SuperKlaus

Re: Multiple Strikes So what's a "standard Maneuver penalty" not counter-able by PSLs if you can buy PSLs for Move By?

Re: Mutants and Materminds You guys sure you're looking at homages / rips instead of characters who're simply the same archetype? I don't know M&M all that well besides noticing some blatant references in the beginning of the core book, but regarding Champs, what makes Defender an Iron Man clone? Armor? Money? A guy can't have armor and money without being Iron Man? I get that he's also involved in business and has some arms dealer's guilt, but the Harmon doesn't feel like Stark to me. Has no dependency on his armor, is less involved in his business dealings, really more like Captain America than Iron Man in outlook. As I understand it from what little I've read, M&M's problem is that it's very direct. I hear a weapons contractor who built armor to save himself while his (kidneys) were failing and he was captured by (African Islamists) would be no surprise in an M&M book. And just to emphasize that I'm not intending to strongly bash M&M here I'll agree that Nighthawk is a lame Batman and the Fabulous Five are about as obvious as things get. I'm saying I hear M&M is very direct more often than HERO.

Re: Mutants and Materminds Ugh, tell me about it. I love this system but my will to purchase supplements fades as I see pictures reprinted over and over, especially considering the core book is all I really need. Much of the art was crap in the first place. It scares me. I tell you when my lotto ticket scores big I'm buying HERO some quality artists. I wonder if a talent search wouldn't prove fruitful. I mean, I know two guys myself, both students and therefore cheap, both capable of producing at least one or two pictures on a deadline, and both dreaming of having their stuff seen. Here's one's page: http://the-scarlet-deiter.deviantart.com/ Is he good? Maybe, maybe not, it's open to opinion. I like him of course, 'specially because he's doing some character arts for me. Is he better than some of that high-schooler-doodling-in-his-notebook anime-inspired crap that's cropped up a couple times in HERO products? I think that's absolute. And he'd love to get published somehow. He can maybe even handle color, though I'm sure the B&W exclusiveness has more to do with DoJ's funds than artists' abilities. What do you guys say? Wanna discuss prettyin' HERO up in General or something?

Re: I've got a train to catch Well you are talking about the steam engines of the Old West there. 60 MPH is pretty much dead-on from what I know - I think those trains might be where the expressions "mile a minute" and "going like sixty" come from. The bullet train blows those guys out of the water, or off the rails if you prefer.

Re: I've got a train to catch According to the Vehicle Sourcebook: A steam locomotive has 55 STR (mass 50 tons), 20 BODY, 5 DEF, 2 SPD, 10 DEX and moves along at 20" / 80". The wheels are DEF 6, BODY 5. There's some stuff about taking damage if it moves too fast that I honestly don't care to summarize. A bullet train has 60 STR, same DEX and DEF, 23 BODY, one more point of BODY in the wheels and possesses not only 4 SPD but 27" / 108" movement. Good luck stopping that one. A subway car has 55 STR, same DEX and DEF, 22 BODY, 6 BODY wheels like the bullet train and 4 SPD but only 10" / 40" movement. A maglev train is up to you, being a creation of the future. These stats should help you create something suitably impressive by comparison. A loaded cargo ship can weigh hundreds of thousands of tons. Try Google or Wikipedia, I'm certain figures can be found. Have fun! Stopping trains does indeed make for awesome scenarios.

Re: AVLD vs. NND What's the dif? When striking a target possessing the right defense, NNDs are utterly nullified but AVLDs can still deal damage. I hope I don't come across as treating you like you don't know the rules or something but I don't believe there are any finer points to it.

Re: Homage

Re: Modeling An anti-magic Barrier Remind me again why a Force Wall doesn't work? What you describe and what I remember from when I saw that show was a textbook Force Wall. Buy Transparent to PD (meaning you don't have to blow points on PD!) and Limit its ED / Mental / etc to "only magic." Add Feedback to get the personal strain thing and deal with firing past your own with a naked Indirect, RSR. Making it stronger through group effort just means everyone bought Aid Magic Barrier Xd6 and making a better one when you're more experienced just means you've dumped more points into the Wall, silly. e: also what Hyper-Man said about giving critters a Phys Lim "Can't Cross These Things" is the most elegant way to get that bullet point.

Re: The Genesis of +5 = 2x power? You getting this from the doubling of equipment rule? I gotta say, same as Collie, that 15 INT never meant twice as smart as 10 to me.

Re: Thoughts on Multiform It helps me some just to make Multiform constructs abide very closely to campaign Active Point caps. Sure it only takes a 70 pt Multi to create a 350 pt alternate self, but in my 350 pt game with 50-60 AP caps a would-be Multimunchkin finds himself less able to create a ton of effective "army knife blades." After all each form's probably blowing 100 points or so just to maintain decent movement, attack and defense.

Re: I am confused by using Indirect

I've gone and confused myself here. I was making my own Captain America PC and assigned his shield throwing move Indirect (originates with Cap, strikes the target wherever, +1/2). I figured this was legit to represent him bouncing the shield off something for crazy trick shots like he does. I've used the same Indirect (+1/2) for Cyclops and a personal laser-shooting character when they do trick shots. It seems like precisely what I want given that 5ER specifically says this type "originates with character, fires anywhere" and suggests boomerangs and arcing arrows. But then I started wondering. What's the point of +3/4 Indirect? These +1/2 types can handle striking a target from behind, right (5ER's examples strongly suggest so)? And even if you defined your +3/4 as originating right next to a target you have to count range from you to him just the same as +1/2, right? I was thinking about how most of these +1/2 definitions work and thought maybe the difference is that a +1/2 is assumed to need to bounce off a solid object and return to the target, thus making a bigger RMod than a +3/4 would have. Only problem with that idea is things like boomerangs, which don't need to bounce off anything to change direction. Plus, given that Advantages are mandatory, I think it's kinda lame that if this were true Cap would need a whole different Multipower slot for throwing his shield straight at a dude (I suppose he could bounce it off the dirt just in front of his target but that's silly).

Re: Diceless Hero Paging Inquisitors, paging Inquisitors, heresy in thread 51390...

Re: Targetting a Hex You could give the hex velocity-based DCV by the speed of the Earth's rotation. More seriously, I'd go with the PER roll representing the trick of judging where the target is about to be.

Re: Ult. Speedster congrats and Qs Ah, right, thank you. They are Limited. (Sweeping Up, p.84 for the first one, and Outrunning the Blast, p. 90).

I finally got my Ultimate Speedster a few days ago and I like it! Much nicer than Ultimate Metamorph, I think. Good work Marc and Steve and thank you for reprinting the "electric guy up a building picture!" I wonder, though, if that would have been in there anyway... Small questions for general HEROdom: Who is the electric guy anyway? Visor, looks like he's got a digital / computer / electronic theme? At one point in the book I see OCV with Sweep costed at 5 / level and at another DEX Skill levels costed at 3 / level. These are simple mistakes, right? Correct costs 2/lvl and 5/lvl respectively? What do you think of the AOE: Trail Advantage? Personally I'd have just bought "Any Area" to the right size and then allowed the buyer to limit the Advantage with "Area Must Be Traversed (-1/2)" or something.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues I happen to think min-maxing to maddening levels is the best part of D&D, so there! The more they try to restrict, the harder you gotta squirm!

Re: What fundamental thing would you change about the Hero system? Now what did Mother Earth do to you? Captain Planet cries.

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games 21 yrs ftw I wanted a superhero RPG after Spider-Man 2 came out and remembered the name Champions, voted best RPG ever in an old issue of InQuest. I weighed it against Silver Age Sentinels through info online and it won (very wise decision in retrospect!). I bought a copy of Champions from some schmuck in Canada who overcharged me on the exchange rate, not realizing that it was a "genre book" and not the whole deal. I stuck with it though and reverse-engineered as much of the rules as I could from reading the book's examples and got myself a Big Blue Book a month or two later. Now I've got a large and growing 5E library and I'm a solid convert. My friends are not so convinced just yet but I'm working on 'em, buying additional 5ERs if I gotta. I also taught the game to some Scots! I feel like a missionary.

Re: Alternate SPD Chart Give each player a suit of playing cards and have them shuffle and draw cards equal to SPD. Count down from Ace, or up from 2 if you're some kind of freak. It's got all the potential troubles of randomizing SPD, sure, and there's one more card than twelve in a suit, but I used it all this last year in a game I ran and it worked well. Players respond well to the thrill of drawing face cards and aces. The only caveat is that you might want to enlist the PC's help in drawing for your villains or you might find yourself wasting precious time drawing Villain 5's Phases while they all sit and watch. No trouble with Aborting and Held Actions or nothing!

Re: Area of a hexagon Paging Stochastic to thread...

Re: How do you use Regeneration in your campaign?

Re: Iron-Man Movie! Planning his vengeance / That he will soon unfurl

Re: Multiple Attacks in a Phase I don't believe anyone's directly answered this question. The Sweep-with-different-moves rules say that when Sweeping with different Maneuvers each move has its own OCV bonus but you suffer stacked DCV penalties. Clawing and biting is all the same Manuever (Strike), but I figure that's a technical point. I believe you would be rolling two 13- and a 16-, that being what happens when you put the Sweep penalty to the numbers you gave. I trust the Bite is 20- because of CSLs: +3 w/ Bite? The rules are not clear on the order in which you attack, which of course is important because a miss causes all remaining rolls to miss...I'd say lead with the claws because Sweep is weaker that way and I personally feel it needs to be very carefully watched.

So just as I was getting cocky, feeling that I was a HERO rules master, I went and tried to design some Usable On Others powers. That is some mighty confusing stuff. Why exactly do I have to pay through the nose using Usable As Attack to give my buddies Powers while paying the END myself? Why isn't the Rules FAQ Limitation Grantor Pays All END Costs (-0) in the book? Kitty Pryde saving her buddies A: Desolid, Usable Simultaneously (8 people, +1), Recipients Must Maintain Physical Contact With Kitty (-something) Saving buddies B: Desolid, UAA (8 people, +1 3/4, ends when recipient stops touching Kitty). Oh, and Kitty really should buy a completely different Desolid for her personal use. The second option is costing me +3/4 more Advantage, the use of a Limitation, and the price of a personal Desolid for what? The strictly by-the-book ability to pay the END myself, and I guess the ability to Desolid a foe so long as he's touching me. Can't say I think that's nearly worthwhile. ALSO Instead of this Differing Modifiers silliness and its accompanying idea that you lose the ability to use your own Power on yourself, why not just suggest that the builder place Limitations he does not want the recipients to suffer on the Usable By Other / Simultaneously Advantage? It's already true that the recipients do not get the UOO part of the Power (I assume because if they do you'd quickly see a pyramid effect of Powers being granted willy-nilly), right? Stoneskin Spell: Armor 4/4, Usable By Other (+1/4), UBO is Limited by Gestures, Incantations, OAF (-1 1/2). Cost 13 points. Does that not create a Power meaning that by Gesturing, Incanting and possessing the Focus a wizard can grant himself or another person Armor 4/4? I tend to try and think these things through privately but I'm feeling burned out and you know what, you guys here are awesome. Please offer your opinions. Last note: So long as I'm talking about Kitty Pryde of the X-Men, can someone please suggest things that affect her while Desolid?