casualplayer

Re: How would you simulate this in combat? I would say the old man had a ginormous EGO, both to resist the PRE attack of a leopard trying to eat you and to make the EGO roll to push his STR (probably got it up to a 18!) The EGO helped him to stay cool and understand that the leopard was going to perform a Sacrifice Throw, taking both of them to the ground and turning their DCVs to poo (who cares if your DCV is halved when it's 3 to begin with.) He knew the leopard's SPD was greater so he took the Throw, didn't abort to a Dodge that probably wouldn't have worked anyway, and waited for his chance. He Blocked the leopard's next attack using his held action and then when his next phase came around he struck! Because of the Block he got to go first and he figured he was Friskies anyway, might as well try for a head shot. Success! The GM was in a good mood and so he allowed the normal damage to actually be killing damage, 1d6+1 maybe. Dice smiled again and he rolled a (6+1) x2 BODY for the head, and with a saucy x5 for the STUN Multiplier. Stunned the critter, KOed it, and left it bleeding to death with a grisly trophy clutched in his hand.

Re: Spider-Man: Elementalist? Funny, I was just about to mention that the webshooters have been crushed, accidentally and on purpose, by people grabbing or striking at Spidey's wrists. IIF, cause all that's visible is a little tube. There is also the fun he has had bringing them onto a plane past airport security. Don't forget the Charges of END Battery, also IIF. If I remember right he loads two and keeps four in his belt. And I'm with MitchellS, that 5 points for x2 equipment rule is ridiculous. Especially with Multiple Power Attacks. Extra Limbs and 2^8 katanas, yay!

Re: Batman Begins

Re: Batman Begins Ahhhhhh, saw it for the second time today. But then again the first time was only last Friday. So good. Every change in the origin was excellent, especially the impetus of leaving the theater. Detective work makes for boring summer fare so ixnaying the Sherlock Holmesian aspects was a good call. And having a cadre of supporters, like the Shadow's Seconds, was awesome. The Batmobile was a bit much though but I'm sure the toymakers will be happy. Katie Holmes' character really needed to leave Gotham, or her absence in the next movie will be glaring. And Batman's 30! At the start of his career? He's not gonna hold up long enough for Batgirl to come around.

Re: Powers--by Bendis You'll find a lot of people here who feel like I do. Bendis was amazing in his early days: Jinx, Goldfish, early Powers, Fortune & Glory. But he just became more and more gratuitous, and less and less respectful of the format he chose to work in. Maybe he caught something from Mark Millar? He is far too enamored of his dialogue to work on his pacing. I maintain that he has become unreadable except in collected form. His early Powers was so good that the decline was heartbreaking. At least for me. Oh yeah, he delved into Unity's backgrounds quite a bit, especially for him. SuperShock was more or less a golden age Superman, whose powers just continued to grow and grow. Ultrabright was a Hippolyta-type Wonder Woman, like an immortal demi-goddess who could command all men. Red Hawk was a US Senator and a Batman riff. Mystical Power-chuk Guy was just a punk and a jerk. I don't recall much about the Radioactive Man. It would be a fun world to play in but it certainly is a dark one.

Re: Powers--by Bendis I think that you are missing stuff. Triphammer is a super-tech guy. FG3 was induced mutants. Christian Walker's powers just kinda happened. Retro Girl's powers have been passed down through the ages. That brunette flying when Walker got to the monastery was Retro Girl, and that was Zora in the background heartbroken that Retro Girl showed her up. It looks like Olympia croaked when he impregnated that woman and passed on his powers to the fetus. There are heaps of alternative origin Powers out there. And SuperShock was directly responsible for the radiation guy going off in Utah. And he burned Vatican City and all of Iraq to the ground. At which point the series got too dumb to continue reading. Used to adore Bendis' stuff but he started to believe his own fan press.

Re: "Super Heroes" That your character doesn't/wouldn't like Well, my PBEM character Sunknight does have some in-game concerns about some of his teammates. My character literally is a choir boy/eagle scout/paladin, and the sun does shine out of his @$$. I stopped short of the 15 pt Intolerant and 25 pt Self-righteous, but he does have strong social beliefs on right and wrong. So the gun-toting loners give him pause. And he's not sure what to think about the mechanical man. Does he actually have a soul or is he just an appliance? Should be fun to play out and overcome. I have never made a character that could have associated with Wolverine before around X-Men 145. Of course they retconned him to make him the failed samurai even before that, but before the facelift it would have been like having a real wolverine on the team. Sometimes he fights the enemies, sometimes he turns and bites you and sometimes he goes off on his own and takes a nap. Who needs it? Here's your walking papers. Curse Logan for inspiring a million homage characters. Even my non-awful good characters would have had problems with the vicious little runt. If you put two aggro characters in the same room, they are gonna fight just to see who wins. It would be like the Thunderbird-Wolverine rivalry all over again, and we know what happened to poor Thunderbird. I rejoiced to see Booster Gold, of all people, take a shot at Batman in OMAC Project. That winged rat needs a boot in the butt. I know, he's been wronged but using that as justification for his actions just means that Batman is an accessory to murder instead of guilty of Murder One (poor Beetle.) Can I have my Jim Aparo Batman back please?

Re: Exponential VS Linear ?

Re: A really variable variable power pool If the pool's not Cosmic, get some levels for when it's cold and slightly fewer for when it's temperate. Then you can make your skill roll more easily and shift the pool around when the weather favors. You could buy special Only when Cold REC or an END Aid so you can burn END like a fiend.

Re: Meta SFX Nah, really what I am saying is that everything that LS does could easily been done with rDEF and Power Defense. Want immunity to snake venom? 10 pts rDEF, 10 pts Power Defense Only vs. snake venom (probably worth much more than +2 Limitation.)

Re: Meta SFX This approach would allow you to recost (and reconstruct) Life Support into less of a platypus type of power (love this simile, who deserves credit?). People could buy Power Defense and regular old DEF into conditional only versus Environmental effects or, at a certain level, characters could just be tough enough in general to ignore them. All environmental effects are either damage or Drains. We could ditch the arbitrary sub-rules of Life Support and if you wanted to be able to survive the damaging effects of space or hot lava we could stay within the core rules.

Re: Exponential VS Linear ? Actually I agree entirely but you are incorporating two variables that aren't based on STR in HERO. Case in point: I hit Superman with a Speed Drain (as opposed to a SPD Drain) and now he looks like he is starring in his own slow motion movie. How much damage should his punch do now? Full STR? A proportional fraction? Should I have to Link up a STR Drain also? You nailed it on the head; force is derived when you have mass, distance and time. HERO STR only gauges the ability to move mass, and as a figured characteristic you get HTH dmg. Shouldn't work that way, causes problems. Someone else finally pegged the exponential-linear transition that you get when you cross the defense threshold. Impervious to a point and then everything afterward is gravy. It's non-intuitive because we just don't think about things with 0 DEF. We are also far too accustomed to the dice smiling and having David occasionally cut down Goliath with a sling stone even though there is no way he should have been able to hurt him at all.

Re: Another Suggestion for Dropping Figured Characteristics It's certainly not going to make the game less complicated, but 'realistically' STR is a small part of punching damage. Coordination involving all of the muscles working together is much more damaging. Are you ready for a DEX bonus to damage? If you have a 110 STR but move like sludge, I'm really only in danger if you pin me to something immovable. Raw STR should only be used for Grab manuevers and damage. HTH damage could be figured off of that (but we're backsliding then) but it shouldn't necessarily be equivalent.

Re: Another Suggestion for Dropping Figured Characteristics It's a perfectly viable way to do Characteristics but, unfortunately, you would have to recost most Powers also. The system is entertwined so that things that you least expect have a huge interdependency on innocuous things. I personally would have liked to have seen Figured Characteristics go the way of the dodo with 5th Ed, but have the actual characteristics (PD-STUN) remain. Where were you when they were making 5th?

Re: Lets cut the crap... There seems to be very little crap cutting going on here. Everyone here on the boards is either a prospective HERO-phile or a passionate fanatic. All the criticism is well meant, if not always well-phrased. So what's with all the grade flinging? For my sake, 5th Ed made a decision to stay almost compatible with 4th Ed. Not the choice I would have made but certainly an arguable one. There are flaws (it's not a flaw; it's a feature!) but they remained out of a conscious decision not neglect. Steve has designed or consulted on like 187 different rules systems; he's pretty sharp at this stuff! If he was mostly stupid and wanted to be his own competition, I am sure he has a strong, workable alternative superhero RPG roaming around in his head. For my money, this is the game to play. I can't play other games without seeing how HERO would simulate it better. That doesn't mean that it can't improve though.

Re: Exponential VS Linear ? The meta-rule, based off the STR chart, says that 5d6 damage is twice that of 4d6. 8d6 costs in meta-rule character points twice as much but is 2^8 times as much damage, according to that same pesky STR chart benchmark. That STR chart is cause of more trouble than it's worth, primarily because people confuse lift capability with foot/pounds of force. It's hard to make a game that can do Batman and Superman. You have to make genre concessions. If the damage classes climbed linearly proportional to the corresponding STR's lift capability, no one would ever survive a glancing blow from any brick. No one would play anything but. There was a choice that needed to be made: exponential power curve-linear point costs or vice versa. HERO chose the former. I've played RPGs based on the latter and HERO made the right choice.

Re: Pros/Cons of an 'official' campaign world Changing stuff, without asking first, makes me so angry. I can't tell you how mad I am that Fiacho doesn't look like Dilbert's boss anymore. I mean, now he looks like Locutius of the Borg! And don't even get me started on Le Sone/Ultrasonique. An 'official' campaign world could be kinda fun if regular, frequent micro-updates occured, say weekly or bi-weekly. The latest issue of Millenium Weekly, so to speak. Even people jumping in later could just incorporate them chronologically, or dive right in and use past issues as backstory. The regular print frequency of campaign material just wouldn't fly. However publishing GM-specific or restricted material extensively is a good way for a company to go broke. No one here wants that.

Re: a Villian game I have ran a Villains game and, surprisingly, it worked well. It was a long established game world and the villains were deathly afraid of running into the player's heroic characters (and vice versa.) Heroes did die because no holds were barred, but the villains also nearly were killed by the Harbinger of Justice. When the game was retired I eventually reused the villains as NPCs and rolled some of them into Eurostar. If you are going to do one right from the starting gate I would suggest incorporating a reason for the players to be together, a reason to do things that you want them to and a reason to not kill each other. You could make VIPER's elite strike team or Dr. Destroyer's brute squad. Dr. Destroyer has a fine motivational technique! If you do get this off the ground, shoot me a message. It sounds like fun.

Re: Superpowers that haven't been thought out... I've said for years that the only reason ruby quartz (wtf?) stops Cyclops' eyebeams is because he's gullible and Professor X hardwired his brain to believe that ruby quartz works. He could have just said Scott snapping his fingers would turn his optic blasts off and on, but then he would have had a really lame code name. And why the heck doesn't he keep the Erik the Red gear incorporated into his costume? Could be a nice surprise when he shoots energy bolts out of his hands instead of his visor. What exactly do they use to mine Wakandan Vibranium? Bamboo? Sure isn't any metal implements. It's already been proven that some mainframes can contain the Vision; why don't they back him up? An old Ultron should have enough memory, and there's probably hundreds of them in the Avenger's basement. Hey, this is fun! I'm going to have to think of some more.

Re: Triforce of Roleplaying Wisdom I like just enough rules to avoid arguments that burn valuable gaming time. I like to know how "gray" the game world is and act accordingly. I would rather lose a fight than act out of character (unless my character is a ruthless opportunist!) I can adjust as long as the gaming portion doesn't exceed ~40%, but I favor drama and simulation by quite a bit. So: 10% Gaming (strange that I play almost exclusively HERO) 40% Drama 50% Simulation

Re: Is missile deflection needed? You mean 100% Damage Reduction Requires a Skill Roll? Nah, I hate that power. Ditch it. It's a bah-roken power. Blame Wonder Woman and Captain America.

Re: Exponential VS Linear ? Guys, you are reasoning from effect and straying away from the rules. The Mach 3 man had better have some sort of power modifier influencing more than just the point of impact, or all he will do is really, really hurt the relatively tiny point of impact. You don't get kinetic (or any energy for that matter) transference for free; you didn't spend the points or scorch off a heck of a power stunt, you got nothing. If I punch somebody for +20 BODY more than is needed to kill him, do I kill his closest friend? This ain't trample damage. The 200 sticks of dynamite, unless they are a synchronized shaped charge, will fight each other. They blow up omni-directionally and the interior sticks of the bundle will fight the exterior ones for little net gain. I ain't willing to do the math, but if anything is broken it's whatever goofy rule said you can just pile dynamite like cordwood for a bigger, more destructive bang. As far as Casual STR, I threw that screwy rule out years ago. Casual STR is -20 STR from the character's full STR, -30 STR in Heroic games. I can bench ~110 kg and I can carry around 1/16 (or 1/64) of that weight all day. It does make super-brick's Casual STR much more impressive but I game-smooth that out in two ways. I almost always make bricks buy 0 END for at least their Casual STR amount (burning points in exchange for usefullness) and I make it difficult for bricks to use less than their Casual STR unless they have put effort into it (5pt Phys Lim for no net.) Everytime this rules system tries to combine addition and multiplication it falls flat on it's face. It's always a small error that gets added upon and multiplied and so on. It really favors the math-maniacs who realize that a small investment with compound interest always trumps the Texas-sized purchase. Wanna really despair? Take a thoughtful look at the Leaping and Throwing rules. Why can't my 60 STR brick put a baseball into orbit? Every bit of oomph that isn't devoted to lifting the ball is dedicated to flinging it. That's a lot of thrust, not just +70 STR over the weight of the ball.

Re: Limitation Minimization

Re: Would you allow <blank> in your game? I highly doubt after 40 years that Spidey's player has gotten around to buying Reduced END But seriously, the main problem people get into when converting published characters is that they forget where they started. Spider-Man started out with 28-30 STR, maybe 26 DEX, 20 CON. As he gained experience, he kept wanting to buy more DEX, more SPD and his GM capitulated to a point, but when he started to get ridiculous the GM steered him towards levels and funky stuff. Modern comic characters sheets should be several pages long! There is never a drawback to buying more DEX. It's all good. If the GM doesn't put the brakes on, you end up with goofy stuff like 40+ DEXs (I double-dog-dare Trebuchet to not respond to this.) I spend 5 points and get a level w/ HTH Combat. I spend 6 points on DEX (and keep my SPD constant) and I get + 1 OCV, + 1 DCV and quite possibly a + 1 to all my DEX-based skills. Let me think about which I want to buy. Spider-Man is all about MPAs and attacking multiple people over much more than a Sweep-sized area. He has 2 webshooters, each bought separately, and fires in multiple directions and with often differing effects. In fights with groups he often covers several square meters of area, fists swinging merrily and backflipping all over the place. He is designed as a solo hero able to fight villain teams. If it helps any, Spidey and Daredevil share villains like fraternity brothers share...well, anyway. The guys that give Spider-Man a tough time would annihilate DD, if you envision Spider-Man at the stats suggested. Unless of course you think Daredevil has greater than a 26-29 DEX, 6 SPD, in which case we are both speaking English but not speaking the same language.

Re: Would you allow <blank> in your game? I don't think Spidey has an 8 SPD, and even if he did he would end up with END problems. He has probably a 6 SPD, and levels for making Multiple Power Attacks-Requires Acrobatics Roll. He flips all over the place, and punches people lots of times but not as a result of having an enormous SPD. He may also have bought AE: Variable Selective No Range on his STR, and he can take a swipe at anyone within a whole rooftop or city street. Spider-Man has a high level of defenses that the sfx is "I get out of the way," but his DEX and SPD really aren't as high as most people stat them out as. He would be fine as a character.