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Re: Pistol Damage Class By Caliber Yeah, I missed the point about tumbling being covered under the ammo entry. I would still disagree with the exact statting, but at this point such an argument would sound like sour grapes, so I'm not gonna get into it. My basic beef remains, however. While I've seen you act quite civilly in many occasions, as soon as the holy grail of 'realism' is invoked, you become extraordinarily hard-nosed and acerbic. While you have every right to defend your own constructs (having put work into them), it's still, well, antisocial to cut into others in the way you do. Yes, some theories have been blown out of the water. Those theories, however, remain far more publicised than their attacks, and for far longer. You decide, however, to simply attack - and then get into these extended arguments due to not-fully-explained statements that leave much open to interpretation. It's only after five pages of this that I understand exactly what you were getting at in several posts. Basically? You could stand to be more civil. I'm taking my lumps here - I made errors, and will cop to them. But damn, dude. You'd generate a lot better feeling towards your views if you explained yourself fully and weren't quite so much of a pedant. As for systems, I'm gonna stick with my synthesising of house rules, striking for a balance of realism vs what I basically want from a game. What I'd kill for, however, is a good system of rapid/autofire, which balanced recoil vs str vs follow-up shots.

Re: Most Damaging Martial Maneuver? The maneuver you refer to looks just like Offensive Strike, a standard maneuver. It's normal damage, not killing. If you use it with a killing damage weapon, it will add 2 DC to the damage, so the greatsword will end up doing 3d6-1. There's a section in 5th ed on adding damage - ALL martial maneuvers are halved when adding to weapon, even the maneuver 'killing strike'. (Personally, I've house-ruled that, as it still only ends up adding 2DC, same as offensive strike, with worse CV mods. Then again, I'm working on 5E, not 5ER, so it may have changed.) Hmm. If you wanna break through forcefields... possibly consider extra Str, only while pushing, only vs forcefields, or something like that. Up the increased END to a level where they can't do it too often or they'll pass out. At an extreme limit, make it a truly extended push - 1 point of END per point of STR. That's nasty. Might be too nasty. Failing that, a dispel/suppress. Won't help the attack itself, as adjustment powers work after the damage is applied, but would simulate the *attack*-"Ha, I am unharmed!"-*shatter*-"Damn." combo. YMMV. Beauty and curse of Hero is that there are so many ways to build something...

Re: Pistol Damage Class By Caliber My sources are the same as Fox1's. I've just come to different conclusions in certain areas. *In one case, it seems as if he's taking commentary intended only for pistols (that the only important elements are wound placement, penetration depth and width of the bullet) and applying them across the board. The very sources he quotes indicate, for instance, that temporary cavity and fragmentation happen with much greater regularity with high-velocity rounds (such as most rifles), increasing their damage potential. Velocity matters; it's not the be-all and end-all, but it does matter. *He deals briefly with the issue of tumbling, saying it's unrelible. Perhaps most systems are unrealistic for including tumbling in all damage at all ranges... but then Fox1 ignores tumbling altogether. *There remain unexplored avenues in his house rules, although these are areas that have not come under argument that I've seen. Some have been touched on, like Str Min. I find it difficult to accept that a submachinegun firing at full auto would have so low a Str min compared to a pistol of even lighter calibre. Certainly, an SMG would have a lower Str min than a pistol, due to being heavier and having a lower recoil. However, there is no effect on this from autofire. Perhaps the autofire recoil effects are taken care of by the autofire mods, but this still seems a bit of a break from realism here. Perhaps, however, it's based on real-life experiences with which I am unfamiliar. So I say that his house rules are not as realistic as he might like. They certainly do not give him clearance to slam all the views of others who offer alternate routes to realism. Even if it did, it's the action of an antisocial type - I'd much rather have multiple approaches than one single approach, and pick and choose what elements I like from each. I'm not proposing my own house rules here. I have already done that on the Dark Champions forum, involving some even more radical departures (I have changed my mind on a few of those rules since, but I haven't had time to work on them). I'm just objecting to Fox1's habit of coming onto threads and decrying others' because they don't match his view of reality. (And then whining when he gets called on it.) (Furthermore, he has a habit of offering short, pithy, barely-explained statements and expecting others to be on the same wavelength as himself. This has led to most of the miscommunications on this thread.) So don't mind me, I'm just enjoying myself. My apologies, Black Lotus, for barging in on your thread. I was just full of beans when I was reading this, and got finally too annoyed to ignore it yet again. From the look of it, Fox1's managed to annoy a few people besides me.

Re: Pistol Damage Class By Caliber Exactly - people's understanding of reality varies. I've read your sources, the better of them admit that no-one actually knows what 'reality' is. There just isn't enough data to know for sure, all there is is theories. And considering how many of the deeply-held theories of yesteryear have been blown out of the water, I don't consider any source conclusive. I find your house rules a mix of good and bad, some of which I'd consider adopting, some of which I go 'no, that doesn't jibe.' Pretty good, on the whole, for a collection of house rules. I wouldn't comment on them at all, except that you seem to enjoy tearing into everyone else's rules, if they disagree with your conception of reality. And that's the point, isn't it? No-one knows how reality ACTUALLY works. In some cases, we know how it doesn't work. We know bullets don't just bounce off skin (most of the time), but we know that they can pass through leaving almost no injury. We know bullets can kill in one hit, no matter how crappy the bullet and no matter how tough the target. These may or may not be things we want to simulate in games, even in ones striving to be 'realistic'. Certain theories I consider well and truly debunked (Marshall&Sanow, for instance). But as for how things actually do work? Your guess is as good as mine. Or perhaps, more precisely, it's anyone's guess. And I'm off to bed. Night!

Re: Pistol Damage Class By Caliber From what I can see, damage from rifles in HERO and your house rules is pretty similar... and you recommend using impairing/disabling as well. So that doesn't sound too different? The main difference I see is that you've also raised the damage of pistol-calibre weapons to match those of rifles (one of the main areas that may, or may not, be realistic; but who really knows). You also have other optional rules, most of which serve to increase lethality. So how is what NuSoard is doing 'unfun' or too lethal? So what point is it you're trying to prove? That HERO isn't realistic? I agree. I just disagree that it's totally unrealistic, or that most house rules are NECESSARILY more realistic. Or that Hero can't be lethal without unacceptibly breaking with realism. I absolutely agree with NuSoard (who I don't hear whining that much, I must say) in that Hero ain't bad in that respect once you get all the rules working. You can then fine-tune the lethality, by messing with Con rolls and the like. I appreciate your drive to find more 'realistic' rules for Hero (put in inverted commas, because as we both understand, true realism in a game is impossible). I have something of an interest in the area, as well. I just understand that given our flawed knowledge of what happens in the real worls, we simply cannot say that there is one way and one way only to do it. That's the point I'm trying to make. That said, I do like some of the options on your site - such as possibly doing away with the BODY stat. I have to look into that further. As for the original post: looks okay to me. I personally believe games are lethal enough with the by-the-book options (that is, more or less as lethal as real life), but upping damage is certainly workable. It's downright necessary if you want reliable one-shot-stops (I'd just advise letting PCs and important NPCs get combat luck or the like, to prevent high player fatalities). (And I totally don't see how any of this, one way or another, is getting in the way of a 'fun game'. O_o That's an odd thing to invoke.)

Re: Can't have power defense, limitation or disad?

Re: Pistol Damage Class By Caliber I know you really love coming onto threads and saying 'that's not realistic'. But seriously, the rules as written do most of that. You just don't like exactly how they do it. I've read your own house rules, and I fail to find them inherently more realistic. It's just a different way of doing it, yet you still like saying that anyone doing things a different way is inherently less realistic than you. Ah well. I'd really rather if we could just agree that there are many ways to achieve 'realism' in a game, given that true realism is impossible to acheive in any game, and that given our (the human race's) inadequate knowledge of exactly how wound ballistics work, we really can't tell which is more and which is less?

Re: War of the Worlds I like to think they looked a bit like ET. Maybe the warrior breed from the same race? Lousy stinkin' little spy scout ratbag.

Re: Ringworld, Stargate and Apocalypse - Oh My! It's a small ring, anyway, not a true Ringworld. More like the Orbitals from Iain M. Banks. Those things are cute, btw. 3 million kilometres across, constructed from plates 1000km wide. They're then set next to a star, at an angle, so light from the star hits the inside of the orbital. It's then set spinning at a constant velocity, so that the spin provides, simultaneously, a day-night cycle AND gravity. Apparently 3 million km is the magic number for a the standard diurnal cycle and gravity (which is something like 25 hours and 1.2G respectively, in his books, or similar). In that setting, Orbitals have more or less replaced planets as the primary residence for civilians in the high-tech civilisation, The Culture. They feel that terraforming is an unnecessary violation of a stable ecosystem, and anyway, who needs to do it, since a single Orbital gives the land area of 50 earth-type planets? (Yes, I like Orbitals.)

Re: Dear G-D, NOOOOOOOOO!!! I hate Hollywood! The rumours mostly sound bogus. They're the kind of things that people who don't like the film will make up - that is, they sound exactly like 'worst scenario' stuff. Things calculated to make fans like us howl. That said, I have severe doubts about the film anyway. I'm one of about three people in the world who preferred movie 1 to movie 2. Why? Movie 2 was an action film. Fun, fast-paced, exciting. Movie 1 was a film on its own. It belonged to no genre but its own - it deliberately moved against the tropes of the action genre. Case in point: when watching it for the first time, when we see the Blackbird power away from the Mansion for the first time, I remember wondering where the bass roar of the engines and the swelling music was. It just wasn't there. Then I thought about it and said 'well, we're seeing it through a window - what's happening here is we're seeing the Blackbird disappear, perhaps never to return, through the eyes of the children. We aren't drawn out of the film by a musical cue of 'yeah, get some!', we're kept very much in the realm of the film.' Second movie? Bass roaring and swelling musical score all over the place. That's just one example, and pretty crude at that. While X2 was certainly bigger, with far better special effects and more excitement... it was lacking to me. Partly because the heroes were, by and large, dumb and useless. The villains drove that piece. And Cyclops got royally shafted. (People complain about him being whiny... when, exactly, did he whine?) So, I've long predicted X3 to go further down the same path. X2 was still good enough to be enjoyable, I just didn't like it enough. X3 I hope with halt the trend and be at least as good as X2.

Re: Ch'i Ki Qi ... That's the one.

Re: Conversion Cyberpunk to Hero Destroying armour is a real iffy process in HERO. For one, if I remember correctly, it's twice as hard to drain/suppress/dispel armour. For the first ammo type, NND (defence is rigid armour)... isn't the gun meant to penetrate rigid armour? I'd recommend looking into Piercing points. Stat-wise, they're extra damage that only serves to penetrate armour. In-game, they reduce the value of armour. If you have, say, 10 piercing points, and the opponent has 10rd (non-hardened), then the opponent effectively has no armour. That should be enough to simulate a gun that ignores armour. Digital Hero #13 has a discussion on piercing points. For my heroic games, I set 5 piercing points as a +1/2 advantage (IE, equivalent to the AP advantage). Similar, one level of Hardened counters 5 points of piercing. I tend to be very severe on judging AP and Hardened... and in heroic games, I don't bother statting weapons. I neither know nor care how much a particular gun should cost, as it doesn't matter to me. No-one has to buy it with points. If someone wants to use Dispel or Suppress on a gun, they can use it on a number of AP that sounds appropriate to me (since no-one paid points for that telescopic sight, there's no reason it should make a gun harder to destroy). That also feeds into your main question. If you aren't charging points for the gun, you don't really need to know how to build it. Make it a multipower, make it something else. If you're really concerned, a multipower's probably a good way to go. Of course, having one slot suppressed gets rid of the whole multipower... in which case, different ammo types might be best represented as naked advantages. Or you could ignore that rule for ammo-type multipowers. The options are limitless.

Re: need help with starship trooper aliens If you're going for movie bugs, I'd add in some damage reduction that doesn't apply to Vitals or Head hits. And give them an enormous STUN pool. That whole 'blow a limb off and the don't really care'. I wouldn't go with 'takes no STUN', as they can still be con-stunned - get enough guys with guns and they can effectively pin one in place. But it takes a LOT of bullets to put 'em down, unless you get a cortical hit.

Re: Can any comic fans fill me in on current Marvel continuity? *cries* I've become a dinosaur!

Re: Hit Location: Heart Yup. So vamp a military dude. A general should do. ("Get this nuke loaded on the truck! I mean now!")

Re: Hit Location: Heart Mmm. Vampire steaks.

Re: Hit Location: Heart If you were a Buffy vamp, wouldn't you load up on fully-automatic weapons? Given how easy it was for Xander and them to sneak into an army base, a good auto-mortar should make short work of the Scoobies' base. And given the Slayer's unfortunate allergy to gunfire, uzis and M16s should be part of any good vampire's arsenal. Such shows are genre, and the characters therein act in accordance to genre rules, not real-life sensibilities.

Re: Need some help with an "heat-energy" character If you don't want to take the penalty for hitting a gun, you could take some variant on Dispel. That might end up being more expensive, of course, and runs into some logic gaps. (So he puts different bullets into the gun, and now it's harder to melt?) But that's the HERO way.

Re: Hit Location: Heart If I ever run vampires again, I'm gonna borrow a bit from Sluggy Freelance: multiple types of vampire. When hunting vampires, you first must find out what KIND of vampires. Some have the severe allergy to wood and you can simply plunge a stake into their heart with your hand and dust 'em instantly (and are also weaker, but have no particular vulnerabilities other than sunlight). Others need to be decapitated and stuffed with garlic (and are very, very strong - megavamps - but are repelled by garlic, holy symobls, etc). Others can turn to mist, transform, but are harmed by silver (which temporarily de-powers them, so they can be overpowered and chunked with the stake). I like the idea.

Re: Hit Location: Heart

Re: Hit Location: Heart

Re: Electric Bullets note Increased stun multiplier might be a solution, too.

Re: Superpowers that haven't been thought out...

Re: Superpowers that haven't been thought out...

Re: Superpowers that haven't been thought out...