Ki-rin

Re: Normal Human Nope. I do not have 5ER.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong WTF did I -ever- say that? Never.

Re: Normal Human

Re: Normal Human

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong 100% Agree.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong Eh? I thought I did give you a concrete answer. Rest assured there was no "making it up as you go along." That's usually not fair to players IMHO.

Re: Normal Human

Re: Normal Human Absolutely. But then the player has paid CP, and used the appropriate SFX, to properly deal with the situation. A guy in PA, even a "normal" guy, is not standing around in nothing but tights (or even chail mail in the case of Capt America) when the building falls on him. Iron Man most definitely has been undamaged by having buildings fall him. Or having thrown tanks pile driver him into the earth dozens of feet. Or being hit point blank with tank rounds. Does anyone really want to claim Tony Stark would survive any of these sort of events without his armor on?

Re: Normal Human

Re: Normal Human That's fine. 1= said character is not always in their PA. 2= even when they are in their PA, that's still a "human of ordinary flesh and blood" inside that armor. They PA may give them all sorts of abilities. It -certainly- will greatly increase their survivability under many circumstances. But the person inside is still essentially "a soft squishy in a hard shell". Knights got bruises and shattered joints or limbs by some blows that did not destroy their armor. Cops may survive getting shot because they are wearing armor. But they often get -hurt- even if the armor stops the bullet. A super using PA should not have to deal with these SFX issues because they have not chosen to get points for using this SFX. A NCM hero using PA should.

Re: Normal Human This is easy. Use whatever stats represent peak human genetics in your world (if they are not 20's, then you will need to redefine NCM to that maximum. I use 25 in my game worlds). Then throw in a few Heroic Talents. Then buy mondo amounts of Skills and MA. Toss a few General Levels in for icing. ...and you get the Batman that even Supes does not want to F with. (Because, as has been demo'd many times in the canonical material, Bruce -can- and -will- defeat Clark if allowed to dictate the circumstances of the ecounter and is given enough time to prepare.)

Re: Normal Human Damn straight it covers the SFX of what NCM means compared to being a super. A non super character =CAN NOT= have the appropriate defenses to withstand a direct-to-the-body hit of a skyscraper falling on them. EVER. A being that can survive having tons of building collapse directly on his body is by definition not human unless you can show me a RW counter example of exactly that. Normal humans can get lucky and survive because the Twin Towers collapsed -around- them rather than -on- them. But if a skyscraper falls directly on the body of a being defined as being of normal flesh and blood, they are DEAD. Period.

Re: Normal Human False. This debate over NCM keeps ignoring the very germane fact that you have to GM the SFX properly of any chosen effect if you are doing your job properly as a HERO GM. That is very much the HERO RAW. EB whose SFX are fire are GMed differently from those whose FX are water. Or ice. Or collections of rocks. Or sand. Or ... So if your chosen effect is "I'm a being of normal flesh and blood commonly in situations where the environment is defined and dominated by the presence of supers.", then -all- the consequences of that SFX have to be properly GMed. Twin Towers collapse on super while they are in the basement. They are very likely STUNNED, KO'd, etc. Twin Towers collapse on Bruce or Steve while they are in the basement. Unless Bruce or Steve gets very lucky (and the building doesn't actually collapse -on- him), he is DEAD. Super enters burning building to save trapped civilians. Not much in the way of after effects for the super. Steve Rogers enters burning building to save trapped civilians. The next day Steve has smoke inhalation just like the other (NYFD NPC) fire fighter at the breakfast table. (Actual example from Capt America title just before Bernie Rosenthal figures out his Secret ID). These issues have -nothing- to do with the characters stats, skills, or powers; and -everything- to do with the player's choice to apply the NCM SFX to their character. They pay for the game -mechanic- bonus in game -play- by my GMing their chosen SFX properly.

Re: Normal Human All of this is handled by making the consequences of the requested SFX be logically consistent during game play. Characters that choose to be "normal" in a supers campaign are stating up front that they are more fragible in some ways compared to the average super in the campaign... ...and that they want it to matter to some degree in game play. This is no different than buying a spell or superpower with certain SFX related Ads and Limits on it. The game mechanic result is that you get to build certain things certain ways possibly cheaper than otherwise. The game -play- result is that the consequences of your chosen SFX, -all- of them, are going to have an impact in game play. A character with NCM effectively gets to buy more for their CP than one w/o. That's the good. The bad are the implications of the SFX chosen (you are a "normal" human of what we ITRW would recognize as ordinary flesh and blood.) on how high your stats can go and how fragible you are in some ways compared to the the average super during game play.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong Occam's Razor. If there is more than one way to get a result, the simpler way is usually superior. The more complicated a HERO construct you make, the more likely it is to be game imbalanced. Also, many of the worst rules abuses I've seen are negated by the simple expedient of making the game mechanic(s) involved logically consistent with the SFX.

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong 1= that means your NND MM does BODY no matter what the circumstances are. Very much an Advantage. OTC, what I'm describing are much rarer circumstances. 2= HOWEVER, an NNDA that always does BODY is a blatent violation of one of the tenets of HERO- that NNDA are STUN specialists. As a GM, I'd be looking -very- carefully at such a construct request. You are entitled to your opinion. Since I don't have 6 ed yet, I certainly have made no claims to know those rules. And let's remember HERO system is not supposed to be a babysitter nor a dictator.

Re: Well, we haven't talked about Killing Attacks in a while... Based on responses to Sean's poll, I have another idea. NA do STUN + BODY NNDA do STUN KA do BODY

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong NNDs don't do BODY unless a= their SFX is such that the attack could have that consequence. b= they do enough NND damage in one shot. As someone said earlier, ITRW there are no NND attacks. It's an abstraction that makes sense under certain circumstances. Violate the premises of those circumstances, and it no longer makes sense. Note also that if I'm honoring the logical implications of SFX to this degree, I'm doing it as much as I can in other ways as well. Players have always liked to buy KA and NND (and put all sorts of other Ads on attacks) precisely because they want "to bypass all that pesky PD and ED". This approach of honoring SFX as logically and consistently as possible helps maintain game balance IME.

Re: Normal Human

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong qed

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong

Re: fair cost for strength that isn't strong The only "house ruling" I'm doing is in making the HERO system as logically consistent as possible. Let's pretend I make a grisly wall out of dead but physically undamaged humans. Clearly, this is "structural material" that I can Blow Through just as I can any other wall. Then be more grisly and make the humans comatose instead of dead. I submit that physics wise nothing should change. We have now established that Blow Through makes sense when applied to bodies. NND is clearly a game mechanic just like every other form of HERO damage. There's no such thing as ND, KD, or NND ITRW. Just damage that impairs the functioning or structure of something, and for living systems the pain such can cause. (and it is certainly possible to do great harm -without- causing pain. Chemical burns from bases will eat to the bone without you feeling a thing in the process.) Now let's deal with NNDs that are based on the application of force (as opposed to that are poisonous gasses or some other non force based SFX). Some involve causing pain instead of damage. (grips like yonkyo) Some involve disrupting the nerve clusters at a pressure point so as to impair the proper working of the body in that area. (nerve strikes and things like "hitting your funny bone") Some involve interfering with or impairing the physical workings of a nonmuscular system. (choke holds and joint locks, even small ones like nikkyo) What all of the above have in common is that they are attacks that if performed with too much force can become physically and structurally damaging. Performed with too much force, all of these attacks can cripple or destroy the target area. If the target area is something like the neck, that means killing someone. I use the Blow Through rules for NND attacks based on certain SFX to better simulate this reality.

Re: Normal Human Lucius, NCM was the standard RAW way to differentiate heroic characters from super heroic ones. Changing the name of the DisAd to "merely Human" is "merely symantics". Tomato Tomahto. Potato Potahto. (Let's call the whole debate off.) Not being able to swim is not a DisAd in a desert campaign. It definitely is as a sailor in an Age of Sail campaign. As to your challenge. Pick any situation where you need a primary stat of 40 or a figured stat based on primary stat that high, and you have a situation where a NCM human basically can't succeed (or in some cases, survive) unless they are extraordinarily lucky. Because HERO is often used to simulate a sort of cartoon physics where people are considerably less fragile than they are ITRW, it's fairly common to forget just how unrealistic HERO can be in this regard. This is true even in Heroic HERO campaigns. It is especially true in Superheroic campaigns. But even in HERO, what is a passing annoyance or inconvenience for a superhero is often =deadly= to a "merely heroic" character. If a player chooses to play a hero in a superhero campaign, they have chosen to put themselves at greater hazard in an already dangerous profession. That's a DisAd. NCM is merely the game mechanic we use to quantify that DisAd. It is no more or less "accurate" a simulation of all of the myriad ways a being of ordinary flesh and blood differs from a super than any other game mechanic in HERO is "accurate" at whatever that mechanic is simulating. Making that simulation as accurate or logically consistent as we want while still making sure we all have fun (this is a game after all) is up to -us-, not the HERO system. HERO is our tool. Not the other way around. In this case, the effect that needs to be simulated is the DisAd that "normal" humans get seriously injured or die far more easily IRL than supers do in HERO supers campaigns. They also have other physical and mental limitations that supers don't. NCM is intended to model that. We as people get to choose how accurately we want to model any effect by how much we "sweat the details" . Often those details are things that we as players and GMs must impose above and beyond any immediate mechanic if we want to simulate a given effect accurately enough. That true of every game mechanic ever made for every system ever made. Not just HERO.

Re: Normal Human *shrug* and that somehow makes it a -bad- thing? The whole point of HERO is conceptual flexibility within a balance tested point based cost system. I actually do see what you mean pretty darn clearly. But you seem to missing the point that what makes Batman "Batgod" in his JLA appearances is not that he's been "pimped" to superhuman power levels. It is exactly that his being a "mere mortal" is never more than a temporary disadvantage. The DC Trinity is Superman, Wonderwoman, and Batman exactly because he does not let the fact that his body is "merely human" stop him from doing whatever he can to out-think, out-prepare, and out-fight whoever his opponent is. Even Clark and Diana if it comes down to it. He is utterly ruthless in both his use of himself and others, even if the others are demi-gods, in accomplishing his chosen goal. ...and his goals are always what he feels is best for Humanity. No matter what the cost to himself. In stark contrast, the Batman books dwell far more on Batman having human foibles and various physical and psychological weaknesses (Bane would never have out-thought or out-fought the JLA Batman.) In one "campaign", Batman is a "normal human" who does not let that get in the way of him doing whatever he can to be most effective. In the other, Batman has Physical and Psychological Limitations. Including NCM.