Phil

Re: Bell curve spread? Not unless they directly describe an effect, no we don't. Effects-based extremism is still alive and well, albeit in hiding :-)

Re: A Modern League of Extroardinary Gentlemen

Re: A Modern League of Extroardinary Gentlemen None of which strikes me as yet worth of the sort of "classic" tag you'd need to qualify in such a league. I think the thought experiment needs to be "would someone know this character in 20 years' time?". After six seasons of a fairly iconic and revolutionary TV series, Jack Bauer maybe qualifies. Michael Knight and the A-Team probably also. Possibly Buffy and Mulder & Scully, though I have my doubts there. These guys... probably too soon to say! Actually, the transient nature of moden entertainment probably means that NO new fictional characters will ever qualify! The idea of a single character becoming so entrenched in public consciousness is so much more unlikely in the digital media age. (Discuss, showing your reasoning and evidence throughout... )

Re: A Modern League of Extroardinary Gentlemen

Re: A Modern League of Extroardinary Gentlemen Isn't it surely a precursor of qualification for such a prestigious league that a character is not only a strong archetype, but that they are extremely well known. Reputation surely counts for as much as ability. With all due respect, and perhaps I don't read as much genre fiction as I should, but I've heard of but a fraction of the names proposed!

Re: Common 6E House Rules Touche I'm sure in 5th Ed that one of the options on Luck was that it could be used to model a 1x day roll-again ability, in which case limited luck would do it exactly.

Re: Common 6E House Rules I think you're getting hung up with the Mechanic (roll again after you've seen your roll) and the Effect (you hit more often). As I said, if you want to hit more often we already have a mechanic in Torg to allow that, and the recoverable charge simply means you can only use it once per day. As an alternative, you could allow a miscellaneous advantage that allowed the CSL to be used after the roll (I'd reckon that's probably a +1/2 or +1 advantage).

Re: Pondering Grab house rule; comments welcome I definitely agree letting a character have a half phase after escaping a Grab. However, I do think it would be nice if you could have a tiered set of results. However, I'm not a fan of "Exceed by x2, get a full phase". I think you should only get a full phase if you've used Casual STR, anything else is an action of some sort of therefore should take *some* time. This shouldn't be limiting, because if you exceed by x2 using full STR, you probably *could* exceed using Casual STR and the casual STR attempt doesn't cost any actions to try (tho it does cost END). Perhaps something like beat by 1, no action, beat by any more than that and you get a half phase non-movement action, beat by x2 and you can have a movement action if you wish.

Re: Common 6E House Rules You wouldn't. All this does is affect the probability of hitting/missing. CSLs do that for Hero. Something like +2CSLs, 1 Recoverable charge (charge recovers if attack hits without needing these CSLs)

Re: Blue Stuff Battery Personally I think the charge thing is misleading. For me, it's a simple 5 REC "must be injected with blue stuff". In strict terms this means the blue stuff doesn't give END, it's just the catalyst for kick-starting the Battery's inherent REC, but that's just SFX to me. I'd always rather go with the simpler build, and when you're talking about 5 REC on an Endurance Battery, the cost factor is negligible.

I'm slowly working my way through 6E, and my original thought was I'd read it once and then go back through it with a notebook to write down all those quirky things that occured to me as I went along. Four weeks in, and I can see that's unrealistic! So, having just read the 6E2 on Grabs, thought I'd drop my thoughts in straightaway. 1. Implications of Grabbing one-handed Grabbing with one-hand works at STR-5 (the log. equivalent of half strength, using the lifting scale). Does this imply that attacking with one hand (e.g. a punch) should also be STR-5. What about attacking with the other hand while the opponent is grabbed? 2. Limbs and Headbutts We all have 5 limbs. I can accept that a good kick will deal out at least as much pain as a hefty punch. But a headbutt? Can Batman really headbutt his way through an interior house wall? And at no harm to himself? 3. Grabs and Utility of Damage As it stands, Squeezes and Slams are of equally utility. This doesn't seem quite right to me. It occurs to me that the advantage of a squeeze is that you're reinforcing the grab while damaging your opponent; the downside being that you're needing to remain relatively immobile and are exerting a longer-term effect. It would be well modelled as a Continuous, cumulative effect of some kind imho, with a hefty DCV penalty. A slam, on the other hand, should increase the risk of losing grip on your opponent, but implies a higher level of mobility and should almost certainly inflict more immediate damage. 4. Grabbing large targets This section, and indeed the section on stopping moving objects, suggests that characters can exert all of their strength on all objects. It strikes me that the key factor is actually the mass of the grabber - strength will help determine whether you can hold on and also help you dig your feet into the asphalt tug-of-war style, but if you want to slow something down, Density Increase, Growth or Clinging ought to do you more good than simply being Captain Buff. 5. No HA on Grab damage This is one of many, many, many annoyances I've found in the rules. The "Cannots". To me, Hero is a toolkit that tells me how to create the effect I want, and we all love that flexibility. To read, over and over again, of the things you "cannot" do doesn't half get my goat! Anyway, after that rant it's a relatively minor point: it would be good to reference how you'd make a HA that did add to Grab damage, i.e. limited Strength. 6. Grabs, Multiple Limbs and Foci A grab typically targets 2 limbs. An extra-limbed character may well be able to still use OAF while grabbed. As such, are multiple limbs too cheap!? Or should OAF cost them more? That'll do for now

Re: More Complications, Please I'm slightly surprised this has even come up. I imagined that people would see this as liberating, meaning they don't have to overload characters with unnecessary complications that don't reflect the genre just to squeeze a few more points out of the game. It's one of the changes in 6th that I whole-heartedly support. The other aspect of complications that I love is the slight change in terminology. You now have 400 points, but lose 50 points if you don't have complications, rather than a 350 character who gains 50 from complications. It's a subtle difference, but it reflects the fact that complications are rewarding you for essential roleplaying hooks, not a way of gaining extra points by layering difficulties to an increasingly absurd level.

Re: Regeneration Costs It strikes me this thread has got very heated and I'm not really sure why. The issue, going back to the top, is apurely mechanical one based on an arithmetical BOD progression and a non-linear time progression. to resolve the difficulty, simply remove one of these two mechanisms. And I'm definitely not a fan of linking regeneration to REC purely and simply because it goes against 6th edition's separation of figured characteristics - I'd like to be able to build low Regen, high REC; high Regen, low REC and any variant inbetween. My suggestion: build Regen as +1 REC (Limited: Purely for purposes of Recovering BOD). Build REC up enough and it becomes +1 per day, then +1 per hour. Neat. Consistent. Tidy. Does it make Regen a lot more expensive? Probably, but on the basis of the current heal rate it probably should be. An alternative, of course, as mentioned previously is to compare it to use of Heal. Or indeed Aid. Though I fear that this will just highlight more odd cost behaviours in some of the powers.

Re: The character should fit on one side of one sheet of paper in 12 point type

Re: The character should fit on one side of one sheet of paper in 12 point type Well, I completely agree with the OP statement. Hero has lots of nuts and bolts in the mechanics, and those of us who are used to them almost feel naked when they're taken away. But Doc Democracy has run a few Hero games which has condensed all of the key information onto a single, well spaced, page. In particular, a memorable League of Extraordinary Gentlemen pastiche that you wouldn't know from the character sheet was even a Hero System game. The trick is to remember that the Hero System is the software engine, it's not the GUI.