Sunday_Gamer

Re: Danger Sense vs. Invisibility (and vice versa) Mushin (The Pure Mind) A Zen term referring to that state of mental clarity and enhanced perception (sensory and intuitive) known as pure mind, produced by the absence of conscious thought, ideas, judgments, emotion (fear and anxiety), pre-conception, or self-consciousness. Ninja Assassins who've mastered this technique would no doubt, be invisible to danger sense.

Re: Danger Sense vs. Invisibility (and vice versa) Invisibility to Danger Sense is like any other power. Depends on the game you're running, depends on the players you have, depends on what you're looking for. I've been in games where it never came into play, and Ive been in games where everyone and their mother had danger sense and the GM outlawed invisibility to it unless you also had invisibility to everything else (it was the cherry on the sundae) Big honking "depends"

Re: What I learn playing a GM. The dice are nothing more than a suggestion. Never forget who the story is about, your players. NPCs aren't perfect, they should fail spectacularly at times. Worry about what is happening, not how your PCs will react. Trying to anticipate your PC actions is a total waste of time. Set the stage, stand back and direct, go with the scene. The catch all filter for any action by PC or NPC: "Yes but how would it look in the movie?"

Re: As a GM, do you charge for...knick-knacks Our rule is simple, if its available in the real world, you can get it with money. If you paid points for it, the universe will see to it that unless it's a plot device, you will never be without it. Not so much with the store bought stuff... Captain Gadget and Retail Man get caught in an explosion... Captain Gadget who paid points for all his gear, lands in a heap in the smoking wreckage. His many gadgets, either still secured to his belt, or raining down all around him, somehow intact. He scrapes himself up, gathers his gear...and limps off! Retail Man bought ressources and then tried to cheese the GM with a long and elaborate list of highly specialized equipment, arguing it was available. Now Retail Man lands in a heap next to Captain Gadget, the many fine smoking pieces of his expensive gear, raining all around. Retail Man curses as he realizes several hundred thousand dollars of gear just vanished and asks Captain Gadget for a ride.

Re: Newbie Question: How Long Should It Take.... Character generation by Sunday Gamer. Real life example, campaign set to begin next week. Settings: Borderline dark champions but with super heroics 250pt characters. Step1: Hassle GM until he coughs up campaign guidelines for character generation (max defense, max attack, blah blah blah) Concept 1: Nexus, dimensional experiment guinea pig, teleport abilities. Generation length: 8 hours what with all the tweaking post GM consultation. Final Result: Very Cool character, neat powers, too powerful. Flushed. Concept 2: Dr.Go, Mutant capable of existing in 5 identical instances. Generation time: 4 hours or so. Final Result: Also very cool, coordinated attacks are too dangerous, flushed. Concept 3: Crimson Shadow, born again undercover telepath, masquerading as a mystic. (GM has the patriot act forcing all psys to register and join a government run guild.) Generation time: 3 hours or so, and I'm not done yet... That answer your question?

Hey Steve, Quick question for you, I just always figured that EGO attacks didn't use his location for purposes of multipliers since I always figured they kinda hit you in the head (without the X2 stun for location). Now I actually playing someone with an EGO attack can you confirm or deny for me that as a general rule, EGO attacks do not use locations? Thanks. Sunday

Re: Multiform and OIHID Death to munchkin magic! He's not trying to make a character with two forms whose forms can also turn into a Hero ID. He's trying to double dip. If he insists, just make his Brutus form OIHID worth nothing, after all, a disadvantage that isn't a disadvantage isn't worth any points, right? Munchkins...

Re: Catching Players off guard. My PCs were involved in some high epic, cross dimensional, time travelling madness... bout 2 years into the campaign, I start a scenario and it's the SAME scenatio as last time... they are confused as all hell but they have experience with time travel so they adapt...they encountered some mysterious strangers who needed them to NOT go where they were intent on going but to an alternate location, the PCs don't like being told what to do so they keep starting stuff... but no matter what they do, these guys are all over them, always one step ahead, knowing their every move, their every thought, the PCs were FUMING with me. Fast Forward three four years or so... the PCs have grown, gained much power, they are still fighting to restore the timeline. They finally learn that one key event was that they went off after bad guy A when they SHOULD have been going to stop events at location B. They got an opportunity to travel back in time to change the past... Before they leave, they decide to dress different and wear masks to not recognize themselves and polute the timeline more than it needs to...They get dressed and as I'm describing the way they look... they FINALLY clue in... the look on their face was awesome. So they went back in time and tried to change their actions, caught up to themselves and I enjoyed nothing more than playing that scene again, years later, with my players, fully aware of who did what and all they tried... constantly stopping the past selves with their superior powers and skills. Was fun...and three years later, they sacrificed themselves in a climacatic epic battle to save the universe and restore the timeline at long last.

Re: Plaugue Bearer powers? I'd probably just give the creature whatever power the disease is 0 end, persistent, Inherent, sticky, continous, Delayed Effect/Trigger, always on and personal immunity. Just assign it a lifespan at the end of which the bacteria die (let's not infect the planet shall we?)

How would one define the ability to ignore the limb immobilization part of a grab? Say you have Mister Fantastic, sure you can grab his arm, but that's hardly going to stop him from using it. You DID grab him however and you ARE holding one of his limbs, it just doesn't affect his ability to use that arm since it'll just stretch out and go about it's business. How do you write it up? Do you write it up? Is it just a derived common sense part of having stretching?

Re: Global Teleportation: How? Whew... looks like I started a poop storm The GM will allow no Mega Scale beyong 1"=1000km so buying the 1" teleport wouldn't work for me. However, in reading this thread and backed by much evidence of its use in various source books, he has caved on the ability to set floating locations through Clairsentience. Victory in mine! Thanks for your input, much obliged.

Re: Global Teleportation: How? p141 of the 5th Ed book states: Clairsentience, even when a targetting sense, cannot establish line of sight. (Barring special GM permission) Therefore I cannot teleport to a location I am seing through clairsentience. My only choice is therefore to use the clairsentience to set a floating location and THEN teleport... however: Fixed Location definitions under teleport on page 233 says "He cannot study a new location via clairsentience unless the GM permits it. So really... assuming the GM does NOT... what are my other options? Sunday

Re: Interesting, But Ultimately "Useless" Powers Sorry but in the 4th Ed Fantasy Hero was the greatest power ever, a detect guard spell that no one bothered adding "ranged" to. Stumbling through the dark, your hands come into contact with an armored breastplate. Feeling your way, you find the man's helmeted face and the long spear he carries, you decide to reveal to him you are in fact imbued with magical powers. "You're a guard aren't you?"

Hey guys, Global teleportation, that is to say, the ability to teleport pretty much anywhere on Earth. Granted this will land you with awesome super hero names like "Captain Mass Transit" and Cabman, but that's not here or there. Easy enough to get the megascale teleport to cover the distance but how do you actually use it? Cabman is in New-York... he needs to go to Paris. How does he do it? Assuming he's never been to Paris before and he doesn't have 5000 floating locations bought to cover the globe with, what's he do? My only two ideas are down to one. I wanted to use megascale clainsentience with scads of telescopic vision to get an impressive view from above and zoom in to whatever area (Paris in this case) find a suitable spot to land and whammo... but I can't use teleport through clairsentience and I can't set a floating location through clairsentience... kinda kicks that idea in the crotch. Idea two was scads of telescopic N-Ray vision, with enough range to see right through the planet. Limited so the only thing it sees through is the planet itself. I'm out of ideas... how can I pull this off? Sunday.

Re: Post your most abusive munchkin character here We had a cheese off once, in which we had 350 pts to make whatever ridiculous chacter we wanted. The duel was won by a rather ordinary man who had lightning reflexes with his shotgun...his Tachyon Shotgun and of course +20 ocv with said weapon. Dimensional Travel (into the past), usable against others. Hero1: I am atomic man, no force on Earth can move me! I can crush mountains with a glance! I can... Hero2 (interrupts, pointing his Tachyon Shotgun): Ya ya ya, tell it to the dinosaurs... *ZORP* I had a good chuckle. Sunday.

Re: Beastly Distinctive Features I'm not a big fan of DF for clothing. I'll fill my character with DF's I have a collection of hats with VERY rude and generally racist and prejudiced statements. Easily concealable, percieved by sight, causes major reaction. It's easily concealable because I can just take the hat off. On game 1, I throw away my hats! Granted this is the extreme cheese example but the basic arguments holds. I've never allowed DF for uniforms or clothings unless they are mandatory. If you're space alien HAS to wear this suit to survive in our atmosphere, ok, he can take the suit as a DF. Sunday

Re: 750 point character are wildly powerful! I run a campaign where they started at 500 but now, many years later, 2 of the characters, which have been there since the beginning, are nearing 650-700 pts. It's a hard act to juggle. In the end it's doable if the GM maintains a close sense of the characters and balance. Meta gaming should be disallowed, if you give them enough points to be very powerful and they thank you by trying to cheese squeeze more points out of you, I say smoke'em =) But balanced characters at any lvl can function, it's just a state of mind. Sunday

Re: Character Review: Doctor Phenomenal For starters, very nice. Not obscenely powerful, well rounded, reasonable amount of skills, skill choices reflect a solid background, nice work. You've got the blindness at infrequent impairment, which with perma awareness (no focus:goggles, they're just theatrics) is entirely correct. Where to go? Wherever you want =) Build his combat side with defense maneuver, for the man who likes to be the last guy standing in a circle of baddies but doesn't want to get buried in rear attacks and multiple attacker bonuses... Build his powers/scientist side with some images and hologram themed foci based powers. Holographic masking (instant change, shapeshift) Images, Hypno beams, whatever tickles your fancy. Up to you really, nice character, shouldn't have any problems building on a solid foundation. Sunday

Hey Steve, Thanks for settling that wee debate of foci breakability posted by one of my illustrious players, I would be the afore mentioned GM in his post. I'm also going to get a print out in ginormous letters of just the part where you said " Your GM is absolutely right" I'm gonna get it on cards, banners, I'm hiring planes to write it in the sky in huge smokey script... Now, just to clarify, because as I've mentioned, me and my players are rules ninjas, so you gotta cover your tracks, always. You said: First, if a character can do this with any french fry, it's an OIF, not OAF, because he can use any "french fry of opportunity." The fact that any given fry can be taken away from him easily is negated by the fact that he can easily grab another fry. Now I assume you meant that the "of opportunity" tag reduces the value of the OAF as to make it equivalent to an OIF, but it remains an Accessible focus in as much as it can still be taken from the character with a grab maneuver. I know, I'm nit picking, force of habit, everything...has to be... perfect. Sunday Thanks in advance for your speedy and helpful replies, please feel free to post "Your GM is absolutely right" whenever the urge takes you.

Hey Steve, love the game. I have some rather experienced players who as a general rule, although not abusive, can make the system sit up and beg. They are therefore, not always easy to convince. I can always just set down the law I mean, it's my game after all but I'd like to ask you to confirm something for me, because if they see it from you, the arguments end, immediately. Unusual Senses, in particular Invisibility to Unusual Detects. I know and can show them the 5th ed rules on pg 228 that clearly state that sense affecting powers (invisibility) cannot affect the Unusual Sense group as a whole. Did it ever say so in 4th ed or is this just something that was meant but not specifically stated and can you confirm that NO, you cannot buy Invisibility to Unusual Detects. We have the 5th ed rules, but the campaign is old and we housed rules a few things that you corrected in 5th ed but now they're entrenched in the house versions and I don't want to piecemeal 5th ed in, if I go 5th it's completely and oh the drama...the misery... Get these monkeys off my back kind sir, please. Sunday.

Re: Overwhelming PRE attacks Great thread, and a whole lot of good answers... The way I see it, if all your PCs want to use 20d presence attacks, then you start using them back. It's the old GMing theory of reaping what you sew. If all my PCs fire is AP/EX ammo, then guess what? Obviously AP/EX ammo is far more common than I realized so all my bad guys will start using it too, they learned from watching the PCs, seemed to work for them. Have yourself a sit down and consider the highly inconvenient ramifications of god like presence, add a splash of amusement, stir, let chill for a few game sessions, serve cold. Let's take Dead Head for example (sorry!) 30 PRE +40 PRE only for fear. Boy I'd be careful where I used that, bystanders beware! People running in every direction, old ladies having coronaries, accidents, tramplings... eesh, that could get ugly. What of Gorgeous Man with his gleaming teeth and PRE of 50? You think Brad Pitt can't go out in public? Try it with 50 PRE. People camped around your house/lair/last place you were seen... with the praying and the chanting and the constant declarations of love... I think maybe they haven't considered all the implications. Sunday

Re: Help save a campaign Ah the joys of a motley party =) The first and obvious question is ALWAYS "how can I assure party cohesiveness?" Sounds to me like you HAD that problem but now that they are wanted fugitives, you should impart the "better stick together and watch each others backs or we're gonna start dropping dead." message. Seems to me all the elements are there. The wood elf has fled, this is highly annoying. Now understand that everyone has a different playing style and GM'ing style so really, my ideas are no better than yours, I just throw them out there to help inspire you to retake control of your game. First, remember that the game, in the end, is THEIR story. Don't make the mistake of it being about the NPCs or the world you crafted. You will have to deal with how THEY act and react, all you can do is know what's happening in the background with your master plan. Now you need to unify your group. Worried about having to change systems if your PCs die? Well no one said they ALL had to die. Kill 1 and get your message accross. Dont kill him/her randomly. Let them do what they do, you do what you do, sounds to me like sooner or later, one of them is gonna bite off more than he/she can chew. Don't be afraid to illustrate the lethality of some consequences. If you drop 1, they'll make a new character and come back in, presumably. Now I myself is usually against killing my PCs unless they really ask for it. I prefer to maim and mutilate =) This does not just invovle physical violence, there's more than one way to skin a cat, if you pardon the rather odd and disgusting metaphore. I recommend cheating, after all, you're the GM, it's your greatest power =) I usually cheat right up front, my last 2 FH campaigns were a group of young barbarians from the same village, essentially the chiefs son and his childhood friends. And a city based campaign, in which the party were all orphans who grew up in an orphanage owned by a powerful immortal sorcerer... point is, the entire campaign was built to ensure party cohesiveness. So how do you achieve party cohesiveness with a motley group? My main suggestion would be to mark them. Say there's a powerful mage involved. That mage has a plan which presumably, he'd like to see come to fruition. So he gets his hands on some augury and tries to see how his plan is gonna go, what mistakes he's making... you know, evil powerful mage stuff. He sees a force that opposes him, whether knowingly or not, these people will be a problem for his plan, but who are they? So he casts a spell to do what he cannot, find his enemies. His spell goes out and places a tattoo on the targets forehead or gives them a tuft of white hair or whatever, doesn't even need to be visible, but the players have to be aware of its existance. Now, there's something uniting the players. They're all marked. They don't know by who or what and what it means they just know they are marked and they can see the mark upon each other. Maybe only certain powerful NPCs or creatures can see it, maybe only children can see the mark, or animals. Maybe the mark gives everyone who sees them the heebeejeebees (extreme reaction) point is, it can be anything you want or nothing at all, as long as they know they are marked. Then you pick on the elf =) Alone in the woods? How unfortunate, you feel the spot where you're marked heating up slightly, it's a steady, slow building heat. (Give him time to haul *** back to the others) Still alone? The mark suddenly flares, you see nothing but you feel it like a fire in your soul. (summon whatever creature you want, or the mark is now active and silently calling out to the forest, pissing it off and here comes the locals and they're furry and grumpy...again, whatever.) This might give you the 2 birds with 1 stone effect and cause the Elf to die, if he persist in staying out there alone. If nothing else, hope this inspires you to retake control. Sunday.

Re: Introductions and a question about jumping. I figured as much, we been using our old system which is the STR chart but we also use a DEX based jumping skill which which we use like a STR push for jumping. (if you make it on the nose its +5 STR +1 for every pt you make the roll by) Sunday EDIT: athankies.

Re: New Power: Invulnerability I just double the cost of 75% damage reduction and introduced 100% damage reduction. Needless to say, there's a large stop sign next to it. Sunday

Re: Manipulating opponent position in combat - how? I agree there seems to be 2 main points. 1) Theatrical combat movement, which just kinda happens. 2) Awarding bonuses and modifiers for such movement. If you want to actually iron out specific bonuses, then the limited combat lvls described earlier work great, I usually just go with the flow. Awarding a +1 here and a -1 there depending on how things unfold. Never underestimate the power of your poetic license as GM. Sunday