Zeropoint

Re: Magic field names Actually, necro- comes from the Greek "nekros" meaning corpse. Zeropoint

Re: WWYCD:The Facts of Life This is a sticky case for Agent Trent. Normally, he would be against anyone being assimilated against their will. If it can be established that the boy is an American citizen (having been born/hatched/decanted/whatever in the U.S.), his duty is clear. If not, it will basically come down to who has legal custody of the child. His strong dislike of telepaths will likely counter the instinctive urge to protect children. Of course, if the government weighs in on the issue, he'll follow orders. Zeropoint

Re: How to handle page number citations on 5ER Steve gave Fred its nickname. It definitely wasn't intentional, but Steve WAS directly responsible for "Fred". Zeropoint

It seems common to take "magic with foo as the subject" and call it "mancy" (if you'll pardon the use of metasyntactic variables). For example, magic dealing with death gets called "necromancy". However, the -mancy suffix originally referred specifically to divination: necromancy = divination by consulting the dead, cartomancy = divination with cards, etc. Does anyone know what the "properly" derived term for "magic relating to foo" would be? Or is this a case where there isn't one, and whatever is commonly used is correct? I'm just wondering. Zeropoint

Re: Target: Earth! If an energy beam of sufficient magnitude hits ANYTHING, it will explode. As the energy is absorbed by the target, the material of the target will heat up. That will, at high enough energy levels, lead to chemical breakdown, melting, and vaporization. If more energy is supplied than needed to vaporize the material, you get super-heated high-pressure vapor. With enough energy, you get VERY super-heated, VERY high pressure gas: plasma. Anyway, that expanding vapor cloud will impinge on the rest of the target. In a Death Star-level event, the pressure will act fast enough that there won't be time for normal heat transfer. Instead, a powerful shock wave will travel through the planet. This shock wave will deliver enough energy that the planet material near the beam impact site will also be vaporized. The effects will spread through the planet very quickly, producing large volumes of plasma and vapor, and immense shock waves will shatter whatever doesn't get vaporized. The high-pressure cloud of vapor will then propel the liquid and solid fragments outward. Short version: a substance can explode with its own energy, or with energy from an outside source. Zeropoint

Re: How to handle page number citations on 5ER Didn't Steve Long alread say that the nickname for 5ER is "fiver"? Zeropoint

Re: Natural Powers VS equipment question In a superheroic game, it's unfair to get a power with cash because the characters have a limited supply of points but effectly free cash. If you say, "Choose one from column A and any number from column B", picking a Column A choice that also shows up in Column B is a really bad move. In a heroic game, you can't choose between paying points or cash for most things. Cash won't buy you extra DEX. Points won't buy you a 2d6 RKA. Since cash is now significant, the supply should be controlled. In this situation, a character has a pool of points and a list of things points will buy, and a pool of cash and a list of things cash will buy. This effectively gives you, "Choose one from Column A and one from Column B," with no overlap between columns. I hope this is clear; I've re-written it several times and it's still not quite where I want it. Zeropoint

Re: X Prize II: The Sequel! Climb high, climb far. Your goal the sky, your aim the star.

Re: A ? About the Images Power Not quite true. Under certain unusual conditions, the varying density of air can create a lensing effect that allows the viewer to see things below the horizon or otherwise out of range. This can make it look like there is an oasis, or city, or mountains, or whatever where there is nothing but empty desert--or even above the desert in some cases. This effect can't create new images, only make something that already exists look closer. Under normal conditions, however, rippling water is the only visual effect you're going to get. Zeropoint

Re: How to make a Taser See, this is why I don't cook. Zeropoint

Re: Costume design help...please? You might try reversing just one of the colors. Red, Black, and Blue, for instance. Go for deeper red and blue while you're at it, and you should get something that reminds you of the American flag gone bad. Zeropoint

Re: Star (WARS) Hero? You shouldn't try to explain Star Wars tech in too much detail. It's Space Opera! It's more "space fantasy" than "science fiction". Star Wars is about starfighters that make cool whooshing noises in the vacuum of space; it's about sinister dark lords and mysterious old wizards with strange powers handing out magical swords to angsty farmboys with mysterious but significant backgrounds. Star Wars is old black-and-white Flash Gordon serials redone with a bigger budget. It's about what would look cool on the screen and what makes dramatic sense. It's about telling the age-old Hero's Journey with a space-age veneer. Zeropoint "Repeat to yourself, 'It's just a show; I should really just relax.'"

Re: Adder question Maybe this would best be represented as a Variable Adder, in the same vein as Variable Advantage. Since Variable Advantage has you paying double, I would guess that something like "Variable Adder: 10 points, allows any single 5-point adder to be applied and changed from use to use," might work. Zeropoint

Re: How to make a Taser I just want to know why the Pasta Wand explodes if you use it wrong. Zeropoint

Re: Scoffing at Magic: What do people think in your game world? Invoking a "law of poetry" sounds like a succinct way to describe many of the ideas I've had about game magic. Zeropoint

Re: Scoffing at Magic: What do people think in your game world? In my version of the game universe, magic depends on the will and attitude of the user. Magic is NOT repeatable in the same sense that science is, and this creates the fundamental divide between scientists and mystics. Scientists expect that certain actions taken under certain circumstances will always produce certain effects, no matter what you want to happen or how you feel about it. Mystics expect that they can make something happen even if the circumstances aren't quite right, if they want it bad enough. As for the public opinion, the published CU contains too many incidents of massive public magic use to believe that the average person doesn't know that magic exists. It's possible that some "magic-users" are seen as otherwise normal supers who have just chosen "magic" as their theme, in the same way that a certain comic book hero chose the bat for his theme. Zeropoint

Re: Who would win? Writer's choice I would also reccomend stardestroyer.net (whose name I didn't remember when making the earlier post) for a better analysis of the Star Wars technology, as well as a detailed side-by-side analysis of Imperial vs. Federation technology and tactics in many areas. I also believe that it IS possible to get hard numbers from a sci-fi movie, although they will have a large degree of uncertainty. If you can estimate how large an asteroid is, you can estimate how much energy it takes to vaporize it, based on its volume and composition and the known properties of rock and metal. The minimum energy needed to explode a planet can be calculated based on well-established real-world science. Zeropoint

Re: Random powers (falling, barriers) The general consensus is that a Force Wall with PD will stop something trying to move through it, unless the object or character in question can do enough "damage" to break the force wall. After all. the force wall will stop your fist when you punch it. It makes sense that it should stop the rest of you. Zeropoint

Re: Who would win? Writer's choice You want hard numbers? Check this out: http://www.theforce.net/swtc/ Zeropoint

Re: Haymaker or mere Push? With an energy blast, just think of it as "charging up" instead of "winding up". I really couldn't see using a Haymaker with a conventional gun--there's only so much powder in the shell, and that's all you get. Zeropoint

Re: Well, I finished reading Conquerors, Killers and Crooks, and... Captain Chronos is a hero, in my understanding anyway. The only reason he'd seem like a villain is that he has to do weird things for purposes that the heroes probably don't understand at first. Zeropoint

Re: Holy Susceptibilities: God and Champions 1) Yes, it makes perfect sense for vampires and demons and such 2) Yes, but as mentioned above, the character as a whole has to support the holiness concept. 3) No. Holiness comes from a deity (in a comic book world, there is usually more than one to choose from). There is no way to create holy water, for instance, through any kind of technical process; it must be blessed by a deity, or at least a powerful agent of one. Having said that, however, if the character was a mystic type already aligned with the forces of good, they might be able to get a holy effect from a Variable Special Effect. 4) N/A: see above answers Zeropoint

Re: Calculating Damage... This has always bugged me. If, in the real world, I hit someone with a baseball bat, it will do more damage than if I just used my fists. The same goes for a two by four, a crowbar, or any number of objects that aren't intended as weapons. Granted, if I had 70 STR, the two by four would be too flimsy to be fully effective, but there should be some way to get more damage by using an object, at least for characters with more moderate STR. Zeropoint

Re: manipulation powers If i recall correctly, cosmic rays are very, very high energy particles coming from (duh!) outer space. On interaction with our atmosphere, they produce a shower of high-energy photons (gamma rays/x-rays) and particles with lower but still impressive energies. While I'm on the subject, gamma rays and x-rays are essentially the same thing, differing only in how they are produced. By convention, gamma rays come from radioactive decay, fission, and fusion; x-rays come from the extreme acceleration of a charged particle. Both occupy the same portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, and are therefore the same thing. By this convention, the EM radiation generated by cosmic rays would be x-rays, although calling it gamma rays would also be correct. Zeropoint

Re: Proper use of Hardened & Defenses According to page 77 of Hero System 5th Edition, the Hardened advantage will counteract Armor Piercing, Penertrating, and Indirect--one at a time. If you have a single level of Hardened, you need to specifiy which advantage is nullified in the event that you are hit with an Armor Piercing and Penertrating, Armor Piercing and Indirect, or Penetrating and Indirect attack. If you have two levels of Hardened on your defenses, then you can nullify any two at once. Also note that Hardened, Armor Piercing and Penetrating can all be bought multiple times for the same power, leading to a potential arms race. Zeropoint