Tom Carman

Re: Like Cold Fusion... Except It Works? Hmm. Wasn't the Saturn rocket the only launcher big enough to carry a 100 MT warhead?

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout? Did you know that Chrysler built the Redstone and Jupiter rockets, and the first stage of the Saturn I (which was effectively a Jupiter kerosene tank surrounded by 8 Redstone LOX tanks)? Their submission to the shuttle design competition (SERV) was one of the most radical: a giant semi-conical single-stage-to-orbit rocket with a vertical-landing capability.

Re: "Realistic" gun damage You could try digging up Western Hero. Granted it's 4th Ed., but it was pretty heavily focused on blackpowder cap-and-ball and cartridge guns.

Re: Gates and gating My GM has allowed this, though it isn't a common event. The first time was a fire-fighting exercise with a gate in a lake and a calculation of the flow rate. It once got used as a kind of psychological attack against baddies in a heavily armored vehicle. The gate disk was cast under the wheels and the car started slowly sinking through. The crew panicked and bailed out before it was half way down.

Re: Ranged weapon reload times Taking extra time to aim for the most vulnerable point.

Re: Ranged weapon reload times You might also want to distinguish between heavy crossbows which need a mechanism to crank back the cord, and light crossbows which use a cocking lever. There would be a considerable difference in both penetration and firing speed.

Re: Flash attack that affects self as well as target. I think the first reply nailed it: simple AoE Radius Flash, with OIF Flash Defense. If the goggles are somehow "tuned" to only shield against his own flash, then an extra Limitation too.

Re: Zeppelins The idea has never seen much success, as far as I can find out. This guy seems to think he has a better solution in his patent than anything tried before, but as I said I don't know enough about the science to tell if he's just full of it.

Re: Zeppelins Interesting idea, sailing airships. I wish I knew enough aerodynamics and the like to tell whether the guy is blowing smoke. Google gets nothing useful on the topic.

Re: Ultra-Tech Punishments? Can't claim it as original: the idea appeared in a Marion Zimmer Bradley Darkover novel, "Two to Conquer". The stasis-in-place-of-execution part, anyway.

Re: Ultra-Tech Punishments? You are making the possibly unwarranted assumption that there is any intention of ever waking the felon up again. Think of it as an easier-on-the-conscience alternative to execution. "If some exonerating evidence should turn up later, well, no permanent harm done!" Just wait until the felon would have died of old age anyway, then shut off the support system and/or harvest the body for (still fresh) parts.

Re: 5th Edition; the correct application of the Independent power limitation In the last campaign I was playing in, XP was given out as a mixture of earned XP and an increase to the character "base". This wasn't so much for boosting up replacements (no one ever died) as it was to ensure that new players joining would not be too far behind the curve.

Re: More Railgun from Brewster Rockit [ATTACH=CONFIG]42002[/ATTACH]

Re: Physical Manifestation I have a 5th Ed wizard character with an EC of wind powers, mainly flight and forcefield. The EC has a common limitation of Physical Manifestation: an air elemental appears whenever any power is active. Attacking the elemental can shut down everything, including the normally persistent FF.

Re: Sci-Fi Melee Weapons: Bat'leth, Lirpas, Lightsabres, Rykk Blades, Koltari, Denn'B Well, of course he would say that...

Re: More space news! Hawaii. It even has a geothermal power source to power the catapult.

Re: More space news! No Buck Rogers, no bucks.

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular? The latest movie makes a plot point of suggesting that Cap's brain may be as "peak human" as his body. His memory may/may not be eidetic, but he could reproduce a map of enemy installations that he just glanced at in passing ("Of course I can't guarantee that I recall every pin on that map, but..."). And in the current-day epilog sequence, he penetrated the deception by precisely identifying the "ballgame being broadcast on the radio" as one he attended before his "upgrade" (if I recall correctly).

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular?

Re: More space news! I suddenly flashed on an old Doctor Who show "The Time Monsters" (Jon Pertwee, 3rd Doctor). The Master was working a problem and musing aloud "E equals MC cubed..." Professor: "Oh I say, old fellow, I think you mean 'MC squared'." The Master: "Not! In! Hyperspace!"

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular? Still, I consider it much less obnoxious and unfair than initiative systems where high initiative means "I act lots 'n' lots of times before you get to do anything at all."

Re: More space news! Given that we are utterly dependent on the stuff for survival, I think we tend to overlook how "eager" oxygen is to combine with practically anything at the first opportunity. Without some process to continually generate it, free molecular oxygen doesn't last long (for certain values of "long").

Re: Religion in Science-Fiction? Wagon Train to the Stars! Which, in fact, is how Roddenberry originally sold the show to the network.

Re: The Elves are Dying Out For an idea of what this might look like, check out Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels, particular the "Ages of Chaos" ones. Of course that was breeding for psionics not magic but "po-tay-to, po-tah-to", y'know.

Re: The future is here, again. Install the powered LED lights in the top of the individual slabs, and suddenly running into a dark alley to evade pursuit becomes problematic. Kind of like the guy trying to evade the police at night, wearing a dark track suit... and light-up sneakers.