casualplayer

Re: Balancing social skills and role playing I give social skill bonuses for players that take advantage of the in-game opportunities I provide for them as a GM, and I do provide them. If they are a Toastmaster or debate champ and their character is Slow Thrud the Tumble-tongued I'm not going to let them try to free-port their own skills into the game unless their character shares that skill at that level.

Re: Order of the Stick

Re: Order of the Stick Well, if Luke used it on Vader, boy, would his face be red.

Re: Order of the Stick With as much vague and indeterminate ancestry as floats around fantasy I would be reluctant to use that spell in fear of suddenly finding out I just hexed Grandpa.

Re: Order of the Stick When the GM wants you to wander about a windy canyon, it's best to just get to it.

Re: What do charges cost? That one's easy, especially with the suggested "doubling of power = +1d6" theory of HERO. 6 8d6 grenades going off simultaneously isn't 6 separate attacks; it's doubled then doubled again for an effective 10d6 mega-grenade. For the found ammo thing, if you really gotta point it out (and of course you do,) I would make a complicated Aid that increases the effective active points of the power by the cost required for the power to have X more bullets.

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!! As someone who was tying my flannel shirt around my waist pre-grunge era, carrying a backpack when everyone else was carrying a nylon gymbag and someone who was shaving his head when Rogaine was setting the world on fire I would like to tell the world to stop pinching my style. It's getting embarrassing.

Re: Damage Negation! I'm curious as to why, my being one of the people who offered up examples of using the power Damage Negation and suggestions on how to make it work in play, you would imply that I don't like, don't and shouldn't use the Power. I'm actually not sure who is supposedly posting to this thread who doesn't. How does not liking an addendum that I find needlessly cumbersome lead to what you are saying? Then you proceed to give a straw man a good thrashing. I've found that DN works extremely well to reflect people invulnerable to certain types of damage, whether an energy type or non-magical weapons. My personal favorite use is DN versus Real Weapons/Items to emulate people who can be riddled with mooks' bullets or pummeled by faceless ninja and walk away unscathed but still have some concern about the non-standard weapons that a named PC/NPC might carry. I have no problem with someone's Advantaged dice pool coming up against DN and failing to exceed the threshold set. When you Advantage a Power you are trading amplitude for finesse and specialization, and sometimes finesse and specialization are not the right tools for the job. Using Sean's own argument, an excellent argument at that, the prevalence of swiss army offensive Multipowers with nearly every variety of tricky damage listed but absolutely including an NND slot shows that the benefits of NNDs far outweigh the costs involved. Many Advantages are too much of a bargain and Damage Negation helps restore equilibrium.

Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy Instead of the goofy, space intensive, non-helpful three tiered power level way spells are offered in the Grimoires, they should just be costed per die of effect so you can just multiply up to whatever your campaign rolls at. It would make it much easier to increment spell power over time and with experience, and also incorporate into Multipowers and VPPs.

Re: Damage Negation! And is this work worth the effort? Does it improve things? I don't believe so. Hit me with some rationale other than RAW.

Re: Damage Negation! Really? How many of your characters' offensive powers have the points per Damage Class written down? Do you know which Advantages affect the points per Damage Class and which do not? How long would it take you to amend all of your characters for this option? Then realize there are GMs who might not want to have to amend every published character they get the urge to use or put even more time into designing every NPC they create. And that unless explicitly forbidden Damage Negation can come up in any game that has Variable Power Pools even if no one starts out with the power on their sheet. And there is one of the main reasons why you would have to memorize or in-game reference the Advantages that Affect Damage Class chart, Variable Power Pools and the multitude of differently Advantaged powers that might emerge. Adjustment Powers and additive abilities like HKA and HTH become a nightmare to adjudicate also if you do anything outside of +DC vs -DC. Meh, the ruling is more trouble than it is worth.

Re: Damage Negation! The meta of Damage Negation is making your opponents abide by Standard Effect conjoined with 3 pts of dedicated Defense to soak that standardized damage. If you don't want to reveal to your players that your NPCs have Damage Negation, just subtract 1 "3" result per level of DN then a "4" result and back and forth. Work your way out from the center pairing 7's and reduce the dice of effect similar to handling an Explosion. I don't mind just subtracting dice from the damage pool to reflect the influence of Damage Negation, except for when it is a player that has the power. Players love to watch you roll hails of gunfire and have them not even muss their hair. Part of the appeal of the power is that no rookie cop or guy taking martial arts classes at the Y is going to scorch off a lucky shot and put my super on his ass. I can't be bothered to memorize a list of which Advantages effectively boost Damage Classes. That's a rule that fails the "Use in Practice" test.

Re: Needing a Name for a Density Increase Super Heroine Seems like you really want to have an 80 STR but your GM won't let you have an 80 STR so you broke it down into a bunch of different aspects in the Multipower to get it approved. 40 STR + 8d6 HTH + effectively a casual STR of 40 + 80 STR for stopping things. Neat character but needlessly complex past base 10 STR (should be higher if she is Titania-burly) + 30 STR from Density Increase + 40 STR from Multipower. For the name I like: Thunder Bombshell Juggernaut Amazon Delta Heavyweight If you want something punny or funny you could go for: Wrecking Belle Homewrecker Battleaxe Your best bet is probably to just take the name of the character whose picture you are referencing: Titania

Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy This. Because HERO can do this. So few other game systems can come close and none so well. I like a rules system where I can make a game where being covered by a crossbow is a serious threat and also make a game where the players can change the face of continents. I've ran high, low and middle earth and HERO nailed them all.

Re: Order of the Stick I do love a bad guy I can admire.

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Yeah, great job illuminating her with the light radiating from her own spell. The expression on her face shows her love and passion for the art.

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!!

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular? Meta-wry, my favorite humor.

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular?

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular? If you peg your game to these benchmarks it also makes it a lot easier to port characters in from other game worlds and genres, so Conan can team up with Captain America and such.

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!! I've beat my head against the first Thomas Covenant book multiple times due to friend recommendations and I just can't make it through. Since I first stated that I've never read Harry Dresden, I've since read Fool Moon (the second one.) Decent enough read, although the books are set in Vanilla City not Chicago like they pretend. My wife really wants me to run a Dresden-ish game for her so I had to have some idea what she was really asking for. Is the short-lived tv show any better?

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!! I think he's playing off his vulcanosity, hence the venus envy comments. Although who knows, maybe Mrs. Vulcan is one hot lava lover.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? I had caught an isolated episode here and there but, because my co-workers talked it up, I've been plowing through Community on Hulu. Haven't seen an episode yet that hasn't made me laugh out loud.

Re: Istvatha V'han - why can't she conquer Earth? She tried to conquer Earth by winning the presidency of the United States while in disguise but she kept making ridiculous errors like saying she could see Russia from her Alaskan front door.

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!! Here's the manufacturer's website. And the description they have up there: There is a wide variety of potential types of cards that you can use to construct your deck, those types shared among all the players and varying from game to game. You try to amass gold to acquire resources to amass more gold and so on to prove you are the most worthy. The cards you gain are added to your customizeable deck and you will make several passes through, shuffling up whenever it's exhausted. You have to add holdings to your deck to acquire enough victory points to win but those cards are dead draws. The endgame doesn't come until IIRC 3 piles of potential cards are completely exhausted. Once you get the hang of things the game plays extremely quickly, like 30-60 minutes. Elegant and addictive.