BasilDrag

Originally posted by GradonSilverton

Talk about leading a cow to slaughter....

 

He'll not know what hit him after getting Cthuthlu (pre d20 version please!!!)

Horror Hero has a section of pulp-era horror.

The wait for Star Hero

Originally posted by Derek Hiemforth

No, there was no Star Hero for 4th Edition. The only Star Hero prior to the current one was a standalone game (in the style of Danger International or Justice, Inc.) that would have corresponded to the 3rd Edition of the system rules. It was the last major book to be published before 4th Edition was released, which drastically affected its usefulness, IMO. You bought the book, and then it was obsolete just a couple of months later.

I got the BBB not long after it came out, and immediately signed up for Adventurers Club. At that point, AC had ads for Star Hero. I tried to get it; I tried every bleeding way possible to get it. It was out of print, sold out, and gone.

I waiting all through the "BBB era" for a reprint or a new edition, or something. It never happened.

Then I hear about 5th ed. "Darn," I said to myself, "more waiting for Star Hero---I mean, they're going to do Champions first, and then Fantasy Hero--oh, and Dark Champs, 'cause Long is one of the owners. And then they'll do.... And so, no Star Hero." I was utterly bummed; I wasn't even sure Star Hero would get done at all.

So, what happens? Champions, then Ninja and Star Heroes almost together. Surprised the heck out of me.

Pleased, but surprised.

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly

Well, it moved under its own power -- and it was slowing down as it approached our galaxy. There was at each pole what was essentiall a giant rocket thrust outlet. If it's capable of moving itself, I'd say that tends to make it a vehicle.

Ah. Yeah, that's a vehicle.

OK, I'd forgotten it was being moved around.

Re: How to make a "sick" attack.

Originally posted by Herolover

In several things now I have seen attacks which make the target sick thereby imparing him in combat. D&D had the stinking cloud spell. Minority Report has the "sick stick."

 

How would you do these kind of attacks in HERO.

Depends on exactly what you're trying to do.

Hurt the target: NND (leave at STUN only, probably).

Slow up the target: SPD or DEX Drain.

Decrease target's combat effectiveness: DEX Drain, or perhaps negative OCV with Usable as Attack.

Weaken the target: STR Drain.

Poison the target: CON (or other) Drain, perhaps with Gradual Effect.

Give the target a disease: Transform, or Drain(s) with Gradual Effect.

Of course, there are other ways to get these effects (these are what occured off the top of my head). Then again, perhaps you had something else in mind?

Re: Re: What defines extreme or not?

Originally posted by Chaosliege

FREd ... lists two limitations on the limitaion(lowering the overal limitation value) that would effect this type of weapon.

1) 1/4 less: Side effect always occures whenever the character does some specific act(not waring the gloves)

2) 1/4 less: Side effect only affects the recipient of the benifits of the power (whoever is using the staff without the proper gloves gets zapped)

 

That brings the limitation down to -1/2. This is resonable IMO.

5th ed., p202:

>In the case of Powers intended to benefit

>the target (such as Healing or Aid),

>characters can define a Side Effect as affecting

>the target.

{emphasis added}

So, your second reduction to the Limitation doesn't apply

General point: since the shock-rod as described doesn't have Activation or RSR, it should have the "x2 value --- Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used". For a 45 Active Point Power, with the Side Effect equaling the Power, this is either

1) -1.75 (-.5 x 2 less .25) or

2) -1 ((-.5 less .25) x 2)

Re: Re: Driving at a distance

Originally posted by BobGreenwade

Not really, though the text on remote control from the final-draft manuscript I sent to Steve can be found in Digital Hero #7.

Is that one of the free downloads from Digital Hero? (I hope, I hope, I hope)

Re: Re: Re: Re: Watched vs. Social Limitation

Originally posted by Chaosliege

It make sense to me that they'd have both. The IA is always watching the police. The frequency is the only thing that would change. I don't have Star Hero, but your example sounds like it would be like an -8. If the guy being watched is a rogue cop like in previouse examples, you could up it to -14. Or even a hunted by Internal Afairs -8.

From Star Hero:

>10 Hunted: Imperial Security Police 8- (Mo

> Pow, NCI, Watching)

Yeah, it's a standard cop's Watched---Mo Pow, NCI, 8-

--

As so as I complain, the boards start working right. ::sigh::

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly

Cuckoo is in two novels by Fredrick Pohl and Jack Williamson: Farthest Star and Wall Around A Star.

 

No, it was not inhabited throughout its entire volume. It was, indeed, mostly hollow shell a few tens of km thick, surrounding empty space with a type F sun at the center for power & drive plasma.

 

Basically it was a mobile Dyson sphere but was never intended to be inhabited. The "crew" were in cold sleep, or were stored as templates that could be grown into crystalline forms when necessary.

 

It WAS inhabited, though, on the outer surface -- by the descendants of those from its home galaxy who hadn't been selected to be saved who had managed to latch on to the surface, and descendants of lifeforms from OUR galaxy (its target) which had been sent back by advance scout ships.

 

The surface was habitable because it had a very thick atmosphere built up from eons of gathered cosmic gases & outflow losses from the interior. The surface was warmed by heat leaking through from the inside rather than from an orbiting sun. Light came from continent-sized "clouds" of bioluminescent single-celled organisms.

 

Oh, and it had a surface gravity of 1/1000 g.

I remember Wall Around a Star. Not impressed.

IIRC, it wasn't really steered, which bring up the question of whether it was a vehicle, or a base that someone sent zooming off.

Re: Re: Re: Coming Soon: Real-world Robot Soldiers

Originally posted by Trebuchet

Not necessarily. I believe all bomb disposal robots are remote controlled. This sounds more like the Army is trying to design a robot that can perform these functions without direct human supervision.

Ah, but the site says:

>"Ultimately, we want to have multiple robots under

>the control of a single soldier," said Chuck

>Shoemaker, unmanned ground vehicle project manager

>at the Aberdeen lab.

>

"The soldier will remain in a protected environment,

>while the robots maneuver out in the hazardous

>environment before the soldier gets involved. Robots

>are sacrificial [sic] -- people are not."

Also, there is a tremendous difference between the needs of an urban police force having a balky robot in the city where it can be repaired quickly if it malfunctions, and the needs of the military to have a capable robot with high enough reliability that it can be used in battlefield conditions. After all, soldiers can break tanks.

LOL. True.

--

Let's see: I just posted, so it's time to login again. Anybody gonna fix these bleedin' boards?

Re: Re: Watched vs. Social Limitation

Originally posted by Super Squirrel

Because you are subject to orders you must have the Social Limitation. I would also go on to state that if they do not trust you, you are Watched.

Star Hero, p.306-307, has a NPC (Major Allyssa Barth) who is a honest, by-the-book cop, who has both Watched and Subject to Orders.

IME, all cops are Watched (by their superiors, the Internal Affairs Office, etc.) as well as Subject to Orders. The same is true of DAs, some military, etc. It is not always necessary for active, specific suspicion to occur for someone to be Watched. Throughout the Law Enforcement, Intelligence and Military communities (and perhaps others) there is a level of institutional 'suspicion' that results in members of those communities being Watched.

Now, what roll that Watched has is another matter....

Re: tk question

Originally posted by Shadowpup

TK says that you can grab, throw and manipulate objects. I was wondering how fast the object in question moves. Meaning that after you grab something, how fast can you get it from one place to another. ex: transporting a team member from the ground to the top of a building.

5th Ed., p.147:

"Telekinesis can move an object a number of inches per Phase equal to the number of inches which the Telekinetic could throw an object with a Running Throw."

Now, if the person has STR 25, and 6 points of "Strength" in his TK, which should you use, 25 or 6?

An exacting reading of the above sentence would say 25, but I believe the intention is to use TK STR, or in this example, 6.

Re: hows this speedster look?

Originally posted by Kefrem

{snip all}

You have:

>Vulnerability: Cold attacks, Common, Vulnerability

>Multiplier (2x STUN)

in there twice.

Re: Coming Soon: Real-world Robot Soldiers

Originally posted by AtomicSwirl

The US Armed Forces are preparing to start using armed robots to supplement (and eventually replace) humans on the battlefield within the next 10-25 years. Here's an article describing some of the robots that are on the drawing board.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/1779709

The site says:

>The Searcher will be a small, portable reconnaissance robot designed to explore

>buildings, tunnels and caves for mines, bombs and hostile humans. It will be able to climb

>stairs, open doors and detonate booby traps. It should be operational in two to seven

>years.

Don't Bomb Disposal Units of major police forces have this already? Isn't this a boondoggle?

BTW, anyone who wants a chart for converting 3G3 DVs to Hero System average damage, take a look at my work at http://users.aol.com/basildrag.

It's a rather large table, but it should help my fellow 3G3 users.

Originally posted by Agent Escafarc

Hey Aroooo,

The term tons(I've also seen it spelled tonnes) when used with ship size is not a unit of weight but a unit of volume (the amount of water displaced by the hull) so a 1000 tons wooden ship is the same size as a 1000 tons metal ship though the dead weight of each is different. It's one of those confusing old English measuring systems. I'm suddenly blank on the exact size in cubic meters but only number in my head this early in the morning is 4 cubic meters but that seems too small

A) There is no reason to believe Steve Long et al. were using "tons" as anything but a unit of mass.

a "ton" in the sense you refer to is one cubic meter (because one cubic meter of water masses on "metric ton"---properly, a megagram)

C) Further, the "tons" you refer to do not measure the overall volume of the hull, but rather the volume (of water) displaced when the ship is carrying its maximum safe load.

D) there are a number of "tons" used to refer to the size of a ship, only one of which has to do with it's displaced volume

E) As a counter example, consider Traveller, where a ship's "ton" in 14 cubic meters (because liquid hydrogen masses about 1 megagram per 14 cubic meters)

Originally posted by Syberdwarf2

So to use my ealier example;

The Andromeda measures in at Length (657 hexes), Width (164 hexes, and Height (493 hexes). Assuming 1 hex= 6.5 feet, that's 4270.5, 1066, and 3204.5 feet respectively.

With L x W to figure SIZE that's an area of107748 square hexes.

Except that a "hex" of area is the area of a hex 2m from side to side, or 2*sqrt(3) square meters. So it's (657*2) * (164*2) / (2*sqrt(3)) = 124,417 hexes in area, or almost exactly 135 points

Cost for that much area (closest figure in SH expanded vehicle chart is 125000 sq hexes) is 135 points.

Now the juicy part,......

The height is 493 hexes. Assuming that the average deck is 10 feet tall (approx. 1.5 hexes to make it easy), that would give the Andromeda..... 328 decks!....

Okay, so let's whittle that down. Make the average deck height 2 hexes; 246 decks.

 

Now (only if all decks are the same size), 135 points times 246 decks comes to 33,210 character points. ugh.........

No, no, no, no. You add all the areas, then look that up on the chart. 124,417 * 246 = 30,606,582, which is closest to 195 points.

Or, you could say each doubling of area adds ~7.5 points, and 246 decks is ~8 doublings, for +6 points.

Originally posted by Tom

I hate to be too picky, but I am...

 

The weapon pictured is a break-action handgun. A modified TC Encore.

Having double checked the site, I must stand (1) corrected. :/

(1) Stand in the corner, that is.

Re: Re: Re: Newpaper For Writers Block

Originally posted by Blackout

...I'm even considering running a campaign in which the characters are all reporters for just such a tabloid. Can't quite decide what power level I wanna run it at, though (or time period for that matter - present day, near future or far future).

Sounds like Tabloid! for the old Amazing Engine game system. Now there was a wild and wacky game.

Re: Just asking for a few references...

Originally posted by AlHazred

I'm actually using a formula to determine DCs of damage. I'm toying with the formula given in Guns, Guns, Guns by BTRC, which involves Muzzle Energy and the Caliber, and with a formula called Taylor's KO Scale.

 

I was more interested in getting a definite hit as far as books I should be looking for, websites I should visit, etc. as far as ballistic statistics on black powder weapons. Any help would be appreciated.

A few notes:

First, black powder has less expansion than modern powder, so it should give projectiles less velocity (all other things being equal).

Second, Greg Porter made an error in the formula for muzzle energy. It should be:

energy in Joules = projectile mass in grams x (muzzle velocity in m/s)^2 / 2000

Third, if you really want to increase the damage from black powder weapons, in the formula for Damage Value (DV), drop the division by projectile diameter (in More Guns, Porter goes into this, referring to it as the Energy Damamge Value, or EDV).

Or, follow the conversion (to Hero System) for melee weapons: add 5 DV before converting.

Originally posted by cboscari

I hadn't thought of that, but I guess I was asking the more general question of if a advantage or limitation applies to all powers, or even some class of objects.

Example-

 

*most* objects of class X have advantage Y in the game world. Is it better to create typical objects X with the advantage Y (making them more expensive) or better (because of the easier book keeping) to give a limitation to those objects that don't have Y - "Object limitation- does not have Y" to make it cheaper? The first way requires more record keeping, and to be honest, print-out space. However, there might be a convention or other good reason to do it the first way.

I hope that made sense.

 

Chris

As you say, the first way requires more writing up and so on. It is, however, in accord with the rules as written, though you have to make sure the requirement is told to all the players.

The second way is simpler, but requires a House Rule. The problem with House Rules is making sure everyone knows about them.

Your call.

Originally posted by Toadmaster

Ok, first of all I find many see .50 cal and start thinking of the M2HB .50 machinegun. If you look at the picture at the bottom of the page of the link you will see that the bullet alone from the machinegun is larger than the entire .500 S&W cartridge.

 

The .500 S&W is listed as a 325 grain bullet at 2000fps, this computes as 2886 Ft/lbs of muzzle energy. This compares to the power of a .30-06 rifle or several of the large magnum handguns like the .454 Casull. It is much more powerful than the .44 magnum which has about 1200 ft/lbs of energy. The .50 cal M2HB machinegun on the other hand has in the neighborhood of 13,000 ft/lbs.

 

Off the top of my head I'd say 2d6+1 with a +2 stun mod sounds about right (a 325 grain bullet is heavy, almost 50% heavier than the bullet of the .44 magnum) Strmin 14 or 15 seems fair, there currently is no method more scientific than taking a SWAG at this time. It is probably a very heavy revolver so could be fired one handed but I wouldn't try it, 1 1/2 handed does not seem unreasonable.

 

As to other .50's

The Desert Eagle .50AE is probably the most available since it is regular production. Not a .50 but the .454 Casull revolver is in the same power range and is also a production weapon.

 

The rest are semi-custom and would be more difficult to get.

.500 Linebaugh and .475 Linebaugh (the .475 is actually the more powerful of the two)

Century's "The mother load" in .50-70 is probably the most powerful of the .50's (about 3000 ft/lbs) although I heard they were working on an even larger revolver in .50-110. The .50-70 version has a 10" barrel and weighs 6 lbs, I've seen a picture of this revolver being fired and lets just say it look odd and completely out of proportion to the shooter.

 

Thanks for the link, I hadn't heard of the .500 S&W yet, seems like there is a new cartridge coming out each month lately.

{This is also in response to cboscari}

I've got "Guns! Guns! Guns!" 3rd edition (aka 3G3), and the companion book "More Guns!" because I'm not that much of a gun person either.

Using the sited webpage, and those books, it looks like the 500 S&W is in the .50AE/.454 Casull range.

BTW, what's shown on the webpage is not a revolver, but a single-shot bolt-action handgun. Most really, really powerful handguns are single-shot bolt-actions.

Someone pointed out a written-up character with .5oAE's; I'd use them for the 500 S&W. It doesn't look like there'd be enough difference to matter, in game-rules terms.

Major Purchase

Originally posted by MisterVimes

I have the Original (2nd edition?) Bestiary around the house and I probably cracked the book two or three times. The new Bestriary has become and integral tool.

 

*Need Ettercaps? There's more than enough info to dash them off quickly (and the HD download is a life saver)

*Daughter wants a Follower: Nightmare? Bang... there it is, slight modification and you are good to go.

*Wife wants a Bear-Spirit Multiform, the Bestiary has three bears to start with, slight modification in HD and you are good to go.

*Need a giant radioactive lizard? Here's your resource.

 

To be frank, I've used it more than Champions... and I'm running a Champions game! 5th Edition has fulfilled ALL my gaming needs to a level higher than my expectations.

Better than 4th Ed.'s Bestiary?!?? I *love* 4th Ed Bestiary. If 5th Ed.'s is better, I'm gonna *have* to get it.

Oh dear, there goes the budget!