Tom Carman

Re: Favorite Sci-Fi Weapon

Actually they were standard (but very powerfull) "rifles", or standard shoulder weapons, because of course you are correct, they weren't rifled.

In "Hammer's Slammers" here are sections discussing other weapons besides the ones that the Slammers use, the cone-bore rifles are discussed there.

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

The official, completely rules legal method to do what you want, is the Multipower idea you mentioned. Actually, in just about every published write-up I've seen this is the method used for the effect you are describing.

 

Personally, I just say screw-it and put Ranged on HA and work from there. It seems to be how weapons are built (in the Weapons section of of the rulebook).

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?

Okay ... if all it does is move people' date=' then I'd buy it as TK ... but to me it always seemed like it did some serious damage as well. That's why I used EB. For the END situation, just slap Only Costs END if Hits (+1/2) on it. Like I said ... it's just a start [/quote']

Oh, the Energy Torrent cone is definately an energy blast with extra knockback, and costs whether it hits or not. Repel just throws people away from you without actually damaging them, sucking END for each person it throws. Then they have to waste time getting up and running back to attack again. Useless against ranged attacks, it just stops melee fighters from standing there pounding you. It's good if you are teamed with a strong healer like an Empathic Defender: you stick close to keep the enemy off your primary healer. Kinetics also has a nice ranged AoE heal to help out the Tanks and Scrappers in the fight; it converts some of the enemy's END into healing.

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?

Here's a start Hope it helps ...

 

75......Force Field Powers:Multipower, 75-point reserve

4u......Personal Force Field: FF (20 PD/20 ED)(4 END)

4u......Deflection Field: Missile Deflection (Any Ranged Attack), Usable By Other (+1/4), Full Range (+1)(0 END)

7u......Force Bolt: EB 8d6, Double Knockback (+3/4)(7 END)

6u......Insulation Field: FF (10 PD/10 ED/10 Power Defense), Usable By Other (+1/4), Ranged (+1/2) plus LS (Safe in Intense Cold; Safe in Intense Heat), Usable By Other (+1/4), Ranged (+1/2)(5 END)

6u......Detention Field: Entangle 6d6, 6 DEF (6 END)

7u......Dispertion Bubble: FF (12 PD/12 ED/12 Power Defense), Usable Simultaneously (up to 8 people at once; +1)(7 END)

7u......Repulsion Field: EB 5d6+1, Double Knockback (+3/4), Area Of Effect (10" Cone; +1)(7 END)

7u......Repulsion Bomb: EB 6d6, Double Knockback (+3/4), Explosion (+1/2), Selective Target (+1/4)(7 END)

7u.....Force Bubble: FF (20 PD/15 ED), Usable Simultaneously (up to 8 people at once; +1)(7 END)

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

Oh, very much. The Colonial Marines Technical Manual did a nice article on the smartgun. Had a nice quote, with one soldier saying that the auto-targetting was just spooky, and TOO good. That most of the bad guys dropped in one engagement looked like they'd been shot exactly once... with all the bullets going through the same entry point.

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?

Jackson's Whole.

 

Does set the power level when a legitimate decision is do you start at the North Pole and carpet-bomb down, or at the South Pole and bomb up.

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?

For those who have read the Miles' books by Lois McMaster Bujold, you'll already know about this fearsome weapon.

 

For those who haven't...

 

A Nerve Disruptor is a nasty weapon in her setting. It fires an energy bolt of some type (she avoided techno-babble, thankfully) which literally fries the nervous system of whomever it strikes. Near misses can cause numbness or "pins and needles" in the area the bolt passed. Solid hits to extremities can cause years of disability or even paralasys. Solid hits to the torso or head are almost always lethal -- if the victim survives, they are likely to be crippled, paralyzed, or just plain brain dead.

 

One character in the book had taken a nerve disruptor to the leg over 20 years in the past, and still walked with a cane and had very little use of that leg (Commodore Koudelka.)

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.

Actually, the way that Warp speed was handled in both the original series and

movies, it was equal to the speed of light times the cube of the Warp Factor

(Warp 1 was equal to the speed of light, Warp 2 was 8 times lightspeed, Warp

3 was 27 times lightspeed, et cetera).

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

The White Witch ruled for the "Hundred Years of Winter" until the arrival of the Pevensies.

She was the last ruler of the dead nation of Charn, and came to Narnia at its creation. She knew how to move between the different realities. She was kept out of control of Narnia for many years (no idea how many) by the bloom of the Tree of Protection- but we are never told how that was overcome.

 

Also, please remeber that Narnia is a country in another reality, not the name of the whole world- the other countries of note are Charn and Calormene. One can assume that Talking Animals exist throughout the whole world, and all the other rules for magic and mythology apply based on the source material. So adventures and campaigns could take place in that world, but even necessarily be in the land of Narnia itself for the whole game.

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

Curufea is right about that. The witch and the Magician's Nephew were both there at the start of Narnia.

 

Also, having the PCs come in during the White Witch's reign would diminish the importance of the Pevensies to the story in my opinion. HOWEVER, the PCs could easily come in during the reign of the Pevensies to deal with some sort of threat or another, summoned by Aslan to do so.

 

In fact there was a short series of gamebooks [four or five as I recall] that were set in Narnia and used that very premise.

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

What's the difference between Gadgeteering and Inventing? Other than the potential to use one in a heroic game rather than superheroic that is. I mean' date=' isn't it mostly symantics at that point? Does Reed Richards use inventing or gadgetry when making devices? I honestly don't see the difference ...[/quote']

Good question. I used to run a mostly-normal inventor in a supers game. Invention was the skill used to manipulate the gadget VPP, adding or altering existing devices. The character had a pile of science and engineering skills to use for complementary rolls. And it was explicitly stated that he carried a satchel of assorted components; if that was taken away, he could not invent unless he had external access to working material (junkyard, lab, etc.) What could be carried in a satchel tended to limit the scope and SFX available: a taser or glue bomb was reasonable, a glider was not.

Re: Sci-fi wear swords?

Consider the liberating effect of an openning like "Long' date=' long ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . ." Star Wars' blasters were inferior to 20th century assault rifles in almost every way. But they didn't have the option to use them, because they hadn't been invented yet, and probably couldn't work according to the physics of that galaxy at that time anyway. Arguably, I'm giving Lucas too much credit here, but the point is that if you aren't basing your game on an imagined future for Earthlings, or if you're willing to allow some radical changes in the future of physics, you can have whatever kinds of weapons you want be more effective.[/quote']

According to the d6 rules Star Wars RPG, armor was generally much more effective against kinetic attacks than energy weapons. After playing d20 Star Wars a while, those d6 rules were a revelation. It wasn't quite a one-hit-kill situation, but you had a serious incentive to dodge a lot in combat. One hit from a pistol, never mind a rifle, would more than likely leave you unconscious and injured.

Re: Women in Pulp adventures?

Another character class' date=' not necessarily a particular person, is the Adventuress. You can read up on this type of person in Space 1889, as she is more well known from Victorian times, though she has appeared much later. Basically the adventuress is a woman of independant means and not too many scruples, who is out to make it any way she can in a man's world. The best example I can think of off hand is Amanda from Highlander. Others might be Margaret from Lost World, Jade from the original Johnny Quest, possibly Jane from the WWII comic strip (if you want to go lighthearted and "spicy").[/quote']

The Adventuress (a successfull one, anyway) will have an upper class male companion: strong, handsome, rich and stupid. I could never decide whether this auxiliary character is better modeled as a Follower or a DNPC.

Re: The Old Races

Haven't read that particular Niven yet' date=' but but I like that too. Unintentional seeding of life on many planets. How about a race that started terraforming a bunch of planets by seeding "early earth"-like planets with a tailored algae to make the air breathable. Then have the race die out somehow, and the algae mutated... sounds workable, and leaves the "non-earthlike" worlds to develop non-humanoid life.[/quote']

That's more or less the thesis of his Thrint situation, tho the seeding was mainly to create worlds to support their food stock. The genetic manipulation capabilities of one of their slave races had a lot to do with that "race die out somehow" business.

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!

Survivor: Stargate' date=' on Fox. Sixteen cast members are sent to a variety of worlds with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. They must complete a variety of trials and tests, with regular voting to eliminate one member per episode. The eliminated member doesn't get to come back through the Stargate.[/quote']

ObSF: Robert Heinlein's "Tunnel in the Sky". A high school survival class was out on a week-long class trip (graduation exercise? final exam?), when a nearby supernova screwed up local spacetime. Earth's gate couldn't find them until 2 or 3 years later.

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

There's no need to make it an Advantage. Energy Blast and Killing Attack effectively inflict the same damage. Increasing the cost of "killing" damage is unnecessary.

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?

In my current game I'm thinking of replacing Killing Attacks with normal EBs' date=' then using a +1/4 advantage "Killing" to apply the damage only against resistant defenses. [/quote']

I don't have my book at work... Is there an official Limitation for Reduced Knockback (which KAs have relative to EBs)?

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

The reason I mention all this is that laser weapons aren't necessarily an advantage versus slugthrowers -- unless you consider that they are harder to detect' date=' and even the sound of a laser striking a wall is much quieter than a bullet striking the same.[/quote']

Ummm, no. The usual way to make a laser do damage without extreme power requirements is to pulse it. When the laser pulse hits the target, the point of impact superheats and explodes. I think an explosion is generally louder than a simple kinetic impact by a bullet.

Re: A more realistic feel for SH

How do you handle money in StarHERO campaigns?

Do you use the straight money option from 5e or do you house rule for more granularity between income levels?

I think it's important because an SH campaign is naturally more gear driven.

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

Just remember, money can be easily gained or lost, while Character Points spent on Advantages and Disadvantages may be semi-permanent or permanent.

 

Thus, I feel that permanently sacrificing CP to buy the "Money" Advantage should permanently provide one with more money, and vice versa -- not just on a one-time basis.

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

That sounds really cool' date=' but with guts and vitals sitting right in the middle of the chart, could be too lethal for some.[/quote']

A more restricted version might work: make by 1, can shift location by 1; make by 3, can shift by 2; make roll by 5, shift hit location by 3.