Chris Goodwin

Re: New Disadvantage: Control Override Codes I thought about including a "single command" modifier for it. An off switch would be a single command: power down.

Suggestions gladly accepted, including ways to do the same thing with pre-existing Disadvantages. - - - - - - - - - - Control Override Codes - This is a Disadvantage, something like a cross between a Watched and a Psychological Limitation. The character has some kind of code or switch that allows someone else to take control. It is built as follows: Who Has Codes: 0 points - 1 to 3 people 5 points - small group 10 points - large group 15 points - practically everyone Effective Control: 0 points - equivalent to EGO Mind Control 5 points - equivalent to EGO+10 Mind Control 10 points - equivalent to EGO+20 Mind Control 15 points - equivalent to EGO+30 Mind Control +5 points - equivalent to one additional +10 level, chosen at the time the Control Override Code is created. Access Required: 5 points - one mode 10 points - two modes 15 points - three or four modes Modes are: voice, radio, telepathy, or physical access (the player or GM can come up with others). The character need not have the appropriate Sense or Power in order for the control code to work on him (but Darkness to the appropriate sense can prevent the character from receiving the code). This is usually used to represent robots or cyborgs that have some kind of implanted control circuitry, but could also represent (in other genres) things like a wizard who has a demon's true name and can control it by that means. In combat, it takes a 0 Phase action to activate a control code; for physical access, it requires a hit against the target in combat. Treat the control mechanism as having a Perception roll equal to the character's.

Re: Alternate encumbrance rules (house rules) Ok, cool. I came up with them because the current rules seem like a patch that isn't really a satisfying fix. Mine uses only the pre-existing Hero rules on STR and Endurance cost and is, as far as I can tell, balanced with the rest of the system. I'm thinking of another addendum. Say your STR is 15, and you're carrying 50 kilograms and effectively using 5 STR. You're carrying a short sword (STR minimum 10). You're in combat and decide to use your full STR with it. It costs you 1 END (from the load) plus 3 END (from swinging with 15 STR) for a total of 4 END for the Phase. In other words, you can effectively use more STR than you have.

Re: Alternate encumbrance rules (house rules) No one? Not even a "This sucks!"

Re: Alternate encumbrance rules (house rules) Addendum: In hot weather (Temperature Level 2) note that your REC is down by 2, thus reducing by 1 your END expenditure without LTE. You also automatically expend 2 Long Term Endurance every 20 minutes at this Temperature Level.

I'm posting this here because FH seems to be the genre that uses encumbrance most. - - - - - - - - - - Encumbrance in Hero In heroic campaigns, STR costs 1 END per 5 points to use. 3 STR would be the minimum amount of STR usage to spend 1 END on. Depending on how you figure it, 3 STR can lift either 40 or 37.89 kg; to make it easy (and not use a calculator) we'll assume 40. Therefore, lifting 40 kg costs 1 END (actually .6 END which rounds to 1) per Phase. Less than 40 kg costs .4 END (which rounds to 0) per Phase, therefore carrying less than 40 kg around costs no END. The following table shows END usage by weight: Weight: END/Phase: <40 kg 0 40 - <80 kg 1 80 - <160 kg 2 160 - <320 kg 3 etc. etc. (Interesting factoid: per the Equipment section, a full set of 10 DEF armor weighs 80 kg.) Note that END usage is irrespective of the character's STR, though higher STR characters tend to have higher REC scores and therefore will spend less in the way of LTE. Which makes sense; to lift 50 kg costs 1 END per Phase whether your STR is 5 or 50. The table below shows, by REC score, how much END per Turn a character can spend and not spend any Long Term Endurance. REC END/Turn with no LTE 3-4 1 5-6 2 7-8 3 9-10 4 11-12 5 etc. etc. Characters can voluntarily drop their SPD scores to 2 and, thus, reduce their per-Turn END expenditures. Note that dropping SPD scores reduces movement as well; further note that spending END on movement can increase per-Phase END expenditures and thus increase LTE usage. For long term movement, note that characters can move up to 2" per Phase without spending END. Moving at Noncombat speeds makes this 4" per Phase. Assuming a SPD of 2 (remember? you dropped it to 2 to reduce your END usage because of all of that heavy armor...), 4" per Phase comes to 4.8 kilometers per hour, or approximately 3 mph, which is reasonable for a casual, sustained movement rate; 4 mph equates to a brisk walk. When combat starts, note that characters can instantly switch from SPD 2 to their normal SPD score (on the theory that the initial segment 12 when combat starts is the first segment that both SPDs have in common). This should be assumed to happen without players having to mention it.

Re: Hero Character Portfolio -- What Do *You* Want To See? I would like to see a Power design sheet similar to the spell design sheet from first edition Fantasy Hero. I use the heck out of that thing, and it makes it incredibly easy to design Powers by hand. If I were designing the Character Portfolio, I'd make it a four page document (basically one full 11x17" sheet folded in half) as follows: Front (page 1): Name, illustration Page 2: Character design. Characteristics, Skills, Perks, Talents, Powers, Disadvantages, all with point costs. It doesn't have to be fancy. Page 3: Combat data. Page 4: Background, character description (height, weight, etc.), powers, campaign use, quote, equipment, Hit Location chart, etc. What you'd end up with then would be, when the whole thing is opened up, one side with all of the character's abilities and combat info, and the other side with illustration, background, and so on. Players could, if they wanted, open it or close it to just the parts they need at the moment (combat info for combat, design sheet for "what Powers do you have?", and so on). Perhaps include the Power design sheet as an insert. I'd say it's probably not necessary to have separate sheets for Powers, Disadvantages, etc., but you could include one sheet that can do multiple duty for all of them, with a blank space at the top so people can write what it represents if they need a full page for it; they could also just use it as a single page with extra space for all of the stuff. This could go on the other side of the Power design sheet insert. I'd say, also, make them all two column. I greatly preferred the two column character sheet from third edition Champions over the three column one from fourth. Essentially, the first column on the design sheet has Characteristics at the top and Disadvantages at the bottom, and the second is just for Powers, Skills, and so on.

Re: Locust Battlemech- another rough idea For DEF, I think that one group I was in that did a Battletech Hero basically said divide the mech's armor by 1.5 to find Hero System DEF. You will definitely want to peg this to weapon damages in some way. Personally, were I going to run a Battletech Hero, I'd skip the Hero System vehicle rules completely. I'd convert Battletech armor and weapon damage values to their Hero System equivalents and use those, or just keep them as Battletech numbers and use OCV vs. DCV and Combat Driving skill rolls instead of their Battletech equivalents. But that's just me. If you use the Hero System vehicle rules, you run into the temptation of wanting to redesign another system's crunchy bits in Hero, which can skew your numbers all around. If you want to do a Battletech flavored Hero System game, where you do use the Hero vehicle rules, then go with that, but don't try to assign Battletech values to Hero System items (i.e. Active Points or DEF per ton).

Re: Locust Battlemech- another rough idea Why not this? Take the mass of the mech. Give it a Size stat such that its mass is less than or equal to the mech's mass. Thus, a 65 ton Crusader would have 9 levels of Size, giving it a base STR of 55 and 19 BODY. IMO, that puts it close enough that you wouldn't need to bother with the extra 2 STR unless you absolutely needed a way to differentiate it from the smaller or larger mechs. Of course you run into one problem: all mechs from 50-95 tons have 19 BODY. But you fit right in with other Hero System values for mass vs. body of other objects, vehicles, etc.

Re: Converting From Older Editions This is treading extremely close to something I've been thinking about for overhauling the Size Powers. All you'd need to add is a "2x Mass Per Level" Limitation and you're all set. It would do away with the need for Growth, Shrinking, and Density Increase, as well as the Size stat for vehicles. Make it a -1/2 Limitation and you're down to 12 points per level.

Re: Converting From Older Editions Oops! You're right. There are at least a couple of other mistakes in it too. When I have time I'll fix them all.

Re: OK, Math And Science Experts: Cubic Hexes

Re: GMB Hard to find in my area.

Re: Converting From Older Editions Here it is. It's reorganized. It's in HTML and zipped up so that I could attach it.

Re: Converting From Older Editions Looking through some 3rd edition Enemies books (Enemies II, Enemies III, and Enemies: Villainy Unbound) I see the following: * DEX/SPD: Nearly all of the DEX scores are in the 8-35 range, with most of those 18-28. SPDs are in the 4-6 range with a few 7's. (The aforementioned DEX 8 character was SPD 6!) They didn't seem to be based on concepts; there were energy projectors with 30/6 as much as martial artists with 23/5. * BODY scores range from 6(!) to 35, with most in the 10-20 range. * EGO is in the 5-20 range with most being 11-14 and a few in the 15-18 range. The occasional mentalist over 20 pops up but those seemed to be rare. * INT scores range from 5-23, with most in the 10-18 range (and one 1 INT loser!). * PRE scores are in the 10-30 range with most being from 15-25. * Defenses: I'm seeing a lot of normal PD and ED in the 30-40 range with 10-20 resistant defenses on top of that. * Movement scores are in the 6-43" range with most around 10-20" per phase; I'm seeing Flight and extra Running commonly. (Note that most characters in 3rd edition don't buy Flight noncombat multiples because the formula was different for figuring noncombat movement; the base noncombat multiple was equal to the points in Flight divided by 5. So with 15" of Flight you would have a NCx of 6 for a total of 75" noncombat.)

Re: Battlemech Weapons to Hero In whichever edition of Battletech I've got, SRMs did 2 points per hit, while LRMs did 1 point per hit. I think the difference is that an LRM devotes more of its space to propellant, thus a longer range, while an SRM devotes more of its space to explosive, thus a shorter range but a harder hit.

Re: GMB Hard to find in my area. Frequently, when the big book chains are asked about roleplaying games they don't carry and can't or won't order, they'll tell customers that the book is discontinued or that the company is going out of business because that's what their distributors tell them. Barnes and Noble probably doesn't and won't carry any Hero products. FREd is the 5th edition rulebook. Old, old joke.

Re: Converting From Older Editions Lord Liaden, you have inspired me to work on that document some more. I will post it when I am finished. It's going to be pretty much a total rewrite.

Re: Natural Healer Note that halving the time is effectively doubling the REC. Why not something like this: Healthy Aura: 8d6 Succor to REC, Standard Effect, Area of Effect Radius, 0 END, Persistent, Continuous, Always On, Only To Max Double Target REC (-1), Succored REC Only Affects BODY Recovery (-1). 46 real points. Everyone within the aura has their REC doubled, up to a maximum bonus of 12 REC, for as long as they are in the field. Ummm...I was assuming that the aura was always on. If it's not then the real cost is 47 points (assuming dropping Persistent as well).

Re: Updated for greater enforcement !!! Let us know how it went.

Re: Need some advice on a Mecha game. Just give the hacker a Computer Programming roll, modified by Security Systems, KS of the appropriate mecha type, the target system's admin's Computer Programming roll, etc.

Re: Alternative to Aid? Characteristics bought UBO can be used to affect characters that are unconscious, if that's what you're getting at. I don't have my book in front of me, but I think they can affect characters that are conscious but unaware as well. With Aid, you can buy up the max. Aid is also cumulative up to its max, so for 15 points you could buy the 1d6 Aid max up to 16 and, with a few applications, crank it all the way up. +5 STR is just +5 STR. OTOH, there are many special effects that IMO would be better served by Characteristics UBO or UAA rather than Aid.

Re: Need some advice on a Mecha game. If an opponent knows who the pilot is, the pilot gets his full Presence plus any bonuses from reputations and so on. Otherwise, he only gets his Presence based on the mech, from violent actions, etc. There's nothing that says you can't buy Characteristics for items that don't ordinarily possess the Characteristic. I believe that the rule of thumb is that if you put points into a stat, you buy it up from a base of 10. So you could buy additional Presence for your mech up from 10, perhaps with an "Only For Presence Attacks" Limitation to represent an extremely impressive looking mech. Or buy it without that Limitation to represent the idea that the pilot feels safer in his really impressive looking mech, and thus is harder to impress (the vehicle lends its PRE to the pilot for defensive purposes). Edit: I realize I didn't really answer your question. I'd say just let the vehicle's PRE add to the pilot's PRE. That makes it simple, plus it fits with other Characteristics possessed by vehicles (namely, that they have their effect on anyone inside -- the vehicle can lift all of its passengers with its STR, it protects them with its DEF, and so on). Again, the pilot only gets his own Presence if the opposing pilots know who he is.

Re: Need some advice on a Mecha game. I've considered doing up something like a "Scale" ability, costing 5 points per level. Every level of Scale doubles the size of one hex for reach, movement, and combat. In Robot Warriors, this was built into all robots and was based on the robot's "Size Class" which would effectively be three levels of Size. One hex equals 16 meters is, IME, a good scale for giant robot combat. For humans, that's a full move to cross one hex. You could go one hex equals 8 meters if you want to go with half moves. You can look at my Robot Warriors to Fifth Edition Hero page at http://home.comcast.net/~archer7/rw2hero.html but a good bit of it won't make sense if you don't have Robot Warriors. Still, you might find some helpful info in it.

Re: Based On Presence Combat Value You're talking about the 4th edition supplement, right? I have mine handy, but I can't find that in there. Do you know approximately where it is? Edit: Found it. Mental Power Based On PRE (-1/4).