Zeropoint

Re: Alternate Form: Tree A tree should also have no need to eat, but I suppose that would be balanced by a dependency on sunlight.

Re: Hero-D&D system merge? Oh, is that all? Just get the Hero System 6th Edition Basic Rulebook (available in the online store for only $19.99), which contains everything essential to the Hero system, boiled down to a single book about 3/8" thick. Then compare that to the D&D system where you have the Player's Handbook, the GM's Handbook, Bestiary, class guides, books of feats, prestige class books, etc. for 50 or 60 pounds of books . . . and tell them that EVERYTHING they need to play any game ever is in that one slim paperback.

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore Man, I wish I had a good ramen restaurant in town. I'd also like to know where to get real ramen noodles.

Re: Conduct Codes I'd like to weigh in on the side that believes a player should only take a Psychological Limitation that they'll enjoy playing, and will therefore NOT try to roll against under most circumstances. Someone who takes a Psy Lim and then proceeds to do everything in their power to act as though they don't have it is Doing It Wrong. If you're not going to enjoy acting out your Limitations, don't take them. In other words, Psych Lims are "free points" NOT because you can get around them with a roll, but because your character would act like that anyway!

Re: Starting a 6th ed campaign and was wondering... x2. Unlike some OTHER games with alliterative initials, the Hero system has been curated by people who take a sensible "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to revisions and updates. You could probably play many 4th edition characters in 6th edition without noticing that there was any difference. In terms of character creation, much is different, but in play, very little that's important has been changed. Furthermore, I find that the changes have improved the internal consistency and logical structure of the game. "Energy Blast" has dropped the "energy" to become just "Blast", no longer sending people searching in vain for "Physical Blast". The Shapeshifting rules have been mostly re-written, so that now it's possible to figure out what you need to actually be a different shape. The unified "Resistant Protection" power put an end to all the headscratching over why a Force Field bought at Zero Endurance, Invisible Power Effects, and Persistant was functionally identical to the Armor power, but cost more. The Elemental Control framework is dead, but its spirit lives on in the much simpler Unified Power limitation. In short, unless you were a big fan of the COM stat, everything you loved about 4th edition is still there, and despite the intimidating size of the books, the system is more streamlined and easier to use, IMO.

Re: Intelligent Animals and Mental Powers That's how I'd read it: when an unintelligent animal is hit by a fear effect, it's flight instinct takes over and it gets the heck out of there. An intelligent animal, just like any other intelligent being, has the ability to make a reasoned decision not to follow its instincts.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Very cool. I notice that in the pictures looking upward, the areas claimed by the individual trees look a lot like Voronoi Tessellation, which makes a lot of sense to me.

Re: Fantasy Economies: How closely should we examine them? "Heeeyyy . . . . aren't you the same "slave" that vanished on me those six OTHER times?"

Re: Fantasy Economies: How closely should we examine them? Well, in the context of the quote, you seemed to be mentioning some potential problems with Summons; I could easily have misread you. I was just thinking that some people would LIKE having a different hot demon babe every time, although I suppose it's equally true that some people wouldn't. I don't have enough experience to be able to comment on the relative appeal of new and interesting lovers vs. multiple encounters with a familiar lover.

Re: Tactics So does Gordon Freeman.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Pony for me! Celestia has a thousand years of peaceful and prosperous reign to her credit, and she's proven that she's willing and able to delegate jobs to subordinates with appropriate skill sets. Celestia/Luna in 2012: Proven Leadership!

Re: Fantasy Economies: How closely should we examine them? You say that like it's a bad thing.

Re: Infertile Half-Breeds? In my fantasy world, which languishes in limbo, the only people that can produce ANY offspring with another species is daemons (not necessarily evil in my world). On the other hand, this results in persons with daemon heritage having a chance of being interfertile with other species, in direct proportion to their percentage of daemon blood. This could potentially lead to surprises for someone whose great great grandmother was a daemon, who just assumes that human-on-elf action isn't going to go anywhere.

Re: Cool Guns for your Games I didn't think it was possible either, but of course, it turns out that I was underestimating what can be done with low-tech methods. Apparently the way that a double rifle is regulated is by building the action with two separate free-floating barrels. Then, the gunsmith will braze or silver solder a wedge in between them at the muzzle . . . and through repeated trial and error, numerous tedious sessions of shoot, unbraze, adjust, rebraze, will eventually get the two barrels to shoot as close as his patience and budget will allow, which for the best pieces meant that the bore lines would meet at some desired range. At that point, the barrels are sliver soldered together along with the rib, so that in theory, they'll stay in the same alignment forever.

Re: How powerful of an attack would it take to hurt this guy? I think this guy is a good example of why it's pointless to try to be "invulnerable" in the Hero System. If I've read the character right and done the math right, he's spent 795 points on physical defenses alone, with another 200 on Mental Defense and Power Defense . . . and yet, there are any number of attacks built on 450-500 points (before limitations) which can hurt him. Also, it looks like he forgot to take Impenetrable on his mental defense . . . a handful of dice in a Mental Blast with Penetrating should be a cheap way to take him down.

Re: How powerful of an attack would it take to hurt this guy? I didn't run numbers on it, but I had also thought about some kind of nasty Lovecraftian stuff built as an NND with the defense being "have an Alien class of mind".

Re: How powerful of an attack would it take to hurt this guy? I'm going to read that as 120 PD/ED of which 60 PD/ED is resistant. You also didn't specify his BODY score, so I'll assume 30, and with these assumptions, I'll give a few of my ideas for an attack that could hurt him. Nothing fancy, just lots of dice: For 2,475 points, you can buy a 165d6 RKA which should, on average, kill him instantly. For a more reasonable 495 points, you can buy a 33d6 RKA that will on average do 5 points of BODY to him. Of course, the biggest flaw in his defenses is that he's satisfied with a piddling ONE level of "Impenetrable", and that Penetrating counters not just PD/ED and rPD/rED, but Damage Reduction as well. Unfortunately, his Damage Negation will apply here, so . . . let's go with a 15d6 RKA with Penetrating x 2. That'll cost us 450 points and do 5 points of body per hit, on average. On the other hand, you could just not worry about breaching his defenses and do something else: Extradimensional Movement (Time Travel), up to 3x10^43 years, only into the future (58 base points) Usable As An Attack (+1 1/4, 130 Active points). There you go, for 130 points you can send him far enough into the future that all of what we know as "matter" has evaporated through proton decay, and there is nothing left in the universe but black holes. He won't be dead, but he'll have a long, long time to regret taking that total life support package. If you're worried about him having access to black holes, you can send him 1.7x10^106 years into the future for only 232 points, and by then all the black holes will be gone, leaving a cold dark universe with nothing but a few lonely subatomic particles. There will be nothing to do, no one to interact with, and unless he's already got his own time travel powers, he's not coming back.

Re: Cool Guns for your Games I dunno, it seems like it would be just as useful for a rifle to have the barrels exactly parallel, so that one always hit half an inch to the left, and one always hit half an inch to the right. Express rifles, in particular, just aren't meant for situations where aiming that finely would ever come up.

Re: Cool Guns for your Games I stand corrected. Apparently, with enough skilled handwork, it IS possible to make a double rifle in which the barrels shoot in the same plane and converge.

Re: Without fusion power, why go back to the moon? I say staging ground. Build an industrial base on the moon with rapid prototyping machines, flexible CNC systems, and other such multipurpose equipment. Use it to build a broader industry base. Use THAT to build spacecraft that don't have to struggle out of Earth's gravity well. Also do radio astronomy and long baseline interferometric optical astronomy, using locally built equipment.

Re: Cool Guns for your Games Nope. The barrels can point any which way relative to each other.

Re: A bit of clarification needed with sawed-off shotguns I really, really don't like the idea that an attack fails to go off because the user missed. I'm trying to think of something more insightful to add here, but all I've got is that in my mind, whether the attack goes off should be a totally separate issue from whether it goes where the user wanted it to, unless there's something specific in the SFX or build to indicate otherwise.

Re: Weapon Familiarity and Futuristic Weapons in a Modern Setting This. A gun, being a weapon, is by its very nature intended to be operated in a high-stress, time-critical environment. I've always thought that this means you'd want the act of firing the gun to be as simple as possible; "point, pull trigger". I might consider disallowing any of the optional maneuvers like Set or Brace or Aim with a gun the character didn't have the WF for, since they certainly don't know the ballistic characteristics of the gun and might not even know how to use the sights. All I really have to say here is "me too".

Re: Cool Guns for your Games Oh, they are, unless you have something against intact collar bones. I just meant that if the barrels hit four inches apart at 50 yards, that's good enough to be "minute of charging cape buffalo".

Re: Cool Guns for your Games It's a problem that double-barreled rifles have ALWAYS had. With the classic African big game rifles, it didn't matter much because they were meant to be used at short range. With a rifle like this, I don't know . . . I guess you'd sight it in for one barrel so you could hit at range, and . . . live with the ammo waste, in exchange for double the close-in firepower? Use it for enhanced suppressive fire, where you're not really expecting to hit anything?