Lucius

Re: Using enemies as human shields Wouldn't this require you to have Missile Deflection if you wanted to block a ranged attack? Otherwise I think maybe the "activation rolll" works. Lucius Alexander Hiding behind the palindromedary

Re: Martial Arts, Weapons, STR, and HA's Q IT is? Since when? Lucius Alexander The palindromedary observes that it might be a good idea for it to be....

"For every attack there is a defense, and the defense is usually considerably cheaper." (I hope I got that right....) By the same token, though, it seems like every defense has a corresponding attack, i.e. a way to get around it. Normal defenses are ignored by killing attacks, which are stopped by resistant defense, which is halved by armor piercing, which is negated by hardened, which is in turn negated by multiple armor piercing, and round and round it goes. But nothing specifically counters Damage Reduction. I have proposed (so far, in theory - I haven't tried it) that there be an advantage, "Irreducible Damage" that cuts down Damage Reduction. i.e. one leve would make 3/4 Damage Reduction equal to 1/2 Damage Reduction, or ignore 1/4 Damage Reduction; 3 levels would ignore even 3/4 Damage Reduction. Now, I know I can do anything I like if am running the game, or if I can talk the guy who is into using my idea; but I wanted to know if there was anything inherently wacky or unbalanced in the idea, or something obvious I'm overlooking, or if there is some meta rule or system axiom this advantage would violate. What do you think? Lucius Alexander I know what the palindromedary thinks already.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Um. No. Lucius Alexander The palindromedary and I sometimes do three part harmony however...

Re: Slightly Less Powerful DNPCs in Champions Say, did anyone try getting an "official" answer from Steve Long? Lucius Alexander Inquiring palindromedaries want to know

Ethics for mentalists I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't think over-riding someone's free will is necessarily more ethical than "shoving them into the cell" physically. More practical if it could be done, maybe, not not more ethical. And to whoever made the distinction between ethics and morals: No two people define these terms in the same way. What exactly did YOU mean by it? Lucius Alexander The palindromedary asks at one end if we should have a thread on "The Mentalities of Ethicists" and responds at the other that that's what we really have here anyway.....

Re: How do I introduce HERO to a potential new player? Running an agent is not necessarily "marginal." In fact, start him as a team member, make him squad leader after a session or two, and he may well WANT to keep doing that. I think playing a "normal" using technology, training, tactics and teamwork to take down out-of-control so-called "superbeings" would be anything but "marginal" although it could be played as a kind of heroic underdog story. Lucius Alexander And The "Do I have a middle name?" Palindromedary

How do I introduce HERO to a potential new player? Oh, just call me Potent for short! Lucius "Potential is my middle name" Alexander And The "The is my first name??!" Palindromedary

Character: Conan the Cimmerian Yes, and if you're not careful Conan the Cinammonian will pepper you with arrowroot or assalt you with his mace, then he'll caraway your gold or your dancing girls. Like he did with Rosemary and Marjoram. Take my sage advice and hide your treasure and women until he's gone. That would be saffron the whole. After all, for everything there is a seasoning and a thyme for every purpose under heaven. Lucius Alexander The palindromedary is amazed we mustard so many puns, but this is the fennel word.

Dancing Girls and Monsters from the Id of China I have read Perdido Street Station. Fascinating novel, and like The Book of the New Sun, it's hard to know how to describe it because it's hard to know what to compare it too. Except maybe an exceptionally lucid and consistent dream - or nightmare. I was toying with taking Concealment off the Dancing Girl, but too many of them seem able to, for example, hide a dagger in a scanty costume somewhere. Some of the skills I'd like to buy up, but there are only so many points to go around. I'm also considering doing the Gorean Slave Girl write-up as well, but not sure I can do it on 75 + 75 pts. Does anyone see anything I missed? And Susano, would you like to see a list of options for spending that customizable 13 pts? Lucius Alexander Palindromedary Enterprises

Life Support: How much is "Intense"? I wouldn't assume a person is hostile to the postal service just because they use email. But if they make statements implying that email is the only worthwhile text-based form of communication, yes, I'm apt to think they're hostile to the postal service, or perhaps somehow ignorant of it. And certainly I'll wonder if they even realize that not everyone HAS email, or wants it. However, we seem to have wandered very far off topic. Luciuse Alexander The palindromedary asks, what was the topic again?

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? And I don't understand your hostility to XL. Or Word processing programs. Or paper and pencil. Megaplayboy, I don't think I'm really "hostile" to Hero Designer. I admit, however, I AM kind of hostile to statements like "The limit of what you can do in Hero Designer is the limit of what you can do in Hero" or other statements you have made that seem to equate this particular computer tool with Hero System itself, or to assume that "Everybody MUST have and use Hero Designer!" You point out that not everyone has or uses Excell - I point out that the same can be said of Hero Designer. And no one else is implying that you have to use Excel to play Hero, or that Excell somehow defines Hero, or something. I do use a word processing program and some custom tables I cobbled up to record characters. For one thing, my handwriting is atrocious. But the day I NEED anything but paper, pencils, dice, the books, and maybe a hex sheet and some kind of counters, to play Hero, is the day I quit playing. If I want a computer game, I'll play a computer game. Lucius Alexander Asking the palindromedary, "I didn't come off as too hostile, did I?"

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? Not everyone has Hero Designer or knows how to use it. Or cares. Lucius Alexander Palindromedary Enterprises

Life Support: How much is "Intense"? Desolidification means being immune to attacks. It means you can't hurt me with your fist. Or knife. Or gun. Or cannon. Or flamethrower. It means you can drop a blockbuster bomb on me and I take not one point of damage. In my dictionary, that's "invulnerability." And it's also true that Hero System allows "absolutes" ONLY with exceptions. No Normal Defense requires some Not Normal Defense. Desolid requires something that still affects you. Lucius Alexander The palindromedary is vulnerable to the crab cannon.

Hyborean Dancing Girls from the world of Conan With the contact information: lucius_p_alexander@yahoo.com ? If it's going up on such an honored website, I may want to go over it again first. I basically just copied most of it from the Fembot write-up. Lucius Alexander Pondering possible publicity for Palindromedary Enterprises

Re: Life Support: How much is "Intense"? You do realize that you’ve just described Desolidification? You’re going at it the wrong way – see below. Ah, I take it that if you’re running the game, you don’t allow Desolidification? Well, in Greek Myth, one God (I forget which) gave a king a fox that could not be caught, and another God gave another king a hound that could catch anything, and when the two kings got together to try out their gifts, the chase went on for a while and then Zeus resolved the problem by turning both hound and fox into stone. The thing is, we already HAVE a couple of absolutes in Hero – No Normal Defense attacks, and Desolidification. Unless you’ve objected to either or both of those (“Why would I spend more points on dice of attack, if I can just take No Normal Defense and always do damage? Why should I spend points on defense, if someone can just take No Normal Defense and bypass them?”) I’m sorry, but I can’t take you too seriously if you say you object to absolutes. If you HAVE objected to either or both of those, then you’re obviously sincere but a little late to keep them out of Hero system – they’re already here. Oh. I’ve said this before, but I can’t seem to find the thread…. First of all, Desolidification as it currently exists, shouldn’t. Exist that is. If you want to walk through walls, buy Tunneling with No Normal Defense, the “Fill in” adder, and whatever other modifiers it needs to tweak it. If you want Invulnerability, just take Damage Reduction, follow the pattern already set by the first 3 levels, and take it up to the 4th, 100% Damage Reduction. Then apply the limitations needed to a) make it anywhere near affordable, and bring it into some kind of balance. A couple of years ago I painstakingly did all the math and showed that if it works like desolidification (costs END, etc.) the price came out to the same as Desolidification – although with a higher END cost (much higher active points) I wish I could find that thread again!! With no Desolidification, of course there’s no “Affects Desolid” advantage. What there would be, would be an “Irreducible Damage” advantage for attacks. Each level of Irreducible Damage would negate a level of Damage Reduction. So if you bought it twice for your attack, you would ignore 50% Damage Reduction, and do half damage to an “invulnerable” character with 100% Damage Reduction. It would work a lot like Armor Piercing and Hardened. Possibly there should also be a “Hardened” advantage on Damage Reduction to ignore Irreducible Damage. Lucius Alexander Absolute Palindromedary

Hyborean Dancing Girls from the world of Conan We like to think so. Thank you. Lucius Alexander Only from Palindromedary Enterprises

Life Support: How much is "Intense"? I can't understand that. A power whose main game effect is invulnerability, and using it for that is a "kludge?" Of course, the real problem is that Desolidification is really two powers - a defense power of Invulnerability (equivalent to taking Damge Reduction at 100%) and a movement power that should be defined as Tunneling, No Normal Defense. Lucius Alexander The palindromedary reiterates that Hero System is not just Champions

Re: N/t Am I wasting my time trying to detect meaning here? Lucius Alexander The palindromedary thinks so.

Hyborean Monsters from the world of Conan I would never have connected the leucrotta with that passage in New Sun. Gene Wolfe is doing something so totally different here, from a simple "monster that mimics a human voice" trope. In fact, I associate it a lot more with his own Catholic background - the idea of the cannibal sacrament, of communing or uniting with Someone/Something by eating part of it, is one of the strongest threads holding the story together. Susano, I have no idea if you'd like it, but I can say that I have read rather widely and I consider it absolutely first rate; at the same time, it IS hard to know what to compare it to. I find myself thinking "it's not like THIS, no and it's not like THAT...." It's incredibly deep, and incredibly rich, and things you think over and done with in one book, turn up in a later one with completely different implications.... Lucius Alexander Explaining a palindromedary might be easier....

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition.... Well, you could use the punch to get the "violent action" bonus on a PRE roll. As for deep philosophical questions about why one person hits another, I suspect it is often hard to get "meaningful" answers in real life, let alone a game. Well, there's the Interrogation skill to force information from an unwilling subject. And there's Oratory and Persuasion to try to make someone change their mind about something. But to do, in Hero, the Magic Fist of Converting Someone to My Way of Thinking by Hitting Them, you'd have to buy a Transformation attack, Based on EGO Combat because it's a mental transform, with the limit Based on CON because the delivery system is physical (quite crudely so in fact....) probably linked to STR or to a hand to hand attack....maybe with a limit that it only kicks if in you stun the target... Interesting. Can player characters pull this on one another? Can nonplayer characters do it to player characters? What other changes can be wrought? Can I say "I hit this person and she sprouts wings and flies away - Because I Say So?" Does it work on the inanimate? If the event I want to make "true" in the game is, say, a better house to live in for my character, can I say "I'm tired of this shack, I'm going to run around kicking the walls until it turns into a mansion?" You know, I was thinking of asking "Why would anyone want to play a superpowered inquisitor?" but maybe I CAN see the appeal. I went through a phase, when I was with a group playing the Marvel Super Hero game, of having trouble coping with the Comic Convention that the villains always escape or get freed somehow and come back. I don't think I'd have put it that way, but I may have agreed if someone said it was "meaningless" to beat up on villains and toss them in jail if they're only going to get out and cause trouble again. I was doing a lot of questioning of the motivations of all the villains - the idea being, if I can figure out why they do what they do, maybe I can figure out how to make them stop. I even (I was playing a super mage) asked if I could work out a spell to deprive a villain of powers, and at least turn them into merely ordinary crooks. I have to say, though, it would never have occurred to me to try to reform someone by hitting them. After all, we're talking about people who were ALREADY getting beat on by heroes regularly, and it didn't seem to help. But then, we weren't playing Dogs in the Vineyard. What the heck does that name mean, anyway? I've heard of a dog in the manger, but what's a dog in the vineyard? Lucius Alexander And a turkey in the straw, and a palindromedary in the palindormitory

The Power of Presence Again - Why? In one turn - 12 segments - you don't get a breakout roll to escape a PREsence attack. You're just out of it automatically. Unless there's something in ReFred I don't know about, the longest the rules describe anyone being influenced by a PRE attack is one turn. If you're adding house rules to "rein in" PREsence attacks, it's because you're already making them much more powerful than the rules say they are. The guy hit by a PRE attack doesn't need any help getting out from under it. It's the guy who LAUNCHED the PRE attack who needs to justify having it continue to effect the victim past, say, segment 12 of the same Turn, maybe segment 12 of the next if the Game Operations Director is being generous. Ordinarily, you have to keep making PRE attacks for a long term effect, and the rules specify that each time, your attack is less effective. Why do you think that specific rule is even there? If one PREsence attack was good for all day long, why do you think they'd have a rule covering repeated attacks on the same target? I'll ask again - where does this idea come from that a PRE attack's effects just keep going and going like an energizer bunny, when nothing in the rules justifies that assumption? Lucius Alexander It wasn't me or the palindromedary

Too balanced?? Good point. Having the whole group go "say what?" is not good for the game. Lucius Alexander Where did the palindromedary go?

The Power of Presence In my experience, players - and Game Operations Directors, too - like using PRE attacks, but they are usually not very effective except as narrative tools. Certainly, if you're using a PRE attack to get everybody to gang up on you, I can see a couple of problems. For example, if even one of your opponents runs up to engage hand to hand, any of your opponents with ranged attacks, even if they really wanted to hit you too, are probably going to attack someone else to avoid hitting their ally. And people aren't going to line up to hit you. If the hexes around you are crowded, some of your opponents are going to go deal with your team mates - even if they promise themselves to kick your can later. And as far as "breakout rolls at each step on the time chart - " uh, maybe I missed something in the rules, but is there anything there that says that, say, 1 min later, the PRE attack still has *ANY* effect AT ALL? Let alone 5 min later? (a few minutes later) I just checked, and the longest it says a PRE attack effects anyone is a Turn. Granted, it doesn't say it can't effect someone longer - but if it does, it's just because the guy running game must have decided they were REALLY impressed. Where did this idea that PRE attacks have long-term effects come from? Lucius Alexander The palindromedary ponders the power of Absence

The Ultimate Speed I am not so sure that having segmented movement would make things more complicated; but you are right that it would be very DIFFERENT than the way Hero runs now. Possibly it's another topic that they could discuss as an optional rule. I'm not sure one would gain enough by it to make it worth the hassle of changing, but I don't see it as inherently more complex than the way it's always been done. Lucius Alexander Riding a palindromedary at the speed of heavy.