Ki-rin

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences You are missing the the +very+ relevant point here. Ads and Dis Ads are in HERO to provide more flexibility to the underlying basic system. If that basic system itself were more flexible, then there would be less need to create more complicated constructs to adequately simulate things. The more complicated the construct, the more likely it is to be A Problem. The Ads ALVD, NND, and the Does Body modifier to them are band-aids applied to the grossly unrealistic damage system in an attempt to mask/fix a fundamental underlying problem. IMHO, it hasn't worked and the side effects of the cure have been worse than the disease. NNDs and NNDs that Do Body, and the issues underlying and regarding why we have them, >are< the real issue of this thread. The "real reason" you want NNDs that Do Body because there is currently no other way to simulate the effect you want with what you feel is the appropriate "reality" of effect and lethality using the current HERO system. AVLD, NND, and AVLD/NND Do Body provably lead to game balance problems. They are poorly defined Ads (particularly the "what is the defense and correct frequency of the defense" part) that lead to systems abuse. They also don't always do a particularly good job of simulating certain desired effects such as VX gas. Therefore system tweaks involving them a) do not attack the real problems, and almost inevitably lead to game balance issues. HERO's concepts of a) non resistant and resistant defenses, and damage being split up into an easy to heal component (STUN) and a hard to heal component (Body) are brilliant. Unfortunately, the original systems design did not take the idea far enough for all the uses we are now trying to apply it to. AVLD and NND exist at all because the basic defense system treats all attacks as being external threats attempting to get through some form of "skin" to damage something. The basic system does not address attacks that bypass a "skin" so AVLD and NND were invented as band-aids. Over ~20 years the issue has remained problematic. What we need is to make less assumptions in the defense system and free ourselves from the idea that all atacks are against "skin". Then we would not need AVLD nor NND. ALVDs and NNDs that Do Body exist because the basic defense system is not flexible enough and too heavily weighted towards causing easy to defend against and easy to recover from damage. A more flexible basic damage system that allows the base lethality of an attack to be more tunable fixes that and allows us to get rid of these hacks that have been the cornerstone of many play balance problems. IMHO, we need could better simulate a wider variety of damage causing phenomena more cleanly and safely if we a) allowed STUN and Body causing potential to be defined independantly of each other and extended the non resistant and resistant defense concepts beyond simply "skin". I'm not yet sure what the best way is to this, but it's clear to me that it needs doing. One thing this thread has convinced me of so far is that Does Body _is_ too cheap. The munchkin constructs have convinced me that NND should not be allowed to do Body. It should only be allowed on AVLD. AVLD should be a (+2) Ad and Does Body should be a (+2) modifier to AVLD. That's a band-aid not a fix, but it makes these munchkin constructs expensive enough to help slow down their adoption.

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences The first problem is that the base damage system has you either a) take ~6x more STUN than Body, or take The GDA (God D@mn Awful) STUN Lottery of ~(16/6)x= ~2+2/3 more STUN than Body. Many deadly attacks ITRW don't stun you, they kill you before you even feel it. ...But using the base HERO damage system you effectively can't simulate an attack that kills but almost never stuns. "This is meet and good for we are simulating the Heros of yore, not the casual deadly violence of the modern world..." ...whoops... HERO is supposed to be a toolkit for simulating _anything_ now, not just pulp four color comics of the Silver Age. We need a better damage system given the increased range of things we now want to simulate. Better would be to have a base damage system that allows you to buy the amount of STUN and Body done independanty of each other when you create the attack (and to banish constructs like the STUN lottery to the extinction they deserve). Such a damage system would be more in keeping with HERO's "toolkit" nature, simplify the system for creating more accurate simulations of any given attack, and more easily allow GMs to enforce genre-specificity without resorting to complications or fiat as often. As to the specific question regarding nerve gas: Reading up on nerve gases like VX and then comparing them to Biological agents and other military ordinance makes it unclear that an NND the Does Body is the "best" or "right" way to simulate a nerve gas. Nerve gases can be nasty, but so can many other gases, radiation, etc. Given that ITRW there are other weapons that are similarly fatal and similarly hard to recover from that we don't simulate as NNDs, let alone NNDs that Do Body, why is there a crying need to do so in this case? I suspect it's because "nerve gas" is a "spooky" term to most, so there's a temptation to make it worse that it really is in order to make it live up to the naive reputation. That's fine if that's what you want narratively or gaming wise. OTOH, simulation-wise nerve gas should be just as effective as our simulations of its peers as weapons (radiation, other mass bio-agents, etc), not less so or more so.

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences The BIG problem IMHO is that standard HERO combat is not deadly enough. Allowing AVLD and AwNND to Do Body is putting a band-aid on the problem (or Programming By Side-Effect for the programming folks out there). The combat system needs fixing. Once I started using variants of Hit Location, Wounding, and Bleeding, as well as using ideas from GURPS most of the relentless hunt to find ways to do more effective damage per unit time in combat ended. The tricky part is making combat more logically consistent without making it slower than a slug or so deadly as to make it impossible to "simulate" the genre or tell the desired narrative. I'm still not completely happy and am always looking for improvements.

Re: Does Body, bypassing defences Agree 100%. Given how inferior _DC Heroes_ was in other ways to HERO, it seems kind of shameful we can't get this at least as well as they did. Disagree 100%. "the people" agitating for "a hot-house of sinister death" are actually a minority made up of Power Gamers and Rule Rapists. That they happen to be more vocal than the majority doesn't make them any larger of a demographic. Catering to Power Gamers and Rules Rapists would ruin HERO as a viable product in the long run. Again, 100% Agree.

Re: Should END be more? Was 2nd Edition essentially right? I vote with David Blue. I'll also note that one thing I did tend to do as a GM was make some things cost 1 END per 5 AP and others cost 1 END per 10 AP depending on how game-efficient certain AP are compared to others. As we all know, not all AP are created equal.

Re: Ten Best Superhero Martial Arts Good list. Gracie Jujitsu should be added to it. I agree with Dauntless' regarding Aikido on every point except one: I think it is very appropriate for a supers campaign. The MA in a supers campaign is constantly going to be dealing with overwhelmingly more powerful foes, and this is exactly Aikido's strong suit combat-wise.

Re: Idle Scalability Notion You either hand out more XP than I do, or have lower NCM than I do, or both.

Re: help with martial arts

Re: I'm Turnin' to Stone Another option for you: In Zelazny's _Dilvish, The Damned_ the act of turning Dilivish to stone turns his body to stone and transports his mind+spirit/soul to Hell. ...leading to the idea that while your body is an inanimate object, "you" are Somewhere Else...

Re: Idle Scalability Notion I've found it to be a reasonable House Rule or hack to give every character "Normal Concept Maximum" on everything: Chars, Ads, Dis Ads, skills, powers- the whole character concept. This reduces "out of concept" XP spending enormously. Spot Defense and other alien "feedback" XP spending happens much less.

Re: Medieval Wages More coolness! Even in a Medieval economy, prices fluctuate. The Law of Supply and Demand exists. The principle of Marginal Utility exists. Etc. The best any static price list can do is model an idealized stable state economy where goods and services have their "expected" availablity and value relative to each other. This is valid for about an instant. As soon as Trade starts happening, as soon as the environment (weather, politics, health issues, etc) is allowed to become dynamic prices start fluctuating. And should. Easier to obtain or less valued goods given the situation become less expensive. Harder to obtain or more valued goods given the situation become more expensive. Best place to start might be to figure out what a "typical" economy of a given size needs for goods and services per capita per day. Base your price list on this and then have guidelines as to how things change given certain factors.... ...hmmm. Might be an interesting piece of code to write.

Re: Flipped Die Rolls Just For The Record: My House Rule for Standard effect is that each 1d6 does 3.5 points of effect (I roll 50/50 if we are talking about an effect that multiples out to "x.5" So 1d6 => 3 + 50/50 chance of 4, 2d6 => 7, etc

Re: Character: Bêlit I'm with you 100%. She's not a "warrior-maid" (Valeria is much better described this way). She's a Leader, a Chief. She is more akin to King Arthur vs. Valeria being more akin to Sir Gawain. Leaders of warriors must have decent, not necessarily outstanding but decent, warrior skills. Else how can they effectively plan and use warriors? History is replete with the disasters that take place when those that lead in battle do not have enough familarity with the skills of those that are led. For Be'lit to have led warriors and seamen at the tactical level she did, she had to have passable levels of skill in those areas in addition to other stuff. What I think you're missing is that IMHO Marvel's interpetation of who Be'lit is from these passages is more on target than your original submission at the beginning of this thread. IMHO, yours is a subset, rather than a contradiction (except for minor things like making her shorter than she should be... ...although I suppose that could be seen the same way ), of Be'lit rather than correctly expressing her totality as well as Marvel did. As I said, I think a suitably tweaked version of Hierax's CS is probably the most accurate version of REH's Be'lit using HERO that I've seen so far. Far more than "no small skill". For someone as expert with a sword as Conan to be impressed (bearing in mind that he's probably 1 in a million skill-wise), Valeria had to be more than just "proficient." Conan sees and works with "proficient" all the time. Valeria had to be _expert_ with a sword to impress someone of Conan's sword skills. Valeria is a far more one-dimensional character than Be'lit. Her sword-skill, courage, and beauty were basically her whole story. OTOH, Be'lit was one of the most complex women Conan ever encountered in his life (may even be the most complex, but I think it's close.)

Re: Need Help With a Character Concept ...Up to a point. Once the cybs had attacked Earth with a battle fleet once, the demis made it quite clear that given the cybs prior actions, it would be considered an Act of War by the cybs to bring a fleet anywhere near Earth... ...and that the demi's would destroy it on sight.

Re: Medieval Wages Most Impressive. That's a serious amount of work. For a look at a game system where magic exists, yet it's +still+ a Medieval setting, take a look at Chaosium's _Pendragon_ (assuming it's still in print.)

Re: Character: Bêlit Hierax's is a Nice picture, and it indeed looks like the "traditional" 1970's version on Be'lit. As to the character, the Str of 15 is too high (8-10), Dex of 23 is too high (15-18), and so is the SPD of 5 (3-4). The other stats could indeed be in the given range. There's no evidence to support a Berserk Dis Ad, and I don't remember her being much of an archer. Certainly not as much as in the write up! I'd also get rid of the Deus Ex Machina "Conan's Co-Star shall not die" stuff... Other than that, I think Hierax's write up is reasonably on target. Including that 1.75m (5'9") is IMHO much closer to a reasonable height for her. 1.75m to 1.80m (5'9" to 5'11") seems dead on. THIS is a woman who could make a bunch of hard bitten warriors believe her to be an Instrument of The Divine... ...and need a very special man for a lifemate ...and make even a Conan consider her as a lifemate. Some short, diaphanous priestess/goddess impersonator without an imposing physical as well as emotional presence would never consider Conan as a lifemate, nor be considered as such by him. Good looking and good in bed are things that Conan takes for granted out of the women he sleeps with. There has to be far more than that to hold his attention for any length of time.

Re: UNITY 2010: A New Champions Campaign SERIOUSLY OT: Ummm, what is the "NGD"? And why would being elected President of it result in an assasination attempt?

Re: What's the most ridiculous PC you've ever been subjected to? Errr, YUCK?!

Re: Disposable Heroes C:NM ?? There was a recent JLA arc much like this when most of the main team went back in time (and evidently died) and Bats had to put together a "fill-in" JLA so that the JLA's normal baddies wouldn't run unchallenged. Might be worth reading for inspiration.

Re: Need Help With a Character Concept "book" very unfortunately. I wish he'd written some others in that universe. *sigh* So do I. So do I. Thankfully, it's fairly clear that as soon as another critter is of at least the same level of sentience as a human, they are protected by the terms of The Construct... The demis call for the defense of Earth is "The Construct has been Violated."

Re: Ten Commandments of Game Mastering With serious apologies to Monty Python's _The Holy Grail_ I hope... Good listTreb

Re: Character: Bêlit Bingo! That's the same as I recall in the official Marvel adaptation. And Marvel made a big deal out of the series being the "official" adaptation. More like priestess... ...of war and plunder. And a bloody hand-ons one at that (Tigress was just a bit self allusionary after all). IIRC, the major friction point that develops between Be'lit and Conan is that her bloodthirsty worship (of Odin by the time she dies IIRC) is a bit much for even our young barbarian. Besides, can you really see Conan, particularly a young Conan, being attracted to or by an intellectual, non physically capable passionate/fierce woman? Sex toy, maybe. Companion who will "rule the seas together" with her? No way. She had to more like him than not for such a thing to work. The lady had to be a warrior woman. Regadless of any other traits she definitely had. Side Note: I can't remember for sure, but wasn't it Be'lit that taught Conan to read?

Re: Character: Bêlit It's been 30+ years for me: remind me how Be'lit died in the books? EDIT: ...as for "not being a warrior woman", this is a woman who ended up in charge of an all male, cyncial batch of warriors. Exactly how do you think they had enough respect for her to follow her lead and command? It sure wasn't that they thought her a religious figure. And repressed sexual attraction only gets a woman so far. She had to have earned it by smarts and the proper application of force.

Re: Character: Bêlit The Robert E. Howard books and the Marvel Series of the 1970's and 1980's which filled in many of the unclear or undeveloped parts of the books. IIRC, the Marvel series was blessed by Howard and/or Howard's estate, making it just as "canon" as the books. Be'lit was caucasian, had black hair, was tall for a woman (taller than some of her male crew) but shorter than Conan. Conan was always depicted as being taller than most men who were not freaks of nature. Be'lit's pirate crew were depicted as being multi-racial but all male. Her first mate was a large (~Conan's size), bald, black guy who clearly worshipped the ground she walked on (so did the vast majority of her crew for that matter, many being slaves she had freed.). Conan meets her when Be'lit's superb tactics capture the ship he is on (I don't remember why Conan was on that ship.) During the battle part of the capture, Be'lit is shown as being very good with a cutlass (this gets shown a few more times in the Be'lit plot arc.) Be'lit and Conan have one unarmed HTH that is clearly pre mating testing behavior before they become a couple. Other than being unarmed, she doesn't hold back much. She's very fast, knows a few nasty HTH tricks, and Conan is clearly out-classed skill and speed-wise (but not Dex-wise, there they are close). But he's still Conan, and his larger size, outrageous (for a mortal) stats, and the fact that he's been fighting since he could walk, ultimately give him the victory. She has a nasty temper, a bit of a jealous/possesive streak, and is greedy and opportunistic enough that she takes chances she knows are unwise for potential financial gain. This last leads to a series of unwise and strategically poor decisions that ultimately end up being the cause of her death. ...and yes, she comes back from the dead as a spirit once to save Conan's life.

Re: Need Help With a Character Concept Me: "Demi's are omniverous and can even hunt. They can kill other sentients with brutal efficiency and absolutely no remorse. They just can't start a fight nor escalate one." The "hunting" in question was for food. As for "Hunting" as in the flip side of the Dis Ad, there are at least 4 very clear incidents in the book: a) a cyborg military unit which was part of invading ground forces was Hunted. And slaughtered with exception of a few witnesses left alive on purpose. The cyborgs as a whole had attacked, this unit had shown hostile intent, but had not yet attacked anyone. a member of the same unit had previously commited a personal act of nonlethal violence vs a non-demi normal (called "draffs" plural, "a draff" singular, ITB) and was captured by a demi, physically restrained and returned to cyborg command with an explicit warning that said cyb was no longer welcome on Earth. That cyb never did return to Earth. The individual incident was while the cybs were baiting the demis but before the outbreak of warfare. c) Again while the cybs were baiting the demis but before the outbreak of warfare, cyb commando units attempted to sabotage critical services in two of Earth's cities. in both cases demis killed the commandos once they had made the attempt (although the cybs started shooting at live targets as soon as the demis showed up to investigate the sabatoge attempts, so it's not clear what the demis could/would have done if the cybs had restricted themselves to attempts at property damage.) d) Once the entire cyb fleet was destroyed, the demis sent the (few) surviving cybs back to the their homeworld (called "Gates", I kid you not) with the explicit warning that given prior cyb actions that should another cyb fleet come within strike range of the Solar System, the demis would consider it an Act of War and respond with lethal force immediately without waiting for the cybs to make any other act. The point here is that The Construct is a complex moral code that I think might be a very interesting plot and campaign development device, but I need to model it clearly in game terms. And it's a big Dis Ad. The demis know before the cybs do what the cybs are going to do yet can't do or say anything provocative or more violent than the cybs do. Entire cities end up nuked that could have been saved had the demis been allowed to act faster. The demis do destroy ~15,000 cybs and their entire war fleet of 12 starships, but at the cost of about 1 +million+ demis and the aforementioned nuking. All of which could have been avoided if The Construct was less restrictive. One of the other interesting points alluded to in _Adiamante_ is that The Construct is not static. It can, has, and will evolve based on its effectiveness. Yet must remain true to its fundamental spirit of peace. It's noted that at least one of the demi philosophers will be spending decades after the events of the book trying to figure out how The Construct can evolve so as to remain The Construct yet allow the demis a better set of choices should a similar situation ever re-occur. ...And yes, I'm seriously thinking about running a campaign where this is the primary moral code of the "super" PCs.