Max Callahan

My one thing is regeneration. The 5th ed way of doing it as healing with a lot of advantages, and a lot of disadvantages means that any disadvantages I add to it doesn't change the final value of the power significantly. Basic 1 body per turn regen 7 points, regen once per hour 5 points, regen once per day, still 5 points. The part of this that aggravates me is that when a power has a set of fixed advantages and disadvantages and is defined as a "talent" the talents real cost becomes its new base cost and you can then advantage or disadvantage it from the new base cost, but regeneration doesn't work like that.

The somewhat insane method my group used for a while was a stun multiplier of 2d6/2 -1 (yes this does mean our stun multipliers often ended in .5) It gives you a good solid 2.5 average stun multiplier, and has the advantage of increasing the number of possible stun results, but does pretty much mean everyone needs a calculator.

There's an event in the world's Strongest mans competion called the car carry. Here is a description of one such event. The last event on Saturday night was the Car Carry. The course was 80 feet long for the fastest time. The car was a modified Volkswagon weighing 815 lbs. (369.6 kg) A portion of the roof and floor were removed and the car was fitted with shoulder straps to simulate a Super Yoke-type of event. This event was also very awkward and not an event that can be practiced for easily. Only 4 of the 16 competitors were able to complete the Car Carry course. Derek Boyer, originally from the Fiji Islands and now representing Australia, showed his determination and "Island Power" in finishing and posted a time of 56.87 seconds, placing 4th in the event. Schoonveld carried the car across the finish line in 52.09 seconds and placed 3rd. "The Viking", Svend Karlsen of Norway, a favorite in this event was brilliant and crossed the finish line in 30.85 seconds. But by far, the most impressive performance in an event over the entire two-day competition would have to go to Chad Smith of Texas in this, the Car Carry. Chad has often exhibited extreme power and speed in yoke events, but would he continue with an awkward 800-plus pound Volkswagon? The answer was "yes" and he astounded the crowd with the "unheard of" time of 21.78 seconds. This was 9 seconds faster than the world-class time posted by Karlsen. It was an amazing show of strength and speed. text quoted from http://www.strength-athletics.com/caribbean/article.html Jouko Ahola holds the world record for this event. Car-carrying world record 1996 444kg (978 lb.) 27.6 m (90.5 ft.) http://www.dlc.fi/~gold-cam/jokke.html

I had started toying with a Linear Lift STR mod for a Low fantasy Viking game I was preparing to run. I was looking at a 10kg per point of STR lift. The problem I quickly hit was that the primary ranged weapon in the game was going to be the spear. And with a system where STR 0 lifts 0 kg throwing range breaks. Just something to keep in mind if a) throwing distances are a major point in your game, or you are going to be dealing a lot with characters that are going to have a negative STR (fairies and what not).

Unless you take encumberance into account. Lets consider a 0 point normal (heroic), with 10 STR lifting 100 kg they are at -5 to DVC and DEX rolls, and thus -2 DVC, they take -8 to Movement and thus have -2 inches of running, and burn they burn 4 extra end per turn, and since their 4 REC is covering their 4 end use from their STR 1 minute later they are at 0 END. And Encumberance is a basic combat modifer it's not an optional rule.

I'm prepping a Fantasy Hero game using the side bar rules for Bows and Crossbows. To allow for more heroic archery I want to have a talent that removes the extra time limitation on bows (actually I'm thinking 2 levels of talent one for full phase archery and one for attack action archery). My problem is how much should this cost as my first answer of make the player pay the cost of the difference between a bow built with extra phase and a bow build without extra phase ends up only costing 1 CP, and that seems too cheep (real cost 9 vs real cost 10). My second answer, making the player pay 3/4 of the active cost of the bow (since the extra phase is -3/4) ends up costing 26 points which is way to much. What is the correct way to build this?

Re: Conquest Unfortunatly this is actually a re-creationists nightmare The mail suit in question was a modern recreation piece, made in the modern fashion where the rings are simply bent into circles. An actual piece of armor would have consisted of rings that were riveted closed which would have not come apart like their demonstration suit. The were in effect trying to pass off a costume as actual armor. Also they were demonstrating the mail with out the proper padding underneath, and it was placed on a wooden cross of questionable strength, which being rigid, would not behave the same as if it were on a real body. The real problem with all this is having caught Conquest being so very wrong about a subject I know about I now can't trust them when they talk about a topic I don't know about. For historically accurate period combat info I highly recommend the nice people at The Association for Renaissance Martial Arts http://www.thehaca.com their videos page http://www.thehaca.com/Videos/NTCvids/testingbladesandmaterials.htm has a wonderful collection of clips of weapons being used against actual armor over actual hunks of meat

As I understand it there will be a DVD release of Saint Seiya (under it's real name even) including the original japanese audio with subtitles available Oct 21.

And in French Speaking countries Saint Seiya was known as Les chevaliers du zodiac.

At risk of draging this thread off topic I'll point out that the 'Avengers" appearance in Authority was after Waren Ellis left the book. (Now as to Ellis killing off the Justice Leauge in Stormwatch, Planetary, and then again in Planetary thats another story).

I'd like to see an armor chart that is more than just Cloth DEF 1 Leather DEF 3 Chain DEF 5 Plate DEF 7 I'd like to see armor write ups that model things like: Maille armor is great against slashing weapons, ok against piercing weapons, and poor against impact weapons. Plate armor is lighter than scale armor for the same level of protection. A Maille hauberk is one size fits many, but a good suit of plate has to be custom fitted. and Armor get hot to wear. And a note for GreyGuardian, I saw that episode of Conquest also. The "look how useless maille armor is" demo was wrong to the point that _NOTHING_ that show says can be accepted as true. The maille hauberk used in that demo was a modern reconstruction, the rings in it were just wire bent into a circle. In an actual suit of period maille armor each individual link would have been riveted closed and thus would have not come apart like that from the axe blow. Also an actual hauberk would have been worn over a padded arming doublet, giving some protection from the mace (not to mention that the mace was being used on a fixed (and probably brittle) piece of wood, not a flexible human body which would have moved with the blow instead of breaking). They also claimed that people fought with 15 pound swords, which is just as wrong.