Chris Goodwin

I dunno. I paid $30 for the playtest manuscript, and it seems I'm somehow getting 10 issues of Digital Hero for free. What's up with that?

When you dodge, you're not dodging the bullet. You're dodging where he's pointing the gun, hoping to get out of the way before he pulls the trigger. If you want to do a Neo, buy Missile Deflection with Autofire or lots of PSLs.

I once created a character for a TaleSpin Hero game. I don't recall whether I played it or not, though.

If you're specifically asking how to implement mine in play, I'd think that false memories wouldn't take very much on the Mental Illusions dice; you're just creating, essentially, an illusion against a Mental sense (EGO or EGO+10). Of course, for more detailed memories, you might need more effect.

I'd build it as Mental Illusions, Damage Shield, with perhaps an "Only For Giving Illusion Of False Memories" Limitation, with perhaps lots of diceage and Standard Effect. If it's on Damage Shield, it automatically hits the target if the target uses a Mental Power on him.

It uses hexes because on a hex grid, every hex is the same distance from every adjacent hex. Using a square grid, diagonally adjacent squares are further away than orthogonally adjacent squares.

Welcome to the board, Shadow!

In general, the way you want to do it is to buy the maximum amount of REC the character will have, then apply appropriate Limitations. It sounds like you can probably figure out the values of those Limitations yourself (in other words, "is left as an exercise for the reader").

I'm wondering about using Mental Illusions to represent the Matrix. They'd need to be at the Takes STUN, Takes BODY, Removes Target From Real World level.

SPOILER AHEAD Some spoiler space..... : : : : : : : : : : : : Enough? : : : : : : Okay. In Hero, how would you write up Neo's ability to fight a hundred Agent Smiths?

Old idea: Deal out a Tarot reading using your Illuminati cards. Make sure your placements of cards follow the Illuminati rules. Find some way to work the groups you get into the Champions universe. Viola.

So you want to stat out agents, coppertops, other free minds, etc., all in Hero terms? That's a lot of work. Neo spent 10 hours downloading skills and immediately went into a long fight with Morpheus in the Construct. I'd say he was pressing himself pretty hard. We don't have any indication that there is any maximum number of skills one person can download. The next movie might make it clear, then again it might not. I don't know that a VPP is the best mechanic for handling skill downloads. The main reason I say Hero is not appropriate is because Hero goes into way too much detail. The thing is, for as much work as I'd have to do to run a Matrix Hero game, I could write a game from scratch that would do it a lot better. Besides, there are already others out there that could do a lot of what the Matrix would require, and would take a lot less work than Hero.

If you want an entire subsystem devoted to hacking, check out GURPS Cyberpunk and/or the Cyberpunk RPG (either the original or 2020 versions). They're pretty similar. This brings up a problem, though, which because of this specifically has been called the "netrunner problem". When there's no netrunning going on, the netrunner is useless. When there is netrunning going on, the other characters are useless. The GURPS and Cyberpunk netrunning systems can almost be an entire adventure on their own, given how much GM attention they take.

I don't think Hero is the best choice for a Matrix game. You can treat the Matrix as another dimension if you want, with different properties that allow characters to do different things, or you can build every ability ever demonstrated by someone in the Matrix and give the PCs VPPs to allow them to do those things.... But that's a lot of work. It could be done, sure, but there are other systems in which you wouldn't have to do nearly as much work to get it to feel right.

I'd let him into my games without a second thought. Literally no changes needed, unless there was something specific about the world I was running that he didn't fit in with.

Re: Heroic/superheroic dimension hopping: How would you handle it? He's the only one who uses the Superheroic rules, unless the dimension travel alters him in the process. For example, instead of taking Defender to an ordinary alternate dimension, it could take him to a dimension in which literary rules are part of the laws of nature, in which case he's gone from a comic book universe to a fantasy novel and is therefore subject to the new rules.

Re: Wow Taxboy, I apologize for the jerkitude. It looked to me like you were asking people to e-mail you the PDF. There used to be a lot of that going around on rec.games.frp.super-heroes and even a bit on the previous incarnations of the boards.

Perhaps, then, they should be "relaxed" about allowing you to use their copyrighted information. Really, dude. It takes big hanging brass balls to go on a company's discussion board on that company's web site and ask people to pirate that company's products for you. Go away. Don't play Hero System. I don't want you playing in my favorite system.

And what are the duct tape and pipe cleaners for?

Re: Prep to Argue Magic Vs. Mental Mental Powers are a specific type of game mechanic in the Hero System. Magic is a special effect. If you wanted something comparable, you might go with Psionic Powers vs. Magic. From the standpoint of the Vulnerability, it really doesn't matter what the final SFX behind the Powers are; if the target has Vulnerability to X, and the incoming Power is X, it triggers the vulnerability. Just to make it more confusing, you can make it a Vulnerability to mechanics or SFX as you choose. So a character could take a Vulnerability to Mental Powers, and would take increased effect from those Powers that are defined within the system as Mental Powers (game mechanics). Or he could take a Vulnerability to Psionic Powers (special effect), which would be any Powers that were psionic in origin, which could include Mental Powers but which might also rule out certain Mental Powers based on their SFX and/or Modifiers; for example, a Mind Control Based on CON (defined as a drug rendering the target extremely suggestible) would be a Mental Power but not a Psionic Power. Your Magical Powers Vulnerability would be in the same boat as Psionic Powers above. You could have Mental Powers (game mechanic) that were also Magical Powers (SFX) because they were magical in nature. Make sense?

Let me take back my first statement on this thread. Does the change make it more fun for you? If the answer is yes, then go for it! That's what everything boils down to at the core.

Read John Kim: http://www.darkshire.org/~jhkim/rpg/herosystem/essays/breakpoints.html

My thoughts: No offense, but.... is the current system really so broken that it needs this fix in particular?

No you don't. HA as is, with 1 point STR, is way off compared to EB, HKA, and RKA. If you have 2-point STR, you want HA at 5 points with no Limitations, because that makes everything line up perfectly. Bigtime d'oh for me, though; I totally forgot about martial arts DCs.

Characters with higher STR would be more expensive. You'd see characters with STR closer to 10. Anecdotal evidence of characters buying up their STR just for the figured characteristics would go down. With STR at 2 points, you'd need to raise the cost of Hand-to-hand Attack to 5 points. Beyond that, absolutely nothing else would change.