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Karmakaze

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  2. Will Stronghold

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Will Stronghold

     

    Really not a very complicated character. Harder to do his Girlfriends powers then anything else in that movie.

     

    ~Rex

     

    I'd almost have to give her a Power Pool, though a lot of it could be filed under Change Environment and maybe a Cosmetic Transform. There would definitely need to be a limitation that appropriate plants need to be present. Probably the most impressive noncombat thing we saw her do was grow an appleseed into a tree so she could climb up it (at which point she pulled an edible apple off the tree). Arguably that's a Major Transform (appleseed to adult tree). I could also see that as the SFX for Leaping, since the point of it was to get up to a roof from the ground. In combat, she had to be near a window in order to summon ivy from outside to create an AOE Entangle.

     

    Maybe a multipower with the Change Environment, Transform, Entangle, Herbopathy (telepathy or mind control, only vs. plant minds) and then a lot of points in the Power: Plant Manipulation skill.

     

     

    Warren Peace would be pretty simple. He clearly has Combat Luck (because he survived being thrown through a wall) and most everything else he did falls under Blast.

  4. Will Stronghold

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Will Stronghold

     

    brain-5.gifcould you describe the character?

     

    Will is the son of two superheroes, one is a brick and the other is a flying martial artist. At the beginning of the movie, Will is being sent to a school for metapowered kids, even though his superpowers haven't come in yet. At this point, he'd be built as a normal teenaged boy in reasonably good shape. About halfway through the movie, he starts displaying his father's super strength. He pulls doors off their hinges and throws another meta through a couple of walls. We see him doing a casual strength lift of about six cheerleaders at one point. He also has an AOE Knockback "brick trick" wherein he punches the floor and everyone in range falls over. In the climactic end battle, he also turns out to have inherited his mother's flight (though not necessarily her martial arts training).

  5. Alas, no more Independent!

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Alas, no more Independent!

     

    As a GM' date=' I treated Independent as much like a DNPC-- the item [b']will[/b] be stolen from you/attacked at some point every few adventures, and you're going to spend the adventure trying to get it back. I mean, the value of the Independent limitation was the same as an 8- Activation roll; if a character bought all his spells with an 8- Activation roll would you hold off on rolling activations because it felt adversarial?

     

    Huh. To me, what you're describing sounds more like the Focus limitation rather than the Independent limitation. Here's what the limitation says, as written: (Hero System Fifth Edition Rule Book, page 193; Revised, page 297-298) "...and a character can lose the points he spent on an Independent Power forever." Whereas something with an 8- activation roll isn't erased off the character sheet if you fail the activation in one instance. It's the permanent CP loss that's adversarial, not that the character sometimes loses the use of the power.

     

    Also consider that if you're not taking the character points away forever and still considering the limitation to be equivalent to an 8- less activation, that means the character should not have the use of the power in three out of four instances. By my GMing style (and yes, YMMV) anything that's going to be stolen that often is a plot device more than a power.

     

    That' date=' or their expectation is to have lots more power while the items last, after which it's time for a new character (with a bunch more Independent items).[/quote']

     

    Yeah, I don't think I'd allow that unless all of the players were doing it on an equal footing. (Which, granted, could be an interesting game for a while. You'd have an odd dynamic where PCs become less powerful over time.)

  6. Alas, no more Independent!

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Alas, no more Independent!

     

    I never had a real problem with the whole idea of "Independent means you can lose your hard-earned points" unless someone was twisting your arm (ie, _requiring) that you take Independent. In non-compulsory situations, you _chose_ to take Independent, knowing up front that it could happen. It's a gamble in exchange for a coupon. Like any gamble, sometimes you lose.

     

    Again, my rather cavalier attitude about Independent applies only to those situations where it isn't _forced_ onto you.

     

    The thing is, role-playing games aren't really games of chance. A player taking Independent isn't gambling on some random outcome, like a poker deck or slot machine, he's gambling on the GM's goodwill. I realize that this will vary quite a bit according to game mastering styles, but generally (as a GM) I have enough control of the game universe that I am the one who decides whether a plot element that could take something away exists in the first place, and whether or not to enforce it should the players invoke that element. So from the perspective of the PC, it's the randomness of the universe at play, but from the perspective of the GM (and probably the player), it's an active decision on the part of the person running the story.

     

    Taken that way, a player taking Independent is gambling that the GM won't punish him for doing so, which lends an antagonistic element that I don't care for.

  7. And 6e print books start to arrive

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: And 6e print books start to arrive

     

    This is the first I've posted' date=' because Darren said not to panic until Monday. No sign of the books here, yet, but the other person who pre-ordered at Gencon with us hasn't gotten hers, either. Maybe people in NJ are last?[/quote']

     

    AlHazred, who lives in NJ, got his weeks ago. It seems random. Mine turned up today, so you can at least look at mine when you come by on Monday.

  11. Alas, no more Independent!

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Alas, no more Independent!

     

    I really dislike the idea that some items are somehow "special" and unlosable' date=' unbreakable, etc, just because you paid points for it. It's not rational, and it means not all equipment is created equal. (It could work for a cursed item that is permanently welded to you hand, though...)[/quote']

     

    It's funny. I came from the other direction. I disliked the idea that CP could just be arbitrarily "lost". If you've laid out CP for something, then you've made it a part of the character.

     

    Basically my issue with Independant was that it was a huge point break that only allowed two options - give the PC a point break with no penalty (which is an unfair advantage) or dock the PC their earned CP (which is an excessive penalty). If I'm going to take something away from a PC that's a big enough deal to have been worth purchasing via points, then I'd rather do it in the context of a negotiated change to the character (like the superhero genre "radiation accident" technique).

  15. And 6e print books start to arrive

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: And 6e print books start to arrive

     

    Y'all are aware of the old phrase' date=' "A watched UPS truck is never making a delivery to your house," right? ;)[/quote']

     

    Actually, if I'm watching the UPS truck, then it's probably within visual distance of my house. In that case, the odds of it making a delivery to my house are better than random, I should think....

  16. Speeding up combat "Restrict SPDs" is Dead Wrong

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Speeding up combat "Restrict SPDs" is Dead Wrong

     

    One of the techniques that turns up at convention games is scrapping the SPD chart and just going around the table clockwise. That's sort of the ultimate in compressing SPDs and it does, in fact, speed up combat. You lose some granularity as a price of that, of course.

     

    Most of my convention pre-gens are SPD 3 and 4, precisely to reduce complexity. I try to have it be about the same of each. I'll sometimes scrap the DEX portion of combat order and call 3's clockwise and 4's clockwise on the appropriate phases. I don't, myself, scrap SPD entirely, but I've seen it done without harming enjoyment of the game.

  19. Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

     

    "Alouette, gentille Alouette.

    Alouette, je te plumerai..."

     

    Ive always wondered....what does that song mean??

     

    Essentially, "bird, bird, pretty bird, I'm going to pull off all your feathers" (as in preparation for cooking) and then lists all the parts of the bird that are going to lose feathers. I've seen it pop up as a "learn the body parts" song for that reason.

  21. CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

     

    When I explain that the default power level for the game is more "X-Men" than "Justice League' date='" I get, "There are lots of comics with mega-characters: Superman, Thor, Green Lantern, Silver Surfer, Legion of Super-Heroes. The system says I can play 'any genre, any power level,' so what if I want to play that?"[/quote']

     

    Do you think it would be worth the page space to take one character and show a version of the write-up at the 5 main superheroic power levels? So we could see the steps from Low-Powered to Cosmically Powerful?

  22. 6E1 & 6E2 help

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: 6E1 & 6E2 help

     

    It is hard for me to tell what is a Batman vs a Superman like level in power.

     

    One of the tricks with this is that Batman and Superman don't necessarily have different power levels. (I know, I know, Kryptonian vs. 'normal' Earthling... bear with me.) When Batman is in his own comic book, he deals with threats that Superman probably wouldn't bother with. Yet, when Batman and Superman are teamed up in Worlds Finest or the Justice League, Batman is able to defeat as many thugs and threaten as many supervillains as Superman is - he just uses more tools and less direct force. So Superman has spent his points on powers, and Batman's spent his on skills, contacts, and gadgets, but they can still be the same point-level.

     

    To get a gut feel for how points and stats relate to power level, I'd refer you to the tables on SE1 p34 (Character Types Guidelines and Character Design Guidelines), SE1 p35 (Character Ability Guidelines) and SE1 p48 (Characteristics Comparison). Those make good guidelines to start with.

  24. Quote of the Week From My Life.

    in Non-Gaming Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Quote of the Week From My Life.

     

    "If it could bite you' date=' it would [b']KILL[/b] you!"

     

    Said about a daddy long legs, but wound up being used as a line for all sorts of things during my photography retreat.

     

    My mother used to say, whenever we failed to find something that turned out to be in plain sight, "if it were an alligator, it would have bit you."

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