CBikle

Re: Storn Art from idea to full picture Year 3 I suggested this one last time, don't remember if it made the cut or not. 90's style Image/Wildstorm type character: Feathered mullet, shoulderpads, cybernetic eye, big guns, disproportionate (Leifeld-esque) arms and legs; exaggerated pose, etc. a Hanna-Barbera style Superhero: Like Space Ghost or Birdman. A super-vehicle like the 60's TV Batmobile or even something stupid like the Spider-Buggy or the Super-Mobile.

Re: The Trail of the Gold Spike Here's the cover.

Re: The Things I've Learned Playing a Var.Power-Pool User I completely agree.

Re: Martial Arts Question By the rules, the character doing the Passing Strike wouldn't take damage. You could always rule otherwise, but I don't think it'd be game-balanced (plus a nasty surprise for the martial artist). The SFX of "judo guy slamming into a brick wall" is one take, but another is "As he leaps over the brick, judo guy delivers spinning kick to the back of his head/knees". As a GM and player, my preference is to adhere to the rules for this kind of stuff (barring a creative use of power) rather than get into SFX vs. SFX debates (especially in the middle of a combat turn).

Re: How important is presentation... For better or worse, articulation and/or showmanship plays a big factor in getting a borderline unbalanced character past the GM (at least initially; often I've seen GMs-myself included, disallow aspects of a character once they [i've] seen the character "in action".). A PC could also always propose a character "like" the Martian Manhunter or Silver Surfer.

Re: Reasoning from effect or vice versa? The reasoning from effect thing becomes easier once you become familiar with the Hero System. At that point, it's just a matter of figuring out what power(s) to use with whatever combination of advantages and limits are deemed applicable for the power. Initially, you might decide that a speedster's high-velocity barrage of punches is a straight +10d6 hand attack and later on in the campaign you might decide that the power is better represented as a 2d6 HKA with autofire, armor-piercing,etc. If you're new to the system, a good rule of thumb is to use energy blasts (EB) to build attacks and for defense use force-field(FF) for any defense that is "powered up" like the Human Torch's fiery form or the Invisible Girl's force-field and use armor for any passive mode of protection (The Thing and Iron-Man both have the armor power, but with different special effects).

Re: [Playtest Manuscript] Stronghold Also, it'd be very cool to have 25mm scale hexmaps of Stronghold's interior (the original versions were very hard to draw out on a map; lots of crazy angles that didn't really mesh with hex-mapping). Either boxed set or shrink-wrapped, the maps would pretty much guarantee I'd pick it up.

Re: [Playtest Manuscript] Stronghold I think Escape From Stronghold and it's later write-up in Classic Enemies got it right the first time. Really, most of the book should be taken up with character write-ups, specifically: - Supervillains (it'd be nice to see the original Escape From Stronghold villains (Ripper, Radar & Sonar, Freon, etc) done in 5ER (perhaps including Ripper's Viper sourcebook write-up) - Robots, guards and their equipment. - Cell write-ups (using the base rules) Personally, I could do without this part, but I think others would want it. - Stronghold vehicle write-ups. - a few write-ups of Stronghold-friendly superheroes. - Civilian NPCs - Scenarios (probably at least three) To sum up, more write-ups (Radar & Sonar), less filler material ("Stronghold Councilling Programs").

Re: Horrific HERO Magazine

Re: PRE Attacks It didn't seem unreasonable for Galactus, but it is a subjective benchmark.

Re: The interaction skills If the character has all that, he probably shouldn't have the Persuasion skill in the first place. For the most part, I think this stuff will tend to gell together and work itself out. Maybe I'm not relating to this that well because I've never had a player decide to run an interaction-based character who didn't want to roleplay out a lot of that stuff.

Re: The interaction skills I didn't say they were equal. A player trying to do streetwise stuff without the skill, will only have marginal success at best.

Re: The interaction skills I get what you're saying. When I GM, I don't expect the player to be an academy award winner in playing their characters, but I at least expect the effort and as long as they do that, I'm not really a harsh critic. I do think that role-playing does play into the success of interaction-based skills, but not to the degree where the game turns into a single-room LARP.

Re: The interaction skills Here's how I run interaction skills: Most significant in-game interaction is role-played. If a PC tries to do something that requires a skill like streetwise, the degree of success is determined by: - Appropriateness of setting. (using the Bribery skill in the middle of a televised congressional hearing) - How well the PC role-plays (dialogue) the situation (generally, this means how charismatic the player is in making his best argument as his character). - How huge the task/info the pc is trying to attain (using the seduction and/or bureaucratic skills to convince the police impound clerk to let you have 5 minutes alone in the evidence locker). - Whether the PC has the relevant skills (this part is very important). - How much the PC makes the skill(s) by.

Re: PRE Attacks Well, figure if each of the FF has an Ego and/or Pre of around 40 (which I think is generous) and if Galactus has a Pre of around 100 (which I think is conservative, especially since Dr. Destroyer has a Pre of 60), his average Pre attack roll will be 70, which will attain the pre/ego+30 effect, which is high enough to send them all running to their summer home in the Negative Zone.

Re: PRE Attacks

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones) Because you said that, I think it just became official CU canon.

Re: tactics as a power Hi Assface ! 23: Tactical Pre-Planning (7d6 Luck, only for ambushes, escapes, traps, etc that could logically be planned ahead of time [-1/2]) (35 active pts). Hope this helps Assface !

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones) On a related question: Can disposable phones make international calls (lets say U.S. to somewhere in Europe), and if so, how hard are they to track from the U.S. ?

Re: Player problem - opinions .... Truth be told, in most D&D games I've been in, all of the players' actions seem pretty normal and par-for-the-course. Of course, we're talking D&D though...

Re: Player problem - opinions .... Meanwhile, at a festive gathering at Thronn Hall... Sir William: "You know what this party needs ? A chaste, heavily-armed paladin with a hair-trigger temper. Yeah that'd be sweet."

Re: PRE Attacks It's only come up once (because I usually forget to have NPCs do PRE attacks). Basically, all the combat effects will still happen (reduced DCV, hesitating a phase, etc.), but how the character reacts (running away, going into a berserk rage, etc) will ultimately be determined by the player.

Re: WWYCD: Lost in a world without Supers; 9/11/2001 The notion of a "fun" 9-11 thread is ...well... you know. I don't consider myself to be a "super-sensitive" type of guy (my sense of humor tends to be dark and very unpolitically correct), but threads about using recent real world tragedies as game material seems very creepy and not a little ghoulish. Although the worst thread I've seen was the Hurricane Katrina WWYCD thread that was started right in the early stages of the disaster (when people were dying, starving, etc.) and followed through the duration of it.

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city? Exactly. Although, I think the distribution aspect of this actually could work within the time-constraints of the scenario and be an additional challenge for the PCs to have to address.

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city? Right. Really,as a moral barometer to figure out the character, you could just break this down to: "Either a 100,000 people die or a little girl dies. After fruitless investigation/research/praying you come to the conclusion that those are your only options, what would your character eventually choose ?" See, as a scenario, I think it actually has promise, but it's definitely a fixer-upper.