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

what I saw as being asked for was "Personal Sacrifice"

 

if it is a drain it needs to be something that is going to last a while

for me this means at least a month,maybe more like years or centuries

 

when I poster my version of Townsaver the character took damage(3d6 normal no defences)that damage is going to take close to a month to heal for a normal

 

their needs to be some sort of inconvience that lasts a while and might include death

a drain that comes back in 5 minutes is not a "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 this has come up in the past, but I'd be at a loss to figure out what key words to search for since the forum search doesn't like three letter words. =(

 

The biggest problem to me in divorcing the two concepts is that Hero is very much a turn-based game (not "Turn," I'm talking about taking turns to go, not game terms breaking down units of time), and in any turn-based game, each player typically has a list of things they can do on their turn. In some games, they can do things on the other player's turn as well.

 

If you wanted to divorce movement and SPD, you'd basically be saying that movement is something it doesn't have to be your turn (phase) to do. In the case of Hero, you would also have to consider if it's something you want done on nobody's turn (segments between phases), which is probably the only way to do it with the variable SPD of characters. (That's assuming you want to keep SPD, and simply disconnect it from Movement.)

 

So, the first step would be to calculate the character's maximum movement per Segment.

 

Next, you would simply allow charcters to use their movement at any time during combat time, including off segments. But that sounds horribly broken to me. I think if the combatants are mainly melee, it would create some crazily long combats as people reposition (act) on phases that nobody can attack or use powers (every other act). That's a pretty huge change in the combat rules.

 

Now, it's less of a problem if you toss out the SPD chart altogether for combat and read the SPD chart as "Attacks/Actions per turn" like other, more abstract, games. Of course, that also has a pretty large impact on a lot of game rules too.

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

Transfer: BODY to END' date=' self only? (Powered by an appropriate END Reserve)[/quote']

 

That's possible. I think I'd be inclined to go a similar route. One BODY should give you 4 END. I suppose the other option is just to build the power with a BODY drain side effect that always happens. Then put it on charges that take 5 minutes to recover.

Re: Decoupling Movement from Speed or Segement moviement

No house rules, sorry.

 

As a personal rule, though, I keep a close eye on the number of inches of running and SPD. A 4 SPD person, with just the base 6" of running can run a mile in about 3 minutes 21 seconds. At 7" we get 2 minutes and 52 seconds. I'm not sure what the world's record is for running the mile is, but I know four minutes used to be some kind of benchmark for it.

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

Having never tried it in-game, I wasn't sure how easy it would be to do that math. On the surface, it seemed no harder than any other combat rolls & calculations. I am surprised that with a 3.7% chance, a x5 multiple is coming up about once per turn. That tells me an average of about 27 Killing Atacks are being thrown per Turn.

 

Do you have a DC cap for your game? If so, why are RKAs 20-50% below that?

 

=====

 

It seems to me that the main objection to the Stun for Killing Attacks (generated the normal way) is two-fold. That x5 generates too high a STUN value, and that it comes up way too often.

 

I was wondering how many of us think that x5 is too high, but think that x4 would be acceptable as a maximum?

 

As an aside, one of the nice (IMO) things about my idea of using two additional dice (per d6 of KA) to determine the full STUN of the KA is that the STUN results become a smooth "bell curve", loosing the gaps & jumps that using a multiplier causes.

 

Book Method: 1d6 KA => 3.5 Avg/6 Max BODY, 9.333 Avg/30 Max STUN

My Method: 1d6 KA => 3.5 Avg/6 Max BODY, 10.5 Avg/18 Max STUN

 

My Method produces a STUN curve identical to a normal attack of equal DCs, and 0.5 more BODY per 3 DCs (presuming neither are advantaged).

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

Something like has this has been done by DOJ.

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?

In my last campaign (as a player) I tried to have my "Spyro" character have a disadvantage, in the form of a perfume allergy.

 

Now, what I wanted was for sneezing to cause inconvienience of some sort, but the GM (and allt he other players) had trouble classifying this oddball.

 

How do you do this?

 

I was thinking of some sort of STUN ONLY damage, or maybe loss of END from sneezing or something.

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

Well, Bendis has been hinting at it for 4 years now, so in theory he should have had plenty of time to develop the story implications. Obviously time is not a guarantee of quality though. Regardless, I figure no matter what explanation Marvel offers up, some people will still hate it.

 

I've made the "3-D Man will save us all!" comment a few times now, but I seriously doubt Bendis will have the day saved by a character he's not even writing. I also don't think Triathlon has ever exhibited that particular oddball 3D-Man power, so unless it's a major plot point I don't see them introducing it now. I actualy wish they would though: I think it would be amusing if the Skrulls put all this effort into countering a bunch of big hitters and then the world was saved by some relatively obscure hero that the Skrulls just never thought of as being a problem.

 

Of course, there are also the Skrull defectors to deal with... it's only a secret until somone flaps their lips...

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

Everyone knows that Comeliness represents "the character's beauty or handsomeness". Or, to put it another way, how attractive the character is when detected by way of the Sight sense group.

 

This brings up the question: Why just sight?

 

Shouldn't there also be characteristics for:

 

How attractive the character is when detected by way of the Hearing sense group?

 

How attractive the character is when detected by way of the Smell/Taste sense group?

 

How attractive the character is when detected by way of the Touch sense group?

 

How attractive the character is when detected by way of the Mental sense group?

 

How attractive the character is when detected by way of the Radio sense group?

 

How attractive the character is when detected by way of the Unusual 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

Why do the rules allow all defences to be used against killing attacks if you have any resistant defence at all?

 

This has always been the way we have done it, of course, and I can see that it has game balance implications - if we did not do it that way then killing attacks would very often create 'stun' results, unless you either bought limited addional resistant defences (only against stun from KAs - messy) or always bought your resistant defences high (not desperately realistic).

 

So there are clearly solid game balance reasons, but that was back then. Nowadays, Hero is a toolkit, a character modelling system, and I'm coming to the conclusion that rule constraints like this - systems in place to balance the game - have to be looked at to determine if they are still appropriate. Moreover, it simply is not very realistic: if you have 10 pd and you get stabbed for 6 Body, it is not going to hurt signigicantly less than if you had 1 point resistant defences on - 5 Body still get through.

 

If ONLY resistant defences stopped killing attacks, then there would be a clear case for increasing the cost of killing attacks: they would, in effect, be a +1/2 advantage over the equivalent DCs of normal attack, and similarly, a +1/2 advantage on normal defences would make those defences fully resistant to killing attacks (I'd suggest a +1/4 advantage would make normal defences resistant to EITHER the Body or Stun of Killing Attacks).

 

Anyway - any thoughts on this: even if you don't belive any changes should be made it might be useful to discuss all the implications?

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

In discussing Marvel's current Skrull Invasion over in the NGD, I got a number of responses that surprised me...

 

Spoilers for anyone who is interested in the Secret Invasion series:

We've found out that there are a number of Skrull infiltrators that have secretly replaced a number of mid to high level characters in the Marvel Universe, such as:

Spider Woman, Hank Pym, Jarvis the Butler, Captain Mar-Vell, and Elektra, among others.

 

 

Using a combination of super-science, psionics, and magic, the Skrulls have devised a way of making those infiltrators completely undetectable, to all forms and senses that we've seen so far, as long as they stay in their disguises and don't ever revert to their Skrull forms. So far we've been shown that they are undetectable to Spiderman's Danger Sense, Wolverine's sense of smell, Iron Man and the Avengers Mansion's sensors, Dr. Strange's magic, and Professor X's psychic powers.

 

We don't know how many of these Skrulls there are on Earth, probably a lot, including at least a few more big names.

 

 

In discussing this storyline, some posters expressed dislike for making characters undetectable by all methods, and at least one implied that he would walk out of a campaign if he encountered something like this.

 

Is it bad form for a GM to have a character be undetectable, or to baffle super senses that the player's have bought?

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.

The way I see it' date=' generally mooks and agents should be able to leak a [i']few[/i] points of STUN through to anyone but tough bricks so they can't be simply ignored, but only those few agents with "heavy weapons" should typically be able to do more. Agents are supposed to be annoyances; something to distract and wear down the heroes (and of course remind the good guys of just how powerful they are). I don't mind bricks ignoring mooks; being tough is their schtick and they should be allowed to display that durability on occasion.

 

If every agent who hits the hero does just 3 or 4 points of STUN, then a group of them is a real threat even to supers but unless the heroes screw up by the numbers are unlikely to triumph.

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?

In your campaigns do you use minis and maps? Considering the knockback and the number of combatants I intended to have in a given conflict in my campaign I made myself a hexmap. I was immediately plagued with two problems:

 

1) The rules for range mean that my TK player can pick up objects and effortlessly remove them from the combat area, when guiding her creation I was more concerned with what she could lift in terms of her concept. Also I don't believe she has an obscene number of active points in the power.

 

On the same token, on a full move either of the flyers can enter or exit the map, however they are the only characters with 'travel' powers (this is less of an issue).

 

2) The other issue is what to use for minis, we've been using lego men because I can't find 1/72 scale minis anywhere. The lego men are somewhat offscale and I wonder if anyone knows where to find minis a the scale that can be used in this game, or do I need a bigger map and change the size of the hex scale to 2-3" = 2 meters?

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

Yeah - I think the web document, though, has some flat made-up stuff that may or may not line up with "canon" Greyhawk...though who is to say what "canon" is now anyway? Regardless, it's a neat document, and GH has long needed more language expansion.

 

I also shudder at the "Elvish". "Dwarvish" etc. languages in D&D in general. That's like saying you speak "Humanish".

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.

That was my thought as well. We don't even generally use supervillains (except Big Bads) who can "routinely" Stun our heroes (except the low-defense martial artists); it generally takes an above-average damage roll to accomplish that.

 

Leak a bit of Stun through with every hit, absolutely.

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.