Inu

Re: Heroes and Nukes! It also cut him off from the sun, so not only damaged him physically, but reduced his powers and his ability to heal. Depending on the incarnation of Supes, cutting him off from the sun might be enough to disable him by itself (that is, not just putting him in the shade, but basically mystically severing his sun-link, whether by magical or pseudoscientific means -- the whole thing being pseudoscience to begin with).

Re: Heroes and Nukes! Sure he does. Patented Liechtenstein technology.

Re: Heroes and Nukes! And in most games, it's the same. The 'BODY of the Earth' discussion arose because HERO is supposed to also be a universal game, and as such, it supports a wide variety of genres. The rules appeared in Star HERO, a genre that very much does support planet destruction. And yes, handwaving does work for me. But for people who want a game where they have planet-destroying weapons, but also ships that can resist that damage (say, inspired by certain Original Star Trek eps), then they might just want to know how much defence is required. Hence, an official answer appeared, and it's been debated (to use a polite term) ever since.

Re: Heroes and Nukes! However, in the centre of a nuclear blast, it should be VAPORISED. Not 'reduced to a puddle', not 'destroyed', but 'there is no tank.' The fact that the +1/x2 theory gets you to that level means that the +1/x2 theory is wrong to begin with. Which it always has been, quite frankly. I've never really bought it. It's a nice idea in theory, and I know it has its place in the game, but with it working against linear defences... it just falls down in the end when you actually analyse the effects. It's not infinitely extensible, and it becomes a place where gamist and simulationist really clash. I'm not sure really where I want my games to be. At one level, a nuke-proof hero who can still be threatened by a tank gun is genre. On another level, it means nukes lose a lot of their devastating power. Note that in Hiroshima/nagasaki, as I noted above, airbursts were used to maximise the area of damage. This means that nothing in the place took a point-blank hit from the nuke. Nothing was inside the vaporisation area.

Re: Order of the Stick Your point?

Re: Order of the Stick I have started to feel ill from the sheer slaughter. Still, that's what happens. I don't expect such to last at this level beyond, say... the siege. A siege is a nasty business, and it's perhaps proper that it SHOULD be harrowing.

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested) Armies might even work better if you just summon them. Draw power from the natural terrain in your realm, focus it towards your magic which you aim at your enemy... "Hey, after that army attacked, why did it wheel about to turn its flank to the enemy?"

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

Re: Heroes and Nukes! Explosions of any type are really bad at digging into the ground, for the simple reason that the force goes in all directions. Much of it will hit the ground and reflect up, or be absorbed in compacting the earth, or spread out uselessly. Hence, conventional bombs may create devastation for hundreds of metres, but the crater will be far wider than it is deep, and a tiny fraction of the blast radius. Even nukes are like this, though with their greater power, the crater is larger. Further, an airburst is the ideal detonation point for nukes only if you want a wide area of effect, or to avoid too much fallout. If you want to destroy something below ground, you want a ground burst or, preferably, a bunker-buster-style delivery system. Though if the villain's base is above the ground, it will almost certainly be swept clean, as Treb said. We just tend to assume that villains have subterranean bases, or at least, bases with significant subterranean components. As for the villain: they better be DAMN WELL SURE he's dead, because after this, if he's been pulling his punches at all, he won't in the future if he survives. On the other hand, if you're really playing a game where such a thing is necessary because the villain IS worse, I can't really fault them!

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested) Yeah, but Mhoram was talking about 150-200 AP spells, not RP. That doesn't mean that bigger spells don't exist (such as a battlefield debuff), don't exist... but it's certainly not just THAT simple. And if spells are getting bigger, then you just put on another +1/4 difficult to dispel and now you need 200 dice of dispel. Basically, it's much easier to make an undispellable spell than it is to make a bigger dispel. =)

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested)

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested) Gotta love fonts. Did anyone else read this as 'Sunny seaside of doom!'

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested) Yeah, I was thinking that. =) My 'fertility ritual' thing was stolen from Glorantha, too. When thinking about small magic or big magic, it's my first stop.

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested) "You can't hide from the Law." Mind scan activated by Marshall-equivalents to track fugitives.. "Diplomatic immunity." Constant low-level mind control placed on emissaries; couple this with a triggered high-level mind control when attacked. "Command and Control." Mind link between heralds (placed with the generals) and the sovereign when they are at any distance away from the capital. "I see you." Scrying device with massive clairaudence and clairsentience. One version megascale, for seeing big features, one version normal, for seeing details -- 'zooming in'. "Cup of life." Life support: immune to diseases and poisons, usable by other (whole population -- 4 million is only around a +5 advantage, I think. Couple with famine-resistant rations (life support: need not eat) for emergencies. "Battle-luck." luck, usable by other (leaders in battle). "Decoy." Invisible teleport with linked duplication (exact copy). Optional trigger: when attacked. The ultimate escape hatch for those lucky enough to be protected. "The strength of two." Duplication, usable by other (exact copy). Army needs a bit of a boost? Two soldiers for the price of one, just when you need it most. Castle not being built fast enough? Double the workers for the same cost! "Army of one." Duplication, self, exact copy, x1024. Eat that. "Domesday." A series of Detects (herd animals, metals, jewels, etc) that keep track of wealth in the kingdom. Link it to the scrying pool to get visual imagery if need be, as well as a nation-wide mind scan. The information outputs itself to a giant book, constantly updated, giving information of exactly who is where and what they own. If the Domesday book was how William truly conquered Britain, this will be even greater. (Possibly requires tax agents in the local area, conducting mundane assessments, using magic to ferret out secrets, and 'uploading' information to the Book.) As well as thinking about the spells, it can be cool to think about how they can work in-game. Perhaps it's not as simple as the high mage waving his arms about, and suddenly all the fields in the country are fertile (to go with a previous suggestion). Perhaps the country's fields are first prepared by local priests with rituals designed to draw the magic down; so when the high mage does cast his spell, with all his ritual assistants, the magic goes where it needs. Makes the whole country part of the thing, like you have for your 'blessing of the faithful' idea. Naturally, much of this also depends on how 'expensive' magic is. If it's running on the basic powers without limitations, then not really a problem. But if magic is difficult at higher levels, or has costs involved, then it might be not worth it to make the WHOLE country immune to poison/disease... just the more important people. There are always more farmers, after all.

Re: Changing direction mid-jump Battletech-style jump jets. You can buy limited flight, or you can guy jumping. Jumping is closer to the actual special effect. If you want 'improved jump jets' that let you maneuver some while in the air, there you have a special effect that this question is appropriate for. =) As for the Hulk issue, he doesn't wholesale change direction; what he does is more like change his centre of gravity so instead of crashing into a bridge, he goes over it. Still dodgy, but not quite so much. (The issue was reprinted a while back. It was one of his early fights against the Leader, if not the first. A train was being attacked by the Leader's Humanoids, or some such. I do believe I read it in a trade; one of several that came out near the end of Peter David's run. Or perhaps it was in the Giant-Size Hulk. Been a while since I've read that collection. Hm, might give me something to do tonight. I was looking for a reason to procrastinate study, this will do nicely. Thanks!)

Re: Cool Guns for your Games

Re: Deep holes on Mars The footage from the probe is now classified. The hole was our only warning.

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds? Cool. =) My version of the Republic of Darokin (somewhat different to the published one) is in the process of changing from a monarchy to a democratic state (a plutocracy in fact, republic in law). Basically, the king still has power; but the merchants in the cities have strong-armed him to the extent that the cities have been granted charters to permit them to pass their own laws. They still get a lot out of remaining part of the country, and not doing anything too far outside of the norm, but in effect the country is split between two powerbases -- money and land, each with their own governments -- the cities have a formally-recognised council that is increasingly threatening royal prerogative. As more and more of the country falls under the domination of the charters, the king is losing greater and greater real power; it's inevitable that he'll lose, in the end. The monarchy is dying,a nd there isn't really much that can be done to save it. All the better, say the guilds. Inside the cities, people are elected by much the same list that you have in the Martic League, with votes largely being decided in the same way. It's a bit more free-for-all, but basically, rather than winning over individual voters, a candidate splashes around money to win over the local leaders, who effectively control the votes in their area. Money talks in Darokin, as do family contacts. In terms of military, they have some of the oldest orders of knighthood in the world, as well as a professional army specialising in pikemen. In the original setting, the line of kings died out a few hundred years before present; with no-one strong enough to reunite them, the country more or less fell into independent city-states, run by merchants. In recent generations, they got back together to form the republic. I decided to continue the monarchy into the present day in order to have the duelling power structures... and because I re-read The Three Musketeers and decided that I MUST rip it off entirely. Anyway, that was longer than I intended... but since the thread is about fantasy democracies, I figured it wasn't exactly a derail. ^_- I hope it can be useful to people... and it's open to critique, naturally.

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds? Yeah, I use the term 'peasant' a bit too freely. ^_- I have a fairly broad working knowledge of history, improving greatly in the middle ages, but I still have many gaps, and I too-often use the wrong term due to laziness more than anything else. And in the interest of knowing more about the world around (and before) me, thank you for the extra detail in the rest of the post! My current game is a D&D game set in Mystara, which TKDguy referred to earlier. I have a few nascent democracies there, such as the Republic of Darokin to which he referred. The more I know about the historical situations, the better I can flesh out my fictional ones.

Re: Matriarchial Societies

Re: Which is faster, Gravity or Light? Yeah, I've had the pocket explanation before. I still don't get it. ; Most relativity examples posit are... well, I have a hard time putting them into physical space. But then, in relativity, 'physical space' is a fairly metaphysical concept. I just haven't seen any site that explains it slowly and carefully, step by step, in layman's terms... all of the explanations I've heard start out fairly simple, but then skip a few steps. I fully expect that some of the stuff I'm missing is, in fact, incredibly advanced mathematics that I don't have a hope in hell of understanding. I've done a lot of maths in my time, though I didn't continue it to university level, but relativity still leaves me reeling. I've seen the graphs -- but they all tend to come off to me like playing tricks with numbers, instead of representing anything 'real'. 'Look, we can make the numbers do this, therefore reality is like this!' But since I haven't done maths, physics like the like since high school, I accept that my knowledge is limited and suck it up. =) But in games, I tend to ignore it anyway, mostly 'cause I like my FTL.

Re: Inspiration: One-storey skyscraper Be nice to combine this with elevators and extend it out. Can anyone imagine this as part of a space elevator? =D Have the central shaft be the elevator (or series of elevators), instead of a light shaft... that's possibly getting into fantastic scifi, but I like the idea!

Re: Democratic Republics in Fantasy Worlds?

Re: Which is faster, Gravity or Light? I remember discussing this back when Generations came out, with the whole 'blowing up stars to remove their gravity to change the course of the ribbon' plot. We couldn't get a consensus among ourselves then, and stuff like this certainly don't help. Personally, it makes sense to me that gravity should propagate at a particular speed, but then, it doesn't make sense to me that FTL should violate causality, and there seems to be something of an agreement on that one. I just hope that better minds than mine can work it out, because this stuff just makes me want to cry.

Re: Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved A counterintuitive idea might be to buy off the 'always on' limitation -- work out how much the sense costs, and how much the -1/2 limitation would be... then pay that!