bigdamnhero

Re: Firefly Hero Count on it! I'm also running my own Firefly-based scenario using SH. I'll let you know how that goes.

Re: Firefly Hero Apparently "Serenity the RPG" is soon to be released by Margaret Weis productions. (Someone's running a demo game Labor Day weekend at Tacticon in Denver.) Hate to plug a non-Hero product, but might make decent source material for a Firefly Hero campaign.

Re: RIP: James Doohan Never me him myself, but everyone I know who has said the same thing.

Re: Scaled damage and armor effectiveness FWIW, here are a couple house rules I have used in the past to aceive similar effects. (Notice the past tense - I'll also explain why I stopped using them.) #1 - For every 2 below the necessary "to hit" roll, add one DC up to x2 the weapon's standard DC. This goes along with my assertion that the biggest variable in weapon damage is shot placement, so the more accurate your shot, the more damage you should do. Also, it sorta parallels the "2 CSLs adds 1 DC" rule. Why I stopped using it: weapons became increadibly lethal and everyone died very quickly. I do however still allow weapons to do max damage if you make half your roll or less. (That was a 3Ed rule, IIRC?) #2 - I used to assign Penetration values to weapons: negative Penetration for things like arrows or small-caliber pistol ammo, and positive numbers for heavy weapons. This value added to the target's resistant defenses. In other words, let's say a .22 pistol had a Pen of -3, and shot someone wearing 4 rPD of Kevlar, the vest would have an effective 7 rPD for this shot. OTOH, if the same target was hit by an anti-tank missile with Pen+6, the vest would have an effective 0 rPD against this shot, but it would not add to the damage done by the missile. In both cases, if the target had had no armor at all Pen would have had no effect. Why I stopped using it: too damn complicated. I still like the idea in theory, but found it too hard to keep track of and it really slowed combat down.

Re: The Quintessential BODY

Re: The Quintessential BODY The can't-die-until-I-finish-this-task paradigm is a classic use of one of my favorite Hero "quirks": negative BOD, but positive Stun, bleeding to death, but using EGO rolls to keep going. Realistic and heroic in one package! OTOH, there are any number of real-world examples of people being shot/stabbed/run over/whatever who lived, when other people of similar-or-larger size with near-identical injuries were dead before they hit the ground. Natalie Portman notwithstanding, some people just seem to hold on to life more strongly than others. Similarly, the before-mentioned Rasputin was slightly above-average in size, but clearly had a BOD of 20. Don't know how you quantify that, in terms of how much is size vs. how much is will; don't know that you need to. But it seems to me that a game built around "Being a Hero" ought to allow some room for heroes (and villains) who are "just too tough to die."

Re: Knockback and Bullets Well, if you want to get technical about it... I was just trying to paint a very rough analogy, ie - KE of recoil small, KE of bullet can't be orders of magnitude larger. But I probably should've been more precise in my language. Or at least started out with the disclaimer that I was a history major, not a physics major.

Re: Harry Potter Hero? Thanks! I figured I couldn't be the first one to have thought of it. The kid in question has already made it through and enjoyed both Hobbit and LoTR, but still has a fondness for the Potter books. Probably the same way I still love the John Carter of Mars books.

At the risk of getting laughed off the boards, has anyone tried doing a Harry Potter conversion for Hero? A friend is putting together a campaign to introduce his son to role-playing.

Re: Knockback and Bullets I don't think knockback was ever intended to be realistic - it's a genre thang. If you think about it from a conservation-of-momentum perspective, the force of the recoil of the gun is basically equivilent to the force of the bullet impacting on the other end. (Excepting high-tec recoil reduction mechanisms.) It's the fact that the impact is focused on such a small spot that gets you. I know people who've been shot and didn't even notice it until someone pointed out the blood. I know other people who've fallen down after taking a shot to the vest that didn't even leave a bruise. So it would seem fair to call it a psychological reaction rather than a physical reaction. (Hmm.. resist using EGO instead of STR...?)

Re: Knockback: just checking OK, I thought that was the case, but wanted to make sure. Thanks guys.

My group usually plays heroic games, so we haven't used knockback much. But a recent forray into Champions land has led to a dispute. 5ed p280 says you subtract 2d6 from "the amount of BODY done by the attack." This is BEFORE defenses are applied, yah? We're talking the BODY rolled on the dice? Or is this another thing I've been doing wrong all these years? (I confess, I've found one or two of those since I discovered this board.) Thanks for the help,

Re: I'm considering Hero... Oh well, if JOE BOB says so...

Re: Two Campaign Ideas

Re: I'm considering Hero... As a sidebar: I've never bothered to invest in Hero Designer, mostly because I have an Excel character sheet that I ginned up back before there was a Hero Designer. I still have to look up power costs and so forth, but the sheet does the math for me. Not trying to talk anyone out of buying HD; just saying that there are other possibilities if you don't have it. bigdamnhero

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Yeah, I've had nights like that. Once I actually managed to nod off in the middle of my own character description! At least you got a few good laughs out of your hell-week. bigdamnhero "Well, my days of not taking you serious are certainly coming to a middle."

Re: Multiple Attacker Bonus True. Close quarters for fighting, but sometimes shoulder-to-shoulder is appropriate. I use a 1.5" hex mat so you can actually fit 2 miniatures in a hex. Still, LOL pinecone! bigdamnhero "Insert amusing quote here."

Re: Mass Starship Combat The problem with not tracking ships is that the more abstract you get the less room there is for tactics, and therefore less room for the players to make decisions that influence the outcome. You could maybe get some mileage by tracking squadrons instead of ships similar to the way the FH mass combat rules track units instead of individuals. My suggestion is to just grab some simple SF miniatures rules and adapt them to your universe. My recomendation is Full Thrust - plays very fast once you've got the ships built (kinda like Hero ) and is easily adaptable to your own setting. It can do fighters/no fighters, big ships/little ships, missiles/phasers/whatever. It's also fairly quick to learn. (If you've seen the ship combat rules in the Babylon 5 RPG and in the Traveller Power Projection books, they're based on Full Thrust.) And... Ground Zero Games has just made the rules available as a free download at http://www.gzg.com bigdamnhero "You do know you're talking to a man with live ammunition? You know that? Okay, good, just checking. Now go on with your bull$#!& story."

Re: LASD Superheros (ideas needed) Haven't been blowing you off, but I can't find my old notes. I'll keep digging... bigdamnhero "These aren't the droids you're looking for."

Re: Dudes, I need help building a city. McCoy is right about transportation, but don't forget other infrastructure like critical bridges, power stations, airports, oil refineries, and other things villains like to blow up. (Modern cities don't actually have huge walk-in sewer tunnels, BTW, but it's kindof a convention of the genre.) Natural disasters: depending on where you're loacting your city, is it prone to earthquakes, hurricans, tornadoes, or what all? A general idea of thecity's emergency response capability: where are the police stations, fire stations, hazmat response units, that sort of thing. Most major cities these days have some kind of "tech center." What other major industries does your city have, and where are they located? If you know where your schools are, it's easier to pull the old "This explosion will level everything for 4 blocks -- and there's an elementary school 2 blocks away!" (Tho that's probably more detail than you need to start with.) bigdamnhero "Seasoned? That’s a hell of a thing to say to a man!"

Re: Spacecraft and END

Re: Compound Power or HtH Attack? Ah, thank you. I didn't have the book in front of me, so I assumed that was one of those rules they changed, I never noticed, and have been playing it "wrong" for the last edition or two. bigdamnhero "Hey! You kids! Don't put your lips on it!"

I'm curious to see how people use the Multiple Attacker Bonus. In most of the heroic games I've run, I have allowed it pretty much as written (-1 OCV per additional attacker, down to 1/2 DCV) except I don't normally require a coordinated attack roll. (I make a subjective situational judgement as to how well the attacks are coordinated, generally giving the PCs the benefit of the doubt.) If I want PCs or NPCs to be able to wade through hordes of chumps without getting hit, there's always Def Maneuver II. But it seems like for superheroic games, that could give the "normals" too much of an advantage? bigdamnhero "Will someone get this walking carpet out of my way?"

Re: Selling your Hero Systems V4? Hmm... Think I'll hold onto the core rulebook, as well as the ones that haven't been re-released yet, like Cyber & Horror. But I could possibly be persuaded into parting with the Bestiary, Star Hero, maybe Fantasy Hero. PM me if interested. You can have my 3rd edition Fantasy Hero when you pry it from Charlton Heston's cold, dead fingers. bigdamnhero "These aren't the droids you're looking for."

Re: Compound Power or HtH Attack? Ditto. Wasn't that the rule in...I'm thinking 3rd edition, but I'm guessing here? bigdamnhero "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"