Markdoc

I think most people posting to this thread already know this (Christopher made sort-of the same point in the post above) but the OP (and plenty of other people over time) are looking for something both more detailed and more realistic in the way that weapons interact with armour. For example, spears are excellent weapons for killing people in Chain mail or leather armour, but relatively ineffective against plate. The 2-3 points difference in rDEF doesn't simulate that very well. Conversely, the +1 STUN mult for maces sounds perfectly reasonable ... until you realise that makes them worse for inflicting injuries on armoured enemies than weapons of similar AP and size (a sword, for example) ... which as far as we can tell, is pretty much the opposite of the way they were used in real life. There are a lot of examples like this once you start to look at the mechanics. So I agree we have the tools to simulate weapon or armour types if we want. But I guess the OP's question could be rephrased as "Do we have any ideas on how to do that which is not gratuitously annoying?" I'll admit upfront that right now, I do not, and I have played around with a lot of ideas, including some which are well off into new territory. We can simulate weapons better than we do now - but in most cases, only at the cost of significant added complexity, and frankly, I don't think that's worth the trouble. Usually in a game, we are only interested in the rough outcomes of combat, not the details of specific wounds. cheers, Mark

I like this idea - it's basically handling poison (or just yucky stuff) in food the same way we handle it in a person who has just been poisoned - say by a giant scorpion - in combat. In terms of mundane use - food which has simply spoiled but is not actually poisoned - the AP would be so low that a very simple cantrip could reverse it cheers, Mark

Soft caps are a thing - but of course a cap that doesn't necessarily cap powers isn't really a cap, is it? "Soft caps" is just another name for guidelines, and I haven't seen anybody suggesting that guidelines are a bad idea. If we loop back to the original post, the problem with the suggested power is that it was a few points over the cap. There's general agreement that the power itself wasn't abusive, so the only problem was the cap. cheers, Mark

The fact that caps are often a problem, I think is neatly illustrated by the fact that even the people who have posted in support of them in this thread have pretty much all also noted that ... ahem .. that personally, they don't actually use caps, but instead have a general guideline in mind .... As far as I can see Hero GMs are divided almost evenly among those who don't think caps are a good idea, and those who think they are a good idea but don't use them. cheers, Mark

Just goes to show there's a lot of table variation. I've never seen a character in one of our games who bought KNB, so it was restricted to those who got it as part of the Density Increase or Growth deals. cheers, Mark

Ahh, just look on it as the feral version of lipstick and nail polish. A biologist friend of mine (when we were discussing pathogens that specifically infect and kill fetuses) said something along the lines of "Hippies have this vision of mother nature as a nuturing Gaia, when in reality, she's a crazed psychob**** who likes to kill and eat her her own babies." In a feeble attempt to drag the conversaion back to the original line of discussion, that image suggests to me an interesting question; In this setting, how does blood - probably the most primal of all bodily symbols, but also something that is being eternally renewed, interact with magic? cheers, Mark

Also a level of agency that can be observed not to function in nature - we know from simply watching, that left to their own devices, many species will consume every resource they can get their claws/teeth/beaks on, and then perish en masse. If the regenerative limit of the resource is below the threshold at which the species can survive, the environment will eventually recover and if any surviving members of that species are still around, they can begin to grow again. But in some cases, the consuming species will consume so much of the resource that it cannot regenerate ... in which case both consuming species and resource go extinct (at least in that local environment). Nature really is red in tooth and claw. cheers, Mark

This is a key point that a lot of GM's forget - when calculating LTE for long term movement, you need to look at how much END is used for movement, but also how much END is used for carrying weight. You can move far faster and much further carrying no load than even a light load, so it's not just about being slowed down, but also about getting tired faster. So your point about offloading weight onto horses and mules is a good one ... which is why people did it in real life. When calculating END usage, a normal person carrying 25 kg or more is going to be burning 1 END just picking it up and holding it. Moving at 6", they will burn through another 2. So at full speed, they will tire fairly rapidly. Offloading some of that to a horse will let you move faster, or for longer, or both, even if you are walking. As an aside, if you want to model the "moving until you die" thing a simple house rule is to use the LTE rules and just apply them to STUN and BOD (prorated) once your END hits 0. So once you have worked your END down to 0, you can still keep driving yourself (or your mount) on, but at the cost of losing Long Term STUN and BOD (1 BOD for every 2 STUN). That will keep you going for a while, but at a cost. Depending on your balance of STUN and BOD and how wounded you were at the start of your death march, you may or may not collapse before your heart and lungs simply give out. cheers, Mark

In Sweden I think it's "One swallow does not a summer romance make" cheers, Mark

It's the other way round - animals don't evolve to try to avoid environmental stress. Environmental stress forces them to evolve. So in environments where some resource (typically food) is constrained, species may be able to adapt by altering body size. One option - viable in the absence of predators or direct internal competition - is that the average size shrinks because smaller animals burn less biomass, and the largest animals are at a disadvantage, when it comes to scrounging up enough food. But paradoxically, the other option is to increase in size in constrained environments, apparently because the smaller animals are unable to compete effectively for what resources there are. It depends what resource is limiting, and how the species in question competes for it. cheers, Mark

No - anyone can do a throw, without the need for martial arts. It's built into the core rules via grab: when you grab someone you can automatically either throw them or squeeze them. You can also use Trip, which is a standard maneuver, as noted above, so there are two ways to build throws, depending on what you want. All a martial arts multipower needs to do is add a some extra STR and some CSLs to make it easier to grab and throw or trip opponents, giving you the ability to build WWF style wrestling slams or Aikido-style redirection throws. Basically, pretty much all martial arts maneuvers can either be built directly with powers (HKA, Flash, etc) or with a combination of STR and/or CSLs. I use STR rather than HA, so that you don't need to build seperate multipowers for use unarmed or with weapon elements, but you could choose to do that if you wanted. cheers, Mark

Already done. Interestingly, the breakdown is: if you spend less than 12-14 points the standard system is much more efficient than a multipower. if you spend around 18-22 points they are usually similar if you spend more than that, the multipower is more efficient I've switched my game over to a multipower based system years ago, and never looked back. It's not just the question of costs and wierd exploits (like making your offensive strike AP) but that the current system really breaks down if you want lots of maneuvers or only a couple. So for example, an ancient master with a very wide range of maneuvers is going to be a crap fighter - someone built on similar points with just a couple of solid maneuvers and a few CSLs will clean his clock, because there is very little advantage to having multiple variations on the basic maneuvers. They are just wasted points. Likewise in the current system, a "novice" will have one or two maneuvers at full effect and nothing else, instead of having a range of less effective abilities. Multipowers scale better in both cases. cheers, Mark

Trying to shoot .... with a wallet? In most jurisdictions "He had something in his hand" is (thankfully) not considered grounds for the use of lethal force. cheers, Mark

You set a limit "activates after 30 points of damage taken" or "activates after 3 hits taken". That would be a fairly substantial limitation (I'm thinking maybe -1, though you could argue -1 1/2 for the second version), since anyone who knew about it could trigger your adaptive field and then hit you with something else; If they had a couple of attack forms, they could potentially stop the defence ever triggering. cheers, Mark

Yeah. I'm old enough that I still recall seeing US soldiers patrolling US streets after civil unrest on TV, and when violent assaults on protestors (protesting violence and murders committed against blacks, ironically) were relatively common. So things have not changed that much. Which is sad, because in the 80's and 90's it looked like maybe we had turned that particular corner. Cheers, Mark

If you search these boards, you'll find a ton of threads - including this one - where caps are the problem, not a solution. I understand that for beginning GMs, they might be a helpful guideline (although there are plenty of posts from noobie GMs frustrated by game-wrecking powers well under the cap). As multiple GMs have noted, you still need to examine all power constructs to be certain that they will fit into your game: it's quite possible to make game-breaking powers at low active points or DC. If you do check all powers, caps become more or less irrelevant. If you don't, you are going to have problems regardless of caps. Now if, as a GM, you like caps, that's fine. It's your game, and if it works for you, great. But caps are an optional rule, not a core one, so the assumption that you have to have caps in your game is mistaken (and obviously, personally I think they have more negative effects than positive). That's not to say that "anything goes" - for most games, that's a recipe for disaster*. It's the job of a good GM to align his expectations with those of the players, so that everyone is on the same page. Caps are one way of doing that, but they are a very blunt, not terribly effective tool, IMO. Personally, I try to do it by describing the power level and atmosphere in terms of games, films or movies the players already know. This is not a Hero system specific problem. We had the problem of mismatched expectations in our last D&D game - the GM expected "mundane fantasy" and we came at it from the angle of "over-the-top anime heroes". The campaign ground to a halt over that issue, even though there, the powers are predefined. Cheers, Mark * actually we did run a series of anything-goes games, and they were great learning tools for nascent Hero system GMs, as well as huge fun. The players were allowed to make whatever they wanted, as long as it was rules-legal. Then we let the PCs slug it out. It was hillarious. We got all the classic abuses, long before they became classics: the pixie sniper, the orbital mindcontroller, the telepathic, mindcontrolling tunnelling slug, the unstoppable robot, the dimension rift genades, the incredible exploding man, you name it. But these games were planned to be one-offs, not continuing campaigns We expected comedic mayhem, and by god, we got it.

And in the end, that's what it's all about: a good knowledge of what you are talking about (as a GM) often spins out into great new ideas, which is why discussions of the sort this thread generates are almost always a good source of ideas. Cheers, Mark

Oh, you're missing the point, all right. Nobody is actually demanding reskinning. So nobody is going to be appeased, because nobody is asking for that apart, maybe, from you. What women, by and large are asking for is characters written either with them in mind, or at least not specifically aimed only at guys only. Catwoman, not Batgirl. A female character who can stand or fail on her own merits, not Link with tits. They are also asking for the same kinds of choices that guys already get. When playing Diablo III, as a guy, I had the choice of gender-match characters ranging from young, lithe guy to grizzled veteran warrior. As a female, my choices ranged from hot shapely babe with short hair to hot shapely babe with long hair. Reskinning as a a lazy-ass excuse for not addressing these issues is a source of discontent, not a demand people want addressed. So of course they won't be pleased. Who on earth would expect them to be pleased when served up something they have repeatedly said they don't want? cheers, Mark

The sad thing is, as a fairly pathetic knockoff, it probably won't sell well. Having made a feeble attempt that almost certainly won't appeal to anyone, they will then say "See? Nobody wants games with female lead characters". cheers, Mark

Soar, that was a really long post simply to say "I just don't get it". I don't think the argument is about trying "to appease a group of people who can't be appeased". I've talked to some, you know, actual women, and their - almost universal - complaint is "Why are there so few characters actually designed with us in mind?" We're not talking about penis-chopping manhaters here, but ordinary gamers, who feel that they are being ignored at best, actively mocked at worst, by much of the gaming industry. I think you make the point exquisitely when you put Batgirl and Robin in the box, because it really is a good comparison: neither of them are original stand-alone characters like Batman. Both of them are derivative, subsidary appendages of the actual character, and both are well-worn archetypes: female version and trusty sidekick, respectively. Batgirl, Female Thor, Supergirl, She-hulk ... etc are not characters designed with women or girls in mind. Like Linkle, they are simply a male hero with tits slapped on, or as you put it yourself, just a reskinning of the character. So I'm not surprised that this approach didn't satisfy feminists (or indeed, women in general) because not only was it not what they were asking for, but it was in fact exactly one of the things they were criticizing. You make this point very well in your post, though I'm pretty sure it wasn't the point you were hoping to make. cheers, Mark

It's funny how the states that most consistently stand up for "American values" are those most often excoriated as "Traitors to America" cheers, Mark

I don't see a problem: the focus must be obvious and accessible. It does not have to be hindering - ie: occupying a character's hand. After all, OAF: wand and OAF: Ioun stone are worth exactly the same limitation, and one is essentially "stowed" all the time. cheers, Mark

There's a couple of points to consider. First, when we look at attacks, there is a tendency to look at the damage without considering defence. In the case of the double KB attack, the defence is KNB resistance (which is so rare in most games that we can probably safely ignore it) and the 2d6 that we roll to decrease KNB (or 1d6 if flying). Looked at in context, the normal 12d6 blast will do 12-(2 to 12) for an average of 5 KNB, while the 8d6 double KNB will do 16-(2 to 12) for an average of 9 KNB. Not quite double, it's true, but close. More importantly for a power like this, it will knock the enemy back 99.5% of the time, vs about only 97% of the time for the regular blast. If the enemy does have some resistance to KNB, due to weight or the actual defence, the gap between the power with double KNB and the regular power will increase: 5 points of KNB resistance will mostly neutralise the KNB from a regular attack, but not the double KNB attack. So it's more reliable at doing what it is supposed to, and it's probably the way I'd build the power. The second point is that caps are an optional rule, and they are optional for a reason. They are basically training-wheels for less confident GMs, and like real training wheels they are a hindrance almost as often as they are a help - and once you are up to speed, far more often than they are a help. As GM, you should not let them become a straitjacket (though I'd also add that in my opinion, if the GM is not using caps for his NPCs, he shouldn't subject his players to them, either). In the end, there's no substitute for the GM carefully examining new powers. I can't see that the 10d6 Blast with x2 KB suggested above would be terribly unbalancing in a game where 12d6 EB is commonplace (though it could, with clever use, do significantly more damage, it's also a more expensive power). cheers, Mark

Yup. In PoE I occasionally get friend requests from random players when playing a female alt, but have never ever, not even once gotten one when playing a male alt ... even though the playername is the same in both cases. It's like a yin-yang circle made up of creepy and pathetic: hard to tell where one ends and the other starts. Cheers, Mark

When looking at building a power, I always first ask "What does it do?" And by that I don't mean the mundane description like "gives always-on access to the internet" I mean "What does it do in-game?" If the idea is simply flavor, so that the character can always access the internet, without any clear in-game mechanical effect, then it's a perk, worth at most 3-5 points - maybe even less, depending on your game's location and tech level. If it is to gain access to knowledge or bonus to knowledge skills, which will be used in-game and with measureable effects, then it's probably best defined as cramming, plus skills or skill levels. KS: Stuff found on the internet, 14- would give you a very broad - if occasionally patchy - skill that could be used in virtually any situation. You'd probably want to bump it up to a much higher level to find really specific information. If it is to use internet access to start hacking attached devices, discover heroes' secret IDs by hacking their communications and tracking their locations, mess with police bulletins, etc, then a global radio comnnection of the kind discussed + hacking skills is probably the way to go. cheers, Mark