Tom Carman

A lot can depend on exactly how precise a weather forecast you want. I mean, if you want to know the precise temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind speed and direction, etc. in a specific hex at some point in the future, then sure it can get hard to predict. On the other hand, determining the general conditions in a mega-scaled hex should be worth a considerable (+4 or better) bonus for being an "easy task".

This sort of "balance" is one of the reasons given for requiring all players to pay points for everything in a Superheroic game. Otherwise the character who invests 5 or 10 points in wealth and buys weapons and vehicles has a huge edge over characters who paid points for powers. This is also why characters in Superheroic games are built on a lot more points: when points are the only real "currency", you need more.

I see no problem with running in a hybrid Heroic/Superheroic mode. Conventional equipment could be purchased with money, but Powers and gadgets (extraordinary weapons and equipment) would also cost points. Gadgetry would remain rare items and they would carry a heavy load of Limitations and Disadvantages to keep down the cost, since players could usually get more "bang for the buck" by investing the points in Skills and Perks.

I've been running a Heroic-level game, in which money is used to buy equipment. However, the bookkeeping is a bit annoying, so I am thinking of hybrid money system. Comments are welcome. Use money Perks and Disads to determine annual income, and divide by 12 for monthly income. Subject to revision on account of players abusing it, a player can freely make expenditures up to their monthly income. To spend more than monthly income, treat it as an Activation-Jammed roll (defined as tapping their savings). For each multiple of the monthly income (rounding UP) spent, the Activation is one level worse. The effect is cumulative: if a character spends 3 times his monthly salary on plane tickets, that's 2 levels past monthly for a 14- roll. If he then spends twice his monthly income on a hotel room, he needs to make a 12- roll. The above is for spur-of-the-moment expenditures; if the expense is planned well ahead, the roll would be reduced or waived. Now that I think of it, Activation-Jammed is more appropriate for a cash economy. With credit cards taken into account, Activation-Burnout may be better to indicate maxing-out the credit limit. Money given out in-game would be in the form of 1-pt Favors. 1-pt Well to Do is worth $100k per year in contemporary games, so a 1-pt Money Favor would be $100k, one use, no roll required.

Hit better. Hit harder. Be harder to hit. The more things the CSL applies to, the more it costs.

Because those the the stats and skills that the player spent his points on, and how the GM designed his NPCs (Non-Player Characters). There are charts of weapons, which indicate the amount of damage they inflict. The character has also increase the damage to varying degrees by adding their strength to a hand-to-hand attack like a club or a sword. Combat levels cost different numbers of points, depending on what they can be used for. Generally, the more useful the levels, the more they apply to, and the more they cost. Carter's levels indicate his skill with fighting hand to hand: hitting (OCV), hurting (extra damage), and evading (DCV). For protection against ranged attacks, Carter could buy levels for ranged combat (representing a steady aim for OCV or spotting someone aiming at him in time to dodge for DCV). Carter could buy levels that only provide DCV against all attacks, hand-to-hand or ranged, but can't increase OCV or damage. Or he could just buy the more expensive combat levels, good for both hand-to-hand and ranged combats.

Re: Quick Hero intro sheet Not that I have one, you understand, but what details are you looking for? Here is my short list for a "Qwik-HERO". Important Stats and their effects (DEX, SPD, STR, CON, STUN, BODY) OCV / DCV and attack rolls (roll-low and roll-high variants) Types of damage PD and ED and the importance of resistant Basic maneuvers: Dodge, Dive for Cover, maybe Haymaker Skill rolls

Pre-5th Edition, I was in a campaign running a character called Steel Manta. He wore a combat suit that was (unknown to him, tho he suspected) a nanite colony. It was an OIF containing an EC, a movement MP, an Enhanced Sense (+3 levels with Targetting Hearing, since the GM decreed that the higher speed of sound in water would impose a -3 penalty), and Life Support: No Need to Breathe. The EC contained Armor, Forcefield, and Gliding: SFX suit morphing. The MP was a little Flight (SFX morphing to make jets, when in a Gliding configuration), a bit of Superleap (SFX morphing jump jets plus morphed pneumatic muscles), and Swimming (SFX morphed manta shape, plus morphed hydro-jets for fast non-combat movement.)

Re: How do you build this power? If it doesn't defend against area-effect attacks, it can be very simple: +DCV vs all attacks, only if aware of them. The SFX is that he is "gating" them past him. To handle area-effect, maybe a Forcefield, only vs area-effect attacks that he is aware of. Damage can "leak" thru a Forcefield: this is the blast wave that gets around the open gateway.

One of the funkier villains in the old, original, Spider-Man cartoons had one of these. Only he was flying WWI-style biplanes or triplanes, armed with paralysis (?) ray guns.

A zeppelin is by definition a rigid airship; blimps and semi-rigids probably can't be built as large as I suspect you are planning. Remember that it wasn't the hydrogen that killed the Hindenberg, it was the solid-rocket-fuel-in-all-but-name that they used for a skin. The never-built next generation zeppelin would have had a more fire-retardant envelope. Incendiary bullets are a hazard to a hydrogen-lift airship, but not a sure killer; after all, they need O2 to burn the H2 and there isn't much oxygen in a lift cell. Since your villain is a mad scientist, I would expect a bullet-resistent envelope (Def 3-4 Armor?) and self-sealing gas cells to mitigate the hazards.

On my computer: I bought the PDF version of the HSR. It's very handy. Not as complete or up-to-date as FREd, of course, but people at the office don't give me funny looks when I consult it.

Another good one is Brothers in Arms. Miles mentions that he avoids writing interim reports because they tend to result in additional orders, and he must either obey those new orders or waste valuable time and energy evading them while getting the job done. It also has some interesting scenes on logistics and bookkeeping for a mercenary force.

Re: Alternate hit roll 3d6 + OCV - 10 = DCV hit I think it's easier to subtract a fixed number (10) than a varying one (3d6). This formula produces a "higher is better" roll.

I'm in a D20 Star Wars games right now, but I don't have enough experience with the system to guess how well that maps to Hero. In place of a direct conversion, you might consider a re-creation of the characters in Hero System. This would involve the players producing descriptions of their characters as if they were in a book or movie. Flesh out the backgrounds, determine the knowledge and skills, perks and talents they should possess. Determine strengths and weaknesses: physical, mental and social. Then construct the characters so described with as many points as needed.

Paraphrasing from Western HERO: Around the middle of the 19th Century, a new way of firing bullets was conceived: cap and ball. A paper envelope containing the bullet and powder was inserted into the chamber, and an exploding precussion cap was placed between the charge and the hammer. Typical army rifles were loaded through the muzzle. In revolvers, the cylinders were loaded with powder and bullet from the front and cap on the back. The fastest way to "reload" a cylinder was to pop it out and put in a loaded replacement. Occasionally, a cap will ignite more than one chamber, blowing up the gun. The metallic cartridge was invented around 1850, but early models were unreliable and sometimes dangerous. Rifles and revolvers using cartridges came out after the Civil War. .38 Revolver: 1d6+1K, +1 OCV, STR Min 8 .45 Revolver: 1d6+1K, +1 OCV, +1 Stun, STR Min 12 .45 Army Carbine: 1.5d6K, +1 OCV, +2 R Rmd, +1 Stun, STR Min 10 .45 Army Rifle: 2d6K, +1 OCV, +2 R Mod, +1 Stun, STR Min 14 Reloading a Cannon: 8 Person-Phases, max of 4 people per gun. 1/2 Phase to do each of the following on a Cap & Ball Revolver: remove cylinder, replace cylinder, reload one chamber in cylinder. 1/2 Phase to load one round in a long arm (carbine or rifle). I suspect that these times are all for highly trained weapon users.

In the Space: 1889 system, there is a 6-level Social Status progression. Here is a description and my conversion notes. 1 - Lower Class (usually rural poor). 10-pt Social Lim: frequent, slight. 10-pt Destitute. 2 - Working Class (usually urban). 5-pt SocLim: infrequent, slight. 5-pt Poor. 3 - Middle Class 4 - Gentry. More status than Middle Class, but less money (land rich, cash poor). 1-pt Perk: Gentry. 5 - Wealthy Gentry. 2-3-pt Perk: Lower Nobility. Perk: Well-off. 6 - Aristocracy. 5-pt Perk: Aristocracy. Perk: Wealthy.

Some more detail is probably warrented here. The game has characters created under another game system then translated to HERO for skill and combat resolution; I plan to shift fully over to HERO, giving the players a chance to modify their characters in the process. Currently the characters are collections of stats, skills and perks, with no Disads beyond what the players care to role-play. The setting is Victorian science-fantasy (Space: 1889) and social level is an important issue. My translation of the characters assigned the usual HERO Disads/Perks for wealth to reflect class origins, but I still tracked their "bank accounts" when the characters bought things. I would like to drop that sort of bookkeeping and use their wealth Perks to determine whether a purchase can be made.

I'm running a heroic-level game, where equipment costs money, not points. Most of the characters theoretically have incomes and their "bank accounts" are supposed to be incremented monthly. However, I usually run in a sort of timeless mode: time passes during a game and duration between runs is variable - I only declare a "new month, more money" when someone reminds me. And, of course, I have to keep track of how much money each character is supposed to have. This has become a bookkeeping chore. I have thought up an alternative and would like some opinions on it. 1. Define annual income (ignore tax issues). 2. Define "annual disposable income". This is what is left after paying for life's necessities: food, clothing, shelter, etc. I assume that some portion of this is going into savings, now and in previous years. Annual disposable income is 30% or 1/3 (whichever is a more convenient number) of total annual income. 3. Define ordinary spending limit. This is 25% of annual disposable income (ADI): a character can freely make any expenditures of this size on the assumption that he is spending no faster than money is coming in. In fact, as long as the player doesn't abuse it, any character can spend up to 50% of ADI. 4. Beyond this level, wealth is on an Activation-Jammed roll. A character gets one free expenditure, and must roll for Activation after that "to see if they're a little short this month". 51 - 75% ADI: 15- 76 - 100% ADI: 14- 101 - 150% ADI: 13- 151 - 200% ADI: 12- 201 - 300% ADI: 11- 301%+ ADI: 8- If a player does a lot of big spending, the 15- Activation would start at 26% ADI

Re: Western Hero related thread Here are a few things I recall from Western HERO: Body damage is tracked on a per-wound basis, not just general damage. A successful application of Paramedic (and maybe also PS: Doctor) can reduce a wound by one Body with several minutes of work. (There may have been a rule about this healing not "taking" if the location of the wound gets hurt again within a few hours.) Any wound of one Body is considered to be healed after a day. So without much rDEF, weapons are pretty lethal. But if you survive a attack you can get patched up and be (almost, usually) "as good as new" in time for your "next scene".

Re: Re: It Figures- Raping the system Yes. I run a Space: 1889 game with the characters translated into Hero for skill and combat resolutions. Space: 1889 has a stat range of 1-6 (3 is about average), so my conversion makes them 5-20 at intervals of 3 --- stat*3 + 2.

This might be handled with a "No Range-mod" advantage instead of a flat OCV plus for standard shotguns. The spreading pellets are as likely to hit their target at range as they are up close, just with less force. A shorter barrel might merit an OCV bonus for being quicker to aim, but only a sawed-off model should really get area-effect. Of course, this just applies to realistic shotguns. Cinematic games call for cinematic effects.

How does the "Gate" limitation on Teleportation relate to the advantage "Safe blind T-port"? Presumably you can see whether the destination is safe before stepping through; in fact, if the other end is inside a wall, you'd run into it if you tried.

The version in Star HERO (not called a "phaser" of course, that would be copyright infringement) came in at a whopping 480 REAL points, with a 315-pt reserve and 1000 Boostable Charges. It has multiple stun and blast settings (single-target and radius), heat rocks, and two disintegrate modes. You could stun people all day with it, but the disintegration settings chewed through the charges real fast.

You may be asking yourself "what 'magnifier' icon?" You're not seeing it because it isn't there: FREd uses an exclamation-point-in-triangle icon as a caution sign. In the 4th edition book, an icon of a magnifying glass was used to indicate "look closely before you allow this".