an annoyance most of the time. If I don't need to take the trouble to name you, you shouldn't do serious damage to anyone who actually has a name. 10-15 STUN on average is a bit much for a basic agent with a popgun, for my taste. 15 STUN is a pretty solid hit from a super, when you figure that most supers can only take 3 or 4 such hits. That gives a group of agents a real chance against a super. Not really very in genre to me unless you're playing street level. Of course, most "street level' supers are people like Daredevil and Batman who have almost no chance of getting hit by such guys - or shouldn't anyway.