tinman

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense? The only bullets that tend to reliably penetrate far enough into an elephant from any angle and even through leg bones if necessary are solids. Though a mushrooming bullet would form a larger permanent cavity sufficient penetration is still the most important factor. Bullet lethality is a lot like real-estate; it's all about location, location, location. Karamojo Bell used (IIRC) a 7mm or 6.5mm Mauser on most of the elephants he killed, not that I'd feel comfortable doing that myself...

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense? I guess it all depends on why it is we find ourselves shooting at a T-Rex. If we are simply defending ourselves in a Lost World setting then I think the M203 would be a nice choice, as it can be used on smaller varmints as well. One shot with the 40mm means it would have to be a good one though. Maybe a G3 would be a better choice for the rifle than an m-16 though... That would be the safe bet without a doubt.

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense? When hunting dangerous game the animal's craftiness is usually less of a worry than it's bloody-mindedness, and I'd imagine a small brain would provide for lots of the latter.

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense? I won't argue that engaging a T-Rex at 60-yards or less would be extremely risky with anything other than a CNS hit or some kind of massive structural damage. The problem with the brain shot on a T-Rex is that it's brain wasn't all that big, and if you're likely to miss anyway that bullet does more good through the heart instead. Unfortunately this is far from an exact science. A solid vitals hit from a .375 could drop an Elephant in it's tracks one day, and fail to phase a (much smaller) Cape Buffalo the next. A heart/lungs hit on an unwary T-Rex might do the trick just fine, but be unable to reliably stop the animal in a charge. I think that a decent Elephant round would kill a T-Rex. Whether that makes it practical is another matter entirely. Were I to find myself with the opportunity to hunt a T-Rex on the ground I would likely want a .50 BMG and a lot of distance. And a partner with an 84mm Carl Gustav for backup.

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense? A .458 Winchester or .460 WM (or even a .375 H&H) will shoot right through an elephant if one is using a good bullet like a Barnes Solid and no major bones are hit. I would guess that penetration from these rounds would be more than sufficient to kill a T-Rex if the placement was good. I wouldn't give good odds on a brain shot though, better to go for the heart/lungs. As for formulating realistic solutions to hypotheticals, isn't that what nearly every aspect of a role-playing game does? Even with relatively common and heavily studied situations like police shootings, predicting outcomes is at best educated guesswork.

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense? I think it is fair to say that when Fox1 saw .50 caliber he immediately assumed that what was meant was the .50 BMG round (and I believe that was in fact the cartridge used in the whale hunt). It has been my experience that when firearms aficionados mention .50 caliber it is commonly understood to refer to .50 BMG unless specified otherwise, as it is overwhelmingly the most commonly used cartridge in that caliber.

Re: Classes of Minds Yeah, I think I'll scrap the point charge and just concentrate on making sure it has some balancing negatives in play.

Re: Classes of Minds

Re: Classes of Minds Hmmm. Good points. One thing that I've been mulling over since I started the thread was the fact that it will be obvious to a mentalist that he is a different class of mind. This is going to mean that they will consider him particularly dangerous and may attempt to eliminate him through other means. A couple of Watched or Hunted disadvantages would certainly be appropriate to reflect that most mentalists will consider him a threat. Thanks for the feedback.

I've been using classes of minds in my Champions campaign, but it has only really applied to NPC's. Until now. One of my players is making up a new character who will be an android (an alien scout) and who will therefore fall under the machine class of mind. The problem is that while I like the idea that he will be a different class of mind than the other PC's (and that this will be obvious to any mentalists he meets), I don't like the idea that he will be immune to most mentalists without really having any corresponding negative drawback or having had to pay any points. I don't mind the immunity per se, but I think it needs to cost him. I figured that 75% Mental Damage Reduction combined with 30 Hardened Resistant Mental Defense pretty much equalled mental invulnerability in nearly any circumstance, and with the limitation: Not vs. Machine Class Mental Powers (-1/4) it works out to about 90 points (depending on EGO). I was thinking that if I charged a flat 100 points to belong to a non-human class of mind that would adequately reflect the benefit of being completely invulnerable to non-class mental powers. Does this seem fair? So far in my entire campaign only one character (an NPC) has had mental abilities that affect machines. I will likely introduce one or two more as the game progresses, but it will still be rare to run into one. Standard mentalists, though still not common, are certainly something the group has to face on a much more regular basis. Thoughts?

Re: Knockback Reduction His whole power scheme is based on being able to absorb half the kinetic energy of any given attack or such like and use it himself. That's why he doesn't want an absolute value for it. Tech's suggestion might be the best of both worlds.

Re: Knockback Reduction Nice, pretty much the same effect. He could probably get by with -10 without losing any effectiveness and save points too.

Forgive me if this has been covered in 5E or 5ER, I'm at work and going from memory. How much would you charge if a player wanted 50% KnockBack Reduction for a character? The special effect is that he absorbs kinetic energy (ties in with his other powers). I'm inclined to go with the non-resistant cost for a single category of Damage Reduction and just charge 20 points for it, but I wanted to poll the groupmind to see if anyone had any better ideas. To give you an idea of the usefulness of this ability in my campaign most of the attacks in are falling in the 15-24 DC range, but Killing Attacks are more common at the higher DC levels than Normal Attacks. He would likely get more benefit from just spending 20 points on Knockback Resistance, but he prefers the flavour of using Reduction instead. Thanks/

Re: Iron Champions I had a vigilante in my campaign who primarily targeted cop-killers (and he would usually make sure they never had a chance to commit another crime). Oddly enough the police were seemingly incapable of catching him no matter how hard they "tried".

Re: This one might be a little wacky... I'll check it out, thanks. New Mexico, eh? That sounds mighty tempting from where I sit at this time of year...anything's better than that wooded glen I bought in Inuvik last year...

Re: This one might be a little wacky...

Re: This one might be a little wacky...

Re: This one might be a little wacky... I don't know that this would make it worse for low CV types. For example a roll under the normal system that would miss by 2 would hit for minimal damage this way. If you're a brick minimal damage might be quite serious against a martial artist. The Martial Artist has a much higher chance of doing max damage, but then that might provide an excuse to do away with some of the martial artist designs whereby they do as much damage with a flesh and bone punch as a brick might do with a steel-hard fist that can lift 100 tons. This way bricks with 12 DC's would be doing minimal damage to martial artists and martial artists with 6 DC's would be doing maximum damage to bricks. And you could have two martial artists fight and hit each other multiple times without the fight being over because their damage scale would be lower against each other. But so far it's just theoretical. I need to run some sample combats between multiple types of combatants using both methods and see what happens.

Re: This one might be a little wacky... Yikes, that never occurred to me. And my players LOVE levels...

Re: This one might be a little wacky...

Re: This one might be a little wacky... Good points. I haven't actually tried it yet, so I don't know how it plays.

Re: Classification Systems for Superhumans As I am supremely lazy (but not Lazy Supreme, lest I infringe), I will cut and paste what I wrote in the Alternate terms for archetypes? thread: In my campaign UNTIL has three general categories for threat ratings: Offensive Ability, Defenses and Difficulty to Restrain. Each is rated from 0-3 (where 0 is a normal unarmed human). A light brick would be 2/2/1 (able to kill easily at close or medium range, immune to standard small-arms fire, must be held in a reinforced structure). A teleporting martial-artist would be 1/1/3 (able to kill at close range, difficult to target, cannot be restrained while conscious). Superman would be a 3/3/3 (able to kill hardened targets at long range, immune to all conventional weapons, cannot be restrained by any known method). More detailed explanations of the individual's abilities would be available in their dossier of course, but the three ratings are easy for agents to remember and refer to if they should find themselves facing someone without having been briefed first. This also provides each superhuman a "power-level" rating which is simply the three threat levels added together ("In other news, a class 7 metahuman was killed in a prolonged battle with UNTIL agents in Hannover today. The incident left six agents dead and seventeen wounded."). The agent PC's also tend to refer to all metahumans, regardless of power level, as "heavies".

...but bear with me. Have you ever been frustrated when you roll and hit that hard-to-hit-someone really well, and then roll crappy damage? Try this: First, take the alternate hit-roll rules whereby you roll OCV+3d6 and compare it to DCV+10. Next, modify them so that the target is now DCV+8. Now take the number of dice of damage you would roll if you hit (figured as though a killing attack, so that 3 damage classes equals 1 die), and multiply that by the amount that you exceeded the target number by. So if you were shooting someone with a 3d6 RKA and you had OCV 7 and they had DCV 6 you would do it like this: OCV+3d6 (rolls, gets 11) = 18 DCV+8 = 14 18 - 14 = 4 3d6 RKA = 3 dice 3 dice x 4 = 12 body standard effect stun = x3 Attack does 12 body and 36 stun to the target (killing). If you were using a 10d6 N punch and had OCV 5 and they had DCV 4 (but also dodged) you would do it like this: OCV+3d6 (rolls, gets 12) = 17 DCV+8+3 (dodge) = 16 17 - 16 = 1 10d6 N = 3 dice +1 (3 dice x 1) + 1 = 4 body standard effect body = x3 Attack does 12 stun and 4 body to the target (normal). You could do the same thing with ECV-based attacks. The only part where it breaks down is for hit-only attacks (drains) and area effect attacks (unless you use the hit-roll vs. the hex, which would probably be appropriate). It makes it harder to rely on a high DEX or levels to keep from getting hit, but even if you are tagged chances are your high DCV will ensure that it's only a glancing blow. It reduces an attack from two dice rolls to one, and it makes the amount of damage done a function of how well the attack roll was made. If both characters have equal CV and the attack would have succeeded by 1 under the standard system, this way it succeeds by three and results in average damage. Thoughts?

Re: Who's the most nearly-invulnerable... Wouldn't the 25% and 50% reductions be applied seperately? So that if an attack got 40 stun past his PD or ED it would then be reduced by 25% to 30 and then by 50% to 15 (after which the absorption kicks in...)? If he had 75% reduction he would only take 10 stun before absorption. In order for two seperate reductions to equal 75% they would have to both be at 50%, right? Or am I totally out to lunch on this? Seriously impressive any way you slice it though.

...character in your campaign world (PC or NPC) and how were their defenses built? I'll go first: Adam Gray (NPC antagonist, Silver-Surfer personality with Superman powers set), 40 hardened resistent PD and ED, 50% resistent Damage Reduction. He also has 20 BODY and 60 STUN. The PC's in the campaign started out at as standard 4th ed. 250-point characters but are now up around 600 points (almost 5 years later).