Lord Mhoram

Nope. I look at complementary skill rolls as the "oh - here is something you might know from another field that can help you in this task". If you fail the roll, it just means you don't have the helpful extra information- it has no bearing on your native ability to perform the primary skill.

Black Cat (a martial artist)- Black Cat by Janet Jackson (due to the name - Rather than the intent of the song. Ballistic (ex cop supersuit) - Demolition man by Mannfred Man.

This is actually for an NPC team, so the name is what I like it to be. Sorry if that wasn't clear. It may actually end up as the PC team at some point, but I duuno. Depends on what the players want. The game I am running is what I call "tapestryverse". I am bouncing around 3/4 different teams, rotating which ones I want to GM, and which the players feel like playing, depending on everyone's mood. A lower powered college team set in San Angelo. A mystic team based in Denver but can travel all over. A JLA level team (made up of members of the two teams of the two defunct campaigns that each lasted 8-10 years - the legacy heroes) and a fairly normal citybased superteam - although this one may change.

Thanks all, for the help through the brainmire. Unity or Penncance is what I will go with.

I'm currently working on my timeline for my Champs game, and I need a team name to create a very specific connotation, and am drawing a blank. Much like other timelines I'm doing a "timeline follows comics style" thing. The gunmetal age is a result of of the UN superteams the IST (international super teams)* The IST is allowed on US soil in early mid nineties, and by late 90's has full US police powers. The IST member nations (and IST itself) have a lot of control of who can be supers, and who can't - this leads to many good heroes being a little more extreme; as they are outlaws due to the IST. Then scandal erupts and it turns out that the IST were the pawns of a world cartel that almost gained control of the world through the IST (and having wormed into the UN and was making it dance to its tune as well). IST is disbanded, and the shadow players power here is destroyed, but not all are caught. Then UNTIL becomes the primary UN force. A few years later, a number of the heroes that were actually good guys in the IST forms a UN okayed supergroup, and is a truly heroic team. They will end up with good relations with most governments and superteams (most superteams had bad relationships with IST). This new team is humble, and are trying to do the right thing, and to make up for what they (or some of them at any rate) were manipulated into doing. They sort of represent the "post modern" Astro city feel that exists in places in modern comics. What do I call them? * - yes the IST is stolen wholecloth from the Gurps book.

I'd go with +1/2, if I went with an advantage. I'd actually just buy more dice, and all the extra dice would have "Only inflicts stun for purposes of stunning, target takes no actual stun" at maybe a -1, and "Stunning damage can be no more than double the base attack's damage after defenses" for another -1 (maybe less depending on how much damage the base attack could do).

He's got hammers for hands and wheels for feet raised by farm Implements and living in the woods. She's a martial artist with who hobby is burning churches with pyrokenesis. They Fight Crime. (ducks) Couldn't resist, on a suggestion from my wife.

No real limit. Whatever fits conception. Had a PC with a Darkforce EC (farily low points) a Martial Arts attacks multipower and a utility belt VPP (15 pt). Whatever fits conception. However I am extremely lenient on frameworks when I gm.

Stuff that I saw come up that I second.. Some nice "usable as attack" gadgets that aren't too cheesy. :-) A number of sample multpower gadgets (swingling gun, utility belt type things). A lot of non-combat gadgets. Sensory stuff, a lot of movement gadgets, investigation helping gadgets. Load those on. I also like the ammo suggetsion to make building multiguns or archers a snap.

There is a new FH review at RPG net. The title "Bigger than God, and quite possibly better." Not surprisingly with that title, it is a positive review. http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9693.phtml

It either was on sale, or a mistake in the listing that they corrected. I got my Farscape season 1 complete (been watching it too) for 52 with shipping. One of the reasons I posted, so anyone else could get in before it went away at that price. Guess that is over now. I doublechecked the site, and what I got is being listed at the 140+ price. Which is what I have always seen it at, which is why I was amazed at the 45 dollar price tag a couple of week ago.

I didn't have the "fun money" for it just yet. I work at a flgs one day a week (for store credit for stuff at cost) to feed my habits, so none of the gaming stuff I get comes from real budgeted money. So I needed to wait for the time to be right, and recently I had found farscape season one for an increadibly low price and blew my budgeted fun money on that. I _will_ get it, it will just be in a week or two. I also think that the puchasing pattern would be different for pdfs. Paper books you run out and buy, you thumb through and read. PDF you have to download, and either find time to read it on your computer or print it out. There is going to be a delay before you can read/use it anyway- so the motivation to buy it _right_now_ is nowhere near as strong with PDFs than it is with traditional forms of printing. The people I know that buy PDFs are all like this; admittedly small statistical sampling, but something else to chew on.

This should be in the Nongaming discussions, but I dropped it here to reach a wider audience. :-) If you haven't yet purchased the Farscape Season one DVDs, you might want to look at mediaplay.com. They have the entire first season for 45 bucks. The SRP is 139. Amazon has it for 127. At that big a discount, I felt the need to let people know- mainly because I avoided them so long because of the price. Back to regularly scheduled gaming conversations.

Re: Goblin Kingdom Diamond stocks very little RPG stuff. If you want a book through them, you need to order it when it comes up in Previews (usually about 2 months prior to release). If you wait until after, they don't usuall have it. I tried to get the Spacers Toolkit 2 weeks after the previews was out (about 2 months before release) and we were only able to get one. Diamond and Alliance are under the same company umbrella - so most companies that have a diamond account have an alliance one as well. Alliance is not the best distrubitor, but much better than diamond for HERO stuff.

This is my reason. I am setting up an FH game (my last one ran almost 9 years, and my players want more fantasy), and I have a very precies magic system. I borrow a number of concepts from the rolemaster magic system (three realms, a type of magic that predates the realms, ect). I have very specific effects that each kind of magic can do- and some of it is by feel. I have about 200 sample spells build, and am about 1/3 done from where I want to be for the game to start. With that as a base, I'd let my players build spells, I would just warn them that I may adjust details to fit my magic system before they could use them. As for the base question my first FH game had no frameworks, and I started it off with a fairly high point level 100+100. I want more versitily with characters, so I am doing via frameworks - magic uses multipowers, and I am either going to use multipowers or ECs for "non powered powers" and weapon tricks.

As a player I am something like a 70% Narrativists adn 30% Gamist. . A quick example of the three I remember reading somewhere... There is something in a group a buildings the PCs need. The simulationist picks one, and when the PCs find it, they find it. The narrativists picks the most dramatic point to have the characters find it, and a gamist picks which would challenge the players most. For me it is all story and character. The trouble is I love HERO combat, and build combat monsters, so I am very much a gamist that way (although I detest logic problems and puzzles to solve, I can never do it). In some ways I am the combinations of worst player types. When building or designing characters I tend to minimax, and build really efficient characters. Then I have a really intricate background and complete personality, so when I play I completely forget abou the minimaxing and just play (which means I will do stupid things in character which a normal powergamer would never do), which can mean I am something of a spotlight hog (although I try and watch it, and back off). So in the end at worst I am a powergamer/attention stealer... however I am a long term GM so I watch myself, and back off on these tendencies, so I don't ruin things for anyone else. Knowing the tendencies of a group can be helpful. Our group had me and two total narrativists, and a new player who is an almost complete simulationsist/gamist. He was always dissisfied with the combats, because tactics weren't a big deal. Then he ran a game that was an unmitigated disaster, because he GMed a simulationist/gamist approach and we all went narritivist, doing dramatically appropriate things that got us captured and worse. We all realized what had happened, after some analysis. But had we "defined" ourselves it probably would not have happened.

Steve, Where was the IPE: hide effects of power written up. As a related question could an index of rules advanteges, adders ect that pop up in the later books be put somewhere on the website, so these things can be found easily? Thanks

Yes. I thought so as well, but had no details on the real world mechanics. The germ of the idea came to me, and I thought others might like to run something like this too, it could be a really nice change of pace from the normal "epic earth shattering" plots. We see invasions all the time, megalomaniacs trying to take over and what not, but not a lot of fire. Thanks to everyone for all the details.

This plot came to me the other day at work. I live in Utah, right up in the moutains. We had a storm come through the other night and start some brushfires up on the moutaintops- I could see the first and the planes fighting it from work. With a western draught, and dry woodsy stuff all over the west, fires are in the paper a lot. So I go thinking, some superviallian gets control of a laser death sat. Rather than going after people, he (maybe a terrorist dunno) hits 4-8 times in a few hundered yard circle, move a few miles off and does it again, with the purpose of starting the entire western third of the USA on fire, with massive brush and wildfires. Questions to consider- How far does he get (depends on how nasty your game is I guess- not too four color to burn off all the west). This is a scene/villian plan- what do you do to make a plot of it for the heroes. Are they trying to stop the villian and the lasersat, are they doing damage control on the fire... For those that know, how much is there in the way of firefighting capability. If there were 10 sepearate huge raging wildwires over a 8 state area how much could each get? would it overwhelm the normal teams, would the miltary get involved? Lets get some discussion going for a plot we can all then singe our players with.

Ouch. We get Diamond weekly and it is this weeks shipment for us. So Wednesday, I will be hoping for a really slow day so I can read this huge tome.

Thats exactly it. Morrison in the JLA were the huge massive epics that superheroes should be doing, and Astro City was all of the little characterization and color that makes comics come alive.

That is so cool. And the reason we do this hobby- moments like that.

One little trick I used for superheroes.. and this is fairly illegal in fifth, and would require heavy GM approval. Buy the martial manuevers that give you some nifty bits you can't do without them (throws for example, or Fmove manuevers), in a basic form. Then you have a multipower with HAs, 5 pt levels in OCV and/or DCV, Killing attacks, NNDs and such. You mix and match the damage, and the levels to gain the mauevers that just grant bonuses, and apply them to everyman manuevers. This is much like the "levels" martial art, but more versitile. It works very well in a superheroic game. I've played and GMed with that construct (the biggest iffy thing being the 5 pt levels within a MP) and never had problems, but I've had good GMs and players.

Well Martial punch could convievably cover - Corkscrew, a knife hand, hammerfist, backfist, a reverse knife, a reverse hammerfist, a weak elbow, a palm strike, a finger jab, panther punch, oxjaw strike, or spearhand or even an openhand slap. One manuever 13 possible RL uses of it (and that is not including the kick side of that manuever). Just special effects.

One of the the things I look at when trying to parse real world MA into Hero... combat applicability. (For reference, studied Tae Kwon Do for 6 years, Aikido for a year, Kempo for a while, A little Wing Chung and a smattering of others). Just because I can go into a studio and perform a perfect jump spinning outer crescent kick, doesn't mean I could use that manuever in a fight where things are much more chaotic, and focus is harder to achieve. While a 7th Dan's JSOC is a Sacrifice strike, mine is much slower and may likely be a haymaker. That it where the PS TKD and KS TKD comes in. I could teach every kick and punch up to black belt level, and in a studio setting I could demonstrate them; but in an actual combat situation, I wouldn't bother with the more advanced stuff, I'd be relying on my base 6 or so kicks and 6 or so hand strikes, in umpteen combinations. I think in that respect Hero models it well. Buying the "Snap kick / Punch" from the Karate Package does not mean "I know how to snap kick", but rather, "I know how to snap kick effectively enough to use in combat". Characters that have other Karate manuevers can snap kick just fine, they just don't do it well enought to get game mechanical combat modifiers for it. So if you include everyman manuevers and if you use optional manuevers, and three or so MA manuevers your black belt has a choice of quite a few options. Most of the many options in combat that a black belt has, is in HERO really just a lot of SFX. And you could use those special effects to give small bonuses and penalties.