casualplayer

Re: HERO SYSTEM MARTIAL ARTS -- What Do *You* Want To See? I think it is all relative. The 1ft spider buys DCV to indicate that it is exceptionally hard to hit, even with martial manuevers. Maybe even some creepy PRE to make it so the squeamish won't even take a shot. The GM might rule you can't make use of any manuevers that are inherently High Shot if the bug's on the floor. The ginormasaur buys DEF or Damage Negation or Damage Reduction to represent that "your puny blows mean nothing to me!" Sure I would like some delving into this but I would hate for it to be hard coded into the MA rules.

Re: What if superheroes only appeared in a limited region? It really depends on how "super" the supers became, if everyone in the zone became equivalent to special forces or if each person in the zone became equivalent to a free-range nuclear weapon. Intelligence services would go into overdrive trying to kill or control everyone within the zone. Now if the zone was an area with a cultural identity rather than a national or transnational one, that would be a problem. If Israel or, for that matter, Gaza got the power up there would be serious problems and likely blood in the street. Same with any region with resentment or entitlement boiling just under the surface like Pakistan and India or North and South Korea. What if Taiwan got hit with the blast? Yowza! There would be resentment from blessings viewed as unearned but there would also be the celebrity from being exceptional. There would also be a lot of people with no interest in either aspect who would just want to be left alone.

Re: Need all of your suggestions for this power build Need more info. Does this character drop the temperature in any area he's in, maybe being a Distinctive Feature or, if useful, Change Environment? Can he crank it up, creating a Darkness field centered on himself? Does he absorb incoming hostile heat and light, feeding the END Reserve? I would say you have an END Reserve with a conditionally limited REC depending on ambient conditions, with maybe some Absorbtion to feed the Reserve also.

Re: Order of the Stick If you did this to a group of players, you'd be lucky to get away with just a table-flipping.

Re: Favorite Character West of the Missippi Things are more spread out in the West, so a hero has to be able to move! Bonneville Flats and all the test pilots and long stretches of highway. Speed and travel and rockets are very West. Nuclear testing grounds make for a certain flavor of hero. What kind of man gets blow up then goes to fight crime? Most of the West used to be Mexico. You can't forget that. Can't go wrong with a horse motif. Bronco, Mustang, Palomino, etc. Similarly cowboys. Ranger, Gunslinger, Wild Bill, etc. Strangely enough for a area with a reputation for sun and heat, fire-based heroes abound. Could use a nice Icemaker when the mercury tops 100.

Re: HERO SYSTEM MARTIAL ARTS -- What Do *You* Want To See? Can I chime in and say that I would like a sampling of evocatively described martial arts rather than a long list of manuevers with interesting italicised descriptors but no idea how the manuever functions or what it means? I would like Style to Analyze, please. I would like to be able to transcend the dice and character sheets and deduce that the villian described as moving to pulsing music only he can hear with his hands staying peculiarly close together is a capoierista and prone isn't such a disadvantage. I would like to be able to guess that a VIPER agent using the horn-nosed strike is likely from Eastern Europe or spent a great deal of time there while the one using a bushmaster blow is from someplace else, even if the mechanics behind the damage are identical.

Re: When sfx lie Sounds like now that we have the concept of Damage Negation that Block may better be constructed using that as a foundation, maybe with RAR.

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. I really would not know where it would be safe to look on her. Dangerous curves. Nice conveyance of casual grace.

Re: "wearable mecha" writeup question Sounds to me like the mecha is the character and the pilot just a splinter of its consciousness, so it sits there Concentrating, immobile and 0 DCV, when it "makes" a pilot outside itself. The mecha has defenses and movement UBO No Range to represent "riding inside." Either that or the mecha is the pilot's powers bought with Physical Manifestation.

Re: When sfx lie Have you considered decaf? The whole point of the thread is whether the OP's suggestion is a valid sfx for DCV levels. Using an obvious, focus-based example of DCV levels to argue for the allowing of inobvious or Invisible DCV levels is an interesting tactic. I don't know why you're taking this so personally but I am not. You have won the internets, and driven me from the field.

Re: Rare Triggers Can I partially limit my REC to Only when STUN, BODY or END are at less than starting values? It just sits there otherwise when I'm healthy and fully rested. If this was taking the piss of Trigger I wholeheartedly approve because it is a power modifier just reeking of cheese. Limiting your powers to Only When You Need Them has never seemed like much of a limitation to me.

Re: When sfx lie What are you talking about? The OP Sean is pointing out something that can be done in HERO but questioning "should it be done?" It's what he does. I am agreeing with him that it shouldn't. It's been mentioned but this is essentially reconstructing D&D's Armor Class, where an attack that would successfully hit AC 10 modified by DEX would actually "hit" but if it didn't overcome the additional AC provided by your armor the attack was considered to have been blunted. Yes, the toolkit is versatile enough to construct a flawed system. There's a marketing slogan. The problem is that the HERO lexicon has "hit" established as successfully targeting, start warming up the damage dice. If you start fuzzying up the agreed upon definition you end up speaking the same language but not communicating, which leads to frustration, which leads to bad gaming, which leads to the door, which leads me to think it is a bad idea unless you renegotiate the definition of "hit" with your players as part of the campaign construction.

Re: When sfx lie

Re: When sfx lie Concealing your abilities from your opponents is a benefit that should cost points, proportional to the usefulness of the duplicity. If the SFX of your defense leads your opponents to switch to the Big Gun to get through your defenses rather than tracking missiles, then you are getting a huge advantage, one I have no problem with as long as you pay the points for it. Combat Luck was a step in the wrong direction to accomodate the commonality of KAs flying around the game. Just because it has quickly become ubiquitous doesn't make it right; actually in HERO the powers that everyone has are usually the ones that need to be checked for brokenness.

Re: Steampunk Star Wars (Needs Better Name) Brass Galaxy. Starforgers. Verne's Tomorrow. Phlogiston Frontier. Aetherpilots. Some names that occured to me.

Re: Talk to me about: Haymaker Legsweeps and Throws set people up for Haymakers quite nicely also.

Re: Villains Campaign I've ran a villains game before and it was a lot of fun. The leader was an amoral mentalist named Black Dragon, there was Bjorn, Son of Ymir who had the viking mindset of "if you wanted to keep it you should have held on tighter," an honorable samuraiko fulfilling her giri to a dishonorable lord, a demon with vaguely Venom-ish abilities and a rotating cast of others who got killed, left behind, sacrificed for the getaway, framed, etc. On one adventure Black Dragon killed a hero, I think it was Amphibian from Champions of the North, and Polar Bear went ballistic and stalked him for the rest of the campaign. I had Harbinger of Justice infiltrate the team and nearly take them all out in an ambush. I had Menton politely "ask" them to embark on a suicide mission. I also invaded the Earth with an exterminating alien force and made them team up with the heroes to save everything. The crowning point was when we switched back to the heroes game and they were going up against some known members of Eurostar and they recognized some of the new members as their former villains. They regretted writing them up quite so vicious and powerful that day.

Re: Invisible Armor

Re: Time related powers Frozen is an absolute and HERO really hates absolutes and does not do them well. Pretty much got to do this with a VPP and the character's imagination comes up short when the pool points do.

Re: New Product: Who Would Win? [card game] Who would win?: Who Would Win? or Apples to Apples. Sounds like a good addition to the Beer & Pretzels game shelf. Something to play with friends who don't take all games too seriously.

Re: Time related powers Missile Reflection/Deflection for stopping incoming attacks as they are coming. Desolidification UAA to cause someone to be "unstuck in time" has both defensive and offensive utility. Mind Control-Only to make them do something they have done recently can "Groundhog Day" a target. Teleport-Only to somewhere recently traveled from can set someone to walking a Moebius Strip. Is it all time freeze from the perspective of the frozen?

Re: Invisible Armor

Re: Invisible Armor If the power provides clues to the observer to make tactical decisions then it is Visible. No one smart wastes bullets on Colossus because he has Visible Resistant Protection; they shoot at a different one of his teammates or opt for something that might scuff his armor. People still seem to want to take a shot at Superman, even with his reputation, because he looks like he has bullet-vulnerable flesh.

Re: Transform Self If you used Transform to change shape it would cause oddness when you could transform from being a low BODY mouse in a blink but it would take a minute to Transform from being a high BODY Tyrannosaur. Transform is too vague and wonky and open to misinterpretation and misuse so they hard coded some safeties into the power rather than just relying on player ethics and GM perceptiveness.

Re: HERO SYSTEM MARTIAL ARTS -- I don't want to see one shots Something I would like to also see in HSMA is an emphasis on manuevers actually being a short section of a kata, hopefully resulting in the effect of the manuever. Some descriptors that show that even the simple jab is actually bobbing, weaving, feinting with the off-side shoulder then planting and driving off the back foot. Something that would explain why you would ever leave yourself open (-DCV) to enhance your chances of landing your blow (+OCV) or vice versa. Something to diminish the rochambeau aspect of many, many fights. I would also like to see some wildarts powers taking advantage of the new powers included in 6th. Iron Shirt is likely now Damage Negation but Ki Barriers and such would be nice as well.