Claire Redfield

Hi! Over here on RPGnet, I invited people to help me make characters in any system. The thread's been very successful, but since I find myself greatly interested in HERO lately, I thought I might try a HERO-specific version here. Someone helped me make a Sonic the Hedgehog clone (he's a lot more powerful than you might think, and so was the clone) over there, so I'd like to try out some more here. Ideally, depending on how you want to do this, I'd like to give you the details up front and have you build the character and explain to me what you did and why you did it. Explain what the character can do (besides the very self-explanatory stuff). This is for my benefit, as a newcomer to HERO, and also my girlfriend's, since she has zero experience with it at all. Plus, it's fun! If there are choices along the way for a more interactive experience, I'd like that, too, and I'm more than willing to contribute to that. So, here are the characters I'd like to see. Eventually, since my darling wants a Dragon Ball game, I wouldn't mind getting more into that. Andrew Cermak helped me build a Super Saiyan over there, but I want moar! So does Rachel. Anyway. Here we are. These will sort of ramp up in power level, but please, don't feel the need to tone anything down for playability purposes or anything. No need to be conservative with points or anything else. Just give me whatcha got. If these work out, I might have one or two more to throw at you HERO veterans. 1) A being from the Night Dimension (this is based on the NiGHTS games). She is a creature of Nightmare (looks like a cute jester), but doesn't want to stay in the dark, nightmarish realm, and instead flies free through the various dreamscapes of the Night Dimension. She's capricious and adventurous. Her powers include the ability to fly (top speed probably well over the speed of sound), very agile and graceful in the air. When she flies, streams of starry particles called "Twinkle Dust" trail from her hands, and she can use this stuff to perform what are called "Paraloops". By flying in a loop so that the Twinkle Dust streams meet in a circle, whatever is inside the circle is sucked into a vortex which transports them to various places within the Night Dimension (which includes Nightmare and Nightopia, the world of dreams). She can also perform a "Drill Dash", which is a temporary speed boost and also an attack. She's stronger than her size would suggest, too, or her blows hit hard enough to rock big Nightmarens, anyway, because of the magic. 2) A sorceress summoner, like Alisia Dragoon here. For those of you who haven't played the game she's from, here's a description of her powers. Alisia's rigorous training keeps her in excellent shape, with the agility and stamina of a dancer. Her greatest power by far, however, is her sorcery. Gifted in magical potential even from a young age, time and intense training has turned Alisia Dragoon into the most powerful mage in perhaps the world. She favors lightning elemental magic, controlling primal electrical forces in the environment with great skill. She can channel this power into destructive blasts, though to do so drains her reserves of magical energy for a time. Alisia can also fly via magic and conjure magical creatures and forces. Four such creatures of great power accompany Alisia in battle, though she can generally only maintain the mystic link to one of them at a time. Though smaller than his kin, Frye the dragon can breathe scorching blasts of fire and possesses a durable, armored hide. He can also carry Alisia, in a pinch. Though smaller and weaker, the Boomerang Lizard is very quick and throws piercing blades of energy with great precision. Conversely, the aptly named Ball o' Fire is a fire elemental, quite literally manifesting as a sentient floating fireball. Though it is not solid in form and cannot carry Alisia or shield her physically, its fiery body scorches all who touch it and allows it to control fire over a large area. Finally, the Thunder Raven possesses unmatched swiftness on the wing, its senses have no equal and it can emit devastating thunder blasts which deafen or even blind enemies. 3) Someone like Nintendo Power Girl here, who I imagine is actually much like an updated Captain N: The Game Master. In Videoland, the Wiimote and Nunchuk are powerful artifacts capable of "pausing" time in the local area, functioning as a Zapper or other things, and letting her "hold A to run" and "press B to jump", giving her superhuman abilities in those regards. She probably has other powers; surprise me. 4) Anyone here know anything about Bio-Booster Armor Guyver?

Re: Heavenly HEROic Host: Playing Angels The Magic: the Gathering lore. With maybe one or two exceptions, all shown and known angels are female. There are male equivalents, of course.

Re: Can you post character builds on these forums? $25 isn't bad, but I've got all of $1 to my name for anytime in the near future. In a month or two I might be able to afford it, when I get paid for this editing work I'm doing now on an upcoming RPG, but argh! I hate waiting.

Re: Can you post character builds on these forums? Thanks! I'll give it a try!

Re: Can you post character builds on these forums? Hm. It opens up with the "Forbidden 404 error" on it.

Re: What third party Hero products would you like to see? Mesozoic Monsters Not just a bestiary of creatures from all across the Mesozoic timeframe, but an actual setting, like a time-transplanted colony. I have considered doing one myself, but I doubt I could license HERO for it. Perhaps a particle-collider or something like that opens up a rift into the past, and people are sent back to investigate. I'm not sure yet; the science doesn't have to be realistic. Mostly, the excuse is to get a big city/outpost back in a Cretaceous world, with all kinds of cool stuff to do in addition to survival.

Then the great curtain of black smoke split asunder, rent by blades of golden light It parted around her as she descended upon wings of luminous white In her hand, the Sun In her eyes, the Light In her heart, the Fire In her spirit, the Purity Before her blackened the twisted host, scattered by her wrath The besieged armies of humanity rallied to her banner and strove once more against their enemy Her arrival was as the coming of the Storm, and her passing like dawn blooming warm and vital in Spring More piercing than any weapon she could wield was the gift she brought the weary, the frightened, the desperate Upon wings of light she brought Hope Playing lots of Magic lately (and putting together a new deck) has really gotten me wanting to play an angel. Now, like in Magic, I want my angels decoupled from Christianity, but this leaves lots of room to create and have fun. The idea is rather simple: powerful beings that hail from higher realm(s), who are bringers of light or war, wisdom or hope, staunch enemies of the darkness and tyranny. I rather like that, in the lore, the angels are pretty much all female. It makes me wonder what we'd do with male radiant beings of similar stature, though, to make them equal. How would you like to play angels? Modern supernatural WoD/Witchcraft/Armageddon-style settings? There they could be powerful and dangerous and involved in the cool hidden wars of the supernatural. Or perhaps in various fantasy settings, like in Magic? A dark realm like Innistrad needs a lot of work, even if you are a powerful angel. Or what about something over the top, like Darksiders, with angels as possible characters? I think that'd be pretty cool. I like the lore of the Darksiders world, and there are angels in it. Instead of the Horsemen, you could play as Angels, though there is Christianity involved there, I think. Well, they've already played fast and loose with the mythology, so it should be pretty easy to excise other parts of it. I also made a half-angel character for a Devil May Cry game who could even "Angel Trigger" and transform into an angelic form for a time. Here are some pics of that character, Celeste, and some other angels I like. Tell me what kinds of angelic gaming you'd want to do!

Re: I can't decide what to run! Which of these sounds fun? Seems like that's the winner, then, I think, for a basic starter campaign. It shows of a little of everything. It'll be quite fun. Now... I have been thinking about how to stat up some old enemies I used for a Dragon Ball campaign. They're a clan of elemental ninja, and in particular, these four are the leaders of that clan, each the head of a different school, I guess. Each has mastered a different of the four basic elements, to the point that he has become that element: Earth, Air, Fire, Water. I was thinking about what the fight with the Water ninja would be like. In addition to the flight and super-speed and strength and so on that all ki-powered fighters exhibit, he can command water, shape it, use it to heal himself and even transform into water himself. Since you would fight him on an island chain, this makes him very difficult to defeat. His water pressure blades can cut mountains in half. He can merge with the ocean below and form a giant body, or heal himself completely as long as he has access to that water. I think defeating him would involve either somehow completely boiling away a large part of the ocean around the islands, or maybe freezing it so that he is slowed down, or something along those lines. Pure physical attacks aren't really going to get the job done. What's mean is that all four of those ninja can fuse into one mighty being: Maelstrom, a titan of raging elements: boiling water, streams of fire, helices of rock and freezing whirlwinds. Very powerful, he has the powers of the four component ninja and would serve as the big boss for that particular story.

Re: I can't decide what to run! Which of these sounds fun? I like the idea because it'd make for a good, quick one-shot starter campaign. Start off Heroic, then move into some powers and things, but nothing too ambitious. Plus, it'd be fun. Hmmm... might have to hop over to HERO Central, or run this on RPOL.

Re: I can't decide what to run! Which of these sounds fun? Hm, you know, for Left 4 Dead, I could always get a little fancy with it some way into the campaign. Have some or all of the PCs get infected, mutate into Kerrigan-esque Special Infected that keep their individuality and reason and either choose to fight the other Infected or rule them. Or even do it like I have done with AVP games, like the old PC games where you had an Alien, Marine and Predator campaign. In this case, I could offer two choices, a Special Infected and a Survivor campaign. At various points, their storylines would intersect and each would affect the other campaign. You could then play as a Special from the game or make up your own. That might be kind of fun!

Re: Why the change in destroying planets between SH 5E and SH 6E? How the heck did you do that?

Re: I can't decide what to run! Which of these sounds fun? Ah, if only! I'm kinda on the other side of the country from you, otherwise I'd be happy to! Especially that MMX game, which has been a dream game of mine for a long time. Now, of course, the story idea grew out of a fanfic which paired Samus Aran and X as romantic options, but there were some intense scenes and stuff in there, besides that. I don't have the APG yet. In fact, I only have HERO 6E vol. I because of someone's generosity. I need to get vol. II on hardcopy, because it's harder for me to read PDFs for long periods of time and absorb the information. I also really need to get Hero Designer, because it would make experimenting with builds and things sooooo much easier.

Re: Why the change in destroying planets between SH 5E and SH 6E? I didn't mean there wasn't, just that a 30D6 RKA still leaves room to grow into the figures presented by 5E Star HERO and beyond, if needed.

I want to use HERO sometime, but the old "open-ended point buy system" problem comes back to haunt me: I can't figure out what to do! HERO works well for many things, I'm discovering, though I'm still reading through the rules (there's so much to digest), so it's hard to narrow down a single idea. Here are a few. One of these I came up with and my brother ran it some years back. It was based on a fanfic I wrote a long time ago. 1) Left 4 Dead: This could be a lot of fun. Normally, I would use AFMBE for this, but using it for HERO would be good for a couple reasons. One is that it would give me some experience with a basic setup: PCs are human, there are weapons and such, it's Heroic, it's a good base from which to work. But then it also gives me some wilder elements, such as the Special Infected, which would be great. 2) Magic: The Gathering: There is a lot to the various Magic settings and if the players play as powerful magical creatures and/or Planeswalkers, there is a lot to do, worlds to traverse, big, epic plots to unfold. This one offers a ton of variety of and could be a lot of fun. 3) Mega Metroid X: This is the one I came up with and let other people use. It's one of my favorites. It's basically set about 300 years in the future of the Mega Man X series, after the fateful battle with Sigma on the moon. Humans and Reploids, which are so awesome and full of roleplaying potential (basically, robots that can think, grow, feel, make decisions, dream, even have souls), have spread through space. They have met other civilizations and joined the Galactic Federation of Metroid. Mavericks join up with Space Pirates or fight with them, Maverick Hunters patrol the space lanes alongside Federation troops and bounty hunters hunt the most dangerous game across the galaxy. There is a staggering variety of PC types available in this one: Humans, Reploids, cyborgs, robots, aliens, alien cyborgs, psychics, even some mysticism in the setting (there are ghosts and such in the Metroid universe, and probably the possibility in the X universe). The idea I have for the first game is awesome. Like how the MMX games always had an opening stage to let you be awesome and set up the story. In this case, there is a massive space station that is the site of a very important Galactic Federation scientific conference. Security is high, with Maverick Hunter units called in alongside the Federation Police, because a pirate attack is suspected, due to the sensitive nature of the information discussed therein. The PCs will be off-duty when things start, and so away from their weapons and armor. Of course, the Space Pirates do strike, and somehow manage to disable effective communications for the station in the breaching of its defenses. With Pirates invading in great numbers, and with powerful weapons, the station is in danger of becoming quickly overrun. Now, the PCs, cut off from their weapons and gear (and can't just have it teleported to them like normal, with transmissions jammed), things turn into a cross between Metal Gear Solid and Metroid. The station is crawling with deadly pirates and haywire machines, so the heroes have to be stealthy as they go to their weapons storage. If they attack the heavily-armed pirates at all, it will have to be from ambush, setting up traps to take advantage of their abilities. Maybe they can scrounge some of the less powerful Federation Police weapons. Then, of course, they get to their own gear, equip up and suddenly it's time to fight! They can make their way to the core of the space station, find out what the Pirates are after (it must have something to do with what the Federation scientists are discussion; Metroids may be involved), rescue important personnel and drive off the invasion. And that's just the opening stage. After that, it's off to different environs and exotic locations on the various missions, a la the respective games that make up this setting fusion. 4) Dragon Ball HERO: Believe it or not, I like the Dragon World and I'd like to game in it sometime. Set a couple hundred years after the end of the series, I am thinking that starting off with a tournament is a good idea. For a twist, I might make it an Other World tournament, as in, all the PCs start off dead. Part of character creation would be detailing the circumstances in which you died, and any unfinished business you left behind. The prize for winning the tournament would be a return to life for you and maybe a few friends (it's a Dragon wish), so the PCs could all be resurrected to pursue unfinished business, seek vengeance, etc. The real story would begin at that point, basically. There are more ideas, too. Aliens vs. Predator HERO could be fun. Or something with supernatural beings, because I'm a real big angel kick lately.

Re: Why the change in destroying planets between SH 5E and SH 6E? Very nice! 30D6 seems to pack more of a punch (naturally) than a 10D6 RKA, and while astronomically expensive (pun intended), still not as bad as 51D6. It also leaves room to grow as the characters get more powerful and can generate bigger blasts. I wish I could do the grown-up math necessary to have figured that out on my own. Thank you! This will be a great starting point. I might put Frieza's first form a bit lower, say 24-25D6 RKA, or even a 20D6, and we could perhaps assume that Planet Vegeta was a bit small, or perhaps not completely vaporized.

Re: Why the change in destroying planets between SH 5E and SH 6E? I... I am not sure what to do with that. O.o

Re: Why the change in destroying planets between SH 5E and SH 6E? Doesn't the vault door have both a BODY score and PD/ED, as well? I haven't looked at the rules for destroying objects just yet.

Re: Can you post character builds on these forums? Hey, what a coincidence... I need a newer version, too!

Re: Why the change in destroying planets between SH 5E and SH 6E? Right. I consider the baseline for "can blow up a planet in one go, without using up all his/her power" to be at the level of Frieza's first form. Super Saiyan 2 can destroy a solar system with one blast (at considerable effort, but still!), and beyond that, I suppose it doesn't really matter, does it? Super Saiyan 3-level characters have far greater energy control, so who knows? And think about what someone like Super Vegito could accomplish... O.o Anyway, so it's useful to establish benchmarks from which to work. Usually, I try to establish these benchmarks based on key characters and plateaus of power seen in the various sagas. Generally, it's pretty easy: Goku/Vegeta, Goku/Frieza, Goku/Cell, Gohan/Cell, Goku/Buu, and so on. It's just a matter of finding the right numbers. It's fun, though, experimenting! So, MegaScale it? Sure, that works for me. I like the idea of using MS AoE, it makes things easier. But the actual damage output still has to be pretty significant. What's it take to completely destroy/vaporize a vault door, for instance?

Re: Why the change in destroying planets between SH 5E and SH 6E? Well, keeping numbers more manageable isn't a bad thing. These guys can vaporize planets at anywhere from Frieza's level on up, and do so fairly effortlessly. So if we consider Frieza's first form to have the bare minimum necessary to blow up a planet, it would still go up from there. I mean, don't be expecting Supes or Wonder Woman or people to tank blasts like that. Even the characters doing this stuff in Dragon Ball can't always do that. You're totally right about contests of power and stuff. That happens all the time in the show. At Super Saiyan 2 level, these characters can blow up whole solar systems, like Cell was going to do, and got into a contest of power (an epic beam struggle) with Super Saiyan 2 Gohan. It was pretty fun. So by that point, RKAs will have gone up, as the power levels of the character go up, of course. Makes me shudder to think of what Super Saiyan 3+ power levels can do. Then again, Buu was tearing apart the universe by shattering dimensions, just by being angry... Mostly what I need is a good baseline for what it would take to destroy a planet. RKA 10d6 might be a little low for my purposes (since a lot of DB characters would survive that, even if hit directly and unprepared), but it's a much more manageable starting point than 51d6. For what it's worth, I love Surbrook's DB stuff and, thanks to Lord Liaden, I'm using that as a basis. But I am not trying to tone things down; rather, I want to see if HERO has what it takes to capture the power levels as depicted in the source.

Re: Why the change in destroying planets between SH 5E and SH 6E? They block the big attacks occasionally. Frieza did it, and Super Saiyan Goku deflected an attack from Frieza later on that would have blown up the entire planet. Hehe, and Frieza survived a planet exploding underneath him, after marathon-fighting all the heroes, including Goku, cutting himself in half with his own attack, being given just enough energy to survive and escape by Goku and then getting blasted by Goku a final time. Previously he had said he didn't have enough energy to survive to the explosion. Guess he was wrong. He floated in space for a couple weeks, hovering on the edge of death, until his father found him. Anyway, the energy control seems to follow a few rules. Planet-smashing attacks, or perhaps even those that would "only" destroy a mountain range or continent or something, can vaporize an unprepared warrior. If they're ready for the blast, then generally they can defend against it, but if caught unprepared, even lower level blasts like nukes could be a threat. It's like... say Warrior A has a total Energy Blast of 100 (chosen just as a random number for illustration purposes, not an actual game mechanic). Her base defense is such that blasts of 40 or less probably won't even hurt her, or not much, and things like 20 or less (missiles or the like) don't stand a chance. She can also put up enough of a force field to block/deflect a blast of up to 100, if she has a chance to put energy into the defense. If she is surprised or otherwise caught unawares, blasts of 60 or more could hurt her, maybe kill her if she is already badly wounded, and blasts of 100 will definitely destroy her, as well as planets or whatever (depending on the level at which the game takes place), if she is hit by them.

Re: Why the change in destroying planets between SH 5E and SH 6E? So, would the 51d6 RKA be assumed to just be targeting the Body of a massive stellar object as a whole, while the 10d6 version is using some tricks to target every square meter of the planet individually?

Re: Why the change in destroying planets between SH 5E and SH 6E? I'd have to check, as I'm not sure. I think it might just be area effect wide enough to target the entire planet at once. Ah, okay, here we go: the writeup assumes that the whole Earth counts as stone (19 Body, 5 PD/10 ED), though it does give mention that you can recalculate to account for the Earth's core and so on. RKA 10d6, Area of Effect (1m Radius; +1/4), MegaScale (affects entire Earth; +2), costs 487 points.

Re: Gaming in the Magic: The Gathering setting I think that creatures that have magic would be able to use that for various effects, just like Planeswalkers could, though perhaps more narrow in scope, depending on the creature's power. If the Planeswalker is drawing the power directly from some Elves, say, maybe it's a Transfer END or Drain or some kind? Multipowers or VPPs for particularly powerful mages could work. And I'd figure the time scale could change from scene scene — one battle might feature a day-long struggle between archmagi and monsters, while another might last as long as the typical superhero fight.

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster