Lord Zod

Re: Mental Powers Sorry to get off topic but this is an issue that has sparked a lot more debate in my group than the Mental powers issue ever has. Reading the tempertature level rules in the environment section of the book, you would think that a camel needs Safe environment Extreme Heat. Can a camel survive in a volcano or on the sun? Ultimately I think that lava and superheated plasma should not be considered environmental affects. On the mental powers issue, I always thought that the distinction between human and alien minds was silly. In my group we agreed to use a sentient minds category. If your can talk, you are sentient. As a limitation, you could make your mental powers only work on your own species. The Alien class of minds might still be appropriate for some Lovecraftian horrors, but generally they don't make good PCs. Animals aren't fit to be player characters. Being immune to mental powers that aren't specifically designed to affect them is a small side benefit of the crippling Physical Limitation: Animal Intelligence. If you make an "animal" that is a viable PC, then it probably isn't really an animal. As for robots being immune to most mental powers, well that just makes sense. Automations are always immune to mental powers automatically, the computers that sometimes control them aren't. The machine class of minds consists of computers, and only computers. AIs use their ego, regular computers replace their intelligence for ego, like it says in the equipment chapter. Being able to mind control or use telepathy on a computer is very useful in any setting where computers exist. It might be less useful in combat than mindcontrol versus humans, especially if you never fight a robot. But I think its a fair trade off for the benefits out of combat. Say you want to discreetly gather some information using telepathy. Use it on a human and you'll need to get a pretty high effect roll to keep him from knowing you read his mind. Use it on a computer with no AI and that doesn't matter. Who's it going to tell? If you want to make a robot PC, then I personally have no problem at all with letting it be affected as a machine class of minds. If you find it unbalancing, make him pay points for it. I can't imagine it should be worth any more than 10 points, since that's how much it costs to affect him. Personally I'd let him have it for free but make sure it's balanced against the disadvantages of being a robot (and the points he gets for them). I'd even let him take automation only powers if it makes sense for him to have them.

Re: Skill Levels--limits? In most of my group's games we use a simple house rule that tends to alleviate this problem. Characters can only put one xp into any one characteristic or skill per session. It takes 3 sessions to improve your DEX by one point. A CSL takes 2 sessions to get, and more to improve, and you can't work on two "different" CSLs for the same attack at the same time. If you want to be the best fighter in the world, it will take a whole campaign to get that good.

Re: Goofy Disadvantage / Power Ideas I know a guy who... okay I admit it was me, forgive me, I don't know what I was thinking at the time. In a one shot game, I played a character with the psychological limitation "Marks his territory by urinating on fallen foes." Fortunately, he never won a fight.

Re: Most Feared Disadvantage My favorite disadvantages are Psychological limitations. Every character has a personality, might as well get points for yours. Yay, I can get extra points for playing my character a certain way, the way I planning on playing him. Technically, I'm loading up on these even after I've reached the limit and don't get points for them anymore, because I'm just defining my character's personality. Sure they limit the actions you can take and can make certain goal difficult to achieve, but generally I find that they enhance the characters. I don't see them as being in the way because my character would have done things that way anyway. I've played hero system about 6-12 hours a week in the past year and in that time I've played 3 different characters. I've made an ego roll to resist my psychological limitations twice, and only because they conflicted. Once they even helped me out by allowing me to resist mind control. I think Hunted and Rivalry also fun ones. Every hero has enemies, might as well get points for them. My least favorite ones are Unluck because its so subjective and Berserk because it tends to require people to have you put down. That's not to say I would never take them though. In the game I GM, I banned Berserk because I figured the PCs had enough reasons to fight already.

Re: Comeliness: Yay, nay or indifferent

Re: Comeliness: Yay, nay or indifferent Keep it. Sure some people make it their dump stat, but even they won't go too low or risk the indignity of mouthy NPCs telling them that they are ugly. If you were going to drop it, or turn it into a perk, why not make it a talent instead? It could work a bit like the "Double Jointed" talent, giving the character bonuses to certain skills under certain circumstances, say Persuasion or Seduction for the attractive and Interrogation or Persuasion attempts based on intimidation for the ugly. Distinctive Features also fits. I use negative comliness for alot of horror game monsters, couldn't do without it. An NPC with negative comliness is a player favorite in my Star Hero game. "DOX IS SCARY!"

Re: New Bleeding Rules I think this thread deserves a bump. More people should hear about the joys of superior bloodletting. Also I'd like to suggest a few new Advantages and Limitations to make use of Bram's bleeding rules. No Bleed (-1/4): Alot of forms of damage should have this disadvantage built in, like the body damage taken from drowning for example. I can see a lot of odd attack powers that would need this. Does Bleed (+1/4): A power that normal causes no body damage, and thus no bleed, causes bleed. Count the normal body and subtract the targets applicable defenses to determine the bleed. Double Bleed (+3/4) or Does 1 1/2 Bleed (+1/2): Double the body taken after defenses for purposes of bleed. Limited while supplies last, buy your Longsword of Wounding +2 today! With Roy's advice I based the prices off of the Knockback advantages, our reasoning being that both Bleeding and Knockback are side effects of damaging attack powers that can cause the target to take additional damage. You might find these untested advantages to be too cheap, (since knockback is easier to prevent,) which case you should probably disallow them or make them more expensive. I might recomend an extra +1/4. I suppose I could have included Bleed Resistance to mirror Knockback Resistance, but you'd probably be better off taking Does Not Bleed for 15 pts of a die of Regeneration with a few levels of the Bleed Reduction (+1/4) advantage to represent your super blood clotting powers. Maybe these rules further complicate an area of combat some people would rather ignore because of the extra bookkeeping, but personally I like my battles to be bloody.

Re: Spiderman Vs. Firelord There are a lot of good arguments on both sides, but after careful thought I'm wieghing in with the Spiderman supporters. This is my reasoning: I think that alot of people are seriously underestimating Spiderman and seriously overestimating Firelord. How do we know Firelord is tough? Because he fought Thor and lost? If Aunt May fought Thor and lost would that make her tough? Aside from the whole starship thing, Firelord has never won a fight in his life. I don't see how the power to grow to thousands of feet tall and slap starships around has any bearing on his fight with spiderman, since he didn't use that power during the fight. He has shown consistently that he has tremendous power but doesn't know how to use it. As for spiderman, just because his day to day activities consist of knocking muggers around doesn't mean that that's all he's suited for. Can spiderman stand still and win a punching contest with the likes of Firelord, the Hulk, Thor, the Juggernaut, or Rhino? Of course not, because that's not how he fights. Spiderman is not a brick, or even a mini-brick. He's more or a martial artist, most Bricks can't touch him and those Move-by's hurt. Spiderman consistently defeats foes who are stronger than him by being faster and smarter. That's his schtik, it's what he does. It's not just a goofy thing that sometimes happens when sales are down, it happens all the time. Sure, part of the reason he always wins is because its his book, that's true of most superheroes, but it doesn't do the "low-powered" heroes justice to say that's the only reason they win. No one ever complains that the Hulk won a fight he "should have lost" because the writer wanted him to. He won because he's the Hulk and "Hulk am strongest one there is!" Can't the reader believe that a character like spiderman wins not only because he's fated to win but because he actually is that good at what he does? He am one with best DCV there is! If we want to look at the issue in terms of hero system stats then I think it should be clear why spiderman won that fight. Firelord's "player" had more points to work with than spiderman's but spent them on things that aren't useful for one-on-one combat. He spent them on huge area of affect attacks that level cityblocks, Life Support, FTL travel, or his Cosmic Power VPP. I've seen 350 pt characters lose one-on-one duels with 50 pt characters because they weren't built to win. It's not that far fetched. So Firelord was a herald of Galactus, big deal. Look at what he can actually do in a fight with spiderman assuming he doesn't want to unleash his powerful AoE attacks and level the city. He can fly around and shoot fireballs that can't connect. Based on his performance in other fights he probably has a DEX of around 23, few if any CSLs, and no Martial Arts manuevars, and a speed of around 6. He had a lot of points to spend but this is not where he spent them. Spiderman on the otherhand has a SPD of at least 8, a DEX in the neighbor hood of 38, advanced Martial arts capabilities and tons of CSLs, probably +4 with DCV alone. Firelords strength and defenses are high, their probably in the mini-brick range but he uses his "Power Cosmic" VPP to boost them. Spiderman's strength is a little hard to guess because he's always either holding back or pushing. I think its somewhere between 30 and 45. His defenses are also really high, not as high as Firelord's. It's mostly combat luck, and a bit of damage resistance. Spiderman can't take a hit from Firelord, but that shouldn't matter because Firelord can't hit him. If you disagree with my stats of course your entitled to your opinion, but I ask you to consider the source material. Firelord has never done anything impressive. He thinks of himself as a warrior, but his powers aren't made for the kind of combat he's likes to fight. Just because he's high powered doesn't mean he needs really high stats. I think the stats I give him reflect his fighting style, powerful but unskilled brute force attacks. Spiderman on the otherhand has tons of combat experience. Even Captain America has a little trouble landing a blow on spiderman, and he has as much as said so. His skills are respected by the Marvel Universe's best martial artists and gun fighters. Hence the high DCV. As anyone considered doing a poll on this?