That Masked Man

Latest update: Hyperman is in the hospital, but out of ICU and recovering. He should be moving to physical therapy in the next day or two. He asked me to post pics of his latest HERO acquisitions.

Hyperman, who is a good friend of mine IRL, was admitted to the hospital on Thursday. Since then, he has had surgery and is doing much better. He will likely be transferred to physical therapy in the next day or two. He asked me to let everyone here know because he isn't really able to type at the moment, but we expect he will be back soon.

Re: Help Make Energy Projectors Interesting

So some times it's limitations that make the character interesting.

Absolutely! Aside from the old saying of judging a man by his enemies, its those points where a character isn't perfect that make him interesting. After all, who wants to hear a story about a hero who has no weaknesses and can't even possibly lose?

I haven't been able to create many characters starting from disadvantages, but I have found that the more you flesh out a character's disads the more you feel like you "know" him.

Re: Help Make Energy Projectors Interesting

Here's a link to a teleportatation/gate powerset I created recently - Wormhole Stan.

 

Not a traditional Energy Projector but that label fits as well as any other imo.

And the winner of the award for Best Use of Ranged Stretching is...

Re: ST: How Not To Do Homages (Trivia)

I was old enough to be a fan of TOS before there was any other source of 'canon' so I did cleave to every little clue it offered - like the establishment of the federation being a periold of violence and calamity that required hard men like Cpt Garth, or the draft of Gaurdians of Forever, that revealed it was humans who ushered Vulcans into space, not vice-versa, or the implication in "The Savage Curtain" that Surak was an ancient figure in Vulcan history.

 

Maybe that's psuedo-cannon, but it's all we had back then.

 

I certainly got the impression that Enterprise started out with that whole 'Temporal Cold War' thing, so that they could simply do whatever they wanted without regard for continuity or canon, real or imagined.

How could humans have ushered Vulcans into space when the pre-Romulans had already left centuries before?

Re: PA hero interest: Life Without People

The collapse of civilisation will do that anyway.

I doubt that. Historical population estimates have 60 million or more people (1/100 present) as far back as 500 BC. I doubt a collapse of civilization would go that far. And there were more than 6 million estimated before the invention of writing and possibly much further back. To get below that level would definitely take a lot more than just a civilization collapse.

Re: Need a reasonably well known charcter idea

Well, yes, I'm sure there are earlier examples...

 

But I personally found Adric to sort of be the absolute essence of the problem.

 

YMMV.

 

for your enjoyment... a plot treatment someone once told me at a con..

 

Wesley Must Die: The transporter goes berserk creating duplicates of Wesley Crusher leading to an all out "phasers on kill" Wesley hunt.

Sometimes I think they killed off Adric rather than having him just leave the Doctor, just to try to make people feel less comfortable cheering his exit.

Re: [Character] Winter

I like Winter, more the history/description than the point build, although that isn't bad. I also like Hyperman's Peregrine, but where is her background? I know we had this when she was in our game. If I had it handy, I would post it myself. She was an equally interesting character who was also more than the sum of her points. You can see some of it in the point build but I remember there was a lot more detail at one time.

Re: Shared Damage

Why not something like

20 Shared Life: (Total: 60 Active Cost, 20 Real Cost) Energy Damage Reduction, Resistant, 50% (30 Active Points); Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (Linked Character takes unresistible STUN and BODY equal to the damage that get through; -2) (Real Cost: 10) plus Physical Damage Reduction, Resistant, 50% (30 Active Points); Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (Linked Character takes unresistible STUN and BODY equal to the damage that get through; -2) (Real Cost: 10)

Powers Cost: 20

 

When the character takes damage, he only suffer half the damage and his linked pal takes the other half. Not really a pool thing since the healing is not transfered for exemple, but really simulate the thing : I'm tougher because my pal takes par of my pain.

So far this build is the closest to what I was looking for. The mind link works and is simplest, but doesn't handle the extra BODY and STUN without just buying more. Thanks to everyone who has contributed.

I have recently started running a new campaign and one of my players had an interesting idea that I don't quite know how to stat in Hero. The idea is that two characters are joined such that each is now tougher than they were separately but when one is damaged, both are. As I recall, the original characters he is basing this on were in D&D where they simply added their hit points into a common pool. This does not work in Hero, so I need a different mechanic. I was thinking of using extra Stun and Body with a limitation and a disadvantage that each takes damages when the other does. Does anyone else have a better way of modelling this?

Re: World encyclopedia

Wait... CIA... Red flag... You're saying that the CIA are Communists?! This is more serious than we imagined!

And what does that say about "red states"? They've infiltrated the Republican Party. We really are in trouble now.

Re: World encyclopedia

Of course I did!

 

If I thought you believed that shtuff, I wouldn't have sassed at you, I would have kept quiet and sneaked away!

And informed your superiors.

Re: Answers & Questions

A: Because I can finally afford to see a Broadway show!

Q: Why are you borrowing money for a flight to New York?

A: It turns into a pumpkin.

Re: The Perpetual Motion Machine - Does It Work?

Other than an interesting power construct (I don't know; I didn't parse it), is it actually modeling something?

Doing something "just because you can" has left the path of wisdom.

 

Keith "Or something like that. I'm stoned on Nyquil" Curtis

I always enjoyed exploring the limits of the system, stretching it until it breaks. Of course I would never try to PLAY a character designed like that, but sometimes creating such a construct is enjoyable in itself.

Re: Making colonization attractive?

What makes you think it was supposed to be...?

 

 

 

I foresee a future where corporations ARE governments... we're not too far off now!

Why should they bother? Many of them are already more powerful than most governments.

Re: Answers & Questions

A) Because I was tired off settling for the lesser of two evils.

Q: So why did you write in "Satan" for every race in the last election?

A: Yet another malfunction

Re: Making colonization attractive?

Unless space travel becomes extremely cheap, offworld penal colonies will be economically unviable. Those deemed so undesirable as to require shipping off the Earth could be more cheaply housed in one of Earth's own more inhospitable regions instead, if not just killed outright.

I believe most colonists will go because of their work. There will be a lot of jobs in space eventually and the money might be better than back home. A few may go for other reasons, but I doubt it would be many. In any case, the only was I see a majority of humanity not living on Earth in the next thousand years or so would be if some sort of disaster kills off all or nearly all of those who stayed behind. In that case human population would likely be at its lowest in ten thousand years or more.

Re: Pushing a HA with Advantages

Here's a better example...

 

Say we build a Human Torch type blaster called "Zapper" in HERO and give him an Energy based HA. We give him a STR of 20 and a 6d6 HA with Penetrating, Damage Sheild that can be used for attacks, Continuous and Only Costs End to Activate.

 

As I understand it, he should be able to do a 10d6 punch this way. Let's say that Proffesor Gizmo points his "Atlas-Ray" (Aid to STR) at "Zapper" and increases his STR to 50. Now Zapper can definitely do 12d6 with his HA.

 

Why can't he do 16d6 with all advantages (6+2 for the HA plus 8 for now using 40 of his current 50 STR) if he pushes the HA by 10 points?

You never stated if his STR was advantaged. If it is, then I think he COULD add all of his STR for a total of 18d6. (10d6 for STR + 6d6 HA + 2d6 pushed HA) If it is not then he can only add as much as he has in HA. Pushing the HA gives him 6d6 HA+ 2d6 pushed HA + max STR of either 6d6 or 8d6 depending on if the pushed HA is considered "base" for a total of either 14d6 or 16d6. I am still not clear which should be the case, but the latter makes more sense to me at the moment.

Re: Pushing a HA with Advantages

Unless I am misunderstanding, the advantage is not really that relevant. The idea here is if you have more strength than you can use to add to a HA and you push to increase the damage of the HA, does that push allow you to add extra strength to the attack. The same case could also happen with a HKA.

Example: Cutting Man has a 1d6+1 HKA and 30 STR. Normally he can add 20 STR for a total damage of 2 1/2d6. If he pushes his HKA by 10 points to 2d6, can he add his full 30 STR to get a total of 4d6? If he can, why would it be any different for a HA?

Re: Answers & Questions

Q: So what makes you think I'm a torturer for the CIA?

 

A: If I stop thinking, I stop existing.

Q: Aren't you taking this "I think therefore I am" business a little far Descartes?

A: Nowhere, but not quite the middle of it.

Re: Answers & Questions

Q: What can you always find on Basil's desk?

 

A: sometimes it is just too easy.

Q: Why shouldn't I make up a question about Tim's desk?

A: Because my desk just disappeared.

Re: How hard is your science ficiton?

Known Space is filled with magic tech which is never explained to any degree. Stasis Fields, Monofilament wire, superconductor cloth, magically-efficient fusion drives, General Product Hulls, Teleportation Booths, Stepping Disks, Skrill, Planets as spaceships, Psionics. Eventually Niven had to give it up because he had written himself into a technological corner (read "Safe at Any Speed").

I reiterate what Doc Anomaly took from me to use as a sig for several months:

 

 

Keith "I love the stories, don't get me wrong" Curtis

Thats the problem with doing too many "Here is a new piece of tech, lets see how it affects people" stories - which a lot of Niven stories are at least to some extent. The supertech accumulates as the number of advanced races do, so the Puppeteers intoduced GP Hulls, the Slavers stasis fields, and the Ringworld Pak Skrith. Add this to the human tech (which is generally better explained) and you end up with a sufficiently advanced technology which becomes indistinguishable from magic.

In the Mote universe this hasn't happened so much but it is still not considered hard SF because it has FTL and ships with shields, although both are pretty well explained IMO.

Re: How hard is your science ficiton?

I find it interresting that Larry Niven's work is on the low to medium end of Hard according the article.

 

I think Niven approaches storytelling a little different than most of the other writers mentioned. When begining the writing process He deliberately asks one or two "what if...?" questions and lets the story unfold based on the consequences of the speculative science introduced. Mote in God's Eye is a great examples of this and the handwavium/plot device FTL drive used in that universe is central to the story.

I think Known Space and the Mote novels would be considered less than hard SF because they have FTL, which current science says is either impossible or would cause paradoxes. Its the same reason Asimov's books are also not considered hard.

For me at least, the big gap in realism is between stories like those by Niven or Asimov on one hand, which try to make realistic technology within the confines of what is required for the story, and most TV and movie SF (and many books as well) which just throw in technology for the "cool" factor on the other. Gripping hand - Go with whatever makes the best story, which in TV and especially movies usually means don't bother explaining on screen, but in books you can do more.

Yes I did have to get in a reference to "gripping hand".

Re: Answers & Questions

Q: Why do I have to clean and restock the soda area?

 

A: If there is any problem it could be that it is not turned on.

Q: Whats wrong with my persocom? She just doesn't seem interested.

A: A bowl of ramen, half a pack of Camels, a broken TV set, and a copy of FREd.

Re: Answers & Questions

Q: Who is Wonder Woman looking to pummel to death?

 

A: once in a while, a government agent actually does something that isn't stupid.

Q: What is an example of a miracle in the modern world?

A: That was the next to last straw.