Tom Carman

Re: Favorite Sci-Fi Weapon I think standard infantry weapons are generally antipersonnel. It was explicitly stated in the first few pages of Forlorn Hope that the cone-bore shoulder arms were designed to penetrate/smash armor (vehicle not body) and brick. Of course, hypervelocity osmium penetrators will kill troops right through light/medium cover.

Re: Favorite Sci-Fi Weapon Drake's cone-bore rifles (not really "rifles" I think) were more man-portable antiarmor gear than standard military small arms. I got the impression that that mercenary company was a bit specialized in the sort of jobs they did. They were a defense force for a military HQ, not field troops. The engagement (cone-bore cannon against laser-armed tanks) near the end of the book was pretty interesting.

Re: Thrown non-killing weapon I just dug up my PDF of 4th Edition (I'm at work) to check the weapons section; Melee weapons can be built with a "Can be Thrown" Advantage of +1/2 ... which incidently is also the value of Ranged. There were no definitions of how "Can be Thrown" is supposed to work either. The section on Limitations uses a thrown hammer as the example for "Reduced by Range". Unless FReD has some rules contradicting it, I would suggest "Ranged" or "Can be Thrown" for a Thor-type returning hammer, plus "Reduced by Range" if your conception includes damage as well as accuracy being reduced at range.

Re: City Of Heroes Powers?

Re: City Of Heroes Powers? OK, Energy Torrent is indeed the name of the cone blast. The Kinetics defense shield of Repel is probably not well modeled as an Energy Blast, because the blast powers often cause knowckback but Repel does it every single time. I would call it a Triggered power because it doesn't cost END unless an enemy gets close enough to set it off. It would be either TK (doing a grab-and-throw) or Flight Usable against Others.

Re: City Of Heroes Powers? I think what you entered as "Repulsion Field" is "Power Torrent", or something similar. The repeller is AoE Megahex Selective (only hits enemies, never friends), Zero Range, Personal Immunity. ... I may be mixing up 2 power sets here. Now that I think about it, the repulsion field I described is a Kinetics primary power for Defenders, not an Energy Blast secondary power. "Power Torrent" may be the short-ranged high-damage attack in the Energy Blast group.

Re: Favorite Sci-Fi Weapon In John Ringo's Princess of Wands, the title-character was on a range, zeroing-in a new pistol and shooting cloverleaf patterns. When asked why not shoot for bullseyes, she replied that if you train to hit the same spot all the time you will tend to do the same in combat. Spreading out the damage to other vulnerable spots might take your target down faster.

Re: Vorkosigan Hero -- How to make a Nerve Disruptor? Waste of bombs, doing it that way. As I recall, the tropics are no more than temperate. The non-glacial zone probably isn't more than 1000 miles wide.

Re: Vorkosigan Hero -- How to make a Nerve Disruptor? What happened to him was a good bit uglier than a shot in the leg. He was one of the very lucky, very few survivors of the central hit. Ensign Koudelka got what amounted to an experimental prosthetic nervous system. He avoided being invalided out of the service by Admiral Vorkosigan putting him on staff, but he still spent much of Barrayar in a suicidal mood.

Re: Anita Blake Vampire hunter Sorry, when I say the title of this thread, my mind kept reading it as "Anita Bryant Vampire hunter". "A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine!"

Re: Comparing starship speeds. I once read an article on this where they compared several cases from TOS where actual distances, warp speeds and times were mentioned. The Warp Factor formula worked if you add in a fudge variable. The fudge was pretty low in intergalactic space, so even with extreme warp velocities the Kelvins took centuries to make the crossing from Andromeda. Within the galaxy, the fudge variable was drastically different in various places. If you ignore that this was really a "at the Speed of Plot" difference and accept it as "reality", it implies that Trek-verse space applies a varying multiplier to a ship's warp speed. In that case, trade routes really work because how you get to a place matters. Mapping becomes very important. Some systems will have advantages beyond simple galactic location. And it is conceivable that some regions could have a fudge multiplier so low that you might get there faster in Real Space!

Re: Chronicles of Narnia A few points: Jadis (the White Witch) did not know how to move between realities, and Charn was not a nation in the Narnia reality. Charn was an old, old world (swollen red sun), and Jadis was its last queen (in the final war, she wiped out every other living thing on the planet because victory by any means was better than losing. She seemed singularly unrepentant about that.) She ended up in Narnia because the Magician's Nephew desperately wanted her off Earth after he foolishly woke her from her magical stasis in dead Charn.

Re: Chronicles of Narnia The Witch was not ruling Narnia at the end of Magician's Nephew. Aslan installed a former London cabbie as King. Jadis took over 100 years before the Pevensies arrived. There was enough time in between for the kingdom to get well established and the original dynasty to die out (or be killed off, more likely).

Re: Inventing

Re: Sci-fi wear swords?

Re: Women in Pulp adventures?

Re: The Old Races

Re: Magic... but not Magic If Tribals have to pay points for their magic, it is "real" in-game so non-Tribals should have to pay for an immunity to it. Alternately: if magic has an equally common beneficial side (like Healing and Aids), then non-Tribals should also be unable to benefit, and you might call it a wash on the advantage/limitation front.

Re: Pulp Stargate!

Re: If you hate Killing Attacks, how would you replace them? Yes and no. They have the same cost per DC. But relative to an EB, a KA has both an advantage (protected against by resistant defenses) and a limitation (does less knockback). If you are only getting the first, then it is worth some degree of advantage.

Re: If you hate Killing Attacks, how would you replace them?

Re: So yeah, about those Star Hero lasers....

Re: A more realistic feel for SH I had a notion about this, and would like feedback if anyone ever tries it out. Figure up your income level, and consider expenditures up to 1% to be "free" to the character. Getting more money would require an activation roll that increases as a higher fraction of annual income is accessed. Assume a base of 1 day to "get some cash together", then apply the time table in reducing the difficulty of the roll. If the roll fails, the character should wait at least a week before trying again. Possible variations are Burnout (get the money but credit line is now tapped out for a while) and Jammed (don't get the money and your credit is tapped out). Some game "treasure" can be in the form of Money Favors: cash to cover a one-time large purchase. A negative "Favor" (if a player has the spare XP for it) could be taking out a loan. This could be expensive (in XP) if the character doesn't need to pay it back, or cheap if the player accepts a reduction in their normally-available funds over the "repayment period".

Re: Money System After years of playing Champions, I found tracking money to be a pain. If I start another game, I plan to use the Money perk to determine an income level. Then set some fraction of that as a "free expenditure" (as long as a player doesn't try to use it constantly) of the cash a player would normally have "on hand". A progressively steeper activation roll (possibly with Burnout or Jammed when their credit line is pushed too hard) would be applied when a player wants to spend a larger percentage of their income, with a reduced roll if they say (well ahead of time) that they are saving up for something. Some mission "treasure" would be a Money Favor: no-activation one-shot wealth usable for some large purchase(s), no change given when cashed in.

Re: Finally figured out what I hate about Star Wars in RPGs