Fox1

Re: Making Hero more deadly I've been thinking about doing that. But it's almost overkill, frankly I wouldn't expect them to encounter an attack that invoked the limit unless it was a plot device. Limit that doesn't limit sort of thing.

Re: Making Hero more deadly Not average, typical as in the assumed default for a superhero. And yes, there is a range. For example, in my Marvel *inspired* X-Men game: Angel: 7 rPD Banshee: 32 rPD Beast: 3 rPD Colossus armored: 25 rPD Cyclops: 7 rPD Emma Frost Telepath form: r7 PD, Diamond form: 25 rPD Gambit: 7 rPD with limited coverage of 12 rPD Havo: 7 rPD Iceman: 12 rPD Jubilee: 7 rPD Nightcrawler: 7 rPD Phoenix: 43 rPD Polaris: 37 rPD Pyslocke: 7 rPD Rogue: 16 rPD Shadowcat: 7 rPD Storm: 7 rPD Wolverine: 7 rPD Professor X: 3 rPD The 3 rPD are from combat luck. The 7 rPD are from a combination of 3 points of combat luck and 4 points from costume- typically not covering the head. If it wasn't for the fact that forcefields are 100% resistant, I would like have somewhat lower resistant values for a few of the characters listed (Banshee, Polaris, Phoenix).

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage As I've noted before, an Elephant's skull is a very thick honeycomb, filled with fluid. The modern elephant gun takes advantage of this as it allows a nice shock wave to transmit to the brain even if your aim is a little off- effectively stunning the creature. However a elephant's head is huge, and the brain not as huge (double the size of ours I think...). So it's still very easy to not get close enough. I've read accounts of a elephant being head shot 5 times before it finally went down. And other accounts of one getting back up after it was assumed dead, something could provide a less than pleasant result for the over confident hunter. Thus the safe action after a head shot is a follow up heart/lung shot, or two or three. Actually I know a guy who did fire a LAW into a elephant, one of asia ones I'd admit. Vaporize? No. But it was raining elephant chunks a huge distance away. Course that may have been in large part due to the ammo supplies it was hauling... However I take exception to the your statement about the game mechanics. I use a weapon vs. total damage necessary to *kill* (not destroy, that means too many different things to different people) method in HERO, and I can effectively duplicate a elephant hunt with either spears or elephant guns or LAWs for that matter without issue.

Re: Making Hero more deadly

Re: Making Hero more deadly Agreed. GM's control the how and what may be purchused. Just don't purchuse high resistent defenses.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage But it's not a small bullet, it's a huge bullet in the world of bullets. Not at all the kind that your post indicated you thought on par with those used to kill people. Basically you were giving an example of just the concept you were trying to counter. That's what stuck me as so funny. I think at this post we've breaten the dead elephant enough. Let's call it quits, I'm sorry for laughing at your post. Sadly, that wouldn't work. Or rather, wouldn't work if you wanted to represent something like killing elephants. There are basically two ways of killing a living creature through the application of kinetic energy. One is by a vital location hit (brain/spine is best although heart/lungs are good too) and that on a elephant requires an elephant level weapon if you want any degree of safety. Basically, to quickly kill big you need big. The other is just by bleeding it to death. Much slower, but it works. To this end even low-damage low-penetration weapons like thrown spears work just fine although they have to be used in numbers if you want to kill it in a reasonable amount of time. There are reports of hunters even jumping on the critters and taking a light axe to them, it was said to be an effective if highly dangerous method. Just upping DEF removes the second option from play. Basically BODY functions fine for both conditions IF you don’t' treat direct BODY damage as cumulative (i.e. only use it for determining impair/disable and for bleeding totals) and IF you apply good bleeding rules and IF you don't overdue it (which HERO has a habit of doing with its BODY values).

Re: Book recommendation for guns?

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage I'd answer you, but I realize that you haven't really asked the question. All you're doing is venting. If you really want the answer to that, give it a couple days and ask again. I'm done wasting my time on people who a) don't know what they are talking about but still insist on talking and who are looking for nothing more than a fight. Edit: What the hell. I go ahead, there may be some here that actually want to know. The statement is stupid when viewed in context. It's a give that a small projectile can kill a human, so it should be a given that a small projectile can kill elephants. The implied reason for making the statement is that an elephant gun does not fire a significantly larger projectile than a weapon used to kill a human would, i.e. size does not matter. This implied meaning given the context is absurd in the extreme. Comparing weapons of comparable effectiveness (say 22 Short vs. human and .458 win mag vs. elephant) we find that elephant gun has a impact area (directly related to the wound channel) 450% that of the human level weapon. The mass advantage is even more significant coming at at 1700%. The energy difference has already been well pointed out, energy used in penetrating that huge amount of muscle and bone already noted. In short, he referenced a huge freakn' weapon in a statement saying that size doesn't matter. Size matters.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage For the common head shots, the total density of the bone is actually less than that of a human given the honeycomb like construction of the elephant skull. The concept of dense flesh having a signficant impact is also false. It's pure depth all the way requiring you to reach thru 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 FEET of muscle and bone compared to a human where 12" of penetration allows you to blow thru limbs on the way to a vital organ. Now there is a significant bone layer in the elephant skull that needs to be dealt with. But that also exists in humans for weapons of the same relative effectiveness. Just like a hit by a .22 short on the human skull can be deflected, an off angle hit on the elephant can have the same result. Now if you want to represent mass in the game as DEF, you can do that. In fact using DEF to represent a large creature's resistance to minor wounds is likely a good idea. But to claim that the size of the target doesn't matter in *reality* is a mark of self-created justification producing ignorance and wrong headed conflicts. And calling an *elephant* a small weapon who's size doesn't matter is just simply laughable.

Re: If you hate Killing Attacks, how would you replace them?

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage And here I thought we had moved on, ghost-angel even went back and edited out the line that caused me to make the post you object to.

Re: If you hate Killing Attacks, how would you replace them?

Re: Double Knockback, How do you find it?

Re: If you hate Killing Attacks, how would you replace them? Page 95 of Dark Champions is at least one reference.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage I'm sorry, but you're... funny. And so classic in today's world. You're like the Sicilian in the Princess Bride, the word you using mean doesn't mean what you think it means- and it funny watching you say it besides. Really ghost-angel, this isn't rocket science. People are a given size, what sort of guns are used to kill people? Elephants are much larger, what sort of guns are used to kill elephants? A look over a few weapon stats will show you the following truism: Guns used to kill elephants are much bigger than the guns used to kill people. That's why they are called *elephant guns*.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage Oh I know elephant guns exist. I'm just laughing at someone who has no clue whatever about the actual reality of them and how they relate to whole family of weapons. It's like a blind man having been told of color attempting to tell Leonardo that the Last Supper would look better with more reds. You're are just funny. Clueless and funny.

Re: Double Knockback, How do you find it? The default in the rules is to always go with the specific power if presented. Ego Blast is a presented power. If no specific method is present, you go with the most expensive possible option. Really, all just HERO 101

Re: Double Knockback, How do you find it? Like everything else in HERO, this perception is likely to be more due to how you run the game and Construct characters than it is the actual pricing structure. For example, the very fact that you would allow the other options you list is a problem- the rules specify that given two ways of building an effect, you should by default require the more expensive one.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage Huge critters certainly exist in my campaigns. Very rarely as PCs. The primary reason I've avoided any problem along the lines you describe is already presented up on my website: see Miscellaneous Rules -> Hit Location and Damage. BODY damage is not cumulative in my campaign, thus 8 hits for 1 BODY each does not equal a single 8 BODY hit in any meaningful respect. I've never understood why HERO thought it wise to treat BODY like D&D hit points. Didn't even believe it did until years after I started playing it. Thus under my house rules BODY functions as a pure damage threshold in my campaign, not as hit points. If you don't do more than half BODY+ in a single attack, the effect is painful and causes bleeding/stun, but is in no other way significant. Bleeding under some cases could present a danger, however large creatues already have some protection under my house rules and its easy enough to buy more if needed. Even without this simple 'fix', I don't consider the problem significant. There are a number of things HERO doesn't do well, and the best solution is often to either build around it on a individual basis (any number of powers with proper advantages and limits can protect amorpho-lad from being nicked to death if you wish) or set up your campaign stuff that the problem is avoided from the start (no amorpho-lad in the setting). Every game system has its strengths and weakness. Not all of them are suited for the same use as a result. HERO at it's heart is for over the top comic book action. Someone wanting more reality at the core of the game system than that should really seek a different game system.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage It's lonely at the top end of the bell curve. So very lonely. The point is that there is no system barrier to BODY = MASS with 2x or any other replacement progression. Any problems in this area are like most problems with HERO- self created.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

Re: If you hate Killing Attacks, how would you replace them? It is. 2 1/2d6K = 40 points 3d6-1K = 42 points 3d6K = 45 points.

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage The constant ability to redefine reality in order to increase one's own sense of realism is one of the interesting mindset of gamers that never ceases to amaze me. You guys tell yourself whatever you need to believe in order to use the rules in the book. I'll just play the game and have fun.