The Hyborian

Re: How do you track END? I knew a group that tried the grease pencil route. It was just a mess, seemed more trouble than it was worth. I always have just used a spare sheet of paper to keep notes on for table top gaming. As long as your players can do basic arithmatic quickly (and I have gamed with a few folks who fell outside that category) there was no issue. My prefered method is to make a column for endurance, one for stun, and one for body for each combat, plus a box for charges where one can make tally marks. It's not pretty but is fast and effective. You can get quite a few combats on each sheet of paper. Only long term changes go on the character sheet; its a reference, not a game play tool.

Re: "Ya better talk Oculon, or you'll get the spike!" (A Super law question) The whole point was that you can have super law work however you want in your campaign. I made up some fake case law as an illustration. The Arizona test could work differntly in your campaign, and for that matter could be called the Us. vs. Protectorate of New Zeland. The point was that it can work how you want, and a bit of "case law" gives some wonderful background flavor. And if you change your mind on something later then you can always have the ACLU win a supreme court case overturning Arizona, maybe on the equal protection clause. A dash of knowledge and a generous helping of BS can turn this into a fun thing for the campaign. There is a precedent for lawyers with superpowered secret identities.

Re: Question: Multiform Limitation Didnt think about burnout/jammed. Thats an interesting idea. I would probably go with burnout, and possibly at a slightly reduced limitation value if its back after an hour of being burnedout. Burnedout/jammed powers should be useless for the "rest of the adventure", whatever the heck that means. But again, it would be easier with the specific details of when and why the character gets stuck in a single form.

Re: Question: Multiform Limitation Its hard to say exactly what limitation to give this without some more details of what happens to your character. Rather than trying to fudge another limitation to fit I would use the Limited Power limitation. As to what value, its sounds like this falls under the Conditional Power part of Limitied power, i.e. power does not work under certain circumstances. For a -1 these circumstances should be "very common" and you should be unable to use the power about "half the time", according to the rules. To get any limitaiton at all you should not be able to use the power about 1/4 of the time, which is worth -1/4 according to the Limited Power description. If its any more rare than that, its not enough of a limitation to save points, and falls under special effect. T.H.

Re: "Ya better talk Oculon, or you'll get the spike!" (A Super law question) Quite true, but the Arizona test is that the defendant understands the consequences of the verdict at trial, ie. that they could be imprisoned or executed if found guilty. The point of Arizona is that you cant plead diminished capacity because of cultural differences. In fact, the idea that I had in mind when I wrote that one up was that in the hellish neitherworld dimension that Lord Chaos came from his activites in demolishing several square blocks downtown was a "normal" activity. He's a big stinkin' demon. But Arizona establishes a doctirine that visitors to earth can be held to our standards, provided they meet the other aspects of the test. But I understand what you are saying. The point that I see lawyers jumping on is the "volitional" clause. Is an android volitional? How about a summoned creature under the control of another? But I am sure more case law would evolve as these issues came before the court. Thats the way the system works, at least in theory. I have also been wondering what happens to the things that dont meet the Arizona test. If you capture a raging demonic killing machine, but it can't undertand or communicate with humans, what do you do with it? Turn it over to animal control? Call the SPCA? There would have to be some government organization to deal with such creatures when they arise. Does a defendant who does not meet the Arizona test still have any civil rights? You could go on and on with this. Its kind of fun. If anyone out there can get their hands on an old 4th edition Dark Champions, there was a whole chapter of this stuff, plus some usefull information on law for the vigilante hero campaigns. T.H.

Re: Ring Ring go away....

Re: "Ya better talk Oculon, or you'll get the spike!" (A Super law question)

Re: Request for plot ideas for an Anarchist villain team. When I first read the title of the post my dyslexia was kicking in hard and I thought it said Antichrist villian team. I had this great idea about Pat Robertson's head exploding on national television, but I guess it wont work here. Deep Sigh. T.H.

Re: "Ya better talk Oculon, or you'll get the spike!" (A Super law question) In the tradition of of 4th edtion Dark Champions, make up some case law. A vast amount of procedural law comes from court decision, not any legislature. It can work however you want. I would say that the Government in a world with superhumans would devise special ways to doing them in, and find legal justifications for doing so. Case law would probably evolve along with the process to set the guidelines. Some examples: U.S. vs. Mark "Rasputin" Tomalov. The defendant, a metahuman with immense abilites to regenerate physical damage, was sentenced to death for several murders. His appeal to the Supreme Court was based on the "Cruel and Unusual Punishment" clause, saying that any method of execution that would actually kill him would be long and agonizing before he died. Mr. Tomalov had previously in his criminal career survived falling into an active lava flow, being fed through a comerical meat grinder, taking over 100 gunshot wounds at one time, and being thrown into a vat of strong acid restrained in a strait jacket. (Mr. Tomalov had many enemies.) The court agreed, staying the execution until the state could demonstrate a method of execution that would be reasonably quick and humane. After 6 years on death row Mr. Tomalov was executed by disintergration using a device built by the famous science hero Captain Texas. The device is now stored at a federal corrections facility in Houston, should it be needed again. Us. vs the entity know as "Ghost Dancer." Ghost Dancer, a non-human energy entity (See Arizona Vs. Lord Chaos for trials of non-human entities) was conviced of murder and sentenced to death. His court appointed legal team appealed, sighting the fact that Ghost Dancer claimed to be in fact already dead, and in any case would be unaffected by any conventional means of execution. The Supreme Court rejected the appeal, sighting the Tomalov decision, saying that non-standard means of execution could be applied to superhuman and non-human defendants, provided they were no more cruel than absolutly necessary to destroy the being in question. The state ultimatly employed a known metahuman spiritualist known as "Sun Eagle", who was able to permanently disperse the energy that composed the "Ghost Dancer" entity via a traditonal Kiowa ritual. And so forth. Have fun with it. In a Champions campaign superhuman law can work however you want it to.

Re: Got the Metal in the Meat I guess others have already said as much in this thread, but If it was going to run this I would do the following: Pre-design all available cyberware. (But be open to player requests and suggestions.) Make characters pay points for it at character creation. There has to be some limitation of what kind of cyber they are packing. Other games tradtionally have done with by setting a dollar cost per item and limiting starting funds. It doesn't cost that much for Hero characters to be filthy rich. If you blow 15 points on wealth you end up with 150 (or 1500) pts in cybergear in your body. This would be unbalancing. Further modification during play would require both cash/resources and points. The points keep things balanced, and the cash/resources keep things making sene "in game". Your street urchin should not show up with ripper claws just because he saved up some xp. He needs the money to buy them off the black market, or needs to sign on with some kind of corporation/military/crime boss, etc. that can set him up. I would have non-implanted gear be purchased with cash, not point. This kind of equipment tends to come and go in these types of games. Things like dermal armor and superhuman speed have a lasting impact on the abilities of the character, one that can not be quickly or easily matched by another. Its much easier to pick up some guns and a armored jacket than to have your eyes replaced with an artifical camera system that includes poison dart projectors. Just my .02

Re: Character growth potential and speed questions Welcome to the community. I hope you like Hero. Another thing to consider in awarding experience is the type and level of campaign you are playing. Three xp to a 50 pont heroic is a huge deal, its a new skill at resonable competence, or a meaningful increase in a stat. For a 500 point super its not quite so exciting. If it takes three play session for Captian Firepower just to get one more d6 of energy blast he might not feel like he is improving much. The same amount of experience for a lower powered heroic campaign could mean that the charcter has learned to fly jet aircraft at a professional level of skill, which would probably seem like a huge deal to them. Just be sure to fit xp awards to your campaign style. And as Gojira mentioned, players who load up on skill levels can advance their combat values rather quickly. Hero can be almost to open ened at times. Its usually a good idea to set firm guidelines for combat values, max damage and defense, and similar things, and raise these slowly over time. If your martial artist buys 10 skill levels with his first 30 xp his hand to hand combat abilites can get a little out of wack with other characters in the campaign. T.H.

Re: Linked or Multiple Power Attack? In general, I would say that Linked vs MPA is determined by how you can use the powers. If one or more of the powers can ony be used with the other, then you are looking at Linked. If they are both independant, then its a MPA. HA is a bit of a special case, however. HA, by definition, is used to raise you strength damage in a HTH attack. The rules for HA specifically state that it cant be used by itself. It MUST be used with a combat maneuver of some kind, so I would not think that linked would give you any points, its sort of already built in to the power. Also, the rules for HA also say that if you define your HA as energy, (with GM permission) then your strength damage is also energy damage for that attack. So, If you want to do both damage types in one attack, then I would buy an Energy Blast, No range. If you could use it buy itself with using a Str based combat maneuver its not Linked, its a MPA. If it can only be used when you are already making a Str attack then you could get a limitation out of it. However, If you could use it with any Str based combat maneuver, I think it might be a custome limitation, rather than linked. I would probably give you (-1/4) for it, if you could use it any time you did strength damage. T.H.

Re: Powers requiring prereq's... I would not allow any limitation for this, because you would define the requirement as a power or skill that you already had, I assume. This does not limit you in any way. You might look at "Requires a Skill Roll" as a limitation. You would have to buy the skill, and make your roll for the power to work. Its a good way to represent power "tricks", like a martial artist who can focus his Chi to perform "superhuman" feats. But simply saying that the power requires great training and focus is more of a special effect/origin than a limitation. T.H.

Re: Ring Ring go away....

Re: Ring Ring go away....