Grailknight

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... 50 pages into A Memory of Light. Last book and so far on par with first four. More later.

Re: "Shock," a Status Effect Mental illusion(electrical jolt) built with a resetting Trigger. You have to make the breakout to move without the jolt. If you do you get an action, then it resets.

Re: Rules You Didn't Know Until Champions Complete While I do agree with the fun aspect being undercut, I agree with the rule in principle. When the Hulk smashes you with a car it does more damage than being hit by a car not than being hit by the Hulk. The car is not tougher than the Hulk.

Re: Justice League-type DC/Champions campaign. Advice, please. Speed is 10 pts for 1. She can only Drain 7 pts on average and that's not enough to cost even someone without Power Defense for a 1 SPD. And as massey says, normals break out in 1 round.

Re: Parry. A third defense option. Everyman Manuver: Soak: 0 OCV, 1/2 DCV; 1/2 Phase, Abort; Damage after DEF is halved. Character makes an SOAK roll of (9+DEF/5) + 10 less the DC's of the attack. If successful, any damage which exceeds the character's defenses is halved. Successive soak rolls after the first are at a cumulative -2 per roll. Advantages that affect damage ( armor piercing, penetrating and increased damage) count toward the DC's in the attack for the purpose of the roll as do the Push and Haymaker Manuvers. Characters may push any DEF powers that actively cost END. Invisible attacks cannot be soaked unless the target can perceive them. Indirect attacks should be adjudicated on a case by case basis . I wanted something that only relied on the damage mechanics but still had a failure chance. This has a 12-14 range against the attacks in an average campaign spread but doesn't allow for auto success and doesn't make you immune to smaller attacks.

Re: Parry. A third defense option. Sigh. Ok, gotta go with an example to show where i'm coming from and where we differ. Attacker A vs Defender D. A will attack with a 8d6AP and roll 28 damage against D's non hardened DEF of 25. Assume A will hit D normally. Block- D rolls against A's roll. If he makes the roll no damage, if he doesn't he takes 15. He is using his OCV + applicable skills in the manuver to determine sucess or failure. Dodge- D declares dodging and uses his DCV + applicable skills to become a harder target. If A misses he does no damage, if he hits then he does 15. In neither case does D's manuver have an affect on the mechanics of A's attack, it just determines the success or failure of actually striking D. Now, on to Parry, A attacks and D uses parry which uses D's DEF to SOAK the incoming attack. A's attack is halved and compared to D's defense. As proposed the 14(halved) total would be compared to D's FULL 25 DEF IGNORING the AP advantage on the attack. My opinion is that the AP should halve D's DEF to 13 as that DEF is the mechanic being used to Parry. Then comparing the damage to the DEF will result in Parry failing. If A were shooting an equivalent(in 6th) 10d6 attack then parry would halve the avg roll to 17 damage against the 25 DEF and D's Parry would succeed. It takes a damage roll of 51 or greater to defeat Parry, the AP attack,designed to lower the DEF of its targets, (the mechanic Parry uses) is penalised and can NEVER beat it and the 10d6 only very rarely. My conclusion, is that Parry has a chance of success far out of line with its failure chance. The advantages that would apply to damage vs DEF mechanics are being nullified by fiat, not reason, since the manuver uses that very mechanic to determine success or failure.

Re: Parry. A third defense option. This

Re: Parry. A third defense option. Actually, they don't. An analagous situation would be if the target declared a block or dodge and you then took away the attackers levels with his attack and only used raw OCV.

Re: Parry. A third defense option. Dodge and Block don't ignore the AP and Penetrating advantages. The mechanic used has nothing to do with damage or DEF but instead is a function of OCV vs DCV. This manuver is using the actual DEF of the target to determine success or failure. In effect, you are giving ALL targets most of the benefits of Hardened and Impenatrable for free.(The only people who will take damage are low DEF targets that are fighting out of their weightclass.)

Re: What makes a great Iron Age campaign setting? A core of nobility, deeply hidden. It is clung to and protected by the few true heroes, mocked but longed for by the antiheroes and despised by the villains who seek to corrupt or destroy it.

Re: Parry. A third defense option. Your proposed maneuver is unbalanced in favor of the defender. Average DEF is 2-3x the average DC of attacks. Each DC does 3.5 pts of damage. Half of 3.5(1.75) will almost always be less than the DEF of the target. So, barring above average rolls against below average DEF, the proposed manuver will always negate the incoming attack. In addition, you propose to ignore advantages on the attack, which negates Armor Piercing and possibly Penetrating. Those advantages are designed to let smaller die attacks affect larger DEF's. Since your proposal says you are using your DEF to ward off the attack, how are the DEF NOT affected by the attack which strikes them?

Re: Links and Advice Talk it out with your players. As GM you are the ultimate authority but not solely responsible for the balance of the campaign. Perhaps the powergamers are'nt completely conscious of the strain they're causing. Most will be willing to reign it in somewhat when you bring it up as a problem for you rather than with them. Maybe the other players don't mind and just want to build their characters in different ways. (Not likely but I have seen it) Throw in some noncombat challenges from time to time. Split the party. Let the combat monsters take on the bosses while the others deal with lieutenants and agents. But above all, communicate.

Re: Justice League-type DC/Champions campaign. Advice, please. Qualifier: Only my opinion. 50 CON is on the highside, as written she is not stunned by a 20d6 attack on avg and it looks like your campaign avg will be less. Raising PD & ED will make her less vulnerable to small attacks. As I read her defenses she has 21PD/ED. That makes 8d6(high powered agents?) a true nuisance and leaves her paticularly vulnerable to 8-10 die autofires.

Re: Justice League-type DC/Champions campaign. Advice, please. Looks like you're doing fine. I might lower her CON by 10 and add 5 to PD & ED but that's a minor thing . Just keep your builds consistent within your campaign.

Re: Justice League-type DC/Champions campaign. Advice, please. The links in Hyper-Man's sig go to some very good 6e writeups. Some of them are a bit complex for some new to the system.

Re: Justice League-type DC/Champions campaign. Advice, please. It's all relative. The reason I don't champion a certain point level here is because there is no set point level for a fun campaign and any fun campaign is a good one. Since you're going to be running 6th, you'll have to raise points to account for the lack of figured stats and the additional OCV & DCV stats.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Just finished Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Bujold. Rate it an 8.5 of 10. This is part of a long episodic series but not a good place to start. The book is set between the last 2 novels of the Miles Vorkosigan series and features Miles' cousin Ivan. Light spy/action in the style and tone of A Civil Campaign . Ivan encouters a damsel in distress and comes up with a unique solution to her immediate troubles. Needless to say, complications ensue and he is forced to deal with the consequences good and bad.

Re: Justice League-type DC/Champions campaign. Advice, please. Sometimes objects (especially vehicles) will cause problems with genre simulation. Getting hit by a speeding car(12-14 DC's) can be a problem for bricks in low to medium point builds when in the source material, cars bounce often without doing any stun or knockback. Destroying a vehicle or even a large tree or wall may take several hits from a charcter doing 12 dc's which is fine unless you're trying to model iconic heroes at that level. Military vehicles, bank vaults and the like can take this even further. Don't get too caught up in this, theres nothing wrong with handwaving these situations until you have some more experience with rules.

Re: Justice League-type DC/Champions campaign. Advice, please. Determine the baseline of "real" technology in your world. By this i mean, stat out your machine guns, tanks, and other armaments with a focus on the heavier man portable stuff. It doesn't have to be realistic just consistent. Then compare it to what the PCs and NPCs have. Determine how much of a threat you want standard law enforcement and criminals to be. The longer Supers have been active in your world the better equipped they will be. An ambush by a SWAT team should be a real challenge in high threat universes and an annoyance in low threat situations. If you find that real weaponry is more dangerous than you'd like or more commonly, IME, that real objects are too tough, you have several options. 1- Raise the points 2- Give supers Damage Negation or Reduction as a campaign setting. 3- Give real things limitations or vulnerabilites against supers 4- Some combination of 1, 2 and 3.

Re: Superhero settings vs People with Powers settings Reed doesn"t use money on material things often. They always have money. They own a skyscraper in Manhattan for example.

Re: Body and Stun Reserve Ok, checked with Hero Designer and it is rules legal. So buy Stun linked to Cannot be Stunned and BODY linked to Does not Bleed as Compound Powers and then flavor vith your limitations as to what does not get stopped. Add limited recovery/regeneration and I think it covers all you wanted. More complex than a new power but I don't see this as something that will be more than rarely used.

Re: Body and Stun Reserve Another alternative, not RAW legal, would be to use the Automaton powers with charges or ablative. Better yet link Takes no Stun to a set amount of STUN and does not bleed to a set amount of BODY.

Re: The Powerpuff Women (or "Grown Up in Townsville") That's some serious oversharing.

Re: Since CoH is gone... Just went dark. Was a fun 6+ years.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I finished Cold Days this morning. I give it a 9.5 out of 10. Some of the scenes reuniting Harry with the gang are lacking but some are pertfect and its missing just a bit on the humor. Book revolves around Harry's first mission as the Winter Knight and a reveal of the raised stakes he'll be facing from now on Reveals(no Spoilers) - The Purpose of Demonreach and Harry's task there. - Summer and Winter's role in the cosmology of the Dresdenverse.(They're not what I thought at all) - Rashid's title is explained Absent - No White Council besides Rashid. - No Lara (my personal favorite recurring villain) - Suprises - There are some holes in Harry's powerup that are a big suprise - The ending plot twist is an OMG!!! moment This book does a good job of blending the old interactions and relationships while basically relaunching the series. Harry's new adventures will have more powerful foes and apocalyptic consequences.