massey

Just to be different here. I'm basing this off of a standard 12D6 Champions game, while keeping in mind that a generic beholder would be an incredibly tough opponent for a group of high-powered fantasy characters. Points aren't really an issue because he's a party killer in fantasy, and should be built to slaughter whatever the equivalent is of 10th to 12th level characters. And then he got a cybernetic upgrade. So I'm going to assume that the Fantasy Hero stand-ins for that level of D&D character are probably between 200 and 250 points, are chucking 3D6+ killing attacks at 10+ OCV, and are 5 Speed or so. So a basic beholder should be a challenge for a group of characters like that. GM permission powers are also freely available to the beholder, because he's a monster under the GM's control. So things that you might not be comfortable with a player having are still open to Colonel Blinky. Math is back of the napkin as I type. 5th edition. Str 40 Dex 23 Con 30 Body 20 Int 23 Ego 23 Pre 30 Com 2 PD 28 (14 r) ED 28 (14 r) Spd 7 Rec 15 End 60 Stun 55 14/14 DR 9" Flight, 0 End -6" Running 9" KB Resistance (a little more than normal because he's always flying, and KB isn't a thing in D&D) Bite -- 1.5D6 HKA (3D6+1 with Str) Anti-Magic Ray -- Extradimensional Movement (to no-magic zone), Usable As Attack (+1), Area of Effect Cone (+1 3/4 -- 72 hex cone), Continuous (+1) , 0 End (+1/2), Gate (-1/2), No Range (-1/2) characters can leave dimension by leaving the area of effect or if eye closes (-1/2) Magic just doesn't work within the cone. The beholder can turn it on and off at will by closing his central eye. Anything that passes into the zone is affected, but anything can travel in and out, including nonmagical attacks. +4 OCV with Eyestalks (all eyestalks 0 End) Charm Person/Monster (no need to differentiate in Hero) -- 12D6 Mental Illusions, only to make the beholder look like target's best friend (-1/2) (I think that is closer to the original than Mind Control) Sleep -- 4D6 Endurance Drain, Ranged Telekinesis -- 30 Str TK Flesh to Stone -- 6D6 Major Transform to stone Disintegrate -- 7D6 Body Drain, Ranged Fear -- +45 Pre, only for Pre attacks (-1) Slow -- 6D6 Speed Drain, Ranged Cause Serious Wounds -- 3D6 RKA, Armor Piercing Death Ray -- 7D6 RKA, all or nothing (-2) (must drop target to negative Body in one shot) Weapons Minigun -- 2 1/2D6 RKA, Autofire x10, 250 charges, OIF Missiles -- 4D6 RKA, Armor Piercing, Increased Range x5, Explosion, 3 charges, OIF Dome thing on top of his head -- IR & UV vision, OIF Yellow thing on his right side -- 6D6 Flash vs sight, Area Effect hex, OIF Gray thing with 8 holes on his right side -- Gas emitter, 4D6 Energy Blast NND , Area of Effect Hex, OIF Helicopter eyepiece -- +8 vs range penalties, OIF ---- I'd put all the weapons in a multipower. I'd put the eyestalks in a very large multipower, big enough to use one of the big murdering powers and one of the smaller powers at the same time, or 3 small powers at once. I might have to adjust the active points of those powers so they'd fit. Only being able to use two or three powers at a time reflects not being able to bring all eyes to bear on the same target at once. He's dangerous enough to be a potentially lethal threat against superheroes, and even without the tech weapons he's deadly to powerful fantasy characters.

If both guys have a triggered riposte maneuver, it's just one guy who gets stabbed one time. Guy #1: Declares attack Guy #2: Aborts to block (before #1's attack roll), is successful. Trigger activates. Guy #1: Can't declare block because he already attacked this phase, gets stabbed. Now if they don't have a "must successfully block" condition on the trigger, then just let them kill each other. Cinematically, the camera lingers on these two guys as they continue shooting each other, blood squirting out, until one falls over. Effectively they would break into their own mini-combat, and then the action resumes with everyone else. It happens in movies all the time.

I think you can tell if somebody's got a gun barrel in your face. The guy who failed his roll probably has it pointed off to the side or something.

The hero is in a running battle with the guards at an evil villain's base. He's shot several of them, knocked out a few more, and now he's sprinting down a hallway with a large group of men following him. He turns a corner and there's just a big glass window in front of him. There's gunfire down the hall behind him, and he knows this is his only chance. He rushes forward and jumps through the window, shattering it, and falls 30 feet down into the unknown. He bounces off of a railing halfway down, and then does a shoulder roll as he slams into the ground. He shakes his head for a second and looks up -- only to see 5 men with machine guns standing directly over him with their guns pointed right at his face. Our hero has just had the Cover maneuver used against him. The bad guys have already used an action. They've already rolled to hit. All they need to do is declare that they want to do damage, and it's automatic. The hero has to surrender and let himself be taken captive, because otherwise he's screwed. He can't dodge, he can't try to quick draw a weapon, he's completely vulnerable. The Cover maneuver is a roleplaying aid, it really helps to set the tone in certain genres, and it should be encouraged. The hero has to wait until something distracts the people pointing guns at him, in which case he now has a chance to dodge or run without getting killed. In my opinion, you should be allowed to take a shot with the Cover maneuver and then use your phase (as long as it hasn't already gone by), even if it results in two attacks in the same phase. After all, there's a strategic advantage in holding your action. There's almost never a strategic advantage to Cover. You could have just shot the guy in your previous phase. It's something that reinforces the genre, so we shouldn't penalize it.

The Sandlot Any Given Sunday Pumping Iron

But it's not the Trigger that is making it dangerous.

It's been a long time since I saw that movie. I was thinking Tom Cruise had big pointed ears in it, but after Googling I think I'm confusing him with another character in the film. Still, there was a short elf character. I generally agree with you, there's not really a need to have a bunch of different types of elves, or dwarves, or whatever. But I don't think it's immersion breaking to have it, even if the differences in each group are small. Small differences in character construction probably won't ever come up after that in actual play.

I've always seen Summon: Specific Being as an attack power/roleplaying thing. It gives you nothing that generic Summon doesn't give you, unless it makes sense within the campaign world, and it costs more points at that. Summon: Knight would call forth a generic knight. Of course he'd have the stats that you paid for, so in combat he's just as powerful as Sir Dave the Loudmouth. They've both got 20 Str, 18 Dex, 4 Speed, a magic sword, etc. But to actually get the Sir Dave the Loudmouth (either because you want to kill that son of a bitch or because he has a key piece of information you need), you've got to pay extra for Specific Being. Summon with that advantage could be used to rescue people who are trapped in a dungeon. It could call up the ghost of your dead dad so you can get some needed info from him, like who killed him, or where he hid all his money. In my opinion, Specific Being is highly situational, and probably very campaign-specific. What do I care if I call forth my specific Batmobile or some brand new Batmobile? Unless I left my lunch sitting in it, it doesn't matter. It has the same game stats.

Only if that's how you want them to be. Remember there are no such things as elves, sea or otherwise. So the only thing that matters is how we want our games to work. On the one hand you've got Legolas, who is supposed to be like 6'4" or something. Then you've got Tom Cruise in Legend, who appears maybe 5'6". You think we can't call both groups "elves"?

That would be hilarious. Hopefully they both end up skewered, and then you don't have to deal with morons with infinite Triggers anymore. The thing with Triggers is that since 5th edition, they can get pretty expensive. You have to pay extra for them to reset quickly. I believe the auto-reset level is a +1 Advantage. On an attack power (which is what most people are concerned about) that means you're paying a huge amount of points to get an attack that gets past defenses. In a 12D6 game, a guy with a 6D6 infinite Trigger is just gonna blast through his own Endurance, and he's probably not going to hurt anybody with it. Even if you don't enforce any kind of Active Point cap (so he can buy up the dice and get reduced end on it), that's still a huge amount of points that he's got to pay. He's gonna have to cut points elsewhere to be able to afford it.

I'll point out that the original poster indicated this was probably going to be 5th edition, so forget about AE: Surface and Unified Powers.

Here's what I do when I come up with a weird power. I start out and ask "what is the basic function of this ability?" As in, in its most streamlined and simple, video game like form, what does it do? That gives you your basic power. Then I say "this power is different because of XYZ, does this make it better or worse than the standard power?" And that tells me if it's an Advantage or a Limitation I should look to. If the power gets worse, I am not paying extra for it. Honestly, I had one idea in mind when I read your post (and everyone else's responses), and then I read the link you posted and their description is entirely different. "In his normal human body, he is as vulnerable as any other person, but while on fire, he can melt bullets and grenades. He can breathe underwater and is bulletproof." That's not a damage shield. There's no mention of burning people when they get too close. Sounds like he just has Life Support and a bunch of Armor. Probably gets increased strength too, because a lot of Golden Age characters did. Having not read that particular comic, and going purely off the description and a general familiarity with Golden Age stories, I'd suggest buying his powers Only in Hero ID. In his normal identity, the character is a regular private eye. Build him as a two-fisted adventurer. Then he's got all his superpowers on a -1/4 limitation. It's low because (knowing Golden Age comics) any time he's in danger, he's probably going to get exposed to heat or electricity right off the bat almost every time. Basically he'd do all his detective work, and then when the time came to use his powers, he'd conveniently get thrown into a fire or shocked with electricity. It's how all those old comics worked. Now if your GM is not going to follow Golden Age logic, and your guy has to spend half the fight hoping to get blasted by somebody with electrical or fire powers, then it's worth a lot more than -1/4. If the enemies figure out how his powers work, and they send Captain Icicle to fight him, then it's worth more than -1/4. But if you keep with the original tone, there should always be a fireplace going, or some exposed electrical wiring that he can grab hold of. Maybe he has to spend one action quietly lighting a book of matches and keeping it in his hand before his powers kick in. But that's it. Those guys never had a hard time activating their powers.

I'm going to disagree. There are several real world reasons why game books might have 15 different types of elves, and only one type of humans. First, books are generally written from a human perspective. So we say "Russians" instead of "men of Russia". That's a normal part of the English language. On the other hand, we don't have real terms for the nationality of made-up races. If you say Russian, I'm going to assume you're talking about humans from Russia, not Russian dwarves (in a fantasy setting where dwarves are different from just short humans). If we want to distinguish, we have to work around it. Second, people have a long history of racial discrimination in the real world. It's a sensitive topic, and so we mostly avoid giving humans from different areas differences in abilities. If you gave one group 5 points of cold resistance, and another group +2 with sports, your game would get the wrong kind of media attention. Third, often games are trying to include creatures from many different real world cultures and fictional sources. A Tolkein elf is different from a Keebler elf, which is different from an Irish fae, etc. Given the need to fill out Monster Manuals and sell books, I think it's understandable that game companies try to draw from as many different sources as they can. And for the casual player base, it's probably easier to say "Mountain Dwarf" than to use a bastardized English version of some ancient Swedish mythological name.

You might say his gun is Only in Hero ID. Very occasionally you might catch him without it, in which case he has his 1/2D6 HKA "object of opportunity" and combines that with 1/2D6 Killing Strike (D6+1 total, 2D6 with Str, uses combat levels to target the head and get x2 Body).

I've only recently seen the first two movies. I was surprised how good they were. Overall, I'd say you should decide what your baseline "professional assassin" template is going to be. These are the goons who John Wick massacres throughout his films. Take that and strap on about 6 Dex, 3 Speed. 2 levels of combat luck, 3 or 4 levels with guns, +6 levels only for hit locations, the rapid attack talent, fast healing talent, and a martial arts package with joint locks, throws, and choke holds. That'll be a pretty decent approximation, I think. As far as his ability to always have a gun, you might just buy his standard firearm 0 Endurance. The special effect is that he's actually reloading, he just keeps finding ammo, and there's always enough of a break in the action so that he can swap in a new magazine or grab a new gun because he's that damn good.

I doubt we are anywhere near that point. Once I stopped watching cable "news" shows and searching for conflict online, most people I deal with are just going on happy with their lives. They aren't anywhere near the "hang the bastards" level of angry. I mean, they might say it sometimes, but nobody is actually trying to do it. From a cynical perspective, 90% of the rest of the world has already agreed to go along with Imperial America. Wherever you are, we probably have troops in your country right now. We didn't have to invade, you invited us in. Generally it's been beneficial for everybody to be on the same team. It's like the JLA, and we get to be Superman. And Batman.

The HERO System is a roleplaying game ruleset, intended to support any genre of play, from sci-fi to horror, from fantasy to superheroes. It is a point based system, where players purchase the abilities they want, and characters are balanced against one another by starting with the same number of total points. The GM determines what types of abilities are appropriate for the story (i.e., no starships in a Victorian vampire tale), but within those limits players are free to customize their characters and are not bound by artificial class restrictions. The rules do not change from one setting to the next. Superheroes use the same game mechanics as fantasy adventurers, though they may be built on many more points (and thus have far more power). Skill checks are resolved with a 3D6 roll (with a lower roll being better), whereas damage or effect rolls have multiple D6s added together (rolling high being better). The game rules are "exposed", meaning each ability will begin with a descriptive name, followed by a shorthand version of the appropriate power (Zarhan's Smiting Blast -- 3D6 Ranged Killing Attack, requires gestures and incantations). Customization options are almost limitless. A comprehensive system of Powers, Advantages, and Limitations, means that players and GMs can fine tune their characters and NPCs to have exactly the kinds of abilities they want. The HERO System lends itself well to player groups who like to tinker. While there are many pregenerated settings to choose from, the many options available means that most groups will want to change one thing or another. There are often multiple "right ways" to accomplish something in the HERO System. Your lightning bolt spell could use any of half a dozen different Power combinations. You build it the way *you* want it to work. 297 words, by my count.

I think you're looking for the Shadowrun forums.

Well, is it a base? Or is it an "anti-scanning field" that you can slap down anywhere you want? Is the power contained within the person, or is it something about the location? I'd suggest doing it as something of a gate. Basically you pay the extra points to have the base in a hard to reach location, then buy XD Movement, Area of Effect, Usable as Attack, Always On. You can't scan inside of it, but you could physically travel to it. If you pay for it through the base, you'd get the normal 5/1 discount. If it's a power you possess yourself, I think you just XD Move to "unscannable location" and that's all you have to worry about.

The egg just needs Def and Body. It's just an object. If you get within a foot or so, the facehugger can jump out at you. You saw how it worked in the movies. It doesn't need a game mechanic for that. "Summon Facehugger, OAF" is probably overthinking it.

Ah, I see. I read the thread a few days ago, didn't comment, and then reread the first post yesterday and commented. Had forgotten all the other details. Make the base extradimensional. XD Movement, usable by other, to place where the base is located. Buy your own scanning equipment transdimensional, and assume that other people don't. The XD Movement doesn't actually have to be to another dimension, special effect wise. Just define it as "super duper protected from outside scanning".

Buy Mind Link for your transmissions. Buy Radio Hearing (whatever they call it now) to pick up receptions. Don't overcomplicate things.

Sorcerer/Paladin, in all likelihood.

World War III is on hold until further notice. The United States is too much of an overwhelming favorite in state vs state action for anybody to risk a conventional war with us. Remember the end of Infinity War when Thor showed up with his axe? Now imagine that Thanos himself never appears and it's just Thor blasting the crap out of the monster army. Other nations will try to create countermeasures against some of the US' weapons, but nobody wants to be the one to test them and see if they work. As long as the US is outspending the rest of the world combined (or nearly so), a worldwide conventional war isn't happening. As far as nuclear attack goes, the major nuclear powers are all willing to respect one another's right to exist, for the most part. India and Pakistan might nuke each other, if Iran gets a nuke they might hit Israel (who would attack back), and North Korea could always do something really stupid. But nobody else is willing to get incinerated over these countries. If tomorrow morning, the US launched ICBMs at North Korea, and said "our intelligence reports stated that NK had a missile on the launch pad, and it had a nuke on it", there would be protests. People would be mad. China would scream and yell. But nobody would launch back. They'd just say "well, it sucks to be North Korea" and that would be that. For WWIII to start, you either need a brand new weapon that makes the US conventional forces useless (which nobody is spending the money needed to develop), or you need the US to return to isolationism and cut the military budget by half or more. I don't see either happening within the next several decades.

I love this show so much. I don't know about anybody else, but I think 1960s television is perhaps the most enjoyable thing you could possibly watch. Amazing for something that's nearly 60 years old.