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Re: MYTHIC HERO Kickstarter That's why I haven't done anything myself on those boards. I have mentioned Mythic Hero in the Shadowrun boards I frequent, but reception there was virtually nil unfortunately.

Re: MYTHIC HERO Kickstarter Has anyone advertised Mythic Hero on the Giant in the Playground forum or on 4chan's traditional games imageboard? I don't know those communities that well, but I know they are fairly large at least as RPGs go.

Re: Car Shark, Asylums, Eldritch horrors and Fell's Point: A couple questions Card Shark's sheet hangs out in Hudson City p.238 in the GM's section. As for the other stuff, I haven't found anything else about Toddbury Asylum, but there might be stuff in the older 4th edition books.

Re: M44 offhand @ 500 yards Here's my breakdown. It's from a 6th edition perspective. While the fact that the video is "out of combat" should kept in mind, you might want to make a PC that can pull off this feat in combat. A non-moving human sized target is DCV: 3 (6E2 170). Since the target is half-human sized, that's +2 DCV for DCV 5. Personally I think it's really odd, but apparently this is the "normal case." Depending on you feel, the DCV could be lowered to 0 or 2. In which case, the later math should be adjusted by a similar amount. At 500 yards or 457m, you're looking at a -12 range penalty (256-512m). If he's bracing, that negates 2 points worth of range penalties. There isn't a M44 entry in the Equipment Guide, but based on other's comments, it's a fairly accurate weapon. Accurate bolt-action rifles are typically given +1 to +2 range bonus. I'll use the higher one due to the praise it has gotten. That's a total net penalty of -8. Assuming you want to hit at least half the time, you need hit on a 11- (this means you will need about 4 takes to do the video). That means you need an total OCV (from base OCV, PSLs, skill levels, or whatever) of 13. If you have the target be DCV 0, you just need an 8. If you take the size bonus into account, then it'll be 10.

Re: Technical Question regarding Dark Champions After a quick skim to refresh my memory, the majority of the powers should be fine out of the box. The vast majority of powers between 5 and 6th editions are the same or close enough to might as well be the same (for example remember 1" = 2m). Powers that use aid, hand attack, endurance reserves, and/or area of effects will likely need to be repriced but otherwise work the same. Lack of Weakness related powers will have to be ignored. Unbreakable Will no longer provides "free" mental defense equal to EGO/5 but is otherwise the same. Overall, a quick double check is all you need.

Re: Dark Champions: The Animated Series DC:TAS has two "styles" of animated series play, heroic Hudson City Knights and superheroic Hudson City Powers. Hudson City Knights is the more "realistic" one and recommends PCs at the powerful heroic level (100 + 100 disadvantages). In 6th edition, powerful heroic characters are built on 225 points (175 + "50" in complications). That seems about right for me. This is the value I went with my currently running heroic Urban Fantasy Vigilante game. The opposition in that game, mainly consisting of people from Predators and the Hero System Bestiary, has worked pretty well besides some slight increases to OCV/DCV. Hudson City Powers is a superheroic setting and recommends PCs at the low-powered superheroes level (150 + 100 disadvantages). In 6th edition, low-powered superheroes are built on 300 points (240 + "60" in complications). That seems about right to me though I have no experience there to back it up. If you don't have it already, I also recommend Hudson City: The Urban Abyss. It's a pretty nice setting book and has saved me a ton of time from having to make my own city.

Re: 5th Edition vs 6th Edition Really it depends on if you care about knowing a villain's total point cost. You can just keep the values the same, rounding up to the nearest 5 in case of END and 2 in case of STUN and be fine in play. You may need to fiddle with a villain's stats anyways to make him a better opponent for you group (upping or lowering CVs for example), but that's the case regardless of edition. Elemental Controls were removed and replaced with the limitation Unified Power. If you're favorable to this, you can get the elemental control feel without having to mess around carefully balancing AP values. If you're not, it's a "free" -1/4 limitation on your multipower. Suppress and Succors were changed heavily/effectively removed. They no longer are lower AP versions of drain/aid that were constant. They are just drain/aid with Cost END now. Actually that's a general trend in 6th edition, removing the lower AP versions of powers that cost END. For example, Force Field is pretty much just Resistant Defense Costs END. How much that matters depends on how much your group used those sorts of powers. The guy who aborted to his 60PD (or 60ED) force field in his multipower loses a lot, but many other characters do not really notice. Killing attacks were nerfed to having a x1-3 stun multiple at no reduction in cost. However if you're running Pulp Hero or Dark Champions, then you were likely using Hit Locations and those were unaffected by the change. Our group just uses hit locations for all games so we weren't that affected by this change. However, the big one is how figured characteristics and pseudo-figured characteristics like OCV/DCV. Personally, I'm for their removal, but many disagree.

Re: John Smith from Last Man Standing Are you playing with equipment rules or not? It sounds like you're not due to AP caps and the like, but I thought I'll check. If you are, I'll change my advice a great deal especially if you're using the HSEG (Hero System Equipment Guide). I wouldn't actually think you'll need a double knockback slot in the MP. Even a 2d6 RKA can do 6m of KB some of the time (for example a 10 body hit and a 7 on the 3d6 roll KB reduction roll). If you view the first scene as a fluke, then you don't need the KB slot. I'll also look into the Beam limitation for the MP. +1 stun multiple is an advantage you might want. It helps a killing attack to incapacitate but not kill on the first hit. The HSEG gives the Colt M1911 the advantage as well. I would buy 1 slot with Autofire 5 to represent rapid fire or dual wielding pistols. Another slot can do more base damage.

Re: Possible HERO System Supplement Kickstarters From Steve -- What Interests You? I would definitely get anyone of those books and give enough to get the book. Maybe more depending on the specials given out on the higher donation levels. I would also be for more post-cyberpunk stuff in Cyber Hero.

Re: Sawed Off Shotguns While playing out a fight I noticed another odd thing about going AE with a shotgun. Since the area DCV is fixed at 3, it can be harder to hit someone with a shotgun than it is with a normal firearm on the lower end. I noticed this when I had some OCV and DCV gangastas with shotugns and mac10s shooting it up. When they were firing on someone who was bracing (so 2 DCV), the mac10s hit on a 13- while the shotgun users hit only a 10-. My guess is that maybe shotguns shouldn't be AEs, but instead be +2-3 OCV. Then when the damage is reduced by 1 due to range increase the OCV bonus by 1. That or remove reduced by range and just allow people to spread.

Re: Sawed Off Shotguns

While I was outfitting some gangers from the HSEG, I noticed the sawed off shotgun. It's an Autofire 2 Area of Effect 16m Cone +1 Stun Multiple No Range Reduced by Range Reduced Penetration 2.5d6 RKA. While the autofire 2 makes sense since it's a double barreled shotgun, I'm wondering if the conic part might be too much from a gameplay or realism standpoint. Basically it means that out from 8m, it's a 2.5d6 RKA. Out to 16m, it's a 2d6+1 RKA. This seems high for the amount of area that is covered. If you had 8-16 guys (depending on the size of your hex) standing next to each other 16m away you'll hit all of them with a 2d6+1 RKA. This seems a tad much for a 12 gauge round. I could maybe see a pellet reaching each of them, but does a pellet do 2d6+1 killing damage? However I could be wrong there and if anyone has information on this, I'll like to look at it just so I know more about them. There's also the gameplay concern that it's an large attack (20 DCs not counting the AE) that covers a large portion of the board. Sure it's got issues with friendly fire, but it's nasty as all heck. Basically you can hit a ton of dudes twice with the equivalent to a .44 magnum round. Reloading is a pain, but for mooks and some PCs, that's not too bad of a drawback. It is reduced penetration so you're unlikely to kill armored people. However you'll still likely do a ton of stun to them with +1 stun multiple. I'm wondering if it shouldn't explosion or nonselective. What is everyone's thoughts?

Re: Effectiveness Based on Percentiles The issue isn't that the system has flaws universal to caps system (gaming the system and edge cases). The problem people have is that annihilates flexibility. It creates bad incentives towards certain builds and concepts that don't need them. Martial Artists and "all power to shields or weapons but not both" style characters shouldn't be a problem in an adjustable cap system (where you can lower your ability in one area for power in another). Thus you want to play static defenses and attack characters and that seems rather pointless to having an adjustable cap system that's suppose to offer more flexibility over a "20PD/20ED, 12 DC and no more or less" style fixed cap system.

Re: Effectiveness Based on Percentiles In my experience, synergy of tactics and powers is a far better way to do "team builds" than having low PD and high ED. Mainly because the latter is more luck based (you fight the Human Fireball today instead of Punchomatic) and there really any decision making. Simple teams based build combos like grab + guy with lots of CSLs, teamwork attacks, aid str + a brick, and fastball specials are tactically interesting (do I want to see if my teammate can set up an entangle or do I want to attack now?) and players get to control when they happen. Encouraging balanced defenses also makes sure there aren't mistakes either. If there's 15 stun on the line (30 PD versus 15 ED), it makes a difference the PC gets the defense right (those flaming stone fists were PD or ED?). For dudes with weaknesses, limitations like "Does not work against fire" or complications like Vulnerability : Fire work well.

Re: DCV Drain The reason for this is that there really isn't anything like Power Defense. If you had 30 PowD and I didn't, we won't know outside of the use of the odd super skill. That's also why SFX for PowD is going to be pretty easy to justify.

Re: DCV Drain

Re: DCV Drain As an usual player in the same games Roy is in, I think I can answer this. It's generally assumed that power defense and mental defense needs about the same level of justification as regular and resistant defenses. So if you can have "Tough Body 10rPD/10rED" you can have "Tough Body II 5 PowD" or "Mental Combat Training 5 MD." We also sometimes have PowD and MD treated more like base characteristics like PD and ED in some of more recent games (very high powered urban fantasy and high fantasy with a special metaphysical framework). Special effects range from "I'm a god", "I'm an alchemical iron golem", "I'm the Embodiment of the Romantic Movement," "I'm a psychic whose powers are aided by a mystic artifact from Atlantis," to "I'm an alternate universe Gordon Freeman." To stay on topic, I've played a character with Change Environment used to decrease combat values, it wasn't pretty. It is especially bad when you can also make summons that have penalty skill levels against said Change Environment. Really allowing you to just drain combat values directly makes the whole process so much cleaner and more balanced. Draining DCV is usually a sucker's game. There's better ways to affect a target's DCV (grabs & entangles especially).

Re: Advice needed for balancing my first 6E campaign As mentioned above, the best rule of thumb is to calculate average damage and average number of hits to takedown target. Generally I've found 1-2 hits for mooks and 3-4 for PCs for PC level attacks. Mooks should do about 1-3 less DCs than PCs and that'll typically mean they'll have to do 1 more hit to take a PC down. Giving them slightly weaker CV values will also give PCs a "mighty" feeling. Making sure that the PCs have access to a "second lifebar" option such as healing or aid stun also makes things easier since they'll be able to take a lot more punishment. Playing mooks more simply and tactically less flexible is another way to even out the odds. If mooks don't abort except in the most obvious of cases, they'll be taken down quite quickly. This is because it helps reduce the impact of having higher numbers since they can't just have the target abort to save themselves and have the rest focus fire the attacker (our group calls this "wolf pack tactics"). Also keeping mooks down once they are knocked out (in my experience KOs are more common than deaths) helps PCs take them out and speeds up play. Lone Boss NPCs are a whole different matter. I've found 75% DR to be a must and set static defenses so that the PCs will do 3-5 stun a hit. Typically this means 10-15 hits to takedown (though I've seen much higher or lower numbers work and should vary based on party size). I guess you can make the boss virtually unhittable (though super high CVs or speed) and have lower defenses, but that makes the fight way more swingly and possibly make entangle + all levels on damage team attacks super effective. CVs, DCs, and Speed should be higher than the PCs though how much so varies, but should only be at most 4 higher than the PCs. What’s far more important for boss npcs is not being a big pile of combat values, but to have a gimmick. Generally it should have some sort of unusual construction so you have fights like “destroy its eyes first to stop its eyebeam attack!” or “it’s actually unstoppable but you have to keep the artifact of doom away from it until you can dump said artifact into Mt. Doom.” Basically something to make sure the fight is memorable and different. A simple way to do this is to have the boss have something nasty but limited in some way that the PCs can directly influence and is outside the norm for them. It’s more of an art than a science since the gimmicks players will like will vary from group to group. Always make sure the gimmick is obvious, something that can do about (stopping it, mitigating its effects, or turning it on the boss), and should matter for the fight. If you’re worried about the PCs getting defeated still, be sure to design an “out” so things can continue even if the PCs are defeated (such as NPC help, the boss just wants to KO the PCs and not kill them, or capture). You can have it so that the PCs still lose something if defeated (a beloved NPC dies, they’re captured, or they lose the lead). If you want "bread and butter" epic fights, I suggest team battles where the PCs fight a roughly equal team of NPCs (in terms of power and number). This keeps having all your combat eggs in one basket, and generally leads to rivalries, heckling, foils, and other fun PC-NPC interactions. To keep special powers “special” and not just have psychics (or freaky alien race powers) shoot mind bullets instead of regular ones, there’s several ways to keep this in line. First off, since you’re heroic, some of the problem is already solved. Why pay 30 character points for the ability to do a 2d6 RKA mind bullet when you can just buy a 2d6 RKA gun with cash? Therefore, you’ll likely see psionics show up to cover things that the PCs can’t do with equipment (some forms of clairsentience, mental blast, mind control, mental illusions and the like). Since I’m assuming your weapons are No END, that means psychics will be using more END than their gun using counterparts. If moving and maybe a little bit of STR are your only END costs (1-3), you can get away with 20 END and 4 Rec. A psychic is likely using more like 4-6 END (assuming 45 AP power) a phase and thus will need to put points into higher END and REC. Even if they spend 5 points towards this, that’s 3% of their starting CP and means forgoing a skill and a skill level or 5 presence. If you make it END x 2, things will be even tougher for the psychic. However, if you’re out of combat, END costs don’t really matter. Even if you have to take some stun, you can just take a 12 second breather and most certainly be fine (this is part of the reason why our group banned out of combat aids and succors). So I’ll ask myself, “are psychic powers suppose to be combat useful or out of combat useful?” If it’s the latter, then you can easier make it not worth it though limitations. If it’s the former, I’ll be careful. If I’m a psychic and I paid points for combat useful psychic powers, but I find myself defaulting to my gun, I’m just wasting those points. The exceptions to this are situational powers like teleportation and desolidification since you won’t use them all the time, but when you do, you’re really happy you have them. It may be best to keep powers (especially alien racial powers) in this category if you want to keep their uses “rare.” I’ll also be up for reviewing powers. Be sure to keep in mind equipment as well. For example, are you using Active Points or Real Points for the cost? I can see arguments for either, but it’ll have a huge impact on the game.

Re: VPPs in 6th Unless you as a GM really know what you're doing, keep Special Powers alway from frameworks. It's generally not pretty otherwise. If VPPs are an option, huge "everything and the kitchen sink" style multipowers are just not going to be as good. If you don't want to be a VPP user and you don't want to be "a VPP user but worse" you'll have to play to your strengths and focus. There's generally a lot of powers (unusual senses, luck, and the like) that VPPs can't buy that are quite handy to have. Pair that up with a small tight multipower and you can hang out with the best of them.

Re: VPPs and Aid, a problem? The problem with that in a race of equal dcs, aids will beat drain at least in the short term. This is because aiding ignores having to hit and Power Defense. Drains don't do anything if they miss or get blocked by a barrier. If they do hit, they are reduced by Power Defense. In the meanwhile, you'll be being beat on quite handily. Now I've done something similiar in a fight with an energy sucking ghost that reduced positive adjustment powers by 1/2 and was equally buffed by the same amount. That was fun (and I must admit I didn't expect the PCs to run and gather help to defeat it, at least when they released it would be tricky to mental whammy it into oblivion). My issue is more that this rapid aiding is dominating the rest of the combats so if fights are "how will the GM try to shaft aiding?" that doesn't seem right.

Re: VPPs and Aid, a problem? I'm the GM for this game and I've been discussing the problems with the players in making good encounter designs for them. While I've been (hopefully) successful so far, I know I'm having difficulties. After all, my goal is to give them a world full of colorful people for roleplaying in and tactically interesting combats if they fight those same people. While we could do gentlemen's agreement (like we do for no out of combat aids), we do try to keep those few as possible. I'm also curious to know if other GMs have seen similar issues. One issue is that their foes really have to choose between attacking the 1/2 DCV "spent" buffer before he can abort or do something about the 7d6 HKA rapid attacker coming their way. Firstly, it's not guarantee that you'll take out the buffer. Secondly even if you do take him out while vulnerable, his buffs will remain up and the pain train from them will still be coming. It may feel nice to punish the caster (from an IC perceptive), but it still leaves open for the heavily buffed smack down. Usually this comes up more when fighting roughly equals (being built at similar point and cap totals). And once the enemy team loses a guy (which is totally likely) they will often lose the speed advantage and thus can't deal with both buffed and buffs since at that point anyone attack can abort to a respectable defense. Thus, "buff, smash, and abort as necessary" default strategy is made. Now a mirror match is totally viable and "fair." The problem with that is that basically it's me deciding "do I want the defeat the PCs or not?" since the difference of +-1 Dex relative to the PCs will determine the fight. If not that, it's the first side to make any sort of error. Overall, while it will work for a one memorable battle (I actually have the idea already), I don't want this style to be the default. One is that I'll really like other strategies to be viable for tactical complexity (so figure out the enemy's plan means something). Something seems wrong with a HERO game (especially one that's fairly liberal with powers and builds) leads to a "how can I get this one strategy to work or what specific countermeasures I need to have up 24/7 to deal with it?" versus "how can I get my strategy to work and how can I figure out and deal with my foes before he does it?" Secondly, it puts me in a bad position of just writting "they will win/lose" on the NPCs's sheets. Thirdly, causally flinging around such huge killing attacks where defenses did not take account can and will lead to PC chucky salsa explosions sooner or later. While I have no problems will killing their characters, I think it's prudent to not to end up playing so dangerously close the time every fight (after all I've come close to killing them twice and have killed a NPC out from underneath them). Likewise to the third point, I've also done boss battles designed for super buffed parties. While they were all successes, the issue was since that assumed a buffed party lucky shots or dangerous shots at the start of the battle had a huge impact. Basically if they couldn't start the buffing or buffed the wrong stat first, they tended to get massacred. It was enough that the players were able create a "master plan" of fighting, getting pwned, having 1 person running away/stall enough for them to get back into the fight. Honestly, the issue is less the plan itself, but the fact I wasn't sure if I could deviate them from that plan. I do think 6 points per die aid is too effective. If you buff someone with an aid of equal size to the attack power aided (either STR or the attack power directly), unless the foe has no or nearly none fixed defenses (such as PD/ED), you'll do more damage buffing and having the other guy attack for you than if you attacked with an attack of the same AP. In addition, the aid will keep on giving bonus damage phase after phase. I'm also talking straight The issue with barriers I'm not so worried about. And the UAA Power Defense may be the way to go and thank you for that idea (UAA DCV would be interesting as well). Most of the other tactics I've tried or rejected for various reasons (mind controlling the buffed characters is fun).

Re: THE HERO SYSTEM BESTIARY: What Do *You* Want To See?

Re: THE HERO SYSTEM BESTIARY: What Do *You* Want To See? The thing I most want to see are creatures useful for high powered games such as superheroes or high powered heroic games. While the old HSB has some, I could always use more. While you can beef up a bear fairly easily by upping its numbers such as higher CVs, more DCs, and better defenses, that is an effort on the GM's part (having to write down his changes). In addition, even "Superbear" is just an animal intelligence character that has a tough killing attack. High Powered creatures in my experience need to have a diverse array of abilities to stay interesting. A good creature with tactically interesting options in combat is a worthy addition for they can be reused far more often. Once you fought a bear, you're already more or less fought a lion, tiger, wolf, or other large mammal. A high-powered foe like a Nosferatu vampire can be used a grand master in a low powered game, a worthy foe in a medium powered game, or a mook in a high powered game. In addition you can fight such a vampire multiple times in the same campaign and have a different style fight due to different powers use and battlefield conditions. I'll like to see more unusual powerful creatures such as exotic creatures (psychic animals or xenomorphs from Aliens), more types of high powered supernatural foes (demons, nature spirits, or eldritch abominations), or mutants (weird mad scientist creations, battle robots, or aliens). These builds are the hardest to do so I don't expect many to be added, but more are always appreciated.

Re: Firearms granularity The problem is that many of the factors firearms have are usually lost in the quantized nature of RPGs. For example the grips of some guns doesn't feel well in people's hands. Either you have to represent this in point form (Perk: Adaptable Hands) or it isn't a factor (if asked the players will just go "not in this case)." Also a minor difference in firepower will either have to be 1DC different or not. In which case, it can be a 5 point difference or no difference. PCs will buy firearms to fill certain roles in the game. The roles can range from "concealable piece I always carry around" to "sniping" to "cover fire." What roles are needed will vary from game to game. A spy game will unlikely have a need for the PC to use machine guns on a regular basis, but they might be very common in a military game. Having different firearms for different roles is a pretty reasonable design decision. The problem area is when you have multiple firearms for the same role. Much like species competing for the same niche, these weapons will be compared to each other by the players until a clear winner will emerge. At which point, the other weapons will be resigned to basically NPCs or smaller niches (players with STR Now who is the clear winner might change during gameplay when the PCs get more money and connections, but that either doesn't happen (too many points invested in the earlier firearm in CSLs or naked advantages) or causes power escalation (as PCs jump from best gun to best gun). Trying to keep this is check via roleplaying is a fool's errand as any creative player can roleplay his reasons for having the best gun. My favorite for skilled combat PCs is that he realizes that the weapon is the best though trying it out. Most players will also want to merge as many roles as possible. The reason for this is typically that PCs want an answer to any situation that the GM puts them in as well as point efficiency. For this reason, weapons that blur the lines between roles such as an extremely small and pistollike SMG can often be clear winners as well. This can especially be the case when one can buy powers or abilities that can enhance such weapons, such as Autofire with pistols, Deadly Blow with SMGs, or jackets that make things more concealable. An example of this is found in Shadowrun 3rd edition. In Shadowrun, there is a kind of shotgun found in long and short barrel versions. The long barrel version is a good assault weapon (no autofire ability but high damage). The short barrel version is basically a slightly louder pistol. This means that a player who doesn't want to be a pure combat monster (such as a decker/rigger/spy/etc) will go for this shotgun as you can use both with the same skill, filling two roles. To do this otherwise will cost two skills. The possibility for specialization (which is based on weapon name not mods on the weapon) makes it even more favorable. My suggestion is to make a list of what roles PCs will want their guns to fill. Then make a firearm for that role. Following that, let the model of the weapon and the like be a SFX of that firearm. This SFX can be basis for CSLs or not. For example you can have people by 1911 CSLs or Medium Pistol CSLs. This lets the players who want to worry about the little things roleplay it out. If he wants to play cop who uses a Compact Ceska 75 because the shorter barrel feels better than the larger Beretta 92s the other cops use, he can do it without having to take what might very well be the inferior weapon mechanically. If he roleplays all of this out well, give him XP for good roleplaying. If the player doesn't care about such things, he can just go for a gun that he thinks looks/sounds cool for the SPX and leave it at that. This way, you don't have everyone carrying one weapon as least not from a SPX point of view. It's also a great deal easier to make and balance vs armor and weapons from other roles.

Re: Sleep Spell Design Help Even not counting stuff from another game, putting people to sleep either makes the combat easier (less targets) or allows you make haymakers with all your levels into damage. Both of which will quickly shorten the lifespan of the targets. As for Ren and Stimpy, the first two seaons where sublimily awesome. The later seasons when the head guy left were horrible.