Hyper-Man

Re: Martial Cringe A block or dodge has to be declared before the attack roll is made. This maneuver is consistent with that effect. Once a roll is made by the attacker there is nothing the defender can do to affect he outcome of the attack roll. By that point it is too late no matter what power, skill or manuevers he has at at his disposal. The manuever Roll with a punch would allow a character to take reduced damage after the attack hits if successfull but this also sounds like another DEX based ability that the word Cringe does not imply. With regards to skill roll vs. PRE attack, I was considering this to be just another martial manuever. As such I did not think it was appropriate to define it as a skill since as far as I can tell you can't abort to a skill roll. "I abort to my Conversation/Acting skill" just doesn't make sense if even a trained Actor who hasn't necessarily trained to use said skill in combat tries. Also, let me clarify that the intent of my construction was a manuever that like block not only helped you avoid an attack but potentially allowed you to gain a momentary advantage of initiative vs. your opponent. To otherwise surrender you ,in effect, give the attacker a 'free' cover on you. I was trying to build a manuever that let you avoid this and take advantage of the opponents momentary suprise. I guess you could make the roll easier to manage by making it a CHAR vs. CHAR roll using the same +20 PRE bonus I described earlier. It might even make more sense to have it be MCringer's PRE vs. attackers INT instead of PRE since it is an attempt to do one thing and make it look like another. So a character with a 15 PRE facing another character with a 20 PRE(20 INT). 15 PRE character 'martial cringes' before 20 PRE(20 INT) swings big stick. He gets [9 + (15+20)/5] or 16 or less vs. (9+20/5) or 13 or less. Maybe a little easier than counting dice totals for Presence attacks too. I just don't see the concept of this manuever justifying the use or purchase of an actual skill like Conversation or Acting. The context for the term 'Martial Cringe' as I understood it in the NGD thread was that PersonX said something that deserved an allmighty smack from PersonY and PersonX sees that person Y is about to attempt and smack him. PersonX reacts by falsely appealing to the good nature of PersonY in an attempt to avoid said allmighty smack and catch PersonY unaware later. Jackie Chan's drunken master technique/movie persona basically does the same thing. Does this define his character with a better than normal interraction skill like Conversation or Acting? No. It is a very specific maneuver that uses body language to convey a very specific universal message. I think that despite language differences (even deafness) most people would understand hands held up in the "don't hit me!!" stance. I'll hush now. silly Munchkin in need of a social life!!

Re: Ye Old "Hero is Hard" Debate Here is something silly I came up with a while back. I am not trying to fan the flames, just give everyone something to laugh about (unless you happen to be a baseball fan )

Re: Martial Cringe Nah, you're just thorough and like to be near the center of attention!

Re: Martial Cringe No slight taken. I can get a bit obsessive about the silliest things sometimes. I did not intend on coming off that way. Sorry

Re: Variable Power Levels for Heroes It sounds like an awesome approach Supreme! Let us know how it turns out.

Re: Martial Cringe

Re: Ye Old "Hero is Hard" Debate It sounds like you are making a commentary on hack&slash vs. supers instead of game systems. Does D20/D&D3.x still give experience for everything killed? If so that part of the argument might hold up in a comparison to a Fantasy Hero game where the GM only rewards good roleplaying, not killing effectiveness.

Re: Martial Cringe I guess my inner munchkin is feeling hungry but... If this thread is an exercise in defining a manuever based on the name "Martial Cringe" lets take a look at the definition of the word. According to http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=cringe To shrink back, as in fear; cower. This does not sound like an active action towards an attacker which is the way Block is usually defined since it requires an attack roll OCV vs. OCV. Cringe implies an attempt to send a signal of surrender (uncle!!) before getting pummeled by a fist or a stick. Before the advent of ranged weapons technology this probably happened more often in combat between men just like it does in the animal kingdom. Its the reason that most male mammal species don't usually kill one another during mating season. They only fight until one gives up. Human's creation of killing technology that is faster than the surrender reflex is one of the biggest reasons people die. How many reports of someone dying in a brawl do you see where it wasn't a fluke accident (head hits hard object like table or concrete) or the attacker was hyped on drugs or alchohol? Not very many that I am aware of and it usually because of the natural surrender reflex response.

Re: Martial Cringe So does The Kirk Maneuver bring Mentor or Mightybec to mind first?

Re: Clairvoyance and Memorization What is the character's method of tracking the characters? And is there any way that a character with some appropriate sense could detect the method? Answering these questions might help determining how to construct the power. It might require two different powers, mindscan for people and traditional clairvoyance with memorized locations imported from teleport works as good as any other mechanic. I'd probably set them up in multipower too. The Zelazny 'Amber' books had a couple of things with similar abilities to what you are describing. One was 'Trumps', which were pictutes of the royal family and important places that were part Tarot cards but empowered to allow communication and travel to (and from if it was a person) the object of the picture. Another one was called just 'blue crystals' that marked someone with a particular energy signature that could through the use of another blue crystal be used to home in on the holder of another one. Someone proficient in the use of Trumps could evesdrop like the NSA can to phone calls.

Re: Ye Old "Hero is Hard" Debate Nicely put.

Re: The cranky thread

Re: Ye Old "Hero is Hard" Debate So does that make us lemon's? If so, let's all make some lemonaid and be happy.

Re: The cranky thread who me?

Re: The cranky thread back on topic. things thta make me cranky: people that try to derail threads that they started! see martial cringe thread:

Re: The cranky thread I was just thinking a good picture of T.J. Hooker might inspire everyone into a new level of crankiness.

Re: The cranky thread

Re: Martial Cringe valid point edited Martial Cringe: Martial Cringe +20 PRE vs. being attacked, Abort, Incantations, Gestures *My only concern with this method is that it almost feels like double dipping since martial maneuvers already have optional distinctive rules. I would have thought Don't hurt me! and covering head with arms and cower would be part of the Presense attack that the cringe is adding to.

Re: Oops... I'm glad to see you are back as well and second KA's appraisal of your contributions.

Re: Variable Power Levels for Heroes Kinda cool idea. Though if the player wanting lower power suggests it be sure the more powerfull characters understand the comic proverb: "with great power comes great responsibility"

Re: Martial Cringe UMA states that you may only abort into Blocks, Dodges and Escapes. Since a standard Martial Escape already boosts STR why not make Martial Cringe a variation of that manuever? Martial Escape +15 STR vs. Grabs cost= 4 points Martial Cringe -2 DCV +20 PRE vs. being attacked, Abort, DCV penalties last +1 phase You make a 'suprise' surrender which startles your attacker. +10 or +20 effect above target's EGO/PRE would be needed to cause the attacker to hesitate (either a half or full phase respectively). cost= 4 points Note, this manuever's success requires that the attacker has sufficient conscience to 'accept' a surrender and will probably only work once vs. any one opponent.

Re: Ye Old "Hero is Hard" Debate It is a very contrived sense of control due to the designers patching but not actually changing the flaws go all the way back to the systems roots in 1st ed. And the fact that they have to make special case rules for hit points and damage that change reinforces the complication. If a stealthy character can slit a high level characters throught, can an invisible character do the same to that high level character in combat. I don't think so.. he might have an easier time hitting but his damage will be mittigated by the 'level' of the fighter. this does not make sense if the fighter cannot perceive the attack. Hit points represent too many different things in one package. I think that most experienced D&D players that have migrated characters to Fantasy Hero would agree that the Body of the 1st level version of a particular character will not be too much lower than the score of that same character when he reached 20th level in D&D. The reason he is better at combat is due to his ability to 'roll with the punch' on virtually all attacks, the exceptions being when asleep or attacked by spells with all or nothing effects which then push you to go to another table for saving throws. again a patchwork of exceptions to the basicly flawed core setup. I think it would be nice if the same mechanic was the rule not the exception. The only exception I am aware of to this in HERO are the automaton rules used for robots and golems which by their nature do not have a stun score. The core setup of D&D does not have an intuitive stunning or subdual rule, there are methods that require as much or more bookeeping than HERO but they are the exceptions. I stand corrected on the level based AC bonus. However the AC bonus from armor itself does not make intuitive sense. Say a character is wearing platemail, another character with a magic sword swings and misses, but the miss is by less than the amount of AC bonus given by the armor itself. Is this miss is explained as a bounce off of the armor? I don't even damage the armor? Can I have a magic sword that gives a bonus to hit without a damage bonus or visa-versa or are the 2 stats intertwined too closely in the rules? Say the sword has a touch effect, do you have to figure the hit based on 2 different AC's? I am not arguing against the speed and ease of use of D&D and other D20 systems. I am saying that they do not lend themselves to actually explaining what is really happening. A miss is not always a miss.

Re: Blade Sharpenings R Us !! thanks! I remember looking at that years ago but just couldn't remember the name.

Has anyone ran a multi-dimensional game with 'weaponsmith-shops' that were setup like a local eatery with pictures/paintings of the famous owners and their even more famous customers? I am imagining a shop somewhere with pictures of some weaponsmith with the likes of LionO, Thundarr, Samurai Jack, King Arthur, etc.. (heck, maybe a few Jedi for good measure!) I remember seeing a book about a floating interdimensional restaurant that was written up but I can't recall this particular combination.

Re: Ye Old "Hero is Hard" Debate