wylodmayer

Re: Western Hero Book

Re: Expirments in Character Construction Well, I get all that, and I'm fine with the Indirect IAF walking stick... he paid for the extra inscrutability in the form of the Active Point bump from Indirect. But what bothers me is that difference between the Inobvious... well, hell to keep the example as similar as possible, let's say: 1) An IIF Ring that shoots fire from it. It's Inaccessible because it's a ring, and it's inobvious because there's no way to tell by looking at it that it shoots fire. But when you use it, yup, the fire comes from the ring. 2) An IIF Ring that allows you to, say, breathe fire. It's Inaccessible because it's a ring, and it's inobvious because there's no way to tell by looking at it that it allows the wearer to breathe fire. But when you use it... well, crap, they still can't tell it's because of the ring. The latter case seems less of a limitation than the former, yet - as far as I know - both qualify as IIFs. Something about this seems wrong. It seems as if there's a "missing" grade of "(in)obviousness" for lack of a better word. Thoughts?

Re: Expirments in Character Construction

Re: Expirments in Character Construction

Re: Generic Characters and Damage, etc Bumping my thread so others don't, er, miss out. Yeah.

Re: Expirments in Character Construction Yeah, what archermoo said - plus, I'm not aware of any 5th ed supplements that list surgically implanted cyberware as Foci. That doesn't mean there aren't any, of course, just that I'm not aware of them. Mind you, I know of HERO stuff from before 5th ed that did so, but we're not using that, now, are we? There was some stuff from old 2nd and 3rd ed books that would be decried as blatant munchkinism these days. They're not reliable guides; times changes, rules change, standards change.

Re: Your occupation, please. There isa reason heroes tend to have one of a few "typical" occupations, though. Patroller and Detective heroes need flexible schedules, and they especially need jobs where they don't have to be up early in the morning if they have been out too late beating up criminals or on stake-out. That's why it's actually very unrealistic that Daredevil is an attorney - when does he prep for cases? Detectives and Science types, and maybe martial artists and mystics to an extent, need a lot of space and sometimes specialized equipment to practice their specific brand of heroism, which tends to steer them into occupations that allow them to afford stuff and a place to put it. Plus, it's best to have an occupation such that you don't attract widespread public attention when you have to suddenly drop a gig or whatever in order to go heroing (at least, if you don't have a public ID). I mean, let's say you're a major fashion model and you have to skip out on a major show in order to go be Slender Woman or whatever. Not only will you be lucky if you can keep your job after one or two such disappearing acts, but they attract attention and questions that a hero with a secret ID can ill afford. In fact, I'm amazed that heroes have the range of jobs that they DO. Like I noted, Daredevil would be a crappy attorney, given his nocturnal activities - he doesn't get enough sleep, and he doesn't spend enough time prepping for court. Plus, he can't just drop a case in the middle of arguments to run off and do whatever. That having been said, I had a few characters who had more unusual jobs. Holocaust barely scraped by a living as an adjunct math professor - despite being brilliant, her attitude kept her from getting a tenure track position. She often cancelled class or left assignments written on the board. She eventually got a think tank job, where she could do work on her own time and submit reports as needed, without having to show up at an office. Similarly, Captain Conifer was a research professor of botany. But, as a research professor, he could come and go more or less as he pleased. Plus, tenure. My ringer for Elasti Girl was a washed up ex scream queen who eked out a living as the host of a Saturdays-at-midnight horror movie showcase on a small cable affiliate, and supplemented her income by signing autographs for ten bucks a pop at conventions. I had another character who was a night disc jockey for a classical music AM station, and tended to prerecord his shows, commericials and all, and just play the master tape while he went out patrolling. My favorite, though, was my skilled normal who gained her prodigious talents FROM her job. Blessed with an eidetic memory, she used her BA in English to get freelance editing jobs for how-to books, companies that made textbooks for police academies, and for Paladin press... a publisher who used to put out books like "How to Change Identities" and "How to Convert an SKS to Full Automatic" and the life (I have no idea if they are still in business). Having full recall of every book she ever worked on, she had quite the collection of skills, and could work from home on her own schedule.

Re: Brainstorming superhero team liaisons I like some of StGrimblefig's suggestions, there, especially the notion of infighting between the agencies for "control." And boy, could THAT be a snarl... After all, DHS may be the highest-ranking dept to have a liaison assigned, but what if DHS isn't backing this guy thoroughly? He's only as powerful as what he can do to/for them - if he can't provide additional funding, or penalize them somehow when they don't take his advice, then they can basically ignore his input. In that case, you may have a DHS guy who has less "pull" with the team than, say, the rep from the local mayor's office. Maybe some of the reps want reports from the team, paperwork to fill out. And of course they don't talk to each other, so the team winds up filling out reams of duplicate paperwork. Maybe ANY of these guys can get funding suspended by putting through a complaint to whatever dept it is that provides it. Egads. My esteemed colleague is correct about gov't workers in fiction, but here's a few other ideas to try: 1) The political animal: Could give a crap about superheroes, but this admin job is just a rung on the ladder of political success. He's moving up in the bureaucracy, and fast. Knows nothing about superheroes, supervillains, or super operations, and spends most of his time interested in higher level politics. Smart PCs will recognize this guy is on the fast track and can't be ignored, despite his ignorance of what they do - someday he'll have a lot more power than he does now, and they may need his goodwill. 2) The functionary: Related to #1, above, but different. She's a bureaucratic functionary who just wants to serve, and her job is ostensibly in some department that doesn't normally deal with heroes. Say, the DHS by way of FEMA. She's an environmental engineer who is a specialist in, I don't know, hurricane damage management, but when FEMA was absorbed by the DHS, the organizational reshuffling temporarily landed her in THIS job. Like #1, she knows nothing about heroes and the like, but she's actually smart, dedicated, and wants to do a good job... although she'd much rather be working in her specialty. Just for kicks, once the party has decided she's well meaning but useless, have a hurricane or whatever hit and let her shine. 3) Resentful: Someone in the FBI or some other "serious" organization who hates, hates, hates being assigned to babysit superheroes when he could be out catching criminals. Compensates by armchair-quarterbacking all their investigative efforts. Is as good at his job as any FBI agent, but unless the team lacks a superdetective, his advice will be redundant at best and a liability at worst. 4) Oddball: A rep from some dept that doesn't seem in ANY way related to what they are doing. Maybe there's an EPA rep assigned to them for reasons beyond the comprehension of the team OR the rep. Maybe there's a rep from the local congressman's office to make sure that the gov't funding they are receiving translates at least in part into services for the city such as speaking at public schools, etc. Last observation. I don't know how much realism you inject into your games, but if you have a gaggle of bureaucratic overseers for your team, I guess at least a fair amount. If they are receiving gov't funding and direction from gov't agents, then there are real 4th Amendment concerns with what they do as heroes - they aren't private citizens anymore, they are acting on the direction of the gov't. Maybe they have a rep from the local public defender's office who tells them they CAN'T do certain things... because the evidence would get tossed if they did!

Re: I eat my Cheerios stealthfully! You know, this suddenly gives me an idea for removing the dice from damage altogether... work out an algorithm such that the degree by which you hit determines the percentage of your maximum damage you do... so a really good hit does toward the high end, and a really narrow hit does toward the low end, etc... I'll fiddle with it.

Re: I eat my Cheerios stealthfully! I can remember two amazing rolls, for different reasons. One was in a TORG game. For those who don't know the system, there is an open-ended aspect to it, and there's also a thing where you can play a card if you roll a 60+ (which is like three open ended rolls) and the tale of your deed gets repeated and there is a game effect and yada yada. Well I managed to pull a 60+ ONCE in the two years we played, and I had the right card in my hand when I did it, but it was on a DODGE. So, the GM had fun occasionally sticking in "legends" of my "catlike dodge." Alas. The other was kind of cool, though. In a WoD game I was running, a PI with True Faith ran into a vampire who had just recently been a mortal runaway he had met. Well, he thought of vampirism as kind of a demon possession thing, in a way, and even though that's not exactly how it worked, the bottom line is, he got into a tussle with her and tried to "exorcise" the evil from her. He had four dice of True Faith, and because True Faith was such a rare and potentiall potent thing, when he spent Willpower for his True Faith roll, it only got him extra dice, not extra auto successes. In compensation, he was allowed to spend as much Willpower as he wanted on TF rolls. Four dice of True Faith. Spent five points (all he had) of Willpower. Threw the ten siders. Nine tens. Nine. I nearly passed out. Twenty plus years of gaming, and I never saw anything like that. The heavens opened up, a beam of light came down, and the girl turned back into a human. Wound up being really cool, too, because some other vamps witnessed it and ran, but people got real curious about our PI friend because he had actually turned a vampire back into a mortal. All kinds of rumors and conjectures about the event started flying around.

Re: Your Character's Room at the Base Ace might have a room at the base, but he would keep a condo nearby, mainly because the other team members would likely object to him constantly bringing random bimbos back to the base. It would be decorated right out of a catalog, Rooms To Go style, with occasional touches from love interests who lasted longer than a week. He'd go for touches that suggested affluence and taste without actually requiring that one has any; when in doubt, he'd decorate to match sets from "Nip/Tuck." Cat's room would be a mess, a real teenager habitat, with papers and comic books scattered among clothes, CDs, and bits and pieces of crimefighting gear. One wall would be a virtual shrine to her favorite superheroes, while the other wall would have a corkboard with tidbits from the news and internet news sources concerning local crime. Holocaust's room would be spartan. The bed would be covered with a single, thin blanket, and the desk would have on it only a notebook and some pens. There might be some empty lager bottles here and there, but other than that, her clothes are all neatly put away, and there's no sign of human habitation. Stuffed under her bed, way under, are spiral notebooks crammed manic scrawlings, nearly illegible and completely incoherent rantings about everything, grand theories of how mayonaisse and Peruvian politics are connected, etc. They are the product of those times when she has gone off her meds (she's a paranoid schizophrenic), but she can't bring herself to throw them away... Captain Conifer keeps his flannel shirts pressed and hung up in the closet, along with his many pair of jeans and his half dozen sets of sturdy hiking boots. On his desk would be numerous woodcrafts given to him by friends as well as a Sierra Club magazine and stacks of student papers (he's a professor of botany). His bookshelf would be filled to overflowing with studies on stuff like interactions between ectomycorrhizal fungi and expansive soil saprobes... he finds this sort of thing fascinating, and can't comprehend why anyone wouldn't. He also has books on hiking, on trails on which to hike, on people's stories about hiking, etc. His movie rack is filled with nature documentaries and his walls are adorned with Ansel Adams prints. He's a singularly dull person.

Re: World Watchers Beta Team Blue Angel, a flyer with no other powers who is a duly deputized member of the local sheriff's dept and a certified paramedic. She helps out with the local Search and Rescue team and has a side job reporting traffic for 104.1 WBAM "Whu-BAM!" Radio, "Music and Madness in the Mornings." Not only can she call in traffic accidents, but she can land and lend a hand! Her public ID and commitments to other endeavors (as noted above) could limit her usefulness to the team, as could her lack of powers and combat skills (she's got a service sidearm, and has qualified on it, but that's about it). However, she is popular with locals and has impeccable connections with the police and paramedics in the area.

I thought some people around here might appreciate this... it's a little document I whipped up for a superhero game I was running a while back. It goes through the general combat-relevant stats of several generic character types, from the "face in the crowd" up through the "generic" supervillain. The interesting bit, as far as I'm concerned, is the stuff at the end which lists what level of attack would be needed to Stun or KO these generic characters. We used it to speed combat considerably, allowing a character who had the right number of damage dice to Stun or KO (as appropriate) police, military, and/or agents without rolling for damage (he still had to hit, natch). This speeded up bookkeeping a good bit. Anyway, it clearly draws from a lot of HERO material, and I don't make any claim that it's original or even accurate - for instance, I don't think I built most police equipment the "official" way. But, you know, close enough for gov't work. Hope it's useful to some of you.

Re: WWYCD: Merchandising Hell Heh... whereas one character I've never gotten to play, Eight Ball - who is a permanently Shrunk gadgeteer/science type - actually wears a lot of Barbie clothes, because it's easier than making her own stuff. Plus, she modified a Barbie Malibu Convertible to actually run...

Re: Ego vs EB (BOECV) You were? I was assuming everyone would. Then again, I remember being pumped about the old 1st edition Psionicist class, back in the Dragon #78. So I guess that makes me old school. Although my personal fave was when I was playing a Psionics Handbook 2nd edition psionicist (I think I was around 8th or 9th level) and blew all my PSPs at once to cause one of the two griffons diving at our party to slightly alter its trajectory more sharply downward... causing it to plow into the ground at about a sixty degree angle, at top speed. Only thing I did during that fight, but it was a solo kill.

Re: Some Mental Power thoughts and opinions sought One word: carelessness. An illusionist specifies, "He sees his girlfriend, dressed up like that girl over there." But I know my girlfriend would never dress like that. An illusionist specifies, "He sees the one person who annoys him the most." But I know my mother in back in Tennessee. An illusionist specifies, "It's a steak illusion." The GM asks, "How long do you want it to last." The illusionist says, "Dude, as long as I'm paying END." Clearly not. Especially since I've played more than one mental illusionist and, well, inconsistencies and growing incongruities have worked exactly as imagined (no pun intended). This would be especially true of things like "you see your worst fear," because - very often - one's worst fear is the kind of thing that isn't likely to happen. Likewise note that unless the mental illusionist achieves very high effect, the target can still see everything else quite clearly. If my worst fear is a, say, a huge rabid bear, and I'm the only one who seems to see it... growing incongruities! Gosh, for something you dimissed so thoroughly, they seem to keep cropping up. He is. He's the one that specified "he sees his worst fear." He's just not COMPLETELY responsible for what I see. And, in fact, that's HOW inconsistencies arise. If he knew my worst fear would be a bear, he might not have used that one when we are, say, in the middle of the Sahara Desert. a) The mental illusionist is as free to specify as much detail as he wants, so this in no way hinders the guy who plays illusions in the way you propose. If I want someone to see the mayor holding a child hostage, I can use mental illusions to project an image of the mayor as I know him. But the guy seeing it won't necessarily recognize it as the mayor. I could also say, "He sees the mayor holding a child hostage!" But then, I run the risk that he doesn't know who the mayor is, in which case his subconscious might churn up any old image he associates with the word mayor, like an image of the guy from "Spin City"... oops, there are those pesky incongruities again. Their attitudes are clearly not universal, as many people like the power fine the way it is. It works perfectly well to recreate various powers found in fiction, comics, television, and movies, such as the person who can make you see what you most desire or most fear. So whether you see Mental Illusion as currently conceibed as what the guys playing illusionists were hoping to get into or not, clearly it's exactly what some are after. Me included. The bottom line is, because of certain things the Mental Illusions power is expected and intended to be able to do, it MUST be a subjective, "the target fills in certain blanks" effect. There's simply no way around it. The illusionist who wants someone to see a bear can always project an image of a bear as he (the illusionist) knows them, whether the victim has ever seen one or not. But the illusionist who wants to say, "whatever he desires most" must have that 'participation' from the victim. What I don't see is the principled reason for DENYING this aspect of the power. Once we dismiss the idea that such illusions are not prey to inconsistencies (they are, as has been shown), there doesn't seem to be any reason to hold out on that point.

Re: Addictions! I created a power similar to this once, and in the interests of gaming science, I post the prefab I made for the character here now. It doesn't include all the powers she wound up with, but the main ones.

Re: Some Mental Power thoughts and opinions sought As implied by an official reply I got from Steve some while back (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1103697#post1103697), the whole point of Mental Illusions is to give the target a subjectively-directed experience. I can give someone the Mental Illusion of his "favorite food" without knowing what it is; likewise, it seems reasonable (and, as has been pointed out earlier in the thread, supported by official builds of MenIll) that one can inflict, say, one's "greatest fear." As has been stated also, nowhere is it said that the Illusionist can access (by dint of that power alone) what the target is seeing. However, it's ridiculous to suggest that if someone were to take, say, a Mental Illusions power that created a visible manifestation that everyone could see (a la Dani Moonstar) that it would present an unconscionable threat to Secret IDs and make MenIll "too powerful." Secret IDs are a Disad for a reason. They are vulnerable to, say, N-Ray Vision, which costs far less than MenIll with a visible side effect. MenIll with an AoE would certainly give targets different images for, say, an illusion like "your favorite food," and if they talked about what they saw, they'd get those bonuses to break out - it's a staple of fiction, in fact (bad fiction to be sure, but still). Mental Illusions can behave contrary to expectation in numerous ways, aside from what was just mentioned. If I know my mother is in Tennessee, seeing her here will be contrary to expectation. If I know my girlfriend would never be wearing culottes, seeing her in them would be contrary to expectation. If I am experiencing an illusion of eating steak, and it never seems to run out, that would be contrary to expectation. Etc. Note also - there is ALREADY A POWER for creating objectively detailed illusions: Images. In creating Images, the illusionist must detail what he is creating, and people react to it from there. It doesn't go away just because they don't believe it's real, which might cause them to go back and forth on the real/not real issue several times. There's no reason to change Mental Illusions; if you prefer a power where the illusionist has to know everything he's projecting, use images, plain and simple. Otherwise, there's no way to implement such Mental Illusions as "this tastes good to you" unless powers like Telepathy can provide subjective experiences to its users. Besides, each power is meant to be more or less self-contained. If Mental Illusions required Telepathy to be effective, it wouldn't be a power of it's own.

Re: Re-Imaged Hero(ines) Well, thank y'all very much. For the next reimagining, I'm gonna pick a character who needs to be, well, anything other than what he is already. His name is vague enough that you can go in just about any direction. I choose... ... Marvel's Forge.

Re: What is STUN? Hey, I'm perfectly willing to call STUN a "real" thing, rather than just something used for games. I got sucker punched once and lost consciousness for somewhere between three to five seconds. I don't even remember seeing the punch. There was no permanent damage, mind you, just some bruising and swelling. But it seems reasonable to me to have one mechanic for long term damage to a fella, and another for those lose-consciousness-for-a-few-seconds types of things.

Re: And this is my special eff... er, I mean, my Sidekick. Ah! I see... ... yup, looks like just a difference in style.

Re: And this is my special eff... er, I mean, my Sidekick.

Re: Altered Reality (making yourself)

Re: Superheroes as firemen rather than cops? This is a great idea! Just to add my two cents and some game info on this (and yeah, Villany Amok has great stuff in this vein), something from a document I prepared on disasters and superhero games... ---- In the period 2000-2005, the New York metropolitan region only experienced two truly major building fires – that is, fires that actually killed, injured, or left homeless hundreds of people. However, “serious incidents” are far more common – in 2004 there were just over 3000, or almost ten a day. These “serious incidents” engage the entirety of a single fire company; nonetheless, they hardly ever prove fatal. Generous heroes will always find fires they can help fight, but those with limited resources or interest will be most likely to concentrate on four- and five-alarm fires, which occur at a rate of about two per month in any given year. There were, for instance, only twenty of these fires in 2004, and they probably account for a significant proportion of the 119 fire deaths in NYC that year (or, an average of ten deaths per such fire per year). Summary: Four or Five Alarm Fire: Weekly Encounter Chance: 10 or less on 3D6. Requirements: Varies. To rescue civilians, nothing except athletic prowess, courage, and perhaps minor firefighting gear. To put out the fire, advanced equipment or special powers over water or cold, enough to encompass a small building. Civilians saved: 2d6 or less. Disaster Level Fire: Weekly Encounter Chance: 4 or less on 3D6. Requirements: Varies. To rescue civilians, athletic prowess, courage, and preferably firefighting gear would be the minimum required, but given the serious and expansive nature of such a fire, resistance to heat and flame, or general toughness, would be preferred. To put out the fire, very advanced equipment or special powers over water or cold, enough to encompass a several blocks and quell a raging inferno. Civilians saved: Dozens if not hundreds.

Re: The Last Word There exists some x such that x is a piece of trivia and for some female human y, x has the potential to stimulate a positive romantic response? Heh. Hey, my girlfriend likes me because I'm smart... although it did cause a bit of friction, once, at the beginning of our relationship. She was a sciences and math person in college, and found that I (the humanities geek) did better on the GRE math than she did. This irked her a bit. What can I say? I test well, and she gets flummoxed.