Tom Carman

Re: Money Perk I didn't take a formal Disad for this one. I have a Wealthy character who heads up the local branch of his family's business, a mostly hands-off manager who "makes his own hours". If something comes up during working hours, there is a 8- chance that he is at the office that day and can't get away immediately.

Re: Stun Only vs Reduced Penetration.

Re: Stun Only vs Reduced Penetration. To do any knockback, you have to first do some Body damage (whether it penetrates defenses or not). Stun Only means "no Body" means "no KB".

Re: Stun Only vs Reduced Penetration. Stun-only attacks are -0 partly because they are completely ineffective against any non-living target (Limitation), and they have absolutely no damage risk to living targets (Advantage).

Re: Did the CCA create the Silver Age?

Re: Weapon Design Question And now it's time for Nyrath to pop in and say "Plasma weapons are silly. It's just hot air, for heaven's sake!"

Re: Why are so many people upset that Cryptic is only using the Champions IP? I guess I'm still fighting the Pre-CU "combat imbalance" war. As far as I'm concerned, the Star Wars Galaxies developers wasted a year trying to tweak mobs and build the Combat Upgrade Revamp/Balance, only to finally dump it all for a level-based system (the CU) that broke things even worse (for anyone who wasn't "all combat all the time"). The "root cause" of much (by no means ALL) of Pre-CU's combat imbalance was the fact that super-buffing secondary stats created a near godmode condition, and the devs seemed to be trying to fix everything except that. It removed the downside of wearing heavy armor: most people then wore only max-protection gear and complained that "everyone looks the same!". It removed the downside of spamming max-damage attacks. It slightly dumbed-down crafting, because armor became all about the resists and weapons were all about the speed/damage; all other considerations could be safely ignored. Godmode players in maxxed-out armor and weapons could solo missions with a money pay-out intended for a full group, and inflation got worse. The doctors' uber-buff created a veritable Hydra of problems... and was never touched. The "All they need to do to fix it is X" argument isn't necessarily wrong, if "X" is a sufficiently root cause and you can do a before-and-after comparison to demonstrate where the troubles started.

Re: Why are so many people upset that Cryptic is only using the Champions IP?

Re: Alternate Universe: No Industry, No Guns There were practical electric cars at the dawn of the 20th Century, and in the days of hand-crank-started IC engines it was questionable which would win out. The real advantage of the gasoline engine was the power-density of its "storage" system.

Re: Why are so many people upset that Cryptic is only using the Champions IP? I can see that some people here are newcomers to the world of Massively-Multiplayer Online Games. Stick around a bit and you will hear all about Star Wars Galaxies and its New Gaming "Enhancements". Imagine if you will, a free-form character creation system with no classes or overt levels. Every player get 250 points to spend on skills. Basic professions (Artisan, Brawler, Entertainer, Marksman, Medic, Scout) have no XP requirements, just an investment of 15 SP to start as a Novice. Using your professional skills generates specific types of XP (pistol, rifle, unarmed, polearm, healing, crafting, etc.), and when you have enough XP you can spend SP on a "skill box". Depending on the profession, the skill box gives access to new weapons or crafting schematics, special attacks, or improves skills (healing speed, weapon accuracy, attack speed, etc.). Beyond the basic professions are Elite and Hybrid professions: Rifleman, Smuggler, Fencer, Armorsmith, Shipwright, Bioengineer, Chef, Doctor, Dancer, Commando, and many more. You only get 250 SP, but you can drop skill boxes and recover the SP to spend on different skills. Master a profession or two to do a few things very well, or be a jack-of-all-trades to do many things adequately; it's up to you to define your own play style. If you want to be a Master Artisan (making vehicles and low-end food buffs) who also crafts low-end medicines, hunts and harvests animal meat and hides, and also plays a mean Chidinkalu Horn down at the cantina, that's fine. Enter World of Warcraft, and the definition of a successful online game is radically changed. A quarter-million players (once among the top 5 in the country) pales next to WoW's multi-millions, and companies get greedy. The changes start with a "Combat Upgrade" that imposes overt levels for the first time; instead of your skills defining your combat capability, it becomes "levels uber alles". Many crafting professions are seriously harmed, and medical crafting reduced to a faint shadow of its former importance. Entertainment professions are decimated as their former functions are eliminated or drastically downgraded and changed. Player interdependence suffers. There are mass protests (ignored of course) and a dramatic exodus. But the player base rebounds: damaged as the game was, it's still better (deeper, subtler, more flexible) than most of the rest. November 2, 2005 brings the announcement of the "New Game Enhancements", which go on Test Center by the weekend, and go live on 11/15. Professions and skill points are gone. You pick a class, and that's all there is to it. You are basically identical to every other member of your class (they later ripped off WoW's talent system to provide some minimal differentiation). Crafting (the old mainspring of the game) becomes all but worthless as loot is elevated far above a crafter's best efforts; the in-game money faucet is turned full-on, and the game economy tanks. In a rare moment of honesty, the game's operators acknowledge that they expect many players to quit; but that's fine because they think that a dumbed-down linear game will bring in many times more than they lose. This time, the exodus is far larger than their worst projections, and all those extremely angry ex-customers make sure that EVERYONE hears about how badly they were skr3w3d. The anticipated vast influx of new players never comes. The game continues to tank, with population levels now down by an estimated 80-90%. Star Wars Galaxies is the industry's poster child for things to never ever EVER do to your game and customers.

Re: Why are so many people upset that Cryptic is only using the Champions IP?

Re: Alternate Universe: No Industry, No Guns Never heard of any religious prohibition on pneumatic guns, and I'm not sure it would have worked anyway at that point. The airguns may have been as potent as contemporary gunpowder weapons, but generally less convenient, as the good ones needed pumps. (On the other hand, they had exchangeable air tanks and a multi-shot capability.) I recall that Napoleon had a standing order to execute anyone caught with a (silent!) airgun, since they were assumed to be assassins.

Re: Double The Hero Excitement!

I think I probably know the answer to this question, but I'll ask anyway just in case... I saw the official ruling that you don't take Knockback from attacks that don't penetrate a Force Wall. A successfully-coordinated attack is made against someone in a Force Wall bubble, so everything hits at the same time. Due to the bubble's strength and some poor rolling, only one attack is high enough to crack the Force Wall. The defense is subtracted from the attacks and the remainder added together to be applied against the target. Now then: is the target's Knockback calculated from the excess Body of the one attack that breached the wall? All the Body of the coordinated attacks? Something in between? Don't assume any funky knockback/feedback limitation.

Re: New to Champions, is BBB good enough? Heresy! The massive black tome is FReD.

Re: Does anyone have any idea why this is legal? I've managed to avoid this problem (so far) with the "Only to Defined Locations" Limitation. Fixed Locations are OIF Bulky (big, magically-inscribed slabs), and Floating Locations are OAF "beacons" that must be delivered to the destination before I can follow with a group.

Re: Modeling world of "Girl Genius"

Re: City of Heroes

Re: Pulp-Era Futuristic Space City Did you catch their movie Meet the Robinsons? In the future sequence, there was a quick shot of that classic cityscape with the sign Todayland.

Re: Return of the blimp/zepellin Hmmm... Disney Air Cruise Lines. "A leisurely cruise down the Eastern seaboard, eight hours from Lakehurst to the Disney World Skyport, then express bus service to your resort. A relaxing sightseeing tour to help you unwind as you start your vacation!"

Re: Steampunk/Victorian fantasy setting questions Have you read Aaron Allston's novels Doc Sidhe and Sidhe-Devil? In an alternate world with a lot of fey blood, iron and steel are toxic, especially to the pure-bloods. Guns are bronze with magically-reinforced barrels. A razor-sharp steel katana is a particularly dangerous melee weapon. Steel is used in constructing high-rise buildings, but needs special handling by the workers and special assembly methods to prevent rust leakage.

Re: What about a Space 1999 Hero UFO was set in the distant future of ... 1980. Clearly the producers were expecting space exploration to continue at the same pace it had been running for the previous decade, instead of screeching to a near-halt. Getting tech as advanced as Space 1999 by that year would be pushing things a bit, but might just be possible.

Re: Tac-nukes vs. Nuclear Warheads

Re: Variable power pool? Questions... It's been a while since that game petered out, but my faint recollection is that the Gadget Pool had 2 formal Limitations on it: a Focus Lim of -1/2 or greater, and "components must be on hand to change the pool". So changing in the lab is unrestricted, but the gadgeteer is normally limited to the contents of his "parts satchel"; having a free hour for shopping or a battle in a junkyard or warehouse plays into this Lim. An additional limitation on the character was just an understanding with the GM: all inventions must be reasonably derived from the character's set of mechanical and scientific skills.

Re: Variable power pool? Questions...