Phil

Re: What do you do onboard a starship? It'll be like any advanced society. As more and more necessities can be provided by fewer and fewer people, the availability of luxuries increase. So most people will be involved in creating entertainments and leisure time services, whether it's creating games, films or novels; running gyms, massage palours or brothels. Realistically with that many people, you'll actually have a much larger crew contingent who only work (say) 2 days per week, with the current 5-2 weekday/weekend split reversed. Potentially, in a world where technology has reached the levels where nearly anything is possible, and where there is sufficient power to keep all this technology running full-time, you create a hedonistic leisure society. See Iain M. Banks Culture novels for one possible example. There, some people have jobs purely as something to do! However, if you have this enormous leisure population, I wouldnt rate their chances of survival once they come to settle on another planet. Better to find things to do to keep them active the whole time, or their post-landing life expectancy will be pretty poor!

Re: Paying points for Falling damage Haha. Yes, lots of opinions the like of which I fully expected! And in all seriousness, I'm not surprised. This really is a ridiculous suggestion!! However, there's a wider point at stake here. In a supers game, why should the benefits of equipment cost points, but environmental benefits be free? For example, if we were really committed to balancing points, then no attack should do knockback without specifically paying for a linked attack. Of course, we're not this committed, because we acknowledge that points are, at best, a fairly rough form of balance (hence stop signs).

Re: Automatic Hit Advantage

Re: Extra Extra: Is 5ER actually bullet proof You guys are total frickin lunatics! Absolutely fabulous though. Have already ordered two copies to wear as a protective sandwich board through the foggy streets of Old London Town.

Re: Automatic Hit Advantage Uh-oh, I think we've been here before! ....and in summary, some people will agree, a lot of people will disagree and suggest you simply buy a heap of CSLs.

Re: A Modern League of Extroardinary Gentlemen Quite true. Something I hadnt considered, but the veil of hindsight is a wonderful thing. Take Mallory's Morte Darthur, for example, which I happen to be reading at the moment as a bit of background for a pendragon game. Absolute rubbish. Repetitive, boring tosh. Not a patch on The Cid, Chanson de Roland or other contemporaneous literature I've read. Yet it is considered a classic because so many copies of it survived, and so many copies survived because it was widely popular at the time. However, this doesnt change my overall view which is that the nature of modern media is so transient, that none of the current characters are likely to be considered classics, other than in the scenario highlighted by other posters where they are remade in the future. In TV at least, I think classics are few and far between, and that trend is only going to accentuate as derivatives are a quicker and easier route to making money - just look at the reality TV explosion. And Joey

Thought I'd start a new thread based on a comment I made in the Strength Damage: Pathetic thread. You're not seriously suggesting this, are you? Actually, yes I am. I'm happy for a character to occasionally use movement powers to cause falling damage, but if it becomes a regular feature, I would seriously consider charging them points as if it were an attack. The reason being that falling damage isnt figured into the price of STR (for the grab) or Flight (for the movement): it's a freebie. It wouldnt cost many points to have sufficient STR and NCM Flight to turn this into an attack against pretty much anyone (especially if you use one of those house rules that allows half-moves after an attack). It's about abuse. In the same way I'd let a player take advantage of circumstance and use a VIPER raygun that had just been dropped, but charge them points if they kept it, if a player starts using this as a recurrent tactic, I want to adjust the points cost accordingly. Having said, I'm probably alone on this. I've certainly never seen a construction written up to reflect falling damage, despite seeing character write-ups with it listed as a tactic. Phil

Re: Flipped Die Rolls Then do it! Easy-peasy. 3d6+CHAR/3 to exceed 9+Difficulty level.

Re: Please Suggest Names for a Hulk Tribute Character

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what? Now, actually I do find this slightly more of an issue than the MA / Brick problem that was originally raised. And that is purely because we have a clash of genre. At the top end of the strength scale, we're clearly talking superheroes - it can be adapted for giants, huge space aliens and the like, but it's the classic superstrong that it's replicating. On the other hand, the falling rules are trying to be reasonably accurate to real life. Instant dichotomy, superheroics vs. real life. The two just dont get on at all. Of course, given the supers points pay for everything mentality, I'd actually have no problem saying to a player who wanted to employ this as a regular tactic "Fine. Buy it". Occasionally someone may fall off a building, but if you want to pick them up and drop them, that's an attack!

Re: [Newbie] My first character Eh?! Why's this? I could understand it if you said have defences as an odd number, so you get an extra point of defence when halving vs. AP attacks (not condoned, but understood) but why divisible by 5?

Re: [Newbie] My first character Well, my thoughts are firstly that you might not want 2 AoE attacks. It means you've got 2 weaker attacks that can affect everyone. You might be better off with 1 weaker but AoE attack, and one stronger attack that can only target a single person. That way, you'll be useful fighting a bunch of goons as well as fighting the big bad boss at the end of the adventure. Secondly, from how you describe it, you may just want to consider Autofire instead of AoE. Either is equally valid, of course, so go with what you prefer. Disadvantages: I'm a big advocate of not having too many, as this is (as you say) classic Knight's of the Dinner Table style points maximising. However, I do recommend you pick up something like a Hunted, Watched or Dependent NPC, as these provide the GM with good story hooks at a later date. Skills: Just wondering about Defence Maneuver. Is this a feature of your character as a trained fighter? Or is it a feature of the armour? If it's the armour, you may be able to put it in as part of the OIF package, and save a point. Armour: From how you've described the power level, total defences of PD14, ED12 may be enough. However, your characters main attacks have been built on 50+ points: this is the equivalent of a straight 10d6 attack. If this is the level your opponents are going to be then the average damage you will take is 35 STUN, minus 14PD = 21 STUN. Against your CON of 15, you will be Stunned, and only have 14 STUN left. Two shots and you're out. Double check with your GM / Referee what the power level will be, but you should at least build your defences up so that the average hit wont leave you Stunned. Endurance: Getting a bit complicated now, but at the moment your Glue attacks are powered from your own Endurance. This represents a superhero or a wizard who is using their own internal energy to create powerful effects. If it comes from a gun, you should probably change this one of three ways: buy an Endurance Battery (goes very well with the introduction of a Multipower, if that's the direction you choose to take); buy Charges (representing a gun with a limited number of shots); reduce it to 0 END cost (representing a gun that can, to all intents and purposes, fire forever without running out of ammo). Example POWERS: 17 - Solid Glue Armor: Armor 8PD/6ED, OIF (-1/2). Cost: 17 10 - Glue Glove: Clinging, STR+6, Durable OIF (-1/2). Cost: 10 45 - Glue Glove Multipower (67 Active Points): OIF (-1/2). - 4u - Glue Ray: Entangle 3d6, AoE Cone (+1), Selective (+1/4), OIF (-1/2). Range 335" Active: 67. Real: 45 - 9m - Rain of Solid Glue Pellets: EB 6d6, AoE Cone (+1), Selective (+1/4), OIF (-1/2) Active: 67. Real: 45 - 3u - Sticky Eyelids: Flash 10d6, OIF (-1/2), Doesnt work vs. Desolid (-1/4) Active: 50. Real: 29 19 - Glue Tank: Endurance Reserve (for Glue Glove Multipower) 200 Endurance; 10 REC, Only Recovers when glue fuel added (-2), IIF (-1/4) Cost: 19 (16 END, 3 REC) Total Powers: 107 pts This is the same cost as before, but you've gained a more powerful EB, a new Flash attack, and an Endurance battery to power it all. Hope that's been useful, although someone will soon identify a problem in my construction because I am a little 'rusty'!

Re: [Newbie] My first character And I hate this approach, and next time I GM HERO I'm doing 2 things; firstly, everything rounds fully down, so no freebie points for anyone; secondly, anyone who arbitrarily ends characteristics in 3s and 8s is going to be docked 5 points each time they do it. As the song goes, "You say efficient characteristic purchasing, I say minmaxing, let's call the whole thing off" I concur with this one! Multipowers are quite a tough concept to get a hold of. Andrea, I suggest you go back and read about multipowers again and see if you can 'get it'. Basically, multipower is where several abilities are provided from the same source. So a gun with different types of ammo or a suit of armour that can fire either solid glue (EB) or liquid glue (Entangle) but not both at the same time. It's worth noting that you may want to keep the powers out of a multipower. If you do, you are allowed to fire all of them at the same time. Very powerful, but it will drain your endurance very quickly as well!

Re: A Modern League of Extroardinary Gentlemen My biggest issue with all of these many, many, many, many (zzzz!) suggestions is that they're largely cinema and TV. While I appreciate that this is the modern story-telling medium, it just seems that as the original League were based on literary characters, so too should the modern league. As such, I'd rule out such characters as Buffy and Neo (who in any case should be disqualified from the league purely because in 100 years time people will be saying "What's a Buffy?". There. That's bound to upset a few applecarts ) Depends when in the 20th century you're looking of course, but I'd love to see Gatsby in there purely for the character. Bond is a cert in any medium, so doubly so in literature only. If I cant have Gatsby, then I want Yossarian instead. Virtually no skills of discernable use, but fun to have around and possessed of almost supernatural luck. Got to have a woman in there, and if you're looking late 20th century, then surely there's only one truly iconic female heroine: Bridget Jones! Realistically, and it pains me to say this, but we're talking 20th century, we're talking heroes, we're talking dealing with the supernatural. It has to be (yuck!) Larry Trotter. Or whatever his name is Godfather started out as a novel, so you could always stick a Corleone in there. Another female possibility is Clarice Starling, but frankly she's unlikely to make the grade in terms of classic longevity. Another that spring to mind include Jason Bourne, but actually I'm finding this quite hard. No wonder people stuck to film and TV! Anyone fancy offering a hand?

Re: Strength Damage: Pathetic or what? Very good question, and one worth answering. Low-end (up to 30) probably work fine, but I do think that high end characteristics are geared to supers. I think that HERO is being over-ambitious by trying to be generic without having 'genre rules', what Torg called 'World laws'. There is probably a strong argument for adjusting how strength damage is either calculated or how it is taken, and the four very broad categories I'd use are heroic-gritty, heroic-cinematic, superheroic-gritty, and superheroic-cinematic. Now, as to how they are differentiated, I'm not sure, but here's one off-the-cuff suggestion: Superheroic cinematic: Pulling punches never costs OCV. Superheroic gritty: as written Heroic cinematic: every level of growth (or equivalent for permanently large creatures) includes +1d6HA in addition to +5 STR Heroic gritty: as heroic cinematic, only normal attacks from creatures with 30+ STR are treated as killing attacks for purposes of PD. Certainly dont suppose they're much good as suggestions go, but maybe it'll get someone else's grey matter ticking over.

Re: Challenge: Explain this scene in HERO Terms To paraphrase a TV advert in the UK that has managed to enter common parlance over here: "it does exactly what it says on the tin". Which is to say, he's issuing commands verbally, she's resisting, sounds like mind control to me. Which isnt to say it doesnt have an SFX of Mind Control and may even have a limitation (-1 probably) to say it's resisted by STR rather than EGO and another (-1/2 this time) to limit it to 'telekinetic mind control only'.

Re: Graininess My main issue with graininess is to do with resolution rather than lifting limits. It annoys me that you have to be twice as intelligent or twice as dexterous before it affects your ability to accomplish a skill. But this is easily fixed. I like to use CHAR/3 for all skill rolls - after all, it's used for combat, why should non-combat skills be different. If you were running Heroic level and wanted even more graininess, there's no reason why (with a little tweaking) you couldnt use CHAR/2. Gotta love the Toolkit, adjustable spanners and all...

Re: Points or $ Personally, I'd be inclined to use a range of the techniques espoused above. Signature weapons are a nigh on necessity for most heroic fantasy games. How often do fictional heroes change equipment mid-story? Require every characters to buy their main weapon as a Focus, which they can build up as the campaign progresses with AP, penetrating, Ranged or other tricks. Allow them to pick up any other weapon, but after even a very short time, it wont be as effective. VPP wealth pools are fine to reflect characters spending power without keeping track of individual GPs for fairly mundane but game-mechanical effective equipment. And then do allow them to pick things up and use them, but consider real-world issues and fantasy economics. Would you buy a suit of used chainmail, replete with orcs guts and notched from multiple sword blows, knowing that there's not much of a market for chainmail among non-adventuring types anyway? Would you buy 3? Would you buy 20? Where would you store them - they're probably only any good as raw material. And that's assuming you dont have an issue with handling what are probably stolen goods. I've often wondered where computer RPG merchants seem to get their infinite cash-flow from - must be a very generous wizard-run bank somewhere in the Forgotten Realms!

Re: Reincarnation Power Resurrection, with a delayed effect. The rest will be SFX for most campaigns.

Re: Help me with my Champions plot For what it's worth, here's my completely contrary take on things. Sending an assault squad to a museum to carry out a theft is crazy. It's absolutely guaranteed to result in a maximum response from either special law enforcement teams or supers. VIPER are, by-genre, pretty dumb but this seems extra-special. Therefore, it stands to reason that they are doing this in order to attract supers. Why? Well, perhaps they know that someone else has already stolen the seal (DEMON, as suggested above is a good one, or maybe a VIPER splinter group), and so they're doing this in order to draw some supers onto the scent. Then their plan will be to charge in when the supers confront the real thieves, and pick up the seal for themselves.

Re: Equipment clarification question It has been mentioned by a few posters, but to some extent it's been buried in discussions of points value. Genre is key. Points value, fairness and balance is all well and good, but the real reason for not allowing heroes to keep equipment they pick up is genre. It doesnt happen. Superheroes simply dont keep equipment that they pick up. Sometimes they will use it in an extended arc of a comic book, but it will hardly ever (possibly never) appear again. And genre is key. The points-balance issue applies equally to heroic level games, and yet heroic level games dont stop characters picking up guns, swords, spells or whatever. If anything, points are even more significant there when characters are built on lower totals. No, the reason you dont keep equipment in superheroic games is because superheroes dont.

Re: "So, Thor hits Superman with Mjolnir..." I actually quite like this interpretation of 'worthy'. I think you're probably right about this. Superman is too chivalric, too pure to do what is considered by Norse mythology to be necessary. Interesting...

Re: "So, Thor hits Superman with Mjolnir..." Hate to keep spoiling everyone's fun by trying to find 'data' to help this argument out, but here's some interesting references from answers.com, drawn in turn from the Marvel Universe: http://www.answers.com/topic/strength-level Incalculable A person capable of lifting far in excess of 100 tons, with no given upper limit. * The Incredible Hulk (Has supported the weight of a 150 billion ton mountain.) * Thor (Has been able to lift part of the Midgard Serpent's body, whose circumference is greater than that of Earth itself.) * Kurse (Has had his strength enhanced to a degree said to be double that of Thor.) * Hercules (Hercules has lifted and hurled giant Sequoia trees and has carried the full weight of a starship.) Again, incalculable is a bit of a kop-out, but it certainly suggests that Thor is in the Supes kind of class as far as pure STR is concerned. Regarding the magic question, I would have to suggest that Thor's hammer wouldnt count as magical for the purposes of combating supes invulnerability, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I've only ever seen the magic thing applied to a single weapon: Kingdom Come. Secondly, the ability of a magic object to cut is perhaps distinct from concussive force. Supes body is supposed to be incredibly dense, and that's where the invulnerability comes from (although he's not super-heavy - you go figure!). In HERO terms, it's the difference between KA and Normal, and superheroic hammers are usually normal damage. Of course, it'd still hurt a great deal, but no more so than a punch from the Hulk or Doomsday I'd suspect, and less than Darkseid's omega beams.

Re: 3 Questions - Force Wall and Area of Effect Are you set on Force Wall? Because this could just be an unbreakable Focus. if you go for unbreakable focus, this is covered off in SFX. I'm probably being dense, but I'm not sure I understand your final question! Are you talking about applying AoE to the teleport? If you only want yourself to go through, it's irrelevant, as it's covered by SFX. If you want others to go through, you'll need Usable by others. If you're just talking about the Force Wall element, again, that ought to be covered off by SFX to some extent, although if you're talking about a focus that can go from mouse-sized to multiple hex-sized, that's too abusive to be hand-waved. Buy it to the largest size forcewall that you might need, you dont always have to use it at full power. Force wall is automatically an AoE power.

Re: "So, Thor hits Superman with Mjolnir..." I have to admit, I always find threads like this interesting. The content and the manner of these 'fanboy' discussions cast an interesting light on the make up of discussion boards. Now my perspective is from a very much DC background. Last marvel I read was when I got Secret Wars issues 1 and 2 back when a nipper. Boy, i bet they'd be worth something now if I'd held onto them! However, it does surprise me the depth of this discussion, and to some extent the conclusion. It had always been my understanding that the marvel generally operates on a lower power level to DC. It was part of the greater 'reality' of the marvel setting, combined with the decision to base much of the action in a parallel New York rather than entirely fictional cities. So, Marvel's speedster could run at a thousand miles an hour, Marvel's super-strong characters could lift a thousand tonnes, Marvel's supertough characters could survive heavy weapons fire. DC, on the other hand, has always operated at a higher power level, including multiple speedsters operating above the limits of relativity, a number of super-strong characters capable of multi-million tonne lifts, and a number of super-tough characters capable of surviving in the middle of nukes (or the sun, or similar). This is one reason why I often wonder why these discussions even arise, because the scale of the comics is different. However, this thread seems to suggest that in recent years Marvel have tried to up the ante and bring their big guns in line with DC's. I think it's a shame, because by so doing they risk removing the humanity of their characters. One of the trouble with the DC headliners - the likes of Supes, WW, Captain marvel - is that they are essentially unbeatable without introducing uber-powered villains around every corner. This sort of thing tires easily, and it's one reason, for example, why I've stopped reading JLA. Grant Morrison's early run was fabulous (and being a Bats fan helps, as he gets to be the hero of the piece!) but it was always going to run out of steam when the only opponents you could introduce had to be cosmic-level, world threatening. Now, looking at the Marvel website, they rank all their heroes. isnt that convenient! all ranked out of 7: Thor: Intelligence 2 Strength 7 (Hulk 7, Juggernaut 7, Thing 6) Speed 7 (surprising this one. Spiderman 3, Quicksilver 5, Captain Marvel 7, Iron Man 5) Durability 6 (Hulk 7, Iron Man 6, Juggernaut 7) Energy Protection 6 (Hulk 1, Iron Man 6) Fighting skills 4 (surprisingly low. Wolvie 7, Spiderman 4) If we were to assume the same scale for DC characters, then Supes would probably scale out as Int 3, Str 7, Spd 7, Dur 7, Energy Prot 6, Fighting ... well, you'd think at least a 4. So, there's a fair degree of parity if we assume the comics now operate on similar scales. And there's the question really. The only real reference I can provide is from the fairly tragic DC / Marvel crossover, where Supes puts the Hulk down fairly quickly and easily (or so it appears). Now even given the iconic status of supes meaning he cant lose, I'm not sure this lead to too many fanboy complaints. But hey, what do I know. I agree with Hugh's earlier comment. Supes main power is he Wins. And Thor unfortunately has nothing that, over the long-term, can match that!