chiralman

Re: Haymaker or mere Push? Strictly speaking by the rules (p. 257), "Haymaker applies to any attack, not just punches." (end of the first paragraph).

Re: Haymaker or mere Push? You've elegantly stated my case, Phil. Entangles were MEANT to bring the character to 0 DCV, so there's no 'trade-off'. At least with Push you're exerting more END and will probably come out more spent than you would with consecutive Haymakers... although in theory you'd need twice the time to do so, but with the extra DCs it seems to potentially balance out. And this entangle SFX is a shell of rock that an earth elemental covered poor Calanticus in... he's immobilized, but he can breathe and by definition none of his senses are impeded.

Re: What Da Hook Gonna Be? a) I am on the side of never using the tavern scenario right off the bat... it's an insult in the face of those players who spent some time coming up with a good background. I spring off their ideas as much as I can. I find random roll or generator tables the best for plot hook generation. I'm currrently in favor of rolling on a random FH Skill list table. Try to come up with a scenario where say (roll) Seduction will be at the fore or (roll) Literacy is at the fore or (roll) Professional Skill might be at the fore... or a scenario where the players have intercepted a missive that tells of (literacy) a scribe who is jailed and forced into labor by a powerful egotistic mad-woman of a witch who has to be 'convinced' (seduction) to let him go. She's got a large working staff and so one of the characters has to gain employment (PS skill) to her keep in order to infiltrate and allow the other characters in... huff huff. Or something like that. I don't think that I would use that particular example since it took me exactly two minutes think of it and to write it out. Anyway, I like to use the Skill List to get the creativity flowing for plot ideas PLUS it justifies the need for every skill, not just the skills the players have. Plus there's a good chance that some obscure skills will become very important. Finally it may give a fresh outlook to non-combat skills if that is necessary in your game. Hope this helps. Try it, you might like it.

Re: PLEASE check this post out - THIS MEANS YOU!!!

Re: PLEASE check this post out - THIS MEANS YOU!!! I'm siding with paige, but mostly because I really really REALLY like looking at her avatar... ;-)

Re: Bringing up Everyman Skills

Re: Bringing up Everyman Skills Now this is what I call an acceptable argument AGAINST the 2-pt cost argument. Very nicely done, KA!

Re: Bringing up Everyman Skills Ah, the clouds are starting to clear a bit. I agree with Shadowpup, the reason to have Everyman Skills is to reflect common knowledge for Everyone in your game world... from punks to the highest authority. That's how it's intended to be used, right? If one were to argue for 'Lockpicking' to be an ES then everyone and their grandma would have Lockpicking, right? I was tempted to make different Everyman Skills for different cultures, etc. but I came to the conclusion that these would be qualified as different Cultural Package Deals. How do you differentiate, blackmoor? I guess it would help if we were kept in reference. It can get fatiguing enough keeping track of race/culture/environment/professional package deals, doesn't adding different ESs add to the confusion?

Re: Bringing up Everyman Skills That's cute, it must have taken you a long time and I appreciate the effort. I'm printing it and hanging it on my wall. Good thing you don't over-react to mundane issues, that would be a tragedy.

Re: Bringing up Everyman Skills

Re: Bringing up Everyman Skills I guess that this subject should just be filed as YMMV. I honestly haven't seen any players *request* the ES = 1pt FAM, so it's not like anybody is crying because it is or it's not getting done. And I agree with Agent X. If I played for a GM that went so ballistic over such minutae, I would knock off early. I can only imagine what happens when a plot line is ruined because you missed a roll by one point... but YMMV.

Re: Movies I think I just saw that Krull is on SciFi right NOW. Talk about timeliness. Gonna go watch and laugh and learn and fall asleep...

Re: Bringing up Everyman Skills I didn't say that the characters paid for them, I can see it more as a 'credit to the account'. Again, its not a hill worth dying on, I'm just not into redundancies and paying for something that is already credited to the account seems redundant.

Re: Bringing up Everyman Skills Well how could it be 'free' if it's already paid for? I mean it's not a hill worth dying on, I just see it as better accounting. I really don't think that it's THAT more inconvenient to have ES skills under a different cost structure initially. Stop sneering at me, you're making me feel guilty for even bringing it up...

Re: Bringing up Everyman Skills Duly noted, but when you're making a 75+75 PC, every point counts. I wouldn't bother with it in a supers campaign. You could actually save enough to buy another non-ES skill in the long run and that makes it noteworthy.

How taboo is it to allow Everyman Skills already possessed to cost 2 points instead of 3? I've always figured that since these are treated as FAM-based skills that they already have 1 pt invested. I know its minor and that it's up to the GM, but since I'm starting a new game I thought I'd survey the crowd to see what everyone else thinks. I mean it's important enough to note in other places (vague I know, but I can't think of where I've seen it brought up) as something to avoid doing. Thoughts?

Re: Cultural Superstitions and Forgotten Practices Placing copper pieces (pennies, bits?) over the eyes of the deceased is supposed to serve two purposes... so that the dead can have passage fare for the Ferryman of the river Styx (to death) and, probably later, to weigh down the eyelids so that they don't open. There have been those suspected of witchcraft and vampirism (murderers as well I believe) buried upside down so that, if they return, they will get lost when they escape the grave and move 'up'... And while on the subject, how about my childhood myth of 'holding your breath' while you pass a graveyard to avoid who knows what...

Re: Movies Change Environment: Extremely Lame Early Eighties Effects, AE-Cone. PLUS 1D6 EB (bouncy fluorescent balls), AE (any confined area) PLUS 1D6 Flash (makes targets cover face due to onslaught of rubber balls) Probably about 2 Real Points worth.

Re: Movies SO FRIGGIN SWEET! Thank you, OH THANK YOU! However, I don't see good ol' Crow reaching for another arrow. God that Disco music during the battle is the SHIZZNIT!

Re: Movies Well look no further. Hawk the Slayer is indeed available through amazon.com. "Mark and Remember" And it's been a long time, but wasn't the elf's entire 'jump, pull and fire' move repeated. I don't remember it as just the firing part, it was more like a movement loop wasn't it?

Fact: The Genesis probe has crashed to earth carrying a 'billion billion' charged atoms of what physicists call 'space dust'. RPG Spinoff: Several workers sent to retrieve the probe, including stunt pilots, are: (a) Reporting bouts of nausea ( Not available via radio, which was abruptly cut-off after hissing noises and what sounded like screams of anguish © Reporting that they 'feel different' (d) Dead as a result of the unknown radiation... yet GPS markers confirm that they are somehow still moving about... Go!

Re: Movies "Mark and Remember..." Hawk the Slayer isn't available on NetFlix. That stinks. Anyone find it anywhere else? I'll go over to amazon.com and look around.

Re: Movies "Hawk the Slayer", baby! Going to look that one up on NetFlix right NOW! It's been way too long since I've seen that one. There was a DnD TV series too that was just about the best thing that could happen at the time. I'm not sure how hard it would be to make any movie fit any game system but since DnD fed off of most of the movies I'd bring up I can't say that this qualifies as to what you are looking for but it's good fun anyway. Also "Clash of the Titans", "Krull" and "H R Puffinstuff"

Re: godless fantasy Whoops, Christianity is not the point of this thread. The God/Satan paradigm is not part of any game I've ever played simply because I don't think that it would work, but that's my personal choice. YMMV. Originally I was pre-empting any 'why don't you want gods?' questions but I can see now that it may have been a more confusing statement than one helpful to my point. If we can keep the discussion going by keeping to literary treatment of the subject I'd be grateful. After all, I wouldn't want to endorse 'hate-mongoring'... So to reiterate, I'm just wondering how 'magic' and 'prayer' co-exist in the fantasy genre, what differentiates one from the other, and whether or not the practitioners would naturally be at odds with each other. Make it a game balance question if you need to. It's all at the top of the thread.

Re: godless fantasy I'm afraid you're not reading it as intended. I'm basing my arguments off of classical Western literary treatment of the subject. "Hate-mongoring"? Interesting. I apologize to you, arcady. Teach me how you'd approach the subject that I'm getting at. I could be missing the target by a long shot. I'm not above correction, my friend. I've tried to be careful and almost overtly apologetic to my admittedly biased viewpoint. I'm not exactly a scholar on the subject and that's why I've opened this thread for discussion.