Tom

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Does anyone wonder why Speedzone thinks it'd be a bad idea for Slyfox to ever have access to fissionable material for his oft threatened 'tac nuc' arrow?

Re: Villains Vandals And Vermin (VVV) I haven't forgotten your comment about Mole's Mom needing to meet Temblor...

Re: Villains Vandals And Vermin (VVV) Well, the PC didn't appreciate it either, but it certainly complicated my life... Leviathan didn't appreciate it much, I was rolling randomly to see who was attacked each phase since I was doing the combat w/o a map. I guess the dice realized he was physically the biggest target...

Re: Villains Vandals And Vermin (VVV) So far: I'm currently using the Brain Trust in a scenario arc (Hermit already commented on that)... I've used Leviathan (anyone who thinks 8 frenzied sharks in a HtH melee is a good idea -- well, they're not... ) Onslaught and Buzzsaw as a combo at least look threatening, but a single 350pt mentalist (t-path/TK combo) managed to take them down -- but he had to think about it to pull it off... And I've used a tweaked version of Python for an off-the-cuff combat that seemed to at least make the players sweat a little (300pt range teen-ish chars -- yeah, Hermit, guess where I got the stats for Tapper...)

Re: Metahuman Tactical Response... Hmmm, I almost hate to suggest something I read in a book series I didn't particularly care for -- but M-Tac works well for what you're describing... Military grunts like to take acronyms and equipment designators and turn them into 'words' for common useage from time to time...

Fun with smilies Chat exchange on Hero Central: Recluse plays Mole, a tunneling demi-brick with N-Ray vision... Jodi plays Ember, a pyrokinetic and his girlfriend... This is a teen game, and Mole has been blowing his PER rolls a lot of late, and we've been teasing him that it's because he's too distracted by Ember...

Re: WWYCD? Women City Savers Only Hmmm, Kodiak would do what needs to be done -- that's just the way he is. Plus one of his closest friends is an avatar he's known in both male and female incarnations, so he's at least been exposed to the idea. He'd deal with the consequences later... Facet is a metamorph (though not a shapeshifter), so body alteration doesn't really bother him -- but while he doesn't really think of himself as human, he does still consider himself 'male', so it'd be interesting to see how that would work out... Speedzone's sense of responsibility would have him accept the change, though he'd find it ironic, since earlier in his career a cosmic nuisance 'gave' his powers to his girl friend. Since she knows what it's like to have his powers, it'd be only fair that he know what it's like to be a woman. No, Hermit, that is not permission to run that scenario... (It'd be amusing though... )

Re: from little plot seeds, mighty games do grow: Share you ideas! Using The Devil's Advocates... Golem possesses Vanguard's statue in the Memorial Grove in Millennium City, and with his powers boosted with assistance from his team mates to more closely match Vanguard's own powers, sets out to destroy Millennium City... (This is a specific application of one of the plot seeds suggested in AA)

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Aquatic giving a quick thumbnail rundown on the rest of the Covenant to Dr Silverback...

Re: 5th Edition Champions Art you liked! The flying heroine on pg 158 of Champions is probably my hands down favorite. I especially appreciate that Storn has a color version of her on his website, but the greyscale in the book is excellent too. I also have to admit the the little vignette of her visiting the Grove in MC (pg 135) made the Memorial Grove a necessary stop when my character Speedzone made a visit to that city in Hermit's 'of Masks and Metahumans' game on Herocentral...

Re: "Crumbling Carrots, we've been animal-morphitized!" Well, Kodiak would seem obvious -- except for the fact his name has nothing to do with his powers, and whenever I've compared his movements to an animal it's been more along the lines of one of the big cats. But ever since another player in the campaign found this pic, there's really no question... (Yes, he's a blond brick who's always tended to be shy around women. That he's also an experienced horseman just makes it funnier...)

Re: Human Maximums As a general guideline, I use NCM for a starter, then allow 'Extraordinary Char Max' which is +25% (25 for primaries, etc...) with one additional caveat. I allow chars with martial arts to have an additional +1 SPD and stay within guidelines... Past ECM the char needs some sort of in game reason for having superhuman abilities (not that it's that hard to convince me of a reason, but past a certain point, you're not a 'normal' human so don't try and tell me you are...)

Re: Mechanon take control of the Minute Man VII Robots Couple of suggestions: Watch MD Geist and MD Geist 2, along with the Terminator movies -- that should give you an idea of what you're potentially unleashing in a 'worst' case scenario. The X-Men 'Days of Future Past' arc should be useful as well... The biggest question is probably how many robots does the IHA have, and does Mechanon get all of them -- followed by the question of how dispersed is the deployment. Assuming your PCs aren't the only heroes in the world, they're going to be part of a larger effort to deal with rampaging robots, and presumably on point to find a way to defeat whatever means Mechie is using to control his minions or Mechanon himself... I ran this idea as part of the backstory for a visit to a post-apoc alternate world where the PCs had to save the remnants of humanity from the surviving robots...

Re: Horizon Academy (Teen Champions) Notes oh great -- someone for Jan to compare notes with... (Good thing Tim runs fast... ;D)

Re: Regrettable Disads This was a char I sorta picked up from another GM, and didn't take the time to fully vet through before play... Note to newer GMs: NEVER allow the PC to have a berserk when 'bad stuff happens' if you like to start adventures when the PCs are in their civilian IDs. Especially when they have most of their powers through a focus that's sitting in the parking lot in the back of their SUV...

Re: Can anyone give me the Character Names in the Strike Force book? Strike Force: Lightrune, Phosphene, La Panthere, Stunner, Shadowwalker, Kestrel, Luster, Plasma Ranger, Skyrocket, Shade, Samiel Shadow Warriors: Psycher, Bolo, Lorelei, Sai, Shelvestra, Man-o-War, Charade

Re: Evil Counterparts I should probably try 'running' an evil duplicate scenario one of these days, just cuz I've had enough fun being caught on the player side of it, but the closest I ever did was send the PCs to an alternate history where at least versions of some of the people (and in one case, one of the PCs) existed... My primary objective in this scenario was to bring a new char into the group -- nothing quite fosters a desire for cooperation like hijacking a char into a strange alternate world with no one but his fellow hijack-ies for support (though I suppose being a teenaged boy in the company of two teenaged girls probably gave him all of the motivation he needed...) Still, I don't think Gale will ever quite forget Stormwing, even if she technically wasn't 'evil'...

Re: Ogre NND Question

Re: Guided Missile Question [HERO: Combat Evolved] Standard rules for accel is 5" per hex up to your full movement for combat movement. (ie: someone/thing with 20" of movement requires 4 hexes to reach 20" of movement velocity) For Non-Combat, the same applies, plus you cannot accel to more than your combat velocity per phase. (ie: your missile with x32 NCM will require 32 phases to reach it's full velocity) The advantage 'Rapid Non-Combat Movement' will allow the missile to reach it's full velocity in a number of phases equal to the number of times it's been doubled (x32 has doubled movement 5x -- 2,4,8,16,32 -- so it would reach full speed in 5 phases). The advantage 'Non-Combat Accel/Decel' will allow the missile to reach it's full velocity in one hex of movement in a single phase. The rules for Accel/Decel are on page 122 of 5er, the advantages above are explained on page 124.

Re: HeroCentral.net issues Dan has been treating the site more as an application than a 'standard' website for a while now, not sure exactly how long though. One of the prereqs to getting things to run right is to have a decent browser... Site has run better on Firefox for quite a bit longer though. I'd been using Firefox for pretty much just HeroCentral, but since IE7 came out, I've made Firefox my default browser... (I'm slow sometimes...)

Re: HeroCentral.net issues Which browser are you using? IE6 pretty much doesn't work at all on HeroCentral, and IE7 doesn't work all that well (in general, but especially on HeroCentral)...

Re: Confessions of an Online GM Just finished up with the fight I posted the map for above. Initial post for the thread was on Feb 12 and today is Feb 21, so the fight took about a week and a half to game out and lasted for just over one Turn of game time. Four PCs vs three villains (Black Diamond, Bluejay, and Cateran -- all from CKC) in a 'danger room' scenario. I'm adding the link to the thread for anyone who might want to see how it went. My posting was slow in parts because of weather and work (when you work in logistics/transportation the two tend to be interrelated). The maps I have attached in the thread are only good for two weeks, but the initial map is posted above and I'll post the 'final' map here as well... ...Shadow Guard (lessons)...

Re: WWYCD: Dependent no more You mean DNPCs aren't supposed to have superpowers? Kodiak's sister was a late bloomer, and not having to worry about protecting her if their 'family' enemies found them was a relief -- the time it took to figure just what her powers were was a little more nerve wracking... Speedzone has a much easier time dealing with Janice in armor, than the time the Examiner decided to giver her Speedzone's powers (leaving him powerless). Even though the fact her powers come from a focus leaves her vulnerable since his main 'hunted' knows who he is in secret ID...

Re: Confessions of an Online GM I'm using a map for a 'danger room' scenario I'm running for the Shadow Guard kids, and thought I'd post it here too as an example of one way to handle mapping....

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... From winterhawk's 'Game of Chance: The Atomic Age' campaign on HC... A drunken bum speaking to Mirage: