Ehreval
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Re: Aijral - Supermen Okay, so that leads us to a new round of questions: 1) Do they have this effect on a large variety of aliens, or only humans? 2) Did they know in advance they'd have this effect on us? 3) How do they react (both as individuals and as a society) when they discover their dominance? 4) What is the reaction of earth governments and supers organizations who discover the alien domination? Do they make contingency plans? Pre-emtive strikes? Do they limit the number of aliens who can be on earth and the activites they're legitimately allowed to pursue? 5) And just why *are* the aliens here? Is it different from why they *say* they're here? (After all, Mars needs women!) And, finally, a follow-up to one of my previous questions: What does it say about the origin of the *aliens* that they have this effect on us and possibly other species? -- Ehreval
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Re: Aijral - Supermen I think it's a fine idea with a variety of implied uses. 1) Alien Invaders -- As written, they simply trump just about any normal they run into, so if they play their cards right, you'll soon see the Aijral as "advisors" to leaders of countries, large corporations, etc. 2) Mistaken Identity -- Even if the Aijral come to earth with entirely benign intent, it's entirely possible that they'd accidentally find themselves in uncomfortable positions of authority, sought-after by the leaders of earth as advisors. Even on their own merits they'd likely accidentally manipulate earthlings into doing their own bidding on a regular basis. In some places, the locals would probably revere them as higher beings, angels or even gods, possibly even against their will. 3) Angels Among Us -- If, like Kal El, the aliens come to us with sheer benevolence on their minds, the possibilities are endless. It's possible that we'd have much to learn from them. It's also possible that they'd be, from our point of view, morally inferior beings. They might also end up taking a "Prime Directive" type of stance in which they conclude that since they have undue influence over us, the best policy is to leave us alone entirely. No matter which of the above is actually true, I'd expect some serious conflict between the aliens and earthlings. Violence aside, cultural conservatives would descry the polution of our culture with such alien ideas. Liberals would be aghast at the infringement against civil liberties implied by the force behind the aliens' words and actions. Philosophers and theologians alike would have to wrestle with the demonstrable mutability of free will. Here's my big question, though: Are the aliens' minds sufficiently human-like that their powers affect each other? If so, what differences have evolved in their society from this? Are they immune to their own "alpha syndrome" or do they have complex societal rituals for communication which allow them to interact without stepping on each other's toes? Or, conversely, do that have a fascist government run by the most "influential" members of their society? Even more important, from a roleplaying standpoint, is what their existence says about us, which provides you with a number of themes involving them in your campaign. 1) Is our inability to resist their mental powers an indication that we were constructed or had our evolution influenced by others? 2) Can we really say that we have free will to any real degree when it can be compromised so easily? 3) Can two species co-exist peacefully or as equals when one is, through no fault of either party, entirely socially dominant? Just some thoughts, Ehreval
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Re: columbia! Definitely get rid of the panties. This is wonderful, wonderful work! -- Ehreval
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Re: Issues/concerns around Flash Playing that game is a waste of time because you know you'll lose. If that were the case, I'd have said it succinctly, just as you did. I've had enough of your mindless negativity. Congratulations, you're the inaugural member of my ignore list. -- Ehreval
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Re: EC AN (Ad Nauseam) I got a lot more long-winded than I intended with this, but that's a known flaw of mine. (PsychLim: Frequently, minorly impairing.) I prefaced each of my responses with a "Nickle Summary" that wraps things up quickly if you don't want to wade through. Thanks. 1. Nickle Summary: No gaming system is perfect, but most imbalances are either perceived or the result of a difference between how designers and actual gm's in the field want things to run. I've played a good number of game systems over the years, and I've never seen a single one, no matter how much the makers tried, that was totally balanced. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the primary one is that any game of sufficient complexity will be used by consumers in ways that the designers could not anticipate short of pulling the infinite number of monkeys trick with playtesters. You can see evidence for this in the "is this balanced" arguments that periodically crop up. A mechanic that is balanced in one campaign or adventure (or even session) may be completely unbalanced in another. Evening these things out is, in the main, the gm's job, when it's necessary, but I think a lot of these imbalances have to do more with the milieu expectations of any given group than with any flaws in mechanics. Note: I'm not trying to say Hero is flawless. Part of the problem is also that in any complex game system, there will be obvious and common uses for mechanics that the game designers can't anticipate or don't like. Game designers enter into their task with their own assumptions, some valid and some not, and if their assumptions differ greatly from yours, you'll perceive an imbalance. 2. Nickle Summary: EC's are points-imbalanced, but needn't be imbalancing if you have a reasonable set of players or don't mind spending time and effort policing your game. Of course I believe that the EC is an integral part of the game. I wouldn't call it "balanced", but that's likely because I have a very different idea of EC's than the designers seem to have intended. From what I've seen, EC's are a primary example of Hero's expectation that the gm will spend a good amount of effort being a rules cop. "Heaven forfend your players would actually want to spend their points efficiently," they say. "An EC is only to be used for simulation value." That's all well and good if your players don't believe efficient character builds are an important and enjoyable part of playing the game. My players *do* believe that building an efficient character is part of the challenge and part of the fun, so they'll try to be as efficient as they can be. That doesn't mean they won't spend points on background skills and knowledges that'll likely never come up in the game or that they'll try to cheat. They'll just try to do what they perceive as a "good job." However, doing that "good job" also means that you don't look for excuses to use an EC. You use it when it's appropriate for a build, and then you reap the rewards (in terms of efficiency) without shame. So long as my players keep this sort of thing in mind, EC's aren't unbalancing at all, despite the fact that they're so terribly, terribly points-efficient.
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Re: Help! Would You Allow This?
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Re: Issues/concerns around Flash Okay. Which of the following is not following concept? (I'll use the characters from my above example.) A martial artist so skilled that from picking up on cues like heartbeats and subtle wind currents he can determine the likely location on an enemy. A spider-man type whose most effective power is a truly stunning degree of danger sense. A cat-girl thing with amazing reflexes that lets her leap away from where a grenade is about to land. Or a brick type who has nothing he can really do to defend against powerful flash attacks other than cover his eyes and hope for the best. -- Ehreval
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Re: Help! Would You Allow This? This is absolute garbage on your fault, Fox. He has a different policy as a gm than you do. That doesn't make his style wrong or yours right. It makes you different people. My policy along those lines has remained essentially unchanged for approximately 20 years of gm'ing in a variety of systems: If a player wants something that doesn't detract from others' enjoyment of the game (including my own) then it's my job as gm to find a way to make it happen. If I can't, that's not my player's fault. It's a limitation on my skills as a gm that I should work on. Now, I could go on and on right now about how your inability to properly accommodate your players is the true gm'ing weakness here, which from what I've seen of your posts is almost certainly what you'd do, but I won't, because I don't believe that's necessarily true. You run your games the way you see fit, and if your players keep coming back, then you're clearly doing enough things right that you deserve some sort of atta-boy. It's entirely possible that, within the bounds of your group's play style, your policy decision in this matter is one of the virtues that makes your games fun for you and your players. But it's wrong for you to tell Tesuji his play style is wrong and weak just because it differs from yours. Grow up. -- Ehreval
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Re: Issues/concerns around Flash Flash isn't any more unbalancing than anything else. From my experience with Hero, and gaming in general, I've seen two sane policies that most gm's can implement. 1) Tightly control pc and npc powers in both variety, level and details. 2) Make the whole book legal with very few limitations and let folks go to town, both the good guys and the bad. I follow the latter course in my current game, set primarily in the current vein of mainstream team comics with some elements of the previous "ages" thrown in. (Major influences include the Wade and Morrison stints on JLA, the current run of JSA, Ellis' The Authority and Silver Age Avengers, with hints of Planetary and Morrison's Doom Patrol constantly hovering around the edges.) The characters are about 525 to 550 points right now. A supervillain well call Mr. Brain-in-a-Jar decided he needed to control the heroes home town in order to enact his diabolical plot. He quickly realized that the most important first step was taking out the hero team, so he gathered his forces and laid a nice little ambush. Part of the ambushing team was a character with a large (but small-radius) visual flash attack. She caught a group of four pc's in a tight cluster for the effect and rolled 21 body. Yup. I was being mean and wasn't holding anything back. I followed the book's suggestion and allowed anyone who made a high enough dex check (who had an action they could abort to) attempt to save themselves. One of the four heroes succeeded and managed to get out of the radius of the flash. Another hero took the flash full in the face, and it nailed him hard even through his (reasonably-sized) flash defence. However, this guy has danger sense built with analyze, discriminatory and targeting. There were some things he couldn't do, but he definitely wasn't taken out of the fight and even accounted for a couple of the baddies while blind. Two other characters were facing away from the center of the flash. I'd built the power so that it only worked to half effect if you were looking away. One of those characters was a martial artist with enough blind fighting on his sheet that he should have been functional -- and if the player and I hadn't both failed our int checks to remember it was there, he would have been fine. The fourth character, my party npc, was pretty much horked for the fight. So I launched a devastating flash attack, and 3/4 of the targets were, by hook or crook, good to go. The bottom line here is that what has been said earlier in this thread about consensual reality is dead on: My players want and expect me to throw random horrors like the 21-body flash attack on them without warning, and many of them are prepared for it -- though sometimes inadvertantly -- as a result. There's nothing wrong with pc's being built who can withstand exotic attacks, if that's part of the style of the setting. I also question whether or not flash attacks are really that exotic, as flash-bangs are standard equipment for swat teams, counter-terrorist forces and others in the real world. I would honestly expect to see the better grade of cop in a supers world carry them as part of a standard equipment load. To the poster who put forth the idea that characters stocked with defenses against exotic attacks are likely not working from concept... That's simply not true for my player base. Much depends on the concept in question and the type of concept your players tend to go with. When your character lives in a world where hyper-intelligent apes, brains in jars, extra-dimensional Nazis, genocidal giant robots, Lovecraftian horrors, demon invasions, spandex-clad mutants and the like are a daily-to-weekly threat, I don't think the uber-sunglasses are out of line. In fact, they seem downright boring. Ehrreval
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Re: How to build a drag chute? Thanks for the replies, everyone! Your assistance is greatly appreciated. -- Ehreval
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A player in my bi-monthly supers game has requested a power that I, frankly, don't know how to build. He's a robot with a built-in parachute, and he wants to be able to use it as a drag chute to slow down or stop his character's motion from knockbacks and other situations where he's not in control over his own speed. Specifically, he's requested that it have greater effect the further he's being knocked back. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance, Ehreval
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Re: What's the most outrageous plot your PCs have ever been subjected to Due to some miscommunication, a party in a low-fantasy world with early medieval technology went on a quest... for paper. Which lasted, I believe, four sessions and included multiple encounters where we had to haggle with various people (a lord, an abbot and several merchants) since we needed to convert trade goods periodically, as it was a barter economy and we needed something we thought the paper merchant (Yes, the paper merchant) might be willing to trade for. No, it's not the most weird plot I've ever seen, but we found it outrageous enough that our time had been wasted this way. -- Ehreval
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Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill?
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Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill?
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Re: Name her! Give her Powers! I'm Lazy! Apparently you mean too lazy to bother covering the pudenda of any given female character. (I was willing to accept that her clothing choice was dictated by demonic nature until I scrolled down and saw Rouge with the same underwear.) My suggested name is Crotcherella, the Demon of Genitalia How about a presence attack or mind control that only works on straight men and lesbians? You could make it an NND where the defense is being blind. Or a transform to "horny 13-year-old boy" built along those same lines? It's debateable whether those breasts were bought as OIF or OAF, but I'd definitely buy her a couple points of COM with a 3.14159 custom multiplier on the cost.... I'm also awaiting the arrival of the male counterpart of either of these. I just hope he shaves, too. Disads for Rouge could include the social disad "childlike face on adult body". In (mostly) good humor, cause I like cheesecake just as much as the next 13-year-old, Ehreval P.S. -- Here are my actual serious comments: I, personally, find it hard to take any hero seriously who constantly displays part of his/her genitals. I'd cover the pubis mons on each of these, seriously. Also, I can understand why some people thing such art is demeaning to women. I mean, really, would you even consider rendering a male hero with his scrotum partially displayed? I'm also disturbed by Rouge's childlike face on what is clearly an adult body. Are you going to give her the disad "Hunted by Pedophiles (less powerful, harshly punish)"?