Tom Carman

Re: Re: newbie questions on power construction

Originally posted by Uncle Shecky

They are both built as Area Effect attacks with no range, so they can only be targeted at the character's own hex or the six hexes surrounding him (everything within reach).

 

Area Effect (AE) attacks are aimed at the hex itself. A hex has a DCV of 3, so it should be pretty easy to hit. As the power is built right now, you would use OCV to target the hex. That might seem a little strange (in concept, the character isn't "aiming," just opening his mouth and singing) but in this case it reflects the character's ability to project his voice right where he wants it.

I think that the hex's DCV drops to zero when you are aiming an area attack at an adjacent hex.

If the "hearing Flash" only lasts as long as the Stun Song, then Darkness to Hearing Group might be used instead.

New attack roll:

Add 10 to DCV, and convert the attack roll to 3d6 + OCV = DCV hit. Of course, you could leave DCV alone and put "- 10" into the equation, but boosting DCV simplifies things.

Originally posted by Markdoc

I'd use the standard Hero system rules as far as DEF went, with the following addendum:

 

real armour automaticaly provides half defence vs most firearms (black powder weapons, pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, carbines) and 1/4 defence against high velocity weapons (rifles, heavy machine guns).

I'm running a Space:1889 game, and body armor is in use by players and NPCs. Leather is Def3, chain is Def5, and plate (helmets and breastplates) is Def7. Against firearms the defense is halved, rounded up (more protection) against pistols and rounded down against high velocity rounds from rifles and machine guns. All guns use black powder, although smokeless powder is available as a special invention.

Originally posted by Doug McCrae

Did you know she started out ugly? Like a female version of Man-Bat. She was transformed in something of a retrofit by a later writer.

Yes, she turned out to be a bit of a shapeshifter with a subconscious habit of "mirroring" the expectations of people around her.

Originally posted by Alibear

I'm guessing that is for a .50cal hangun? The kind peeps on this board explaind the difference to me a while ago. Something about smaller casings have less gunpowder have less velocity have less damage or something?

 

Alistair "misses his pal wee Alan, the gun nut, who lives in Japan and knows this sh1t" Currie

I think the .50cal Gatling gun in Western Hero was 2d6+1K. Of course, that was black powder and not a modern gun propellant.

Originally posted by Supreme

Personally, I prefer the use of allegories in campaigns. Zombies certainly make an excellent allegory for fascists because that's what fascism does to its population. It homogenizes them, removes their humanity, and turns them into automatons. The US contingent being werewolves is, while it is a good polar opposite to nazi zombies, seems to present a couple of problems.

 

First, if your PCs want to play Americans, it seems like their only choice will be lycanthropes. I don't know what your players are like, but it seems a little narrow to me. You may wind up with a lot of players saying, "I want to play an American - BUT..." That's always the player's way of saying, "I'll play in your campaign, but I don't really care for the background you've written." Those games are always troubled. Second, werewolves are powerful, loud, and unsubtle. During the War the Allies greatest strength was in espionage. You may want to think of things along those line. In the US, the natives have a folkloric tradition of skin-walkers - but the settlers have a long tradition of psychics.

I'm suddenly flashing on memories of Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos. There was the Army intelligence officer with his Polaroid "WereFlash" (for when there wasn't a convenient full moon), the witch with the switchblade broomstick (used as a flying lance), and her familar cat skating backward as it pulled the trigger on a "grease gun" loaded with silver slugs. Quoting from memory: "And then there's the Petrological Warfare boys... I wonder about the whole utility of that corps: you have to get a basilisk pretty close to an enemy and looking straight at him to get a effect. And the aluminum foil suit you have to wear to deflect your pets' influence makes you a dandy target for snipers. And then, when a body's carbon is turned to silicon, you get an unstable isotope, and you can get such a dose of radiation that the medics will have to give you a St. John's Wort plucked from a graveyard in the dark of the moon."

Re: Re: Farscape HERO

Originally posted by Syberdwarf2

I'm still tryin to wrap my brain around B5 Hero and Battlestar Galactica HERO. I must confessed, I've never watched Farscape, but it looks very interesting. I'm sure that with a little inginuity from herodom assembled, someone is working on this. In fact, I beleive this was a big topic of discussion on the old boards.

Get the DVDs and watch them, it's a great show! You know you're not watching a typical "bunch of heroes" when half of the cast conspires to chop off the arm of a crew-mate ("He regenerates, no problem") as payment for a map to home. - "DNA Mad Scientist" in first season

Re: Fractionary SPD chart

Originally posted by Zaratustra

Here is something I've done in a moment of boredom: How to use fractionary SPDs correctly in the time table?

 

http://zara.verge-rpg.com/spdchart.txt

 

The asterisks mark the phases. Notice that for 0.1 increases in SPD, you need ten times as many segments for the chart to wrap.

This method has the advantages of eliminating the round-down chink in SPD calculation, as well as making odd values of DEX more useful. Unfortunately, it has the disadvantage of being total bonkers. Comments are welcome.

What a scary mess. Total bonkers is right. I would say that the round-down of SPD is a feature, not a bug. The odd values of DEX are already sufficiently useful for their effect on the initiative sequence.