Shike019

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

I don't agree with defining skills on that level. To me, an 11- roll in something is supposed to mean you're capable of making a living on the basis of that skill. (It might not be a very good living, depending on how in-demand the skill is, and depending on how many people with better than 11- rolls are around.) Just because I can play a number of musical instruments, doesn't mean I have spent points on those skills.

 

Different GMs often have a different idea on what having points spent in a skill actually means in terms of the character's ability with the skill. Accordingly it's unsurprising to see some people take the tack that long skill lists should be near-mandatory, whereas others take a more minimalist point of view.

OK, how bout this. By the time I graduated HS I had been accepted to at least 2 different music programs for college and played in professional settings under a variety of Genres including Classical, Jazz, and Blues using a variety of the instruments I represented.

But my point, in total was, even if I take all of those as 1 pt skills I still beat 10 pts in skills as an average High Schooler. That doesn't include general knowledge skills I obtained during classes, as well as specific knowledges I might have obtained elsewhere.

Edit-

Also I think the point of this thread is whether or not a young Superhero would have 10%-20% in skills. My argument is Yes, they would. Through their hobbies, sports, classes, extra-curricular activities, etc. Of course, I guess I was kind of a Socialable Loner. I could get invited to pretty much any party I wanted, but I always felt more at home, at home. BTW, the Sax was the only instrument I was taught before I got to College, the others on the list I taught myself, and taught to others (teaching baritone, sax, and clarinet lessons to other kids). So I did make some money in High School with my musical skills.

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

How is this better than?

 

PS: Musician 11- (Saxaphonist, plays a number of other instuments at -3 unfamiliarity penalty) 0 points(everyman)

 

Oh look, the same concept expressed both more eficiently and closer to designer intent.

Most long skill lists I've seen could use similar condensing.

Ok, we do that and I would still have over 20 pts in background skills. And this is me, as a person, by the time I graduated High School.

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

All of this discussion is interesting. I say this because, going through my memory, I figure I had 21 pts in Background skills and at least 1 perk by the time I graduated Highschool. This plus most martial maneuvers from the Soo Bahk Do Style (Tang Soo Do from UMA) and possibly a HTH CSL. Probably others as well, including some 1 pt languages and CuK familiarities. and a couple of others.

AK: Marquette, MI 11- 2 pts.

KS: Soo Bahk Do 11- 2 pts.

KS: Boy Scouts 11- 2 pts.

PS: Saxophone 11- 2 pts.

PS: Trombone 8- 1 pt.

PS: Baritone 8- 1 pt.

PS: Tuba 8- 1 pt.

PS: Clarinet 8- 1 pt.

PS: Oboe 8- 1 pt.

PS: Piano 8- 1 pt.

KS: Jazz Music 8- 1 pt.

PS: Skiing 11- 2 pts.

PS: Soccer 11- 2 pts.

Survival: Temperate/Subtropical Forests 11- 2 pts

Perk: Eagle Scout 1 pt.

Re: Van Damme does Pulp

Why do I get the impression "The Quest" is Street Fighter II- Pulp Style

Funny, I always thought of it as a remake of "Blood Sport" with a pulp feel.

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

In my current game, we started at 505 points (free regen 1/day). But we were required to have 120 pts in non combat skills. My char. I think has the highest skill point total but he is also 2500 years old. I don't actually have skills for some things, such as Classical Greek Mythology (as he grew up with it) and the GM allows me to make Int checks for those. He also knows 10 languages and has 15 skills under (Traveler).

Re: Altering rules: d20 style skill rolls?

I guess, I just don't understand the feel you are going for then.

 

Shrug.

 

Maybe someone else can help...need more SODA!

Rapier, I think what he's getting at is that he prefers the "Roll High" Method. As in Take your roll + ability bonus + Skill Level + Situational Modifiers and try to have a Higher Total that that of your Opponent or of the "Difficult Class" (to use a d20 term).

Re: Tuala Morn

I'm slowly but surely nearing the end of The Ultimate Mentalist. When that's done' date=' I will write [i']The Celtic Bestiary,[/i] and when that's done I write Tuala Morn. So we're gettin' there, slowly but surely.

Steve, You're a Machine.

Cheers

Re: An Old Quiz, But A Nice One.

You scored as Method Actor.

You think that gaming is a form of creative expression. You may view rules as, at best, a necessary evil, preferring sessions where the dice never come out of the bag. You enjoy situations that test or deepen your character's personality traits.

Method Actor 67%

Storyteller 58%

Butt-Kicker 50%

Tactician 50%

Specialist 33%

Casual Gamer 33%

Power Gamer 17%

Re: Alignment Issues

I think I'm going to actually jump into this one since I've been having some thoughts on the topic.

Currently I'm running a "current edition" D&D game in the Forgotten Realms. In this setting most people are neutral, as in they generally don't care that much about the Cosmic forces of Good, Evil, Law, Chaos. And in this setting there are Metaphysical and magical forces attuned to each of the alignments. Where this comes in, really, is in three places. An individuals religion (must be somewhat related to their deity), A Cleric/Paladin/Druid/Monk who must have a certain alignment (and clerics/paladins actually an aura associated with their alignment), and extra planar creatures (where they are the imbodyment of that alignment). Otherwise, for characters Not of a divine class, alignments are more flexable and the definitions of those alignments become very individualized.

So, in the D&D game, Good, Evil, Law, Chaos are actual metaphysical and magical FACTS not conecpts or ideas. They actually govern how the universe runs (to a degree).

This type of thing, in the D&D game, exists to have a clear definition between "good" and "evil", and "law" and "chaos" where in reality it is all shades of gray (and most D&D characters use the Alignment as a guideline not hard rules, except for Clerics/Paladins who do the bidding of their god/dess and must follow the designation of teir deity's alignment.)

Re: Martial arts

I am trying to build a mixture of Ninja and Samari sword skills for my charecter. Have about 20 points can make it 30 if i need to already have WF for common melee wepons common martial arts melee wepons and small arms. Ive never made a charecter with martail arts before.

Buy Ultimate Martial Artist.

You can make all the martial arts and related skills for a Samurai (ulness you add in unarmed martial arts) in about 20 pts. 10-12 pts in Martial Maneuvers (Block, Dodge, Strike, Bind) and then Usually Breakfall, KS: Kenjutsu, Fast Draw, WF: Blades, etc.

[edit] my current character is a master in Kenjutsu and Jujutsu. Scroll down to the bottom and his Martial Arts ar listed in the Right column (Kenjutsu is at the bottom). Also look at his "Martial Skills" in the center column. This may help[/edit]

Re: How often is the Skill: Acting used by your characters?

My current character (a Martial Artis with 360 degree Spatial Awareness discriminatory) uses it to "act blind". It goes over quite well when he is pretending to stumble a little bit on things he knows are there, but in reality couldn't "see".

[Edit] Also, But the Ultimate Skill. An Amazing book for anyone who likes to use skills, a lot. (like my GM)[/Edit]

Re: Music Instrument Familiarity

I would think' date=' for a Jazz musician who knew several insturments, PS: Jazz Musician and a good character background would cover it. Or, going a step farther, a few professional skills (since, with Jack of Trades, you also get the break on other skills).[/quote']

 

I like this idea. And will most likely use it vs. the new familiarity skill. It makes more sense.

Re: Music Instrument Familiarity

Bear in mind, there's "dramatically correct" versus reality. That being said, it makes sense to tailor to the needs of the play group. Most laypeople would be thrown not being able to apply sax abilities to a trumpet (though I'd just put "horns" and maybe "woodwinds" into separate groups and leave it at that), even though they are of course very different. And it also matters how much such things matter in the game at hand - in a game centering around musical abilities every instrument should be broken out possibly with a GURPS-like or language-like familiarity table.

 

But, to the point itself, sure.

But if you just look at a Sax and a trumpet next to each other they have nothing incommon aside from the material they are made of.

Of course in most jazz circles, anyone who plays a wind instrument is playing a "horn".

And, truth to tell, learning 1 musical instrument makes it easy to learn others of similar type, by this I mean winds (both woodwinds and brass), Strings (both high and low), Keyboards/percussion, etc.

At the beginning it's all about learning how to read music (and not just the music on the page, but to "hear" how music is produced, and what sounds go together, etc.) After that picking up other instruments is relatively easy.

Cheers

Shike

P.S. On a personal note, I have trouble with High brass (trumpets, French Horns, Flugel horns, etc) because of the size of the brass mouthpiece (its just too damn small for me).

Re: Music Instrument Familiarity

I've oft heard this and am personally a strong advocate for mass music lessons for this very reason. However, I'm always skeptical of such comments because I'm concerned whether analyses have effectively taken account of reverse inferences (intelligent people play music, rather than music making you intelligent) and societal links (if you have music lessons you are more likely to be at least moderately wealthy, if you are at least moderately wealthy you may be more likely to have had better nutrition, access to books from a young age, parental nurturing, better education or inherited intelligence).

 

Still, my advice is err on the side of caution. Get them kids on instruments sharpish. Apart from anything else, two musical tours to Germany and annual residential courses make up some of my fondest and most, er, interesting teenage memories

 

Phil "One time, at bandcamp...."

Again, yes, I agree with you. Though my undergraduate thesis was on this topic, it is still very debatable.

Weather or not it actually "creates inteligence" it is proven that it does instill a sense of accopmlishment and discipline (though in some cases minor discipline) into children.

There is research proving that human thought processes, when mapped in the Trion Modle and parsed through a MIDI sequencer (Each row of 5 pixles equals a note) confer's descrete "styles" of music through the sequencer. (Keeping Mozart in Mind)

yes, these are the people who did the famous "Mozart Effect" study, which their results found that listening to Mozart Sonata (K.448) enhances Spatial-Tempral reasoning for about 15 minutes.

This study was done to obtain grant money for their longterm project which included teaching children piano and watching their progress against a group of like children (close aproximation of all factors) over time.

Re: Music Instrument Familiarity

The press over here are running a story that music lessons for children make them smarter and more intelligent so should music skills give you a bonus for intelligence characteristic:)

It is not so much as makes you smarter, but helps in forming certian types of neural connections, for things such as music (appreciation), math, and logic. (to name a few)

Re: Music Instrument Familiarity

Phil, I completely agree with you, but it just struck me as odd, as a musician of most of the wind instruments, that some of them appeared, to me, to be miss categorized. But you have to agree that a person buying woodwinds, should, in fact, be able to play sax. A person buying brass should get French horn.

Re: Entangle as improved grab

Edit: This is completely irrelevant' date=' but I just realized HERO makes a far better option for a Star Wars games than actual Star Wars games.[/quote']

 

You're not the first to notice that the HERO system is better at for a setting than a system published for that setting.

 

Cheers

 

Shike

Re: Why do we have skills?

There is of course another thing in the favour of skills' date=' which that some skills do things that are simply impossible for a power. Knowledge skills in particular have no power which can duplicate them in every application. At best you can just use telepathy to steal the knowledge from someone who does have the skill.[/quote']

 

Actually I think that you can use Clairsentience for this.

 

At least (after I re-read the power) I would assume it is possible to use Clairesentience for the purpose of gaining the information you need about a topic or topics.

Re: Does this make ANY sense?

OK sure' date=' if the GM allows you to sell skills back. To me that seems like stretching things tho. Just my $0.02.[/quote']

 

Actually, I thought that it was quite common (going from what I've seen on the boards) to "upgrade" a CSL to the next level.

 

And apparently some GM's require it.

 

Cheers

 

Shike

Re: Ultimate Skill - Good for new groups?

Thanks Rifter

Re: Ultimate Skill - Good for new groups?

Thank you. I'm very impressed with the HERO system, the game designers are very talented people.

 

I notice you recommended Ultimate Vehicle over the Vehicle Sourcebook, can you elaborate on that?

If you read the Product write ups, the Vehicle Sourcebook is like the Ultimate Vehicle II. The Vehicle Sourcebook expands on the information contained in the Ultimate Vehicle.

Re: Ultimate Skill - Good for new groups?

Daeger, First off, to echo Captain Thia Halmades, Welcome to our little slice of the gamer universe. It is one of the very few places where you can talk directly with the game designers.

Second, on the Topic of the Ultimate Skill. If you like Skill heavy characters, buy it, you won't be disapointed, 400 pages of Skillsy goodness. Again, the Captain is accurate in saying it reads like a codified Encyclopedia, but you can't beat the information without getting a library of your very own.

Thridly, There isn't a generalized recommended reading list for Hero. It all depends on what you are trying to do. My personal suggestions are Ultimate Martial Artist and Ultimate Skill, and my collection also contains Fantasy hero (but I've been creating my own Fantasy Setting). For Space Opera, I would suggest Star Hero, Ultimate Vehicle, Ultimate Martial Artist (can't beat this one ), and then from there you could go in any number of directions. Steve, who frequents these boards and may pop in for a comment, does an excellent job of trying to make all of his books as useful as possible for everyone.

So Enjoy.

And please forgive some of our zealous behavior, some here have been playing in the system since it was first published.

Cheers

Shike

Re: Your "2006" Pet Gaming Projects

TheQuestionMan - I fixed the link.

Re: Your "2006" Pet Gaming Projects

Well, For Fantasy/D&D

I'm creating a Campaign Setting Abra Dar. A pseudo Celtic/Yamato feel. [edit]It is still under heavy construction[/edit]

Also, a Searchable Spells Database that is currently written, I just need to do the data entry (thousands of spells, including those from Killer Shrike [with permission]).

Other

I plan on doing an Equipment Database as well, which will again take time for data entry.

I've also been designing fictional martial arts, and some specific items (prefabs, templates, exports) for Hero Designer, which, as my programming capabilities improve I will be able to do more with.

But by far, I have to say my campaign setting is my biggest endeavor and will probably take at least another year for me to get even close to a finished product.

All of this is on my website which also has some discussion boards of its own.

Re: Historical Fiction

What kind of Historical Fiction are you talking about, Mythological kind of stuff, or possibly more recent stuff. If you are reading more recent (ala 1500's - 1600's) I would suggest the Boroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson.