Duke Bushido

Excellent point! So, just as a quick analysis: I can make a character who is a zombie or a vampire who has powers. They are both dead, though perhaps because we classify them as "undead" it makes a difference. I can also make a character who is a robot: not at all alive, without possibility of being "undead." However, it is never technically alive, so it can't really be a corpse, either. I can make many, many kinds of booby traps (according to the equipment books) that, like the robot, are never alive (or capable of dying) with the Trigger advantage. Longer analysis may be needed, but a cursory check (why it took so long for me to get back; I actually cracked some books- like I said: I am not at all up on the Long Editions), but from cursory investigation, I am willing to posit that since an unliving thing can have powers and a character with powers can be dead and actively played (if dead is his "normal state of being," so to speak) that a corpse can likely have powers. Though the nature of Trigger doesn't require character input ( beyond setring a non-automatic reset-type Trigger): when the Trigger condition is met, the trigger goes off. The most reasonable cause for denial would be the idea that a recently-alive-but-now-isn't character using a Trigger power would be that he can no longer pay END to fuel the Power. However, he can pre-pay the END. In fact, I can't find any limitations on just how far in advance he can do so (for what it's worth, Fantasy HERO seems to be the best place to find examples of pre-paid END), and I can't seem to find any rulings that pre-paid END disappears when the donor dies. There do not seem to be any rules preventing a literal deadman switch on a Trigger (which is why I asked: I thought someone else might have a citation for such a rule), so on first blush, it _seems_ book-legal. Side note: the fact that there seems to be no limit as to how far in advance a character can prepay END suggests to me that it has a near-zero value as a limitation- spells and potions that require pre-paying END, for example. I have been allowing -1/4 as it is a bit more difficult in combat to take the time and allocate precious END, but I may have to rethink that. Anyway, it smells book-legal, but I can see why someone might decide to make this a GM's call. I'd allow it, though. I am going to have to reread 1e. Somewhere in the earliest days we got it into our heads that death was -10 BODY. I have got to figure out why we thought that. Anyway, for non-supers games, I still use that, else it takes a surprising amount of stabbings to kill a guy.

Another vote for FHC here, but I have to say that I vote that way specifically because you said this: And because you have played 4e FH. You have everything you need for setting detail, building wrapons, races, equipment, etc. FHC gives you a solid distillation of the current rules and just enough genre trappings to make what you already have one-hundred percent useful with the latest rules.

I can only speak for me, if we are doing "what would this be like in real life," and I must honestly say "oh, yes; I would definitely abuse it." Caveat: not to any sort of criminal or person-invading degree, because I am not _that_ horrible a person. In fact the full list of things that I absolutely should never be trusted with: Mind control Mind reading Invisibility Desolidification Four wheel drive For the good of everyone else, I should never have any of those things, ever. Agreed. And probably why, having seen two episodes of those seasons, I have gone out of my way to _never_ see another one. I can't lie: I am just a little bit disturbed by the number of people who can tune into that and watch it over and over as entertainment. All it ever did for me was make my blood boil that the crimes they depict _are things that happen every day_, and remind me how disgusting some human beings can be given an opportunity. I think only one of you knows this, but a quarter century ago, I became the legal guardian of a twelve year old girl who was being- sorry. Just say "victimized." Every time I see a show about that- presented for 'entertainment'-- all I want to do is dig up the guy that was doing it and desecrate his corpse. Two still live, and I think things I shouldn't about them, too. I have no interest in such entertainment. I find _zero_ amusement in such topics. I do not- no pontification here! I _genuinely_ do not understand how anyone could enjoy such stories, even if the focus is on catching the bad guy. But I don't wamt to being the thread down, so I am going to stop there. Now _that is_ an interesting angle! Thank you, Sir! I am probably going to play with that for a while. What is it like to be the only mind reader or mind controller amongst thousands of people? What kind of "people / not people" or "me / them" concepts become imprinted on the mind of a person who can hear your thoughts or alter your desires? Very interesting. Well-thought! Ditto. We can do horror, macabre, angsty, light-hearted, heat-breaking- But there is a line that I am just not going to cross in my games, ever. To steer to the subject, the "most awful" villain we ever faced was a homebrew concoction by my first Champions GM when we were going through our street vigilante phase: Jojo, the Human Clown. Man did we learn to hate her....

Not at all up on 6e; not readily conversant with 5e. Lots of neat suggestions, but they bring a question forward: Cannot "Trigger: corpse takes damage" work to trigger this? Cannot "when BODY is a positive value" be used as a valid auto-reset? Thanks for any answers.

Woah- Sorry guys; I spent a lot of rime and worda saying "armor piercing." I didnt really catch that until now. We have been using "Piercing Points," the dorerunner of Penetrating. My apologies for what must have been seven extra layers of confusion... Mea culpa.

Wierd. I looked at a picture and now I'm in traction..... Who knew you could dislocate seventeen joints by _seeing_ something?!

This will never not be quote worthy. No matter how long we have played or how often we harp on "reason from effect," we will all of us hve that one build we are shooting for where we lose track of what is the mechanical result, amd what is the special effect. A quick Googling told me Karnak is a super-ninja moon man who finds the weakest point in a target and karate chops it into pieces. It could be fins weakness, but it could also be a special circumstances (ie, highly limited) plus Xd6 HKA as well. I like this. I think I am going to play around with it when I have more time.

You are absolutely correct, Sir. You ever use a house rule so long that you forget it's a house rule? to "equalize" things when we pushed out Find Weakness, we House Ruled "2 levels of AP halves defenses." However, a single hardened will prevent that.

Dang it, Old Man! Do _not_ force me to accept any sort of "good side" to CCGs..... I ain't havin' it. 😕

K Okay, rather than let this end on a sour note, let's do this thing! As always, I am okay being the bad guy by suggesting things that mighty be distasteful, but if you bear with me, I will certainly attempt to explain my various "why's." This _is_ the simplest solution, and arguably, owing to both the simplicity and ease of the solution and the relatively simple mechanic of the original build, the most elegant. Not only that, but it takes something from older editions, which I always love. Almost always love. I don't love this. I so much don't love that even today, as an unrepetant 2e player, I wouldn't do it. See, even way back when, I never liked Find Weakness. Well, I mean, as a player, I _loved_ it, and I loved it for all the reasons that I hated it as a GM: dirt-cheap endlessly-stacking Armor Piercing that can reduce (eventually, with lucky rolls) reduce any defense to 1. It _might_ be possible to get it to zero, but given the way we figured the halving (ie, rounding fractions from .5 up to one before applying the next halving, etc), we never pulled it it below one. Still, back then we had settled on 18-24 DC as a character's "main" attack- 21-28 Body from a KA-- against 1rPD... Gets ugly pretty quickly.... So... As noted earlier in the thread, this was a must-have for all of us in our early power-mongering days (where 20DC was a "back-up power" and a "big" power could push deep into the 30s). It got so ubiquitous and so _ridiculous_ that, way back when 1e and 2e were the _only_ e, one of the first things I did when I got pushed into the GM's chair was to ban Find Weakness. This was well-received initially, but eventually complaints started (I suspect because change is _slow_, and after a few years of endless power escalation, it was hard to crank it down, and there were other adjustments to be figured out. I mean, after deciding to make 20 DC a "big" or "emergency" power, we we're still building with 30 and more DEF!) and the complaints got worse and worse once they started. Then we would root out the _actual_ problem behind the complaint -- for example: I can't buy enough DEF to last two turns because at that point, Joey the Ninja has cut my DEF down to a quarter or less of what they were! Eventually, you move from 'defense is capped too low' and 'defenses should be cheaper' to 'Find Weakness is problematic' to 'Armor Piercing as a mechanic (the ability to cut defenses in half as a concept)' needs to be reigned in.' So we initially capped AP at double and capped FW at double. Or 'Fights are dragging on forever!' This was true, especially after we reigned in AP /FW. Nobody _won_ a fight, at least not through clever tactics or teamwork, and certainly not through slugging it out, especially not with power and DEF levels where we were running them. It was a matter of "the last guy standing and gasping for breath is the defect winner" or "the first guy who recovers enough END to slap the neutralizer gauntlets on the other guy wins by default!" (I guess you can see why Drain (or Transfer): Recovery was the most popular asjustment power....) Eventually we figured out the problem was that characters had to be able, by default, to deliver noticeable damage to one another. Invulnerable only works in comic books, and even then, only because- for whatever reason- comic book fans don't seem to think that Hulk versus Superman isn't quite possibly the most boring fight scene ever concieved (with Hulk versus Thor being the most boring scene ever filmed, for the exact same reason: it's like going down to docks and watching the drop hammers install pilings. Over and over, boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Never stops, never ends, never even slows down. Same trade, lick for lick, all day long until you can't find a reason to keep watching. So now we had capped AP levels were beginning to reign in DCs and we had begun to assess the DEF / DC relationship. But these are other subjects. Sorry. The problem at this point was ninjas. I have maintained forever that ninjas are just one of the reasons that the typical superhero team doesn't work: Oh, no! Iron Man was a bad guy all along! Quickly, Ralph Macchio! Use your Crane Kick! Ow! Ow! Crap! I broke my freakin' ankle! Did... Did I get him? Is he down? Granted, there is absolutely no believable way that "guy wearing a high-tech tank" is _ever_ going to be brought down by "guy with a pair of short sticks on a chain" or "guy with a boxing glove on an arrow," but because it _does_ work in comic books, we had to figure out how to make it work in the game. In a moment of epiphany, it came to us that "_this_ is why Find Weakness _exists_." From there it was "_this_ is why Haymaker exists..." And a few other things that were meant to level the playing field for the concept-has-no-actual-superpowers guy fighting side by side with Superman and Aquama-- uhhh.. Wonder Woman. Fortunately-- and guys, don't take this in a negative light. It is just a thought process, okay? Fortunately, we had no internet then and precious little access to even game stores, let alone numerous other groups to influence or be influenced by, so we avoided the whole "but Haymaker should be for everyone!" thing that became the norm for the rest of the fandom. Since we knew what a haymaker was in non-game terms, and at the time, game terms defined it the same way, we accepted that this was a special case maneuver for folks who relied on physical prowess. Because the initial rules for Find Weakness let FW stack and stack and stack until you flubbed a roll, we deduced that it was also a special case intended to level the playing field for characters who otherwise would be completely useless in combat-- Bruce Lee versus Mazinger Z, for example. And why not? There was a roll involved, suggesting there was some kind of action involved. It all kind of fit with the ninja Schtick "I have been carefully analyzing his X recations to Y, and it is clear that he is gaurding a vulnerability to his vital Z. If I focus my attack there, then I _should_ be able to...." Etc, etc, etc... But we capped it along with AP. Now, in this case, I am using "ninja" in a broad way, as an easy shorthand (because touch screen thumb typing _suuuuucks_....) for any supers character who isnt actually "super." Seeker, Batman, and the like. They are all, for the purposes of this conversation, "ninjas." More on that problem in a bit. Maybe. If I remember. I cannot make a universal statement such as "this is broken," simply because it really isn't. I won't even make a statement like "everyone abuses this!" I _can_ say that everything this poster noted as a problem lines up perfectly with my own experience. I even copped to being part of the problem as a player. 😕 I can say that it _is_ still problematic if you pass it out to everyone will-nilly "because it is my concept." it becomes very meta at that point: allowing it based entirely on analysis of concept and power level. For myself, I have no real issues, no actual problems with exactly this, but then, I have always felt there was a reason for the GM to exist beyond designing the characters that the players will beat up and crafting a story they will be engaged by. But hey; who am I to think my,opinions are importsnt or even credible, right? It's no secret that I am not a 6e fan (or 5r, or 4, or 4, or 3..... ) But this is exactly the solution that we can up with in the eighties. I still use it to this day. There were initial complaints- mostly laments about the cost. Now I _believe_ most of you are familiar with my willingness to do "super skills" and "skills as powers"; it get's mentioned any time that I enter a Shape shift conversation. No; I am not rehashing that here. As there is zero chance of changing my mind (been doing it since the early days of 2e; it has been playtested a-plenty; I promise. So we did what Steve did: put "requires a roll" on Armor Piercing. Find Weakness _is_ Armor Piercing, after all. To simulate doubling, buy AP again, also with requires a roll, but add "only if previous level is active, or- and forgive the use of the word, but it is what we had back then- "Linked" to the first instance. To get a third or forth instance, continue in this vein. And of course, the whole thing failed if a roll was flubbed, as per the original Find Weakness. The most different thing we did was to give a rather nebulous cap: "cannot reduce opponents defenses below average attack damage for power being used" and declare that, as with the actual armor piercing attack, the character must pick a specific attack (ninja's usually picked "strike" or "martial strike" depending on if they were martial ninjas or not, but a few built a special "giant slayer" attack for use with the ability). No; I do not put it on STR so it works with any strength-based attack any more than I would put it on a Control Cost and let it apply to the entire Multipower. Yes; I know "put it on your STR" is a tradition on these boards, and something I will alow for a lot of other things- Affects Desolid, for example- but not here. The cap was softened already, and the cost per was much lower owing to the limitations, and as far as "get what you paid for, well... Competitively, I found this ability with the limitations and softened cap applied with any _one_ power to be what you paid for. There are even some things where I will allow it. This isn't one of them). With the first build proposed, yes. However, since "double armor piercing" is a legal and periodically printed thing (as is double Hardened), I allowed this version of "Find Weakness" to be doubled (and more) as well. As is detailed above. This still created a pricing problem, particularly since one could succeed a second roll and get a "free" second level of AP. What to do? Well, as the majority of us were still fighting with our "build to _win" and powergaming mindsets, triple and Quadruple AP would show up with some regularity. This is right about the time i capped AP at double. Again, remember the era: the hobby as a whole was working really hard to throw off the adversarial nature of the early days of the hobby; power gaming was more the norm-- not optimizing, now; actual powergaming: making every attempt to create a PC that could break the game to "keep the GM in check," so to speak. In this case, small attacks with dour or more levels of AP were popular; Drain: Recovery was the drain of choice. And the arms-race inspired solution for GMs was quintuple Hardened...... To be perfectly honest, re-working Find Weakness and capping AP was a real turning point for us overall, and once the grousing finally died away, we started making serious strides to working together as a group, and from both sides of the screen. But that was an unexpected and unrelated musing; sorry about that. So Anyway, there was a cascade wffwcr to our entire play style that fell out of the study and tesrinf that went into this (such as finding value in and appreciating defense caps) that utlimately led to more enjoyable games -and-reduced our deoendence on stacks and stacks of power limitations to get those DCs up, etc. Even combat became less of a chore simply because we couldnt just wade into a four-hour slugfest any time we saw a villain. Okay, there was so much more I wanted to say, and more coherently,but the long post /multi-quote post on a pgone screen has, as usual, proven disastrous. So here it is; I am certain meaning can be extracted easily, ib spiye of the choatic arrangement.

Thanks, Hugh. how about that! It took sixty-odd years, but I finally found a place where I'm the _subtle_ one!

Pretty much, yes.

And thia is how I learned about RPG.net. Neat.

Wow. Looks like our friend Rich "the lych" McGee has some competition, necromantically....

If I can find them, I will PM you dor a mailing address. I have some somewhere, and I freakin' hate them. 😕 no charge! I would rather they go to someone who appreciates them; I really would.

Thoughts? Mine? Dude, following through on things the players _like_ in your game is, bar none, the best possible thing you can do. If your players are sympathetic to his plight, they may very much enjoy seeing what changes this brings about in his behavior, personality, and life. And if not- well, they will still know that you lead them through a story that they were interested in. Go for it. For what it'a worth, in our own games way back when, my co-GM used Hideous a bit, but on one particular occasion, a PC, attempting to distract him, removed his mask. Turns out he was absolutely _gorgeous_ underneath. So half the party stops and stares while he beats them senseless.... Turns out the chemicals that disfigured him also gave him regenerative powers, but made him dim-witted. He had never noticed that hia face had completely healed.

"cheat with both hands" has now become part of my lexicon. Thank you, Sir. As to speeding up combat: The ideas suggested above (particularly "remember that villains aren't here for some greater-than-themselves" type motivation and are thus not realistically likely to willingly fight to a knockout, given as how that is synonymous with capture) is one that doesn't get repeated often enough. Same with intentionally keeping defenses near average damage for the campaign (a but above; a bit below-- sure. Variety is allowable and fun, but stay near the average damage roll for the average DC attack in use. One That never gets suggested, but speeds things along really quickly is that defenses do not (or perhaps only Resistant Defenses do) protect against STUN damage. Low-level mooks and mid-level agents will either drop out or just plain drop considerably quicker, and even your PCs will put a lot of thought into their "should we just slug it out" decisions. I am not saying that this is good because villains will fall faster. Combined With "villains aren't stupid enough to fight until they are KO'ed," and combat will fall off sooner as villains, now in more pain and aches than ever before, decide the time to go gas come sooner than they might have before. In all cases, though, like Hugh, I find not letting defenses creep too far above the midpoint of average damage results in shorter combats yet retains all the options, maneuvers, and complexities you heart desires.

It Actually isn't, but it is a pretty solid one; thanks!

Mook Sweeps. There is a really interesting thread on this topic from a year or so ago (I think it was a year). If I can find it I will link it.

Ditto for me, at least in supers and sci-fi (where medical tech is assumed to be amazing). Honestly, onky in the _grimmest_ of campaigns have I not done that, but realistically,I find using something other than HERO best gives the grim, risk-of-life at every turn feel: probably why I have never abandoned Traveller: it works great for weaterns and no-magic historical settings when you want ant bullet to have a chance to kill.

If I remember correctly, JI _did_ come1 with a four-fold poster in the box.

This is more complicated than it sounds if you are going for realism (which I assume you are,or it would be a non-issue). Determine the characters movement speed per half-second. Determine the character's apex height of his vertical leap and his leaping distance per half-second. Determine how many inches he will move until he achieves apex. At that point, begin to apply falling (per half second while he moves forward. At the point he comes back in contact with the ground, you have determined how wide a gap he can cross. If it helps, I am 63 and in terrible condition. I have two forms of movement (running and swimming) a barely any appreciable leaping- bad back, bad knees, an getting heavier as I age. I can running clear a one-point-five meter gap without breaking stride. I have no flight (so far as I am willing to test).

Per Schultz, the series is "still ongoing."

Odd timing. I am working on a Xenozoic Tales port for HERO right now.

Founder's Day seems like a given in any star-faring civilization. And possibly "we exceeded C" day dor the entire race. Other than that, I tend do look to the in-game religion and Big Events of the region's history.