Mike W
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Posts posted by Mike W
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Re: Concepts You Just Can't Build on 350 points.
5th Edition has actually cut out a lot of the old fashioned EC abuse. You can't buy stats or armor and the like in ECs anymore, so no more vampires and werewolves on 150 points. Also, no more EC for "my godlike abilieis." just to shoehorn in more points.I also think that disallowing the old focus and OIHI combo has stopped a lot of powered armor munchkinism.
I never allowed it in the first place. OIHD and Focus are completely different. You get one or the other but not both.
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Re: where do the villains get the MONEY?
Traditional:
1. Crime pays.(Beetle)
2. Own a business and don't leave a trace(Lex Luthor, Justin Hammer)
3. Government lackey(Crimson Dynamo)
4. Idle rich/I own my own country(Dr. Doom)
Other ideas:
Day trader with one heck of a business rating(as long as he doesn't have a record)
Writer/Artist/Songwriter
Movie Producer - all you really have to do is sell the script, get the director and put up the cash. Other people do all the real work.
Invented something. Probably really mundane, maybe even corny(beer hat, singing fish) but you sold a TON of them and now have more money than god and no need for a job.
Created a character/toy line that became hot: can you imagine how much the guy who created the Ninja Turtles is worth, or the Bratz dolls?
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Re: Concepts You Just Can't Build on 350 points.
I've found very few things you can't build a workable version of on 350 if you're willing to be flexible(or abuse if you prefer) the necessary concept for defining an EC.
I think the hardest thing is people who have a decent amount of all around skills/abilities but that "one big power" that costs insane amounts - Rogue's power drain comes to mind. It's a tough build to begin with and very hard to do cheaply.
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Re: Untrained & Familiarity skills
The steps are too big. Maybe if the range was 6-10 or so I might go for it but only for familiarities. But you shouldn't be able to get an 11- roll(essentially a full skill) for 1 point unless you've got a skill enhancer. Even then, the whole idea of a familiarity is that you haven't really studied it seriously enough to know much about it. No matter how smart you are, a familiarity means you have very limited exposure to the subject so you should be very limited in what you can do with it.
And I'm not big on "untrained" use of skills unless you've got something VERY close. Ok, you have Biology but need to know something about Biochemistry. You can try it...but it's gonna require a particularly good roll. Most of the time, we just let you roll the skill you have but assign a penalty. In the example above, maybe -3 or 4.
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Re: Is it worth it to make stuff on your free time without even playing them?
Is it worth it to make things for your campaign (for a DM' date=' such as locations, NPCs, monsters, etc.) or a player (characters, spells, etc.) even if you never use them? I've made some things before that I had a blast making at the time even though I never got the chance to use them in a game. What do you think? Is it a time killer for having fun when you don't have a gaming group with you?[/quote']I tend to enjoy making characters a lot. And I often find myself using things years later than when I make them. I need a new PC, sometimes I go grab a guy I made to be an NPC in a different campaign and tweak him a bit - or at least use the concept.
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Re: Contacts Question
It's essentially a quirk of the game. In theory, if you wanted to learn something about something in Cairo while you're still in Singapore, you could still cable your friend.That said, in Fifth edition contacts are to expensive, IMO.
Theoretically, yes. But given the technology it would take time. I was thinking that since Hunteds can be "limited by geography", it would make sense that Contacts could too.
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Question: I couldn't find it in the base book, but is there any kind of cost break for Contacts who are only available in certain parts of the world? Specifically, I'm in a new Pulp Game and several of my contacts are limited to certain cities that we may or may not ever get near. Given the fact that having a local official in Cairo as a contact is useless until we get there, is there anything to represent this? Or is it just a quirk of the game?
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Re: All-in-one box games
Brought out here to avoid mussing up the 6th edition discussion, per Steve's requests to keep that forum focussed.Who said anything about fluff?
I'm not 15 anymore. I have a wife and a kid and a job and a mortgage. What I don't have is hours of time on a telephone line in which to sit and create just the right magic system and just the right spells to go with it. And I'm not the only one. Like it or not, for years our hobby has been aging and acquiring all of those things. If I had a book that gave me a mini-setting, an inobtrusive, yet useful and somewhat customizable default magic system, a couple of dozen each of spells, packages, magic items, and monsters, that I could use with Sidekick or the core books, I'd be a happy man.
I like the idea of an "out of the box game" a lot. Maybe include A) A basic adventure
a roster of basic characters to play it with. No fancy adjustment powers, just martial arts, bricks, and energy blasts that sort of thing and C) a "cheat sheet" that you can run off that lists all the basic rules on one page. You know, the basic combat maneuvers, turn modes and basic movement rules, SPD Chart, END Costs, Damage dice, hits and hit locations, and basic modifiers - the stuff you use all the time. Once you get the basic system down, the in game stuff goes pretty quick and you can start adding the other stuff later as you need it. Star Wars did this once. They created a "basic set" that had basic characters, a simple adventure, and a very streamlined core rules set up that gave you everything you needed to know to crack it open and be gaming in half an hour or so. Once you had the basics down, you could add the other stuff later. But the "base box" gave everyone a good, fast start on the basic system.
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Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now?
Mostly classic country on the IPOD right now:
Merle Haggard - Ultimate Collection
Conway Twitty - 25 #1 Hits
Ronnie Milsap - 16 Biggest Hits
Tanya Tucker - Best of My Love
Roger Miller - Best of Roger Miller(which I find I keep on almost all the time no matter what. It's so fun and so infectious, it makes great psycho therapy when things suck.)
Just picked up the new Sheryl Crow CD Detours
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Re: An observation on two systems
I think HERO has plenty of ways for players to extricate themselves if their characters are well built and the players are thinking. But those come from the character sheet more than an arbitrary "get out of jail free" points that some games have. I think that getting your feet wet a bit more will help a lot. For all the massive sets of rules and such, you can reduce almost everything you need for most sessions to a single cheat sheet, one side only. The rest is flavor and judgments.
HERO does require you to pay a little more careful attention to the level of difficulty of the villains, which takes some getting used to. Sometimes things you don't think are that big of a deal can turn out to be amazingly effective(make a group full of martial artists and see what all that extra speed does, even if the attacks are relatively weak). TORG, the little I remember, is almost geared toward the players having an easy out if they just hang onto the right random draw cards they get for when they really need them.
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Re: "Neat" Pictures
Map of London. No idea of the time frame on this one' date=' though it [i']looks[/i] like an oldie. Larger version.
It looks similar to one of London c.1600 that is sometimes found in books on Shakespeare/his works. But there are too many hospitals and too much buildup outside of the "old city walls". Given that it is from a "pocket atlas" it's probably from the last century.
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Re: how do you deal with guns and superheroes in your campaign
In the thread about CapGun, it was brought up that normal guys with guns really shouldn't be effective against supervillains.Now in my campaign, I design the agents. major police etc as pretty heroic characters they'd be the stars of the show if not for the supers ( and since I run a multiverse campaign other versions actually are the "big guns" in other universes.) but the villains are designed so that a normal with a gun is rarely the answer. Its not that everyone is bulletproof its just normals need the supers to deal with the "firepower" of the villains extraordinary abilities.
My question is how do you handle this? Do you go my route or another way? Make the normals really normal? villains don't confront conventional forces much? Gunguys are a good alternative? ( if so what makes the heroes "Super" innate heroism maybe) Just curious.
Normal guns don't really hurt supers. But police have special squads (sort of SUPER SWAT like Code Blue form Marvel) that have guns which can hurt regular supers, though the cops are still at a bit of a disadvantage depending on who they're dealing with. Similarly, some agents just carry regular guns, others don't. I expect agents of AIM or minions of major masterminds like The Wizard to have things that are not street issue. Now Hammerhead's guys, yeah, they just have off the street .45s. They might hurt some supers, assuming they can hit them. But then, that's another problem entirely. I mean, sure that .45 can hurt Spiderman. Now all you have to do is hit him.
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Re: What Have You Watched Recently?
Giant Robo: The Night The Earth Stood Still. Very good. Very dark.
Castle of Cagliostro.
The Scarlet Pimpernel starring Leslie Howard. Classic stuff. Howard is every bit as good as Errol Flynn who is better remembered.
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Re: Best and worst jobs for Superheroes
It was funny
but yes' date=' at one time IIRC, Steve Rogers drew for Marvel (or Marvel in the MU). I recall a rather humorous scene where he tried to make a few suggestions to the writer of the Captain America comic book about how to better portray cap. The writer mutters a 'yeah sure' and thought clouds about artists giving him lectures 
[/quote']Yeah, Cap drawing Cap led to a few really good moments like that.
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Re: Another kind of balance
That' date=' plus new Contacts, Favors, gear, etc.[/quote']I tend to give Contacts and Favors as roleplaying rewards. You don't spend points on them, you roleplay it out and I give you the contact straight out. You can put points in it to improve it later though.
But this is the crux of the problem. Yes, in a lot of source material people don't seem to progress much for long stretches at a time. Characters go years without appearing to change. And yes, many of us build characters by starting with the "ideal version" and then scaling it back to what we can afford based on 350(or however many) points. But what if there is no point limit. What if you can build the 600 point version TO START? As gamers, it's bred into us that you adventure, you get XP and then you either go up a level or spend the XP to get more powerful. So how do we combine the two? How do we handle a game where XP is essentially unnecessary because the character starts with no need for it? Or very limited need for it? The game will almost certainly reach a point - rather quickly - where the GM is giving out XP because it's habit and it's expected but the players have nothing good to spend it on. They've already created the "ideal version" of the character and there is nothing sensible left to buy. Sure, the campaign may expose a weakness or an oversight. But well built characters won't have many - and some may be built right into the character concept so that it doesn't make sense to "buy off" the problem. Can you really see Spiderman buying off Doc Ock as a hunted? Or Superman buying off his Susceptibility to Kryptonite?
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Re: Best and worst jobs for Superheroes
I would think that the absolute perfect job for a superhero would be the writer/artist who writes and draws his own comic-book adventures--THE EDITOR: "Great job on these Thunder Man pages, Robbie! We've got another best-selling issue for sure!"
ROBBIE: "Thanks, Chief!"
THE EDITOR: "I love these action scenes! It feels like I'm right there in the middle of the action! Reading these, I could actually believe YOU were Thunder Man!"
ROBBIE: "HA HA HA HA HA! That's a good one, Chief! But we both know I couldn't possibly be Thunder Man!"
(Broad Wink At The Audience)
Yeah, Steve Rogers was the artist on Capt. America comics in Marvel for a while. But then, that's where you got the idea from isn't it?
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Re: Best and worst jobs for Superheroes
Generally speaking, I would say the best "jobs" are:
billionaire playboy/idle rich - What job?
Next tier:
artist/writer, inventor, anything that lets you work from home and be self-employed.
college professor - you are in class 12-15 hours a week, in the office 5 or 6 but can easily cancel and have meetings maybe once a week. Again, you do almost as much work at home as on campus - or you can.
Worst jobs:
night security, policeman, fireman - jobs where you have to work the nightshift and HAVE to be there
retail/fast food - but only if you work after 5. Before 5 it's tricky but not as bad
television reporter - you're supposed to be in front of the camera when the story happens, but not in costume
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Re: How much do you use...
I have mostly 4th edition books. I found a long time ago that you had to rebuild the characters for them to function in the same universe anyway, so I take the ones I like, rebuild them and add my own to get "Mike's Champs Universe". This means I use a LOT of 4th edition stuff. And I still use the 4th edition Shapeshift rules. 5th edition is just too many points for what you get.
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Re: Another kind of balance
I've toyed with this idea in the past. But one of my biggest concerns was what would happen to the need for experience points. If I get to build the character exactly as I envision it at the start, what do I need XP for? Players will still expect to get them and still want to spend them, so how do I make sure they have things for them to spend XP on while making sure that the new things A. Fit the character and B. Are in some sense necessary and not just "I'm buying 5 more STR, STUN, whatever because I have 5 points and need to spend them on SOMETHING".
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Re: Range Based on STR
I have issues with this Advantage/Limitation. It seems to me a static value for this (+/- 1/4) doesn't take into consideration the weight of the "object", making it too dependent on SFX. If I define my RKA as "throwing energy shuriken (which weigh next to nothing)", I'll get a much more effective power than if I define it as "throwing superdense neutroniumspheres (which are absurdly heavy)", even though they cost the same. But given that Ranged is a +1/2 Advantage, and No Range is -1/2, there's no space for adjusting the value for heavier/lighter objects.
How do you deal with this?
Part of the ability to throw something is based not just on weight but also on aerodynamics and the technique involved. Most people can throw a baseball farther than they can throw a playing card - or an arrow. Also, you need to keep in mind the STR of the character who will be doing the throwing. In a Heroic level game where stats over 25 are rare, it's not big deal but in a Superheroic game, a guy with an 80 STR is going to have no real change in his effective range. In most cases, the range will still equal his LOS.
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Re: What are "vitals"
How do you define the hit location "vitals" in your game?There seems to be a generally held view that the vitals equal the groin. But I can find no basis for this in the rules. Perhaps someone can point out where in the rules vitals are defined?
Personally I have always felt that saying the vitals is the groin is rather silly. As long as I have been playing Hero System / Champions (early 1980s) my groups have always defined vitals to be more than just the groin. The "chest" is any part of the upper trunk of the body except for vital organs (for instance, the heart). The "stomach" is any part of the abdomen except for the major arteries and or other areas likely to cause a greatly increased chance of fatal wounds. Thus we have always defined the "vitals" to be a area from the heart down through the central torso and abdomen where vital organs are located (including the groin). In our game a vitals hit is generally considered to be a heart hit.
How do others define the vitals?
I think it depends on the angle: groin, kidneys, solar plexis, maybe a shot just under the ribs. We usually play Champs so hit locations aren't a big deal.
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Re: Repackaging Character Disadvantages
[EDIT - reads as if I'm slagging you off JmOz - just thought that this is a perfect example of doing something by the book that can stimulate the negative thought processes of those that do not understand the way the system should work. No offence intended]It is this kind of thing that plays better with players when they approach the business by understanding that they are supposed to be feeding into the characterisation of their PC in the game.
If, instead of them thinking "I need some points - what is almost never going to come up in play" and then getting all upset when the most unusual attack form in the world is standard kit for the local thugs in pyjamas, they thought "Hmm, I need some points. I think it would be interesting if the local villain agancy was a real threat to me every time they showed up - I'll ask the GM what weapons they use and take a vulnerability to it".
The whole approach is different and more collegiate between GM and player rather than the more adversarial scenario. Less chance of looking as if you have a Gotcha! attititude.
Doc
True, but I think part of the problem is that the guy who would take a Vulnerability vs. Taste Flash effects is the kind of guy who wouldn't be willing to have the conversation you're suggesting here, which is where the problem comes in.
I think we all have certain disads we like a lot and other ones we don't like to take. I hate Vulnerability/Susceptibility. It's just against my nature. But I always have at least one Hunted. In the last game I built a "veteran" hero and gave him Hunted: Rogues Gallery with about half a dozen guys in it. I tend to create a personality and a history and then start looking for disads that flesh out the personality and look for characters in the campaign world that I can connect to my character. This means I often end up with heroes who have "been around a bit", but that's ok. It usually works out well for the group.
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Re: Looking for another character name
Or if you want something more sinister:
OMNI - One Man Neutralization Instrument
EAGLE - Environmental Armored Global Liquidation Element
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Re: Most Oscure Reference You've Ever Worked Into a Game
Possibly Reginald Scot's "Discoverie of Witchcraft", if by 'obscure' you're including only English language sources. 2 original copies survived the book burnings, so it's pretty rare. Used as a source for a witch-hunting organization and the hero who believed all witches were merely psychologically disturbed and in need of his protection.Then again, I've also used Bertrand Russell's private correspondences, which was never published, so that's extremely obscure. Nice source for my mad science villains.
"The Handbook of Watch and Clock Repair" - more copies of the original print run of this, possibly the most perfectly written book of all time, survived, but it's sadly nearly unread. Great for gadgeteering references.
Wacousta -- the most unreadable book of all time -- so obscure, it's Canadian. Transposed the whole thing into the near future. Worked like a charm.
Beowulf.. in Old English, which at the time I could read with fair fluency. The players were not so fluent, and didn't much like every NPC only speaking the language.
The Heimskringla.. I can't actually read the thing, it's that obscure, at least to me. But at least only the NPCs who weren't saying anything crucial to the plot were given lines from it.
Oh, and there was the time I introduced the Anunga Runga into a campaign, with the PC's convinced it was either a Manual of Puissant Skill at Arms or a Libram of Gainful Conjuration.
Is that what you meant?
Pretty much. Most gamers have enough exposure to traditional fantasy, sci fi, and comics that the obvious references are pretty easy to figure out(we know, for instance, when someone is doing a Wolverine type character or when someone seems to be standing in for Gandalf) but we also have less well known favorites that we make into PCs or NPCs and dredge up ideas out of the more obscure and esoteric bits of our experience just because we know that at least half the group will spot certain references.
The most unbelievable trope in the superhero genre...
in Champions
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Re: The most unbelievable trope in the superhero genre...
I think the trope is necessary to maintain a positive/upbeat campaign view. If humans are basically constantly at war, or forced to cower in their homes to avoid uberbeings or even deal with being victimized by them a few times a year as the next super conqueror comes along and enslaves whole populations, it ceases being fantasy and becomes very dark, gritty almost Hobbesian stuff where man's lot is pain and there is a large dose of "humans are basically evil" since even the well intentioned tend to do more harm than good.