Delthrien

Re: Ultimate Wonder Twins My two shekels (likely overpriced)... Keep the powers relatively the same -- without the lame requirement that they first make contact... Make Zan's shapeshifting "fluid only" (none of that "ice giant" drek) -- not necessarily liquid, but very flexible forms (a little like Mr. Fantastic). Jayna's could remain the same, but maybe limited to vertebrates or "rigid" forms (no snakes, slugs, jellyfish or buckets of water). Their personalities could be a reflection of their powers. Zan could be a little more easy-going, go-with-the-flow (or even "morally flexible") and Jayna more of a hard-ass. Throw in the "cultural ignorance" that two alien teens would naturally possess and I might be willing to read the book... maybe...

Re: What if REC was based on EGO, not STR? I actually kind of like the idea. In addition to a sort of giving a "strength of will" aspect to PCs, it would give players an incentive to actually build up the EGO characteristic. A HUGE number of characters I've seen written up (both player-made and published) have EGO scores that are only slightly above average (usually no more than 11-13) for non-mentalist characters. Thats always struck me as unusual, especially since there are countless examples of comic characters carrying on through sheer tenacity, force of will and just plain "digging deep" -- all on a regular basis. My two ducats...

Re: Standard Adventurers Pack Oddly enough, this week's Pyramid has a pretty informative article on horses -- types, uses, descriptions, care and feeding. Good stuff.

Re: Golden Heroes... Wow! I thought I was the only person in the US to have actually picked this one up! I also liked the "comic panel" combat. I was never really a fan of the random character generation, but the few that I rolled up were playable. I kind of liked some of the characters as well. "Fanatic" was one that I translated into a champs game (o so long ago...). The most prominent of his disads was "Berserk for no readily apparent reason"

Re: Superhero Fiction? While that one still works just fine, here's a slightly more current link (there are a few more stories uploaded...). I'm trying to perform a rectal-cranial inversion and get the remaining issues into pdf format. The PDFs are set up in smaller type with a 3-column layout for those inclined to print them -- far less paper than just printing out the web pages. [edit made due to the aforementioned rectal-cranial inversion.] Charlie

Good... I'm glad I'm not the only one to have caught that error. Now I don't feel quite so old. (Actually, I do, but now it's not quite so depressing.) Anyway, I always wondered if the whole energy pill thing was actually an insidious way to get drugs into prominence in cartoons. I mean, why else pick Wally Cox as the voice of the hero... Charlie

As do I... oh damn... another gray hair.

Mostly because... I'm not smart enough to get out of doing it... I like the challenge of coming up with interesting plots, but alas I'm not always up to the challenge. On the whole, I think I like playing better than GMing but if comes down to GMing or not having a game, gimme the screen and I'll fake it for as long as possible.

Nowhere Man I acutally had a character like this, inspired by a power in the the old FGU game, "Psi World." The power was called "forgotten" IIRC. Essentially it was a blessing as much as a curse. The poor bastard with this power could only be remembered for an amount of time equal to the length of the interaction. That is, if you had a 5-minute conversation with him and he left, 5 minutes afterward, you'd forget about him. We simulated this with invisibility to memory for the power and with a physical disad for the downside of the ability. The points were even roughly matched. Coincidence?...

D'oh!! I totally overlooked that option! I suppose I should actually use my good eyes next time... Many thanks!

Still usable... ... if they start and have to stop early becasue of interruptions, scheduled breaks or whatever. I'm also going for being able to whip up low powered item faster than a high powered one -- like a "rubber band" faster than a "Mk VI Blast Pistol"

Today's fun little exercise: I've an idea for character who can draw an image (using whatever materials are available) and then use that image to generate various effects like: Summon (bringing an image to life) Teleport or desolid (drawing a door or hole in a wall) Extradimensional travel (jumping into a picture -- remember Mary Poppins and the chalk drawings?) various attacks (drawing and animating weapons, etc.) entangles (portable hole anyone?) ... you get the idea. I want to include the "Delayed Effect" advantage, along with the requisite focus limitations, but I'm not quite sure how to handle the tricky part of the power. I want to place a limit on the active points he can use, based on the amount of time he puts into doing the original drawing -- essentially a drawing that he only spends 5 minutes on is less powerful than a drawing that he spends an hour on. I've thought about something along the lines of a "gradual effect" limitation (or maybe extra time?) but neither of these seems to exactly fit the bill. Can anyone suggest anything else? (edited for cranial gas...)

Re: Ladies Only (A discussion of all female groups in super worlds) This seems like the NPC groups "Sisters of Hope" (heroes) and the "Matrons of Mayhem" (villains) from the Titans of Tomorrow. Descriptions from the site as follows

My own preference for a power would be a single super-skill: KS: Everything (100-) 'cause sometimes it seems like I'm expected to know the answer, regardless of the subject. "No, I have no idea what the lifespan of a marmoset is... Why do you ask?"

extended... You can also apply certain rationales to the non-physical characteristics. For instance -- a "multi-mind" (a "vessel" character that houses more than one mind/spirit/soul/whatever) could have a higher INT and EGO -- more points of view, more minds to help resist mental effects. The same boost could also be explained by having a cybernetic brain (or a partial one) faster processing of info, a "not quite human" mind that would be more difficult to control than a natural brain... A god-like character could be gifted with divine PRE and COM, etc. It kind of boils down to the character concept as to what you can reasonably include.

Hmmm... It was my impression that the foci listed weren't necessary (unless from House Verditius) and only served as a way to make it easier to cast the spell (rather than make it weaker without its use...). Of course, it's been many, many moons since I picked up my copy of the AM rules. I must go peruse now...

Yeah, what he said... KS nailed it, I think. Makes me wish I'd checked the board earlier , though. This is one of the few questions I could have answered without feeling like I was missing something...

Pretty thorough, too... E-mail him. I'm certain he'll send you a copy of the files. I'm tinkering with the Magic rules (now that i have Fanatasy Hero on hand). Still, I think he's done a pretty good job of converting things... Charlie

Steve long did an article in Digital Hero on variants of armor piercing and IIRC, Piercing was mentioned and discussed. I may start using it soon...

True. Enforcing a genre wouldn't be a good thing for a system rule. I do think that switching killing attacks from a power to a maneuver could still work. I've always regarded KAs as more "character intent" than "system mechanic." If a character is intent on wasting someone, there's not really going to be much difference between rolling 12d6N and 4d6K. On avg., the KA will do the job a bit quicker, but an extra phase or two won't (generally) make a difference to the prospective corpse. If I were to make KAs a Maneuver I'd give a +1 to OCV and a -1 to DCV -- the bonus reflecting not holding anything back and the penalty reflecting the desire to destroy being more powerful than the desire for self preservation...

The only ones I've really considered... ... as a house rule so far are: [*]make both Power Defense and Mental Defense figured characteristics. [*]make Killing Attacks a maneuver instead of a separate power and eliminate resistant defenses. It's one of the things that I liked about the old DC Heroes game. It was generally presumed (even built into the rules) that a Hero was attacking to subdue, not to kill. Of course, you always had the option to go for the kill, but you would then lose the Hero Point award. Made taking things like Berserk a little more risky. I haven't had the chance to actually playtest it, though. [/list=1]

Bummer Kind of makes one wish for a RL road map to better navigate. Be well and return when you may... Charlie

How about... ... the "legalities?" I want to maintain some degree of believability in the way the legal system addresses super-criminals (without binding the hands of the authorities too mucn. Foci that are stolen, I think should logically be returned to the original owners (after trial I think - though I'm not quite certain what the rules of evidence are...). What about foci that are the personal property of the criminal or foci where ownership is not clear (such as with alien technology or ancient artifacts )?

Has anyone worked up (or know of a link to) a set of protocols that might be used for Stronghold. If possible, I'd like to see info the handling/storage of "dangerous" foci. Like, what happens to all those power armor villains when/if they get captured?

Re: Remove or lighten That would, indeed be the easiest way. On this one (simply by way of example) I did that and then used the "Select -> Color Range..." command (playing with the "fuzziness" a bit) to select the black. Then I went to "Select -> Similar" to get the rest of the black that I'd missed. Finally, I used the round marquee tool to remove the interior of the map. from the selection. Once done, I hit backspace (with the background set to white) and this is the result (see attached). Took much longer to type this out than it did to do. And a VERY nice job on the map, Master Curtis. Charlie