Duke Bushido

Yep. That's quite clearly a mandril suit.

Ah; I see where you're going. I have been using a House Rule for so long I forgot it wasn't a book rule: Run out of END, burn STUN. Run below negative STUN, burn BODY. Frankly, it's called "option land." That's my option. Still, using T-form to induce "sleep" leaves them full STUN to take a pinata-style beating long before "well, this sleep is going to last a few months." Draining STUN to simulate sleep means I can whack them into option land with a single strike of a broom handle.

Sort of.... In as much as everyone got mad, the mood dropped and stayed that way, and the game petered out within an hour. While we met for other games, it was in the neighborhood of a year before anyone wanted to pick that one back up. The entire time with that "well how were we supposed to know...?" Nonsense. How were you supposed to know what? That the ship was likely in danger? That you were hired to guard it and _walked off the job_? That Lt. Sandbag stressed several times that the job wasn't over? That there was a war going on, and the company you were working for was one entire side of the war? What was it, exactly, that you needed to know that would have properly stressed "hey, you know, some really bad stuff could go down any minute?" Or perhaps this is Ghost Rider 2, and we're playing the world's first inaction game.... Excellent catch, Sir! Yes; this is my long-running Traveller-on-Champions wheels game. Yeah, but usually "hey, that ship is our honest-to-God only ride home" had worked in the past as a motivator to at least post a guard. Didn't that time, though. I just wanted to say thank you for that. The way, in my head, that this comment was stated was hilarious. I have had very, _very_ few TPKs, but I would like to share my favorite (though I really think that I have shared this before, many years ago). It's a space opera game (Yes; Sci-Fi is my genre of preference. Specifically, not Star Wars sci-fi). One of the party members had managed several sessions ago to get his hands on a Phase Field generator. This experimental Force Field generator is a body-worn protective device that, when activated, creates a phase field "bubble" of protection. Anything-- physical or energy-- is phased and randomly expelled from some other part of the surface. To skip the rubber science, it's essentially Missile Deflection, Area of Effect (could be cranked to a 10 meter radius) costs END, and a couple of other things that are not important for this story. We had two Johns in this group with the unique distinction of being identical cousins. That is their fathers were identical twins who, against the odds, married identical twins. I won't pretend to be a scientist, but given what I did learn while going through my medical education, they are, genetically speaking, siblings. (purely genetic, mind you). They are both named for their grandfather (and they were just almost two years apart, and because of that, I find it a bit hard to forgive doing that to your kid, but that's neither here nor there). They were strikingly similar in appearance, though technically there was no reason for that, as neither favored one parent more than the other. Conversationally, we referred to them as "Old John" and "Young John" (or Little John), mostly because Straight John hated being called Straight John (Gay John did not mind being called Gay John, but Straight John was something of a spoilsport >:-/ ) Anyway, the party is making their way though the prison (they are tasked with questioning and possibly having to exterminate a prisoner. They have opted to spring him and help him get off world, because that's who they are: they are the good guys). So we have the five players and two NPCs sneaking their way toward the auxiliary command to do a couple of quick overrides and create an express exit, as their presence (but not their whereabouts) has been discovered. As they step out into a _wide_ and empty corridor, they see nothing, and the group pushes ahead. As the bulkhead seals behind them, they make their way to the intersection fifty feet ahead. A lone staffer from the prison pops around the corner, sees them, and stops dead in his tracks, shocked. Brent announced "I shoot him before he can raise the alarm!" and fires off his hand cannon-- his straight-from-Johhny-Dangerously 88 magnum (recoilless, as Jim DiGriz would have wanted) slug thrower. BOOM! The.. uh..... the alarm... has been raised..... The security systems guy turns to see if he can open the bulkhead for a quick retreat; Old John wants to sprint dead-ahead beyond the intersection in the hopes of getting through it before any guards appear. Sixty seconds of indecision and guards arrive-- eight of them, with full riot armor and armed with stun cannons (before there were real-world shoots-a-wire-at-you Tasers, there weren't, so we had to guess. These were basically weapons that fired arcs of electricity at incredible voltage and very low amperage: they were non-lethal, usually, sort of). Right away Amy says "I activate my force field and crank it up enough to cover everyone! John's right; we've got to make a run for it!" Young John, who has been letting his mind wander to who-knows-what hears "John" and snaps to attention-- sort of. "Full auto, Baby!" Young John's character has a plasma weapon that can be toggled to single shot, burst fire, and what he calls "Full auto." This is a setting that, with a single button press, will set the weapon firing full auto (5 shot autofire) repeatedly, until the setting is changed again or the energy clip is spent. "Full Auto" was something he liked to do as he seemed to think it was allowing him to take "extra attacks," no matter how many times it was explained to him that it in fact did not do that, as he couldn't really aim save on his Phase-- it was just firing. So the Plasma rifle begins to fire, unceasingly-- into the inner surface of the Bubble of Missile Deflection. Roll Activation. Neat! Rolled a 4! Oh! Time to roll again... Neat! Rolled a 5! Wow! A 3! It was grim, and it was hilarious. Many dice where thrown that evening, most of them at Young John.

Galactus's hat. Actually, anyone's hat. The man could draw; I will _not_ take that away from him, and I will publicly announce my never-ending jealously of _anyone_ that can. But his fashion sense-- the various costumes and such that he is responsible for..... >shudder<

Pretty much that. I am delighted that Champions II has been referenced! It includes a paragraph that sums up so much of why I don't charge for bases: Going line-by-line: The purpose of a base is, apparently, to be attacked in the base. I am not charging someone for the location in which they are attacked. The more intricate your base, the less secure it is-- at least, that seems to be the ideal. Never mind the points you spent for the Concealment Roll! If your base is anything cooler than hiding under a manhole cover, villains are just going to get in and attack you. The security measures for which you paid points are meaningless, and will only serve to prevent your reinforcements from arriving. The best and most effective part of the base is the character team itself. Sure: I'm sure the rules are changed and better expressed, but at the very heart of the matter is this: The base is an enabler. "using your lab in your base can give you a plus 1 to plus three bonus!" When you read your skill usage rules, using _any_ skill-appropriate lab will give you that same bonus. Heck, you can use the points you'd spend on a lab in your base to buy up Skill a point or two! Or just use anyone's lab. That seems to be a common theme in comics anyway, right? Ooh-- even better! Your badguys aren't constantly breaking into the borrowed lab! I can go on, but like four people have replied while I write this, so I'm just going to state my absolute agreement that bases are nothing but point sucks for PCs. If you want a base-- fine. You can have it.

Kirby? Is that you, Jack?!

Glad to help, Sir.

I tried to rep that, but apparently I'm all out. I agree that sleep is more a binary condition. However, assuming that lower STUN makes it much easier to kill someone / move them into option land is hardly a presumption of a special effect: that's the way the Characteristics work: if you Drain Characteristics, you get lower characteristics. The end results of lowering damage-soaking characteristics is that you are able to survive considerably less damage. It is entirely possible (but ridiculously expensive) to Drain: Body or even Drain: Stun someone to death, precisely because they are your damage-surviving characteristics. Special Effects not required.

Not sure where this went; I posted a reply from work a couple of hours ago, but here's a short recap: First, I have to say that they don't come up too terribly often in the group where I first piloted this. No; there's no special reason for that, but it could be related to the fact that we do _slightly_ broad interpretation of skills. Not too broad, as there are eleven players, but if you have, say "Astrogation," I'm not going to make you buy it per ship size or per quadrant or anything like that. I'm pretty happy with "per spiral arm." That being said, they do come up now and again. "How we handle it" depends entirely on the mood at the table at the time. if it's all mellow and everyone is attentive, roll the complementary skill as normal to determine a die modifier (if any). If things are hectic and lots of people are trying to act, assume a die modifier of (Skill Level -11)/2 or (Skill Level-11)/3, depending on how relevant the complementary skill is determined to be-- rounding works the same way: if the skill is clearly something that will improve your odds, round up. If it's a _maybe_ this will help kind of thing, round down. Now I remind everyone following along that the entire thing was conceived to help manage time and off-topic conversation (when you have a lot of players, and two or three are acting, if you spend more than a couple of minutes with each actor, the rest gravitate toward chatter. Anything that speeds up the mechanicals helps to forestall that). Yes. I should probably add that the players-- granted, most (not all) were experienced when I started doing this-- took to it immediately. There was no hesitation or resistance; it made a kind of sense to them, as you were competing directly against someone else, just as you are in a combat roll.

The last out-of-combat NPC death in my sci-fi campaign: The Players have been hired to provide security for a cargo. Not a bad job, as they get paid for time spent doing nothing but getting a free starship ride. All the problems are believed to be on the destination planet: they will land on a small continent that is in the middle of a brush war, local natives against alien settlers (three hundred years ago, the original treaty said "we don't want this area; we are happy with this small zone you gave us." Then radioactives were discovered on this nearby continent.....) Today, settlers and corporations have pushed into this continent to "negotiate mining contracts" (akin to how lumber contracts are being negotiated in the Amazon region). Corporate supply ships are targeted semi-regularly sitting in dock at the port, so the corporation has taken to hiring contract merchants to bring in really important stuff-- preferably ships and crews who are already known to the locals. The PCs are hired by the corporation to provide security for one such ship, which is carrying clandestine mining equipment (inspectors have already been paid to not notice). Short version: The clock starts running at touchdown. By the end of the first day, all the contacts have been made. By the end of the second day, arrangements to unload and convoy the materials are made. By the end of the second day, one of the paid-off inspectors has made contact with his people: he is a sympathizer to the natives. Ironically, he would have rubber-stamped the ship and cargo simply because he knew them and had dealt with them for years. Being asked and paid to rubber stamp this particular ship and cargo made him curious. He knows it's mining equipment and starts making calls. On the third day, the material will start being moved off of the ship in small batches, starting at about mid-day. This all hinges on the PCs foiling a plot to blow up the ship at mid-morning. Dock hands and other workers mill about constantly. Two guerrilla fighters have managed to plant shaped charges at key points on the ship and even inside (especially anywhere that will damage the cargo, but the destruction of the ship is a sought-after prize: this ship is working with the corporation and must be used as an example-- a warning to other independents that they don't want to truck with the corporation). This was the initial plot outline for the session: discover the sabotage, small firefight, and if all went well, make a lot of money and start the next arc of the campaign. If everything went really badly, end up on the run for smuggling and who knows what else. It all hinged on _one_ thing: actually provide security for the cargo. On Day Three, the PCs decided _to a man_ to go sightseeing. "Well, the arrangements are made, and the cargo will be picked up this afternoon. It's still on the ship, still in danger, but the arrangements are made, so let's find a bar and see if we can start a fight (or whatever it is that Players want to do that makes little sense in the moment and wrecks even a plot this simple). Two NPCs (one is a crewman on the ship who put in a good word for them to get them the job; a fairly new NPC). The other is Lieutenant Sandbag (discharged), a jack-of-all-trades NPC who has been with the party for literal _years_-- not just game years, but real-world years. He doesn't do much, as his job is essentially to have a lesser version of whatever important skill is held by the character of the player who didn't show up that night (wish I was kidding) and to periodically be the mouthpiece of the GM (ie, the guy who says "I don't think we should do that" or "that seems like a really, _really_ bad idea. Can we talk about this?"). Lieutenant Sandbag decides to opt out of the pub crawl: "I don't know, guys.... We were hired to provide security until the cargo was picked up and to keep the ship and crew safe until they could get off-world. The ship is still on the ground and the cargo is still in it." "Yeah, but the arrangements are made, and they'll be here today. It's as good as gone. I wanna check out this planet." "Suppose that's just the chance somebody's waiting for? Waiting for the guys with the guns to leave the ship so they can storm it and claim the cargo?" "It's just a bunch of heavy equipment. It's not like it's got street value! Just calm down. Whoever it was, we've obviously scared them off...." "Just the same, I'm going to stay here. That _is_ the job we were hired to do, and it doesn't seem real hard. The bars will still be open when the stuff is actually off the ship, right?" "Suit yourself, Sandy." So while they were crawling around looking for con jobs, the ship blew up. (Sandbag's Concealment isn't very high, his Demolitions is poor, and while he did see two guys "messing with the engines," he didn't see the third guy coming up behind him). What is different about this plot because an NPC died? Well, lots of NPCs died: eight in all. Two name-brand, and one well-liked with a long history with the group. The adventure started with a clock in the background. I did not turn that clock off because the PCs decided "eh; the job's half-done. Good enough, 'eh Boys?" What in this entire script would encourage me to provide a do-over?

Of all the options given- and it is really hard for me to say this, given its use in the past (lookin at you, 4e everything)- I have to support the Transformation option. As I said before, HERO doesnt really have a sleep mechanic, making T-form attractive simply because T-form doesnt need a mechanic: it changes what you are, period. In this case, it changes "alert and peppy this guy" into "sleeping this guy." I dont much care for the supress Characteristic X or Drain Characteristic Y approach because, again, there is no sleep mechanic, so there are no Characterisitcs related to being awake or asleep. Lowering Characteristica is a _damage_ mechanic, and the not-awake condition that results from Characterisitc loss is body-throwing-everything-that-is-left-into-the-preservation-of-homeostasis unconsciousness, which is miles away from restful, restorative, refreshing sleep. Further, I am pretty certain that all of the reasons that it is easier to kill a sleeping person are tied to his lack of perception, lack of movement, and lowered defenses, and all the time you can take lining up your called shot, and definitely not because his STUN and END are each thirty points lower that usual. If you want to use unciousness to simulate sleep, drain BODY. There is a point where reduced BODY results in unconscioisness, and as a bonus, you can kill them with a popsicle stick, should that be your goal. Granted, Killing Attack is cheaper, and results in draining both BOFY _and_ STUN.... And just like Drain, Killing Attack can get either of those to a point where unconsciousness will happen, target willing or not. Seriously: the more I watch the discussion and the more I think about, this is one of those really unusual occasions where Transform really makes the most sense to me.

li'll stick with the Guild; Thanks.

I don't have the slightest idea what that means, but something about the phrasing of it makes me pretty certain that I don't even _want_ to know.... 😕 I'm with Scott, to be honest. Mind you, I am assuming he didn't just up and decide "oh; it's your turn in the corpse grinder...!" Unless specified up-front, death is a very real, very possible thing in most of my heroic games. No; I am absolutely not a "killer GM;" I am not even a remotely antagonistic GM. However, if we are playing a game with a real chance of death, and a Player does something that brings about his death, well.... He dies. Same with NPCs: I don't just start chucking them in front of bullets or anything like that, but they may, during the process of being themselves, living their lives, making completely in-character decisions, find themselves in need of a mortician. If death is on the table for the heroes of the story, then it is most certainly on the table for the supporting cast. I will warn; I will caution- I will have the voice of God booming from on high: "do you understand the risk you are taking?! Are you really, really certain that this is what you want to do? So you see that friend of yours doing something way more reasonable / ridiculously dangerous / downright stupid? Are you sure? You are committed? You understand the possible and most likely outcomes?" I will do _all_ of that as different needs arise. But it is a rare, rare thing indeed for me to retcons: we have all agreed to be bound by the results of our actions and the results of the dice. Dice are the oldest gambling tools in the world. I suspect that is because you cannot perfectly predict them.

Ultimately, the first point is irrelevant. Don't misunderstand: I fully get what you're saying; I used to feel it was important, too. Over the years, this "level of success" concept started creeping in, and that's how we tend to gauge things: determine who did better by who "succeeded the most." Thus, it is always possible for a character with 16- to succeed more than a character with 8- possibly could. Once you've begun comparing levels of success, it doesn't matter how well or poorly the individual characters actually did, because the victor did better. No player wants to hear "you see him by three more than he hides from you." He wants some narrative; he wants to know how awesome his character is. If the level of success (which is what the to-hit mechanic does: it boils directly to the level of success and which way it went) is small, the contest was difficult. If the level of success is high, then the task was child's play for the victor. Toss out a narrative that makes that work. Additionally, I gain an ability and lose a problem: I gain the ability to detail the exchange in a way suited for the moment. If the mood wanes, I can narrate it as lucky, nearly-missed thing. If the players are starting to drift out, I can detail it as meticulous and hard-fought-- whatever the players need to maintain engagement, and at no time am I just giving them successes or failures; I haven't change the mechanical results at all. I also lose the problem of annoyed Players who has "wasted" a good roll. The character who has rolled a 3 for his Stealth is going to be quite happy (we all love threes on Skill Checks and combat, after all), only to sneak past the sentry who rolled a 17 will, in my own experience, always be disgusted rather than overjoyed, because he "wasted" his one-in-two-hundred-rolls 3 to sneak past a guard who was actively throwing sand into his own eyes the entire time. I don't have that issue anymore. Do understand: I am not advocating that you-- or anyone else-- adopt it; I don't actually care if anyone else adopts it; it's something I have adopted, been well-pleased with, and thought I'd share, never having seen anyone else post it. The _biggest_ reason that this came to pass was that I was running a group of eleven players in a Heroic-level sc-fi game (which is in it's second year of Corona Hiatus). Heroic level games, as we all know, are Skill Check marathons. With eleven players, and rolling a roll for the NPC who was here two weeks ago to determine the modifier for the character here and now, each time a Skill-v-Skill situation came up...... In addition to the benefit of tooling the narrative to suit the mood or the needs of the moment, it eliminated a crap ton of time loss for rolling NPC skill results to create the modifiers for eleven players. Like anything else in terms of options and house rules, mileage will vary.

The most popular paralysis builds seem to center around Entangle and "based on ECV" or "Based on CON" variants. Sleep potion is going to a lot harder-- or easier, depending on how important it is to you that follow the letter of the law. Why? Because HERO has no rules or write-ups for the sleep condition. The closest mechanic for sleeping in HERO is unconsciousness, which isn't the same, and which is generally achieve through damage. Newer editions have some ideas on sleep deprivation, but again-- nothing specifically statted up to represent the sleep condition itself. (For what it's worth, I have zero problem with this). When sleep, or some aspect of sleep or sleep deprivation are particularly important to a specific character, that character will typically have a Disadvantage / Complication addressing the exact problem: "Narcolepsy. Falls asleep 8-; check every two hours" or something like that. So with regards to making someone go to sleep, you're kind of on your own. (Be prepared for lots of suggestions about "let's look at what you lose when being asleep: -10 to PER Rolls" and such as that. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those kinds of topics. )

Excellent list, Hugh, but you left out one that has shown up here and there over the years and has been increasingly popular in one-off rules-light games: Cards. Draw a card. Either compare or card means something specifically, etc-- gad, do I hate cards as a mechanic in an RPG...

Thanks. Now I have to go watch Ice Pirates again.....

Here's a weird angle I have played with a couple of times now and thought I'd share. Okay-- we know I'm a crap strategist and tactician. Fortunately, RPGs exist, so I could ease my way gracefully away from Starfleet Battles and Block Mania into something that gave me a fighting chance. The upshot of that is that most of my characters-- NPCs and the rare (nowadays) PCs-- have powers and skills that are purchased first and foremost to the concept of the character and almost never tailored specifically for advantage: part of the fun for me is learning how to take the concept and use it advantageously. All that being said-- I have very recently come to replace some extremely old builds with DN instead of a particular amount of DEF that "cannot be lowered." Okay: the standard human has a 2 PD, meaning that you should be able to 1/2 die slap him all day long. You should be able to pinch and poke and he's fine. However, we can _all_ voluntarily lower that-- and sometimes we are caught unawares with it lower than we think-- and not be too terribly fine with it-- particularly the pinching and poking. I have a small handful of characters-- typically bricks-- who have such high defenses and pain thresholds that not only do they shrug off minor annoyances like getting it with a brick, but they are quite likely to not even notice it ("must do STUN damage to distract character," etc). The rock-covered guy from Fantastic Four-- imagine trying to give him a flu shot! I have of late come to play around with a small amount of DN, and am finding it to actually work out almost perfectly without having to add a bunch of odd disclaimers and one-off builds for a tiny portion of some other defense. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Well done, everyone. I know it sounds trite, but this is the third time I have had to say "it's a difficult choice." Ultimately, I think the nod goes to Quackhell; the microscopic angle just sort of won me on the novelty. Thanks to all! Quackhell, it's your go, Sir!

But but but.... The Typing of the Dead....,.

I think I'm going to start bookmarking these threads and just respond with a list of links. The survey is a nice touch, though. My standing is still "no; I don't do it. I have yet to find any argument that has convinced me that it is in any way better that the way we've been doing it for decades. On a related note, though-- so I can add something constructive to the conversation: I use the to-hit mechanic for Skill v Skill rolls, instead of the RAW way: Okay, you're making a Concealment check to search the room. The guy hiding the McGuffin had a 12-. Let me make a quick roll.... he rolled an 8; that's four levels of success.... You have a 14- on your Concealment; make your roll.... Okay, you rolled a 10; that's four levels of success.... Spend ten minutes searching, describe what you're doing to increase your odds of finding something, and try again.... Alternatively, of course: Okay, you have a 14 penalty because of the first guy's success, so you roll a 10... yep. You found it, barely. This eliminates the potential for ties, of course, but my preference: I use the to-hit roll as the mechanic: Your 14 (or less) plus 11 minus the "defenders" 12-. Roll 3d6 (apply any modifiers, of course). It eliminates ties, and I use the "level of success" to determine just how long the search might have taken, roughly. Anyone else do that?

So I showed this picture to my wife: "You see?" I said. If we were still a bit younger, that totally could have been us." "No;" she chided. "We weren't _both_ that stupid."

Quick question for Christopher: Do you see this as diminishing the absorbed thing in any way? For example, if you are absorbing momentum from Running, what effect, if any, does this have on the Running power? If you are absorbing a force field, what effect does this have on the force field? Thank you in advance.

As both a former nurse and a former medical student, let me heartily encourage you to _never_ google any variant of "deglove." you have been warned. This whole recent arc has made me ridiculously proud of a life in the trades where my dress code is "clean with no holes; eye protection, and steel toed footwear."

Same book, so far as I know. Been working on getting a new scan (thanks for the raw materials, Spence!), but the work has been extremely hampered.... I did a video review that dragged on and became the source for more videos, but bottom line: it's damned near unreadable.