Frenchman

Re: Semi-Penetrating Semi-Penetrating: Works just like penetrating, but one less body per die is penetrating. 1-5=0, 6=1

I've been catching up on the forums, and a couple weeks ago, Soleil Noir asked: Unfortunately my copy of the UMA is MIA, but I seem to recall that a character can choose to make/maintain a grab with only one hand in exchange for suffering a penalty to their effective STR. As I recall the benefit of doing this was a reduction in DCV penalties (and a free hand) Am I correct, or is my memory erronious?

Re: Impairing & Disabling

Re: Simplifying 1-hand/2-hand/1.5-hand/Str Mins. A character who 'wraps both hands around the hilt of a dagger and plunges it, with all their strength, into the target' should be able to get an extra DC out of it - assuming they aren't allready hitting the doubling cap - which is 14 for knives. Your first post looks a lot like what our group does. The exception is that, unless its a two-handed weapon by which you exceed the STR Min by 5, you suffer a -1 OCV penalty for wielding it with the wrong number of hands. And of course, some weapons (bows, a bat'leth) cannot be wielded in one hand no matter how hard you try.

Re: Difficulty ratings for Bestiary/MMM/etc... I made up a really quick and dirty way to evaluate a character's combat ability: OCV+DCV+0.5(rDEF)+0.25(DEF)+DCs+Movement= a number. If they have martial arts, add +4. You can compare that number to other numbers and see how they stack up. It doesn't take speed into account, and extreme min/maxing can throw it off too, but it works well for the most part. Oh, yeah, definitions. OCV and DCV - The characters modified OCV and DCV using all combat skill levels that can be applied to one attack, but not using any particular maneuver. rDEF - resistant PD + resistant ED. DEF - NONresistant PD + ED DCs - the number of damage classes done with the attack used to figure CVs above. Obviously, you should choose their typical/most powerful attack. Movement - The number of inches of combat movement in their primary mode of movement. Again, its Q&D, but it lets you gauge two opponents against eachother at a glance.

Re: What was your best plot twist My most memorable one would have to be when I was running a fantasy game - had a player playing a 'unique' race, he'd never met anyone like himself before. So While the party is traveling through the mountains, he gets separated from the group and finds... a city filled with people like him. They treat him well, tell him about some 'prophecy' that he is to 'fulfill,' and he kills a 'vicious' beast. They give him a suit of chain mail and several potions with the warning that no-one should drink more than one, and that he'd know when to use them. Over the course of the campaign they contacted him (secretly - they were a very secretive race - thats why no-one else had ever heard of them) and had him do little things, make small changes to the parties plans. Well, it actually turned out he was fooled by a handfull of dopplegangers in service to Oozeroth - god of Slime and Betrayal. The 'beast' was a party member that had been captured and shapechanged (don't listen to its lies, they said) who nevertheless managed to meet back up after the blizzard... The potions would slowly (after months of pain) kill anyone who drank them and they'd turn into an undead slime. Only the character in question actually drank one, and he was nearing the final stages when the final battle against Oozeroth's minions occurred. The armor would entangle the character with a certain command - used several times, but he thought it was a spell. And those little things he did? They were setting up traps, dropping off supplies for his enemies, and diverting the party towards the more dangerous route. It finally dawned on him during the final battle, when one of the doppelgangers turns into what he had thought was his uncle, that he's been a dupe the whole game...he was really pissed at first, but admits it was a great story. In revenge (or so I insist upon believing) when he ran a FF-style game, the party found a wounded owl. We had a small child NPC with us, Ben - who everyone was very attached to. Ben insisted on us keeping the owl, so my priest healed it and it became a member of the party. Surprise, surprise, it turned out to be extremely smart and fast, and we used Spotter (the owl's name) as a messanger and scout. For the next two years (real time) of the game. We discover that the earring Ben wears is a magical artifact that the villain has been seeking - at one point we are in a facedown with him, and Ben has Spotter on his shoulder as usual. The villain says something like, "I want that earring, NOW," and Spotter *RIPS* Ben's ear off and wings it over to him. We were in shock - it all made sense now: How he had known where we were and where we were going, how he had been able to foil our plans, and how he knew when we were going to be distracted and away so he could use his time to his best advantage. Later, when the party's sniper had a choice between headshotting the villain or taking out Spotter, he capped Spotter. This was shortly before the Villain killed Ben as we watched helplessley from jail. Ben's whole story was just pretty messed up. I guess thats why we made up a song about him.

Re: "real" Magic resources Oh, the horror. CraterMaker, I recognize some of the names of the Anthropologists who worked on that first one. I need to get out of school more.

Re: A New Use For Hardened Knew the NND response was coming (actually expected AVLD), but I thought I'd throw it out there anyways - it seems to me to be a perfectly legitimate, if potentially abusive, use of Indirect at +3/4. Indirect can bypass a force wall, so why not a FF that is defined as an extension of a characters allready existing FW power (Invisible Woman). It can bypass a shield bought as DCV levels - so therefore it makes sense that it can bypass a shield bought as Armor. Really it, as always, boils down to sFX vs sFX. While I agree the comic I referenced would be AVLD or NND (I just got a chuckle out of it) I think it's reasonable for Indirect at the maximum level to bypass a lot of 'personal' defenses, depending on the relative sFX involved. I wouldn't make a character buy an alternate version of their Indirect EB just because FW-Villain has learned how to make a FF-bubble around himself.

Re: Some Grab House rules I'm considering Our group actually mis-read the grab rules and this is the way we used them - defender gets their full STR immediatly to resist the grab. Problem was, this made grab almost useless (at least for the heroic genre, where it was very unusual for anyone to exceed 20 STR, or 30 with magical aid). The character allready had to make an attack roll at a significant penalty, and we have few characters who have both high STR and DEX, so the attacker was almost guaranteed a wasted action unless it was against a target who was both weaker and at a low DCV, in which case why not whack 'em with your axe? Usually grabs happened from surprise or against a stunned opponent because of this. Even when the OCV roll succeeded, the opponent had a not-unrespectable chance to get out with the STR roll, and THEN the attacker has to make another attack roll to hit with the attack - squeeze or throw or whatever. Long-winded explanation short: The attacker has to win three rolls allready for a result that is rarely better than that a simple strike would have achieved. I thought they could allready do this? It sure sounds like aborting to a defensive action to me. I guess I have to go back and *sigh* read the grab section of my UMA again - its starting to wear out. Again, I thought this was allready a(n optional?) rule. I would add to that list any attack unarmed or with a small melee weapon, like a knife. Stabbing and punching isn't that much more difficult that locking your hands and squeezing.

Re: A New Use For Hardened

Re: What are the Normal Limitations? We just use the -1/2 limitation from HAs on EBs also And thanks for understanding.

Re: Questions On Expert I'd allow them, but I'd also decide on 8-10 non-background skills (max) that the cost break would apply to, and I would most likely allow them to apply it to a restricted range of contact types - only those in a secret ID for the Spymaster, say.

Re: What are the Normal Limitations? [insane] AAAA!!!! I've been saying this for years and noone has ever responded/picked up on it!! 'K, now that I've gotten the screaming and yelling out of my system (all of a sudden I see how people can get so worked up over a post on a forum - but maybe that's just stress from finals)... [/insane] I've done this, used it, playtested it, and it works wonderfully, at least for heroic genres. As for the issue of cost vs. STR issue, if you double the cost of STR to 2 points (and double the cost of the powers which grant STR: DI, Growth, and TK - though we don't use these powers enough to really playtest them) then that should pretty much do away with that balance issue. We also like to sometimes use (instead) the reduction of STUNx on KAs by 1 on all locations except the head (we use the hit location chart) - this makes EBs do more stun and also seems to work for us.

Re: A New Use For Hardened I'd have to say no, just for simplicities sake, but it brings back up another point I'd like to vociferate upon: The idea that defenses should be 1/2 the cost of attacks - based, I presume, on the idea that characters have to buy twice as many defenses (energy and physical) while they only need to buy one attack. Hardened at +1/4 is, to me, a bit underpriced as it is - it functions a little like a variable power, in that it can be changed to apply to whatever it need to, and it cancels out around 4x the character points spent on it. Don't believe me? Take a 40 point attack (8d6 EB vs. ed) and the 'equivalent' amount of defense should be 20 points (0/20 FF). I'm not saying that they are equal, that one will cancel out the other, or anything like that, I'm just using these as examples for the sake of my argument. Defenses should cost 1/2 what attacks do, so we have a 40 point attack and a 20 point defense. Now apply AP to the attack and Hardened to the defense. 60 points for 8d6 EB AP, but only 25 points for the 0/20 FF Hardx1. If we go to double AP and double Hardened, then the difference is 80 points vs 30, and hardened becomes increasingly more cost effective. No-one would seriously consider buying a 20 or 30 point attack with APx4 in any gaming group I've played with, but buying 10 or 15 points of Hardenedx4 has not only been discussed, it has happened. What the heck is going on? The problem is that we are applying 1/2 the advantage to 1/2 the cost, which means that hardened costs only 1/4 the amount of AP or PEN, and as little as 1/6 the amount of Indirect. Do I think this is a problem? Only occasionally, when theres an escalation of AP vs. Hardened - because the cost differences grow exponentially with each stacking of the advantages. [/rant]

Re: COM - What dose it mean in real life (well ... real 'gaming' life anyway). How about: 3. COM represents the degree to which most others will find the character's appearance aesthetically pleasing in one way or another. I don't see why so many people feel that COM has to relate to sexual attraction/arousal/etc. I can think of plenty of people of both sexes who I'm not sexually attracted to who I would rate a high COM score. Surely even those of us who cannot 'see' (or refuse to admit) this type of non-sexual attractive appearance in others can at least understand the effect of a low COM score - we all know and notice especially ugly people. I'd say more, but I think spring crush has literally bruised my frontal lobe.

Re: Hit Location Immunity I agree the automaton power is the way to go...but what if you want to build a character who is simply missing a hit location - doesn't have a head, or has a large hole in their chest (like those buggers from chinese mythos in the AB1).

Re: Why must wolves be evil? I'm surprised noone's mentioned some of the oldest myths involving wolves. Anubis is the canine-headed god of the egyptians (you can occasionally see him on the sidebar to the left) - he was the guardian of the dead, a decidedly benevolant position in the Egyptian world-view. Also the mythical origen of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, is that they were born of or at least raised by a wolf. I know there are other examples, but they just don't leap to mind right now, and I have too much reading to do to do a websearch for 'em.

Re: wheel of time As much as I despise wizards, there is a d20 book on the Wheel of Time setting (maybe a series of them, not sure) and my friend, who is a big WoT buff, says that it is excellent material. It should be pretty easy to convert.

Re: Improved Critical It all depends on how you do critical hits in your game. Since Hero doesn't have any official way of doing it, then its up to us to decide how. The most used one I've seen is the 1/2 roll, and if thats what you use then Erkenfresh's idea is probably the most suited for you. You could also buy it as a form of deadly blow - only when OCV roll succeeds by X or more. Or you could just buy it as extra STR or damage with a really low activation roll (say, 6-) and linked to another attack. Then just use the OCV roll as the activation roll - anytime you roll 6 or below, you do extra damage.

Re: Invisibility You'd have to build it like this: Detect Invisibility 13- (Unusual Group), Range, Sense, Targeting Costs 22 points, and it won't work if they have invisibility to this sense. I'd probably only allow it in a fantasy game where the magic system has escalating series of measures and countermeasures.

Re: What does your SPD Chart look like? Mine is a sheet of binder paper. The segments are written in the margin, with 12 on the top, and 1 on the bottom. Two blank lines between each segment. In the margin next to the segment number are teeny numbers from 1-12, each in their own place (I mentally divided up the space left into twelve boxes, and each number has its own box). These are the speeds that act on that segment. On the lines I have written down, in DEX order from highest to lowest, the entire party. For those of use with Lightning Reflexes for certain actions, they are on there twice with (notes) for what they can do faster. Since I have the whole party (PCs and the 4 GMPCs), I can easily keep track of enemies by just remembering who they go before or after. If theres more than ~4 then I add little tik marks as a reminder. Works great.

Re: Emotion Sense - would you allow this or is it munckin? Big, Fat, Dittos. This came around from the other direction in a how to: Detect Magic thread on the FH forum. Detects allow you to sense something, but they don't tell you what it is - you need other knowledge for that. FREX: You see a Globbersnatcher. You've never seen one before, and you have never heard of one or had one described to you. You have no idea what it is. You still see it, you just can't do much with the information until you find out stuff about it. The sense power doesn't tell you anything about the Globbersnatcher. You could describe it to someone and they could tell you about it, if they know anything, but the detect alone doesn't allow you to know what it is. For a simple Detect Emotions Power, I'd probably allow a sense - because you, presumably, have emotions and therefore are familiar with them, so you can recognize them when you see them. This is a bit more than that though, and it seems to me that with Analyze and Discriminatory on it you could not only tell what someone is feeling, but what the target(s) of their emotions are and why - and that sounds like Telepathy to me. 'course, maybe your power can't do more than tell basic moods and allow you to recognize individuals you've sensed before - then Detect sounds fine to me.

Re: Variable Summon Ah, I see how it works now... but I still think a Variable Adder is a cleaner, more universally useful build. It just requires taking some concepts from Advantages over into Adders.

Re: Martial art style Prefabs and other cool ones.

Re: Variable Summon