mallet

Also check out the movie No Escape Surprisingly good. near future Sci-fi where especially violent or problematic prisoners are sent to a remote island where they are dumped off and left to fend for themselves. Two rival societies have evolved and are at war with each other. Military prisoner Ray Liotta is dropped off and becomes a wild card between both warring factions, but his only goal is to find away to escape. Now as to your write-up, how were you planning to use it in your campaign? Are the players sent there and have to escape? Are they hired to rescue someone from there? Does their ship accidently crash on the planet and they have to survive until the government sends a ship to rescue them? If you are looking to make it a bit more "logical" as to why there would be a prison where they dump criminals to live and die there and never leave, rather then just killing them and saving the time/money, No Escape also has something you can borrow from it for that end. Make the setting have no death penalty and that the Prison system in your setting is run by private corporations (like is already happening in the USA). The government pays the corporations to guard and look after the prisoners and put them to work. On the corporations side of things, if the prisoner works and isn't causing trouble they stay in normal prisons, but if they are too much of a problem and causing issues, then they get the "job" of colonizing a new planet. So on paper it looks like the corporation is doing everything by the book if the government ever checks, but in reality they are just dumping off the prisoners on this prison world to get rid of them. The only thing is is that they can never let anyone escape, because if someone did and reported what the corporation is doing to the government then the corporation would be in big trouble. Now if this is a major part/setting of your campaign, then maybe the corporation could have a secondary motive, like maybe there is something hidden on that planet (ancient alien artifact/secret/etc...) or a vicious native lifeform that they want the prisoners to eventually find/kill off, etc... so sometime in the future they can colonize the planet easier and better (and start using a different planet for dumping the criminals on). Basically the prisoners are the first colonists on the planet, like how the worst prisoners were used/shipped to Australia back in the day, so anything they do to survive and make it even a bit better (clear cutting forests, building towns/huts, discovering the best living places, etc...) all is free labor for the corporation's future use of the planet.

The problem I think with comparing say a Champions buy and play adventure and a D&D one, is that characters in D&D are pretty much “set”. This is because of classes and levels. A level 5 fighter in any D&D campaign is going to be close to in powers and abilities to any other 5th level fighter in hundreds of other D&D campaigns. Because the character creation rules are set in stone. That is not the case in Champions and Hero in general. In Champions a 350pt hero in one campaign can be wildly different from any other 350 pt hero in every other Champions campaign. One could fly and pass through walls, another can control minds, another could shoot and control fire, and on and on. And then hen there are all the stop sign powers that any particular gm may or may not allow. It it is very hard to make a buy and play champions adventure when the writer has no idea which of hundreds if not thousands of different abilities any particular group of heroes might have. In comics the writers control who the hero’s fight. Daredevil doesn’t fight Galactus, Flash almost always fights other speedsters, silver surfer doesn’t fight street thugs. But in a for sale adventure the writer had no idea what type of heroes will be playing in it, so that makes it hard and hardly ever makes it something that any gm can just pick up and play unlike D&D adventures.

Hi all, any help or thoughts would be welcome. First, in Hero Designer there is the Martial Arts maneuver Flying Tackle. Does anyone know where the write up for this is? I can't find it in 6th ed Vol 2 or in the 6th ed. Martial Arts book (it is also not listed in the index for either). Also, since there is a Flying Tackle, is there a normal Tackle that anyone can do (a basic combat maneuver)? I couldn't find anything for that either. Second, does anyone know if there are rules for Dogpiling on a character, like they do in Football? I would assume that it would have to take place after a Target is Tackled, or already Prone. Then the other Characters would jump on him/her. My thinking that to Escape from under a dogpile the GM would add the weights of all the Characters on top of the Target together, and then that would be the "combined STR" of the dogpile that the Target character would have to roll against? But then that is only using brute STR to escape, like maybe those times in comics when a bunch of characters pile on the Hulk and he stands up sending them all flying, but in say football or some movies where this happens, the Target Character finds a way to wiggle out from under the pile, often without the attackers noticing, and then running away. This might be like using Contortionist skill to escape? Third, how would you calculate damage done to the target by all the other characters jumping on to him/her? This happens in football a lot, and doesn't often seem to do any damage to the person on the bottom (but sometimes it does), but then football players are big, strong and wearing armor. What would happen (how much damage) to a normal person, not wearing armor? Any thoughts or suggestions would be great! Thanks!

Ugh. Well I hope they figure out cold fusion reactors and propulsion systems soon, because it would be awesome to get to Mars in 2 days.

But then I have a question, if these numbers are correct, why don't we do space travel this way currently? Is the technology not there currently to keep a passenger alive/cargo intact at that acceleration or is it a matter of carrying enough fuel?

Ah! So it was my poor math skills

Am I reading this travel time chart wrong, or do those numbers seem way, way off? According to that chart going to Mars from Earth (on average 225 million KM away) would only take less the 88.7hours at 1G. That is obviously wrong, as we send probes to Mars at more then 1G and it takes months to get there. Heck, Mars at its closest to Earth is only 55 million KM away, and so by that chart it would take less then two days to get there. I mean a simple reverse math check shows that if a ship could go 255,000,000 km in 88.7 hours, that means the ship would be going 2.87million km/hour!!!! (255,000,000km/88.7hrs= 2,874,859 km/hour) The moon is 384,000Km from Earth, lets round up to 400,000KM which is on the chart. According to that it would only take 211 minutes to get to the Moon at 1G. That's only 3 hours and 31 minutes. Avengers: Endgame has a longer runtime then a trip to the moon according to this chart. So either that chart is wrong or my math skills are seriously off.

Assuming that all life on the planet originated there, then they would have all evolved to have those seasons and temperatures be their "normal". So while maybe at 3 AU out a human from Earth would find it chilly in mid-summer, a human from that planet might find it hot because they evolved under those temperature conditions. If you brought one of those humans to Earth they would find it super (possibly deadly hot in mid-summer) but find our worst winters "not that bad", because they evolved on the planet that was cooler then our. But since all life on that planet evolved there, then is it all balanced and becomes just "fluff"/background/point of interest and not needing to be statted out. As for less sunlight, well their eyes would have evolved to be effective with that amount of light. So to us it might seem like they have a form of nightvision, but since every creature on that planet evolved under those conditions it is normal to them, and would only make a difference if they travelled to another planet (like Earth), where our nights wouldn't bother them as much, but our days would be blindingly bright to them. But assuming the Characters won't be planet hopping to Earth, then it doesn't matter if they would consider 50F to be hot and 100F to be deadly, because their temperature scale would be based on their planet/world, not ours.

Sorry if this has been addressed somewhere or sometime before, but I did a search or two and couldn't find anything. So surprisingly enough, over the years of playing 6th edition none of the Players in my campaigns have ever Shoved an NPC. But now it has come up and I have been reading up on it and have a couple of questions, and might have found a discrepancy in how Shoves are resolved, or at least maybe an error in an expansion on the rules/example. In the write up on Shove in 6E2 79, it says the target gets Shoved back 1m for every 5 STR of the Shover (on a successful attack), it then goes on to say the person being Shoved can resist using their Strength as per resisting Knockback as per 6E2 117. In that section is says that if the person being Shoved declares (s)he is resisting it (before the Shove attack) and it is a 1/2 Phase action (and their DCV drops to 1/2), and they take 2m off of the Shove for every 5 STR they have. Question 1) Can you Abort to resist Shove? If they do, is their DCV 1/2 when the Shover makes his/her Attack roll? Continuing on, as an example combat resolution, a 40 STR character Shoving (on a successful attack) a resisting NPC with 20 STR, the NPC would not be pushed back as they would resist the full effect (40 STR = a 8m Shove, 20 STR resisting = -8m vs Shove). No dice roll needed (except for the attack roll). If that is correct, then all good so far. But while reading Shove (and Root) the books directed me to look at the APG pg 170 for additional rules. My concern is in the Example in this section. In the Example it: A) has the Shover (and target(s)) rolling BODY dice based on STR to determine how far they might be Shoved, which isn't part of the main Shove rules in 6E2 79. Is this just an error or should Shove be resolved by BODY dice rolls? B ) the targets do not seem to be Aborting to resist the Shove, nor declaring they are resisting it. Is this just to keep the example shorter? Or if using BODY dice rolls, you do not need to declare or spend 1/2 action to resist? C) The Shover in the example has 40 STR and the combined lifting STR of the bad guys is 20 STR, under the 6E2 79, rules wouldn't they cancel out? 40 STR = 8m Shove, 20 STR = -8m vs Shove? Because how I read that example (minus the BODY dice roll, and the fact that the thugs don't declare they are resisting/have already attacked that Phase) that all three thugs should have been Shoved back 8m by Cheng Fei (under the 6E2 79 rules) Or am I just completely off the mark here and missing something obvious? Thanks!

I don't think Champions will ever become a phenomenon like D&D, at least not with Hero System build whatever you want rules. There are just too many options and rules to learn to build your own characters or to use pre-made characters. It is so hard to compare one character to another so people have a hard time "visualizing" their own character and the other characters. We all know how a munchkin build can ruin a game, and those can happen accidentally if you have new players making characters for the first time. Too many options can be debilitating. Damage classes, 1/2 damage classes, 1/4 limitations, and on and on. I love it, but 99% of people just wanting to play don't. D&D is easy. Roll dice for stats, Pick a race, Pick a class. Write it all down. Get some weapons and gear and you are done. From the books you know what your race is like, what their culture is, what their history is. For classes, you know what they do, what is cool about them, and what powers and abilities you'll have as you level up. It is all right there for them to see and imagine and visualize. This also makes it easy for GM's to plan adventures and campaigns. 4 5th level Players? Cool. I can make an adventures for that (or just buy and run one). but 4 400 pt characters in Champions can be vastly different in powers and abilities. Some powers can make an adventure pointless or finished in minutes. Some builds will be killed before another similar point build is even hurt. Maybe if someone, someday, made a Champions game that had Classes (Brick, Energy Projector, Mentalist, etc...) with pre-built powers and pre-built power progression (yes, levels. I know many people here hate that), then maybe Champions could gain more widespread popularity, and do stuff like mentioned in the article, but until then, it is not going to happen. Set classes, levels and powers allows GMs to plan correctly, it allows for adventures, campaigns and settings that can be played by every group worldwide (which in turns creates a community as people can discuss and laugh about how their group did the campaign compared to another person's group who they just met). So until Champions puts out a set of rules like that, I don't think it will ever be even 1/8th as popular as D&D.

Would some of the above discussion be "solved" if Normal Human Maximum was applied to all characters, both Heroic and Super, as a rule? Maybe even lowering the NHM to 15 in Heroic games and keeping it at 20 in Super games, or some variation of that?

Good Point about COM not being linked to sexual attraction always. In that case the Limitation would be lowered, based on how much of the in-game population would be affected. Heck, maybe give it an Activation roll 11-, 12-, 8- or something to represent not everyone will react the same way to a character's physical appearance.

How about this: Good Looking: +1 with all Interaction Skills (4 Active Points); Only vs characters that would find Players appearance attractive (-1 1/2) Real cost: 2 Gives more granularity then Striking Appearance, and has an ingame effect that COM doesn't. The -1 1/2 Limitation is because theoretically over half the population wouldn't be sexually attracted to the character. If aliens are part of the campaign they also wouldn't care about he characters appearance. 2 CP for this ability, is equal to 4 points of COM (if I remember correctly 1 point of COM cost .5 CP), so for general discussion sake you could say this character has 14 COM, buy it twice and they have 18 COM, 3 times 22 COM, and so on. So my super-hot super-spy has +3 with all interaction skills vs. characters that would be attracted to her. This means she has the equivalent of 22 COM when matters of appearance are described. Another player on the team has the cute-farm-girl-mechanic character who only has +1 and the equivilent COM stat of 14. If the character needs massive appeal, then they take Striking Appearance.

I posted this on a similar thread a few months back, but it applies here, so here is a re-post: I would add to this that potentially most of the geography and nations of the world have changed, so the players don't know "what is over the next horizon". This kind of mystery has always been popular in Fantasy Games. Sure, you might have a general map, but the map might no longer be correct because of wold events, and the slow speed of communication means that big political or power changes might have happened in the time between the map was made and the way things are when the players get there.

I guess it might have something to do with each GM's game design theory. If all characters started at 1 in each characteristic that would be worth 146 CP. So a starting average Super Hero would be built on 546 CP (400 Cp suggested in the game + 146 CP from what having all that stats start at normally). This would be a "true" build whatever character you want version of the game. But what 6th does is start all the characters at a "normal" person point level, to make things simpler and let the players know what "normal" is in the system. So do you consider those 146 CPs set in stone and free because they are what a normal person starts with in the system, or are those points just and part of the rules that can be repurposed to whatever the player wants to spend them on? I feel that logically there are either two options, option: A ) No characteristic should be allowed to be "sold back" and repurposed for other sending. Starting "base" is the ground floor for all player characters and the minimum a character can have/start with. Those 146 points don't technically exist for character building purposes. Or B ) Those 146 points and just put there to make things easier for starting players, but that all characteristics should allowed to be sold back to 1, as the starting "normal" level is just a suggestion built into the rules. I am firmly of the B camp, and since the rules say you can sell back stats, the game itself is also of this feeling. If it was a "true" build what you want system, then all stats should start at 1 (or even 0) and all the starting points for each type of campaign would at +146 (+186 is the starting is 0 ) CP to the totals listed in the book. And if that was the case, no one would complain if a character only had 1 in OMCV or DMCV or any other characteristic that the players vision of that character would have at such a low level. So basically are those 146 points all characters start with free to be used by the players, or are they "off limits" and and shouldn't be adjusted down at all.

Ah, okay. That is what I feared. Too bad. Another question then for those of you more familiar with Hero Designer then I. HD can do both 5th and 6th edition characters. I am playing 6th edition. What would happen if I tried to load a 5th edition character pack item on to a 6th edition character? For example, 6th ed character wants to use a item from the 5th Edition alien wars character pack? Would a 5th edition character pack even load into the prefab tabs for a 6th edition character?

I posted this in another thread, but got no response, so I thought I'd try here. Was there ever a Character Pack released for Star Hero 6th Edition? If there was, I can't find it in the store. Does anyone know?

Found the Fantasy Hero one, but still no luck finding the Star Hero one. Does anyone know if it was ever made?

Like the title says, either I can't find them anywhere in the store, or were they never made?

If you are trying to come up with a new setting, and looking to draw in younger or new players players it might be good to look at what is currently popular to them on TV. In that regard first look might be at all the CW series: -A bunch of DC hero shows (Flash, green arrow, etc..) -Supernatural (15+ seasons!) -Riverdale -The 100 (7+ seasons) Lets cut The DC hero shows as that is hardly a "new" genre or setting. Might as well use Champions. Lets cut Riverdale as it is primarily a relationship series (although parts of it could be used) So that leaves Supernatural and The 100. Next lets looks at Netflix series: -Umbrella Academy -The Marvel series -Sabrina teenage witch Umbrella Academy and the Marvel shows are again super hero universes, so again lets cut those. That leaves Sabrina. Other popular series from other channels: -Game of Thrones -Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead -Numerous Cops shows -Numerous Spy/special forces shows So lets cut the cop and spy shows as those don't really have a special setting/genre that would probably translate to an RPG. That leave Game of Thrones - a fantasy genre heavy with politics and a slight approaching apocalypse vibe (with the advancing white walkers. And Walking Dead series, which are post-apocalypse So over all we are let with two or three possible genres: Urban Horror (Supernatural, Sabrina) - good, but a bit done to death so would need an original take on it to make it work as it has to fit into the "regular" world. Post-Apocalypse (Walking Dead, The 100) - Easier to develop a setting for this type of game as there is a lot more freedom in the world building. Fantasy (Game of Thrones) - Lots of competition in Fantasy settings, so maybe not the best choice. So in this analysis I would say a Post-Apocalypse setting is probably the best choice for a new game/setting if you wanted to create one. One that involves not only survival and re-building the world, but if you could add in some relationship drama, different groups and politics. Then you only need to decide how much of society has collapsed, if things are different in different parts of the campaign world, and what the apocalypse was caused by (aliens, zombies, nuclear war, magic, supernatural monsters (Cthulhu, vampires, etc...) and go from there.

Can he use this to escape handcuffs and wrist-ties, etc...? If that is the case then there would need to more to it then just Indirect Str. According to the 6th Ed rules, I'd buy it as Disoldification (Arms only) with the Affects Physical World (Arms only; for 5 STR). So... Ghost Arms: Desolidification , Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (60 Active Points); Arms Only (-2), Does Not Protect Against Damage (-1) RC: 15 Plus: +5 STR, Affects Physical World (+2) (15 Active Points); Linked (Desolidification; -1/2) RC: 10 So total cost is 25 Points

So this idea interested me so I took a stab at creating it how I would do it. I obviously don't know your campaign limits, house rules, etc... So this was just an attempt to cover most things and keep it close to 300 points. Very hard to do! His skills are very weak, plus there is other stuff I am sure he should have, but without reducing his characteristics even lower or cutting powers he would/should have this wasn't possible. I didn't spend time on complications or so other details (didn't build out the ship which is a floating base in this build). Anyway, I've attached here. Ship Avatar Character.pdf

I'm of the mind that the ship should be built as a vehicle or base that the characters has, so it does have a physical location that all the characters can use, and then the powers of the character (the humanoid "drone") that rely on the ship (the attacks, etc...) are bought like Gnome Body suggested as just being the SFX of the powers/attacks (all built with Indirect). This saves having to work out super long ranges/modifiers for the attacks coming 100's of miles from the ship and all that kind of thing. So maybe to start the Ship (built as a vehicle or base) is a simple say 100 point build (or less since most of the powers will be coming from the "character"), so a cost of 20 real points (or less) to the character, so the character still has 280ish points (or more) to spend on powers and abilities. Then with experience points, you can increase the ship and character as time goes on. Give the Character Regeneration (Resurrection) to simulate that if he is killed (destroyed) the "Ship" builds a new one of him to keep being his Avatar in the campaign.

How about: Extraordinary Success: Multipower, 140-point reserve, (140 Active Points); 1 Charge which Recovers every 6 months (-4), Extra Time (Full Phase, -1/2), Perceivable (-1/4), Requires A Roll (Power Tricks Skill roll, -1 per 20 Active Points modifier; -1/4), Incantations (-1/4), Gestures (-1/4); all slots Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2) 3f Extra-Dimensional Movement (Any Dimension, Any Location corresponding to current physical location) (42 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2) 4f Extra-Dimensional Movement (Any Point in Time, Physical Location Same As Starting Location) (67 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2) 9f Tunneling 10m through 21 PD material, Fill In, MegaScale (1m = 10 km; +1 1/4) (139 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2) 8f Luck 28d6 (140 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2), Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4) Real Cost: 44pts. Add abilities/powers to suit. It only recovers every 6 months, so they can't use it all the time. Maybe once every few adventures, etc... If they want to waste it taking out a Goon then they can, but they can save for when they really need a cinematic amazing success use of power, etc...

I also found the movie just okay. Definitely in the lower end of the Marvel films. Most of that was from the writing and pacing of the film. The stakes never felt that high and once Carol got her full powers near the end she still had trouble fighting the Kree, but at the sametime could blow up starship and massive bombs, etc... All the needed to do was drop one line of hers in there about her not wanting to kill her former team and it would have made more sense, but she never says that and it seems like she is trying to kill them, so why is that so hard for her to do? Are the other Kree so tough that a shot from her doesn't kill them, but can blow apart a spaceship? The movie also raised another issue that I think the MCU needs to resolve very soon give how cosmic the films are getting. How does space travel work in the universe? We know there are jumpgates, as seen in this movie, GotG, Thor Ragnarok, etc... that allow the jumping of large distances in shorter amounts of time (although it still takes some time) and some jumpgates go further and faster then others, but there are times when they also seem to be traveling at "warp speed" (faster then light, but not using a jumpgate) like in Infinity War when the Guardians are looking for the Asguarding distress call and Tony, Dr. Strange and Spidy are on Thano's ship heading to Titan and a few other instances I am sure I am forgetting. And then there is the Bifrost used by Thor that allows almost instant transportation across the galaxy, and we know that the bifrost in the MCU is just super advanced technology and not magic (as stated in the first Thor movie). Yet the big "McGuffin" in this film is a ship/technology that goes "lightspeed" oooo... wow... a ship that could go at the speed of light that could help save the Skrulls by taking them to a different galaxy in what? Something like 2 million years going at the speed of light? Why is a ship that goes slower then other current technologies so important? And then at the end it looks like Carol and the Skrulls just fly away into space at super fast "warp" speed anyway, without a special drive or any other special technology and they don't use the jumpgates like the Kree did.