brionl

Re: STAR HERO Cover Sneak Peek! "I can nuke your house from here!"

Re: Gorilla Grond - from typo's are mighty heroes made (6E) ITYM, Monkey Feet. But other than that, very nice.

Re: HERO System Grimoire OK, thanks.

Re: HERO System Grimoire So is this being printed, or PDF only?

Re: ADVANCED PLAYER'S GUIDE II -- What Do *You* Want To See? Wouldn't it just be a barrier with only ED and no PD? If you want it to work only on some types of energy, sounds like a limitation "Only works vs Pulson Energy, -1".

Re: to hex or not to hex So don't let them. Bust out a timer and when they take too long "OK, while you guys are standing around talking, the enemy opens fire." Just set a time limit for moves and stick to it.

Re: ADVANCED PLAYER'S GUIDE II -- What Do *You* Want To See? Other people have mentioned the mental zone from Ultimate Mentalist, and there are also the micro-zone and macro-zone from Ultimate Metamorph. Not to mention the Danger Zone from Ultimate Kenny Loggins. If you left out all of the "X energy has no special interaction with Y special effect" entries you could probably fit all the energy types from Ultimate Energy Projector into a half-dozen pages.

Re: Drivers, start your engines! Well, for the campaign I'm considering, the game will mostly be the "between races" stuff, with a few races thrown in now and then. Ninja attacks, EVIL Corp trying to do a hostile takeover of Viktori Family Motor Corp, "The race track is built on an ancient Indian Burial Mound!", that kind of stuff. So lots of room for non-racing skills.

Re: Drivers, start your engines! I've been trying to think of dirty tricks. But of course only so our Heroes can defend against them, they would never do that themselves.

Re: Drivers, start your engines! Here are the actual rules: Drivers, start your engines! Races are a series of contested complementary rolls using the skills of the key positions. Characters can fill one or more key positions if they have the proper skills. Key positions Driver: Presence, Combat Driving Crew Chief: PS: Auto Racing Head Mechanic: Mechanics (Automobile) Navigator: Land Navigation Spotter: Perception roll The results of the skill rolls give you your position number. The default position is 0, which puts you in the middle of the pack (Half of the field size), negative numbers are trailing the middle, positive numbers are ahead. You roll against "the field" which normally has a skill level of 12- in everything. This may be higher for championship races, or lower for entry level races. There are two types of races, closed circuit and open course. Both types of races are divided into four phases; Qualification, Start, Mid-Race, and Finish. Qualification uses the Head Mechanics skill at setting up for the course as the main skill, and the driver's driving skill as complementary. Starting uses the driver's skill as the main, with a presence roll as complementary (how good you are at bluffing the other drivers out of the hole shot). This gives you your starting field position, plus or minuses Mid-race is different depending on whether it is a closed circuit or open course. Closed circuit first roll against the field's mechanic roll to see if there is an accident, failure indicates an accident/hazard of some sort. If there is an accident, use the driver's skill with spotter's perception complementary against the field to avoid it. If you fail, you lose positions equal to the amount failed, if you pass, you gain positions. If there is an accident, you can pit under the yellow, and don't have to roll a pit stop. If there isn't an accident, make a pit stop roll against the field, using the Crew Chief's Auto Racing skill with the Head Mechanic's mechanic skill as complementary. Gain or lose Position. Mid-race for an open course is much more dependent upon the navigator's skill at hitting the check points on time, so it is a roll against the field using the Navigator's Land Navigation, with the Driver's skill as complementary. Finishing calls for a roll against the field using the Driver's skill with the Crew Chief's auto racing as complementary. If you want to play out the finish, you can use the "rolling road" technique of mapping where the vehicles stay stationary, and the scenery moves backward at the average speed of the field. Place the cars on the map and assume they all move forward simultaneously by the base speed, they can turn or side-slip as desired, but if they turn more than 60 degrees (one hex row) off of the base course at the start of the phase, they lose the free base movement and fall behind. One driver can make a presence attack against another driver to force them to maneuver out of their way. In the case of a collision, the damage is calculated according to the difference in speeds, but control roll difficulty is based on the base speed. Probably two or three turns of maneuvering would be good for the finale, but a race car could cover hundreds of meters or more during each turn. Example team: Viktori Family Motor Racing Team Driver: "Ace" Viktori, combat driving 13-, Presence 18 (13- 3 1/2 d6) Crew Chief, Spotter: "Pops" Viktori, PS: auto racing 14-, perception 13- Head Mechanic: "Wing-nut" Natchez, Mechanic (automotive) 14- Sample race, Henderson 500 (closed circuit) 2 mile oval, 250 laps. Field size 10. Even though there may be more than 10 cars in the race, only the top 10 really matter, we'll assume our heroes are part of those. Qualification: The field (12- in everything) gets a 9 on driving for +2 to the head mechanic's 8 for a total of -6 against out heroes. Ace gets a 12, only adding +1 to Wing-nut's roll of 13, which means they fail by 4, and start out 4 places below mid-field. Wing-nut picked the wrong tires and suspension set up for the trials, and barely sorts it out in time for the race. Off the starting line the field gets 13 on their presence roll, adding nothing and 15 on driving skill, failing by 3. Even though normally you don't need to make a contested roll against a failed skill, we will in this case to find out how many places Ace picks up. With an 11 for the presence roll, Ace adds +1 to his driving roll of 12, making it by 2 points, and moving up 2 places to 2 down from the mid-field. He fakes out some of the back markers and moves up in the field The mid-race finds that we barely avoid an accident when the field gets 12 for their mechanics roll. A bit of excitement just before turn 3 in the 100th lap, but everybody avoids it. Barely. The field starts pulling in for pit stops after the near miss, with an 11 mechanic roll adding +1 to the 14 rolled for their Auto Racing skill, only missing it by 1. Pops calls for a pit stop on the 130th lap, and Wing-nut's crew puts in a good performance by rolling 10 for a +2 to Pops roll of 12 against his 14- for +4. With the -1 from the field's poor performances Ace moves up 5 places to +3 (first place is +4, so this puts them at 2nd overall). For the finish Ace is in second, dogging the leader. The field's Crew Chiefs roll 11, adding +1 to the Drivers' 10 for a total of +4 against Ace. Pops coaches Ace with an 11 against his 14- auto racing for +2 to Ace's roll 6 giving them +9, beating the field by +5. Ace catches up with the leader and blows past him on the last lap, winning by half a lap for a stunning victory for Team Viktori! Positions +4 - 1st +3 - 2nd +2 - 3rd +1 - 4th 0 - 5th -1 - 6th -2 - 7th -3 - 8th -4 - 9th -5 - 10th With multiple players, each makes rolls for their own team, and the GM still rolls for the field as the baseline the players have to beat to determine their position.

I've been considering racing in the Hero system, and there is sort of a dead spot between just "high roll wins the race" and laboriously plotting out the entire course with turn by turn movement of each vehicle. I've come up with this system for running races where several players can take different roles and all contribute to the team's success. This should work for auto-racing, boat racing, airplanes, blimps, dog-sleds, what have you. You may have to adjust some of the skills, but the basic framework should still work. I haven't put in anything about equipment variations, because most mature racing venues have pretty standard equipment. The rules put all the vehicles on the same footing, and generally only the skill of the participants matter. I've put in an extensive sample because; I'm not entirely sure I have opposed and complementary skills down 100%. And also to show how you can add some narration to spice up the bare rolling.

Re: Need another name for Juggernaut... If he goes Hollywood, "Juggie, sweetie, baby!" Or yiddish "Juggilah, bubbie."

Re: Terry Pratchett's Discworld I use GURPS genre books for Hero material all the time. I've got GURPS Discworld, Lensman, Autoduel & Imperial Rome (amongst many others) on the shelf right now.

Re: Where do gangsters get pool babes? I'd think that would just be a special effect of the +5pts for x2 beings summoned. And it should be a "grope of groupies".

Re: Pink Anime Power-Suit Girl How about a T-shirt?

Re: Your Bearded Duplicate Flexo, he's been in a couple of episodes. Bender and Flexo had a laugh about how their serial numbers were both expressible as the sum of two cubes.

So how's that book coming along? I've been going through The Ultimate Vehicle & Hero System Vehicle Sourcebook to work on some airplanes, helicopters, cars & stuff, and I noticed that the speeds there (and in the 6E2 sample vehicles) are off. For the airplanes I've checked, the calculated speed comes out to only 1/2 to 2/3rds of the "real world" speed in most cases. For example the F-15 Eagle in 6E2 only has a speed of 566 mph, instead of 900 mph (according to the "fount of all knowledge", aka Widipedia). The C-130 Hercules from TUV clocks in at 190 mph, vs a 336 cruising speed, etc.

Re: Just for practice - I want to build a super-car! If you don't have the Hero Designer software yet, I really can't recommend it enough. It lets you plug things in and whip up stuff like the Ultra Car in minutes. Then you can spend days tweaking it so it's just right.

Re: Just for practice - I want to build a super-car! You just have 6ed Vol 1 & vol 2? The Champions book has a couple of example vehicles fully listed out, instead of just summaries. But you're basically right, you just add in the extra points for the new movement modes and powers to what ever the current cost is. You can add a focus limitation for equipment, mostly for things that are added equipment, like life support, or weapons, and not focus for chassis components such as engines, tires, or armor. This hasn't been explicitly stated anywhere that I've seen, but most of the example designs seems to follow that guideline. Here is Ultra Car that I made up last year.

Re: Champions 4th edition love? While there are still a lot of people who haven't switched from 5th to 6th, I don't think you are going to find much 4th edition material around these days. Unless it's an archive of somebody's GeoCities page. If you're working on learning the system, you might as well pick up the new Hero System Basic Rulebook and start from there.

Re: 6th Edition Bestiary & Fantasy Hero Character Packs In Store Just checking, but does the Fantasy Hero pack include all the equipment? Armor, weapons, etc?

Re: Your Bearded Duplicate I would hate to be a DA in a Supers universe. Defendent: "Your honor, I was replaced by an evil opposite from an alternate universe." Judge: "Did he have a goatee?" Prosecuter: "*sigh*, yes." Judge: "Case dismissed."

Re: Well, hello there, HERO System! (New Guy) I may have to miss DunDraCon this year for the first time in about 25 years.

Re: Where do gangsters get pool babes? Cost: 8 End: 4 Bimbos: Summon 16 50-point creatures, Friendly (+1/4) (37 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Hour, Only to Activate, -1 1/2), OAF (Wad of Cash; -1), Arrives Under Own Power (-1/2), Summoned Being Must Inhabit Locale (-1/2) Also 1 Timothy 3:2-3 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach; Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous;

Re: Not Usable Without Ultraviolet Light....? Well, I've got my first and second edition books here, and they only have the "power only works in a given situation +1/4 to +2" and give examples of only in darkness +1/2, only in water +1 and only in an intense magnetic field +2.