Bartman

I haven't picked up either Battlegrounds or Shades of Black myself. I am not currently GMing myself, and my GM is planning on using material from these. So I will refrain from making any comments about their usefulness. But here is my 60 second review of rest of the product line.

Ultimate Martial Artist - An updated version of one of the best suppliments ever made for Hero. If any character in you campaign wants to be a 'combat master' or any type of martial artist, this book is practically a requirement. I can't recommend this one enough.

Viper - Another classic which has been completely rewritten for 5th edition. Viper is a huge player in the Champions Universe and this book provides a huge amount of detail on them. And much of the material can be easily reworked for use in any group of bad guys. Definitely a must have for any Supers GM.

Beastiary - A great collection of animals, both real and fictional. It also has some good rules on adapting the writeups for various uses. Perfect for creating a cyborg gorillia army, or even for just stocking your home base with mutated sea bass. Probably not my top recomendation for a Supers campaign, but there is still plenty of applicability and it is well written.

Resource KIt - I personally have looked at my GM's copy and decided to pass on this one. It has a good 5 panel GM's screen, an excellent rules booklet, 4 unexceptional pre-printed maps, and a selection of poor quality black and white carboard characters. I personally don't use a screen when I run and the booklet only interested me moderately. The maps and cardboard characters were what I was most interested in and I found them to have the least usefulness.

The Ultimate Vehicle - I was personally a bit underwhelmed by this one. No doubt it is a solid buy if you are running a vehicle heavy campaign like Power Rangers. Otherwise I'd skip it.

Hero Designer - I love Designer. It is a great program which really does take a lot of the work out of character creation. That said, in my opinion, there are several significant flaws in the program. So I would wait to see the reviews of version 2, before you take the plunge.

Star Hero, Terran Empire, and Spacers Toolkit - These are the Champions, Champions Universe, and UNTIL Database for Sci-Fi. These should probably be much lower priority for you. But all of them contain some interesting stuff that you would find helpful if you plan to run any kind of alien invasion or have galactic hopping heros ala The Justice League.

Fantasy Hero - This probably has no real applicability to a Supers campaign. Even if you run a dimensional hopping campaign and need to create a quick fantasy world, you probably won't need anything as complete as this. Don't get me wrong, it is a great book. I just don't see it having even the minor applicability that Star Hero has.

The Fantasy Hero Grimoire - The fantasy equivalent of the UNTIL Database. Worthwhile as a spellbook for a mystic character or as a powers idea book. Outside of that I'd give it a pass.

Ninja Hero - A great source book for any kind of martial arts campaign, a fair amount of the material bleeds into supers as well. It's a great buy if you have ninja heroes or Lo Pan style villians. Otherwise give it a pass.

I think that's more or less everything. Hope it helps.

Originally posted by SSJ Archon

Scott, you just don't get it do yeah?

Scott? Who the heck is Scott? I can only assume that you are refering to me, as I am the only one responding to you. Let me assure you that I have not in 32+ years of existance ever been known as 'Scott.'

Its a weapon that is built as needed. Like against a super or something. Theres nothing better than watching a super trying to take on an entire nation, let alone the world.

Well sure a super villian with 'super-science' can do just about anything. However this is the very first time you have mentioned that you were discussing comic book physics rather than real world. So no, I guess I just didn't get it.

Originally posted by Beetle

Fie! There is nothing more complicated than HERO!

Says the lucky soul who has never played Phoenix Command. IIRC it had hit location charts that included 'second joint on left pinky.'

Originally posted by Col. Orange

[bLINKS]

 

So, to sum up, are we saying Arrows should be low DC AP attacks?

I think we are saying that the real world is significantly more complicated than the Hero system. The energy of a weapon is a great starting point to determine the amount of damage it should do. But it doesn't take into account such things as the composition of the target. cutsleeve provided the great example of bucket of sand. In that case an arrow was able to easily pierce the sand while a bullet of unknown caliber wasn't. Kevlar is another good example. Kevlar does great against the 'blunt' attacks bullets do. But it does very poorly against cutting attacks. A good sharp broadheaded arrow will slice through Kevlar without losing any of its killing power.

To really properly model this you need to, not only give arrows a series of advantages and disadvantages, but you would also need to modify the bleeding, impairment and hit location rules to take into account the nature of the attack along the lines that D-Man points out. As I mentioned earlier, I for one am willing to forgo all this and just give the things a few extra DCs.

Re: Arrow Damage

Originally posted by Gary

Why is arrow damage roughly comparable to handgun damage?

 

According to numerous posters, Hero operates on a logrithmic damage system where each additional DC = roughly 2 times kinetic energy.

 

A 9 mm pistol bullet has roughly 450-500 joules of energy and is rated as 1d6+1 damage in the book. However, arrows usually range from about 20 joules for a reed arrow from a light bow, to a little over 100 joules from an arrow from a heavy longbow. That would seem to imply that arrow damages should only range from 1 pip to 1/2d6.

 

Anything wrong with my reasoning?

Not that I can see, but I am one of the nuttier logrithmic fanatics

These numbers are probably right on for someone playing a 'realisitic' fantasy campaign. A quick look at ancient battles shows pretty quickly that the average injury in battle was not very likely to kill a person. Well at least not quickly. Someone was far more likely to die from infections then the wound itself. And people did take multiple wounds and survive.

However the extra DCs don't bother me much in these cases due to the fact that many arrows/quarrels should probably have some AP or penetrating to reflect the arrowhead design. Replacing these advantages with a few extra DCs seems reasonable in this case for genre reasons Monolith mentioned

Originally posted by zornwil

Hey, just thought of a more general thing - how does everyone feel about the depth of 5th edition?

 

I like it. But I could see where some would think the "core" rulebook should be more like Sidekick, and would expect 6th edition to retreat to something more pared down, while having a sort of almanac or other book that gets into all sorts of details.

You know, I never thought about it, but that seems exactly right to me. I think the core book has become to heavy. A really light but complete rulbook, with a seperate explanation/rulings book would fit my style a lot more than FREd currently does.

Originally posted by SSJ Archon

Why would a nuke have to be so large? If you compress the uranium/plutonium, you can get a smaller volume. Of course, you'll have to keep it very cold or it will go nuclear all by itself. Using liquid helium, you could build a really powerful weapon. You can also use a mirrior trap to store the energy needed for detonation, so you won't need any bulky lasers. Of course with a mirrior trap and liquid He, your bomb will not have a very long shelf life, but hey. Boom.

I think you just answered your own question. Such a construction is innately unstable, and rather more costly than more conventional nukes. A configuration like this is impractical in the extreme for something that will in all likelihood need to sit on the shelf for decades. It is expensive, high maintenance and unsafe. In the long term, given the rate of use for nukes, it seems far more likely that one would cook off and destroy its constructor's territory than it would be actually used against an enemy. In all a weaponizing nation is far better off pursuing an option of more smaller, distributed, low maintenance, stable weapons than a handful of huge, concentrated, high maintenance, unstable ones.

A lot of this repeats what others have said.

1- Strength. I've never had a problem with it. And if it is broken so are most of the characteristics.

2- Kryptonite Man. I've never had this come up. But I would say its just special effects. Maybe a perk if it is useful enough.

3- Damage Shield. I have yet to see a player write up a character with DS in 5th. And this is in campaigns which don't have a cap. That, more than anything, tells me its over priced. This also seems to be the most universal complaint about 5th.

4- Cumulative suppress. Really I hadn't noticed that. That seems over powerful.

5- +1 Stun multiplier at +¼. I haven't noticed this being a problem. Maybe I'll whip up a character and see if I create an abusive construction with it.

6- Light done by images. I personally don't mind this a bit. Of course I wouldn't mind it if it were done by CE either.

8- Positive effects in CE. I don't miss positive effects for Change Environment at all. And I think it could be highly open to abuse. What would be an effect which would give bonuses anyway?

Instant change. It should be brought back. Transform clothing is just bad.

9- Regeneration. Should also be brought back. Healing doesn't have the same effect. And frankly the write up in FREd hand waved a lot of inconsistencies. But regrowth and from death were great additions.

10- Extreme breakdowns for disease and poison in life support. I would have liked to see both these cap at about 5pts each. But they are great for rounding out characters. I would have liked to see something more gradual as well. As it is you jump straight from no immunity to total immunity. What about characters who are resistant but not immune?

11- Desolid and Affects Desolid. I don’t have a problem with the way they are done. But I can see why others might. And frankly I would mind seeing Desolid worked into a number of categories (mystic, transdimensional, low mass, etc.) kind of like they did with mental powers and classes of minds.

11- Adding Damage. I don't see it. What do you find needlessly complex Talon?

12- Variable Effect on Adjustment Powers. Still easily abused but with a careful eye by GM it is controllable.

13- Framework changes. I like the new E/C rules. But I would ignore the costs end / special powers restrictions on any framework as long as it was a reasonable construction.

Re: Re: Logarithmic math attempt at damage from the sun

Originally posted by Alcamtar

I've wondering if Steve changed the underlying scale without telling anyone, for example instead of doubling every 5 AP, maybe it's now doubling every 10 AP or something. That would explain the inflated weapon damage and defenses.

I don't think so. All the sample weapons below about 10DC are exactly where they were. If he had done something like this we would see high powered rifles at or about 4d6 killing. I think the problem is that Steve has abandoned scales all together, in favor of "what feels right."

Originally posted by Lord Liaden

Much as the published version, though, Lung Hung seems rather light on noncombat Skills. With his age, background and extensive travels, this is one character who could justify lots of Languages, Area and City Knowledges, not to mention Traveller and Jack of All Trades Skill Enhancers. I'd also recommend High Society, Bureaucratics (the main tool of power in Imperial China), other Interaction Skills (useful to a behind-the-scenes manipulator), some Deep Covers (at least one that we know of ), and tons of Contacts and Favors.

 

The writeup I developed for Lung Hung for a past campaign had nearly a hundred points in noncombat Skills.

But that doesn't go with the background does it? The point of the character was that LH hunkered down for a couple of centuries and missed how radically the world changed. The whole motivation is not to adapt and learn from the new world but to return it back to the way it was. LH wants to go right back and hunker down for another couple millenia. Languages? Maybe. AKs? Those don't make sense to me. Jack of All Trades? That seems completely out of character, LH has others to do any professional work.

On the other hand you are right about needing more as a master manupulator. LH should have lots of very good interaction skills, deep covers, and is pretty much by definition 'Well Connected'.

My current character is easy.

Rune - A superpowered mystical weapon who was awoken from a millenia long sleep to participate in the coming battle between dark and light.

To make him dark, just make sure he is woken by someone with the power to control him. Had it been Dark Sereph who found him rather than some 3rd rate sorcerer, he'd be kicking a** and taking names for the dark side.

Originally posted by Lupus

Which I still say is an argument agaisnt blindly applying scaling rules without actually looking at the results and saying 'hey, why haven't nuclear tests blown up the planet yet?' There are points where any system breaks down, and an 86-BODY planet is a prime example.

 

Hell... a machine-gun could destroy the planet!

Well actually it couldn't. Look at the rules for destroying inanimate objects. When destroying large objects you calculate how many hexes your attack destroyed based on how much you exceded the destruction of the first hex. 86 body is what you need to do in a single shot. It would take 2 shots at 85 body, 4 at 84, 4000 at 74 etc.

The rules only break down in this case, when you don't actually apply the rules as written.

Cool! I didn't know that. I guess I have fallen behind, my last physics class was about 10 years ago.

Of course even at 6 million anti-protons per dollar it would take $100 quadrillion to make a full gram of anti-protons. and $10 quintillion to make enough to have a single 1Mt warhead. So I think good old fusion and fission warheads are going to remain more cost effective for some time yet.

How often does someone get KOed and then gets back up and into the fight in your campaign? Or actually more specifically how often will this character? In most campaigns I would give something like this a -1/4.

Originally posted by SSJ Archon

Those numbers are old, and I don't remember where i got them. Though, there is no reason a nuclear weapon couldn't do that. The upper limit for nuclear fission is around 600 Megatons, and for Fusion its about 2 Gigatons. I'm getting my major in nuclear physics, so i'm pretty sure on those. Thank you for correcting my old numbers, (though I do remember them building more powerful weapons, not nessesarily testing them.)

What is possible and what is practical are two very different things. And I believe you are right about the theoretical max for each type of weapon. The problem is that such big nukes would be somewhere between the size of a house and an apartment building. They become far to bulky to be usable weapons. Even the Tsar Bomba was too big to be made deliverable.

The second problem with really big weapons is that somewhere around 10 Megatons they begin to compress the air so powerfully that a wall of compressed air begins to 'contain' the blast to a limited degree. The weak point in this wall is up (lower natural atomospheric preasure). So with larger blasts there is a natural tendency to direct much of their power up and away from the target. So you get a situation where two 5 Mt warheads are better than one 10 Mt warhead.

Antimatter is the wave of the future when is comes to big bombs, though they're not really needed anymore.

Eventually maybe. But unless something has happend I haven't heard about, it still takes a month to make 10 atoms of the stuff. And we still have no way to store it. So it is likely a century or more away as a viable weapon.

Re: Further Details?

Originally posted by CorpCommander

The table looks interesting. Could you further define what you mean by point, 1-hex and explosion in the table?

 

For example, the Point column doesn't even see any value until DC12.

Sure. Frankly the three different numbers for TNT are because of the assumption used in the rule books that TNT is always area effect/explosion. Because of this the official numbers for TNT don't match up with the muzzle velocity of the guns. In fact they are 12DCs different. This makes sense as the energy of an explosion is more spread out. However there are a number of sittuations where it is possible to get TNT to act over a smaller area than an explosion. Shaped charges are one example.

So the point value is what the equivalant energy of TNT would be if were somehow shaped, focused and directed into a single point. Basically it is like a bullet. A gun focuses all the energy of a small amount of explosive and imparts that energy to a bullet. Another idea would be something too small to make an 'explosion', like a heavy firecraker, but could do some damage if someone held it in their hand.

1 Hex represents an explosion which is contained within a 2 meter sphere. An example for this case would be like shaped charges which focuses all its energy into a bank vault.

And the reason I didn't go below 1/64th of a pound of TNT is that it didn't seem likely that anyone would need or use less than 7 grams or 110 grains worth of TNT. And second I had already formated my fixed width table and 1/125th was a character to long and it messed up my formatting, so I removed anything with more characters than 1/64th.

Re: A bomb

Originally posted by SSJ Archon

While people may have survived the bombs dropped in japan, would they survive todays nukes? The things were like 50 Kilotons, and todays can be up to 300 Megatons! Maybe the nuke listed is modern? Could superman survive one of those at point blank? Even though he is superman, i mean, thats 300 megatons! That will take out a state 3 times faster than the speed of sound can travel across it! And lets not even go to antimatter! Lets see him try to catch some of that! The sun should be about 3 times worse than a 500 megaton nuke, at the center. The temperature is about the same, but now its not conveyed in one Atm, but in what maybe 20? Like sound and other chain reactions, that makes it more powerful. I mean at that level no known substance can even come close to surviving, and to produce a field effect to protect you, you'd need another star to power it! Lets not even mention that that would not be healthy for the Sun.

First- The largest bomb ever exploded in the whole history of mankind was the Tsar Bomba. It had an effect of 50 Megatons and was done only as a proof of concept by the Soviets. Currently the single largest warhead in the world is the 4-5 Mt warhead on the Chinese DF-5A. But that is missleading as the vast majority of warheads are in the 100kt range. So I don't know where you got your numbers of 300Mt and 500Mt weapons but there have never been any and never will be.

Second- Who is talking about reality? You mention that no known substance can survive in the sun. Well yes you are right. But we are talking about comics and Sci-fi here. It is most likely that we will never make a material that is stronger than the equivalant to 25-30 def, ever. What does that have to do with the survival capabilitys of completely impossible characters like Superman?

Originally posted by Lord Liaden

Bartman, I hope you don't mind, but since the discussion has brought in logarithmic progression of damage in HERO, and the old DH article "The Flavor of the Game" was cited, I thought people might appreciate seeing your fine "Damage Class to Real World Conversion" chart from the old boards. I've found it to be a useful guideline:

 

http://www.herogames.com/oldForum/HeroSystemDiscussion/000836.html

No of course I don't mind. And thank you I never can find any of the stuff from the old boards.

Originally posted by D-Man

David: Hello, my name is David and I'm a hand-waver.

 

Hand Wavers Support Group: Hi Dave!

 

David: I've been hand-waving upper end mechanics and declaring plot device caveats for thirteen years now. It all started when I realized hero's mechanics were set on a bell curve, but their supplements, and many gamers, didn't adhere to this rule on a consistent basis.

Well what's the fun in that? Why, that's downright sane and reasonable. I therefore disregard it out of hand completely.

But you have a good point D-Man. I remember a growth based character I made back in 3rd Ed. Back then growth was based on a logrithmic scale but the stretching associated with it was on a linear scale. At low levels his arms apparently grew faster than the rest of him. At mid levels it was about the same. But at the high levels he would be hundreds of meters tall but would only have arms a couple dozen meters long. In fact strictly speaking he shouldn't have even been able to reach up and touch his own head. So there has always been a mix of both of scales in the system since the begining. I just hope with enough grousing we'll get Steve to explicitly follow the logrithmic format and change the few things that don't follow it, to do so.

Originally posted by Crusader108

....And here I thought I was the only one who owned the series run. It was an...interesting series with some...creative {shudder} characters.

Oh the original series wasn't bad. What was it 4? 5? books. You know which one I'm talking about, it's the one with the Demon plot line and character writeups in the back. It wasn't great but it wasn't horrific either.

After that though, bleagh. Flare was just bad. And I never picked up any of the others.

Well the Earth has about 80-100 body + defenses. So a 30-40d6 RKA will blast it ala Death Star. Of course just an RKA will punch into the Earth rather than exploding it. Still not a pleasant experience, but not quite as brutal. So you just need to make sure you add enough megascale area effect so the whole earth gets effected by the thing. 1,000 km per inch should do it. And obvioulsy you need the megascale on the range as well, unless your planet killer is extrordinarily tough.

For something more like the B5 Shadow planet killer use the same megascale attack, but drop the dice down to 8-10d6 killing. That'll wipe everything out, kill all inhabitants and level all the buildings but still leave the planet around, if in a less than usable state.

For somthing like the Lexx planet killers drop the area of effect to about 100 km per inch. And drop the damage to about 20-25d6 killing. That'll leave the the planet a molten mess, but it'll take you a few dozen shots.

If you want to just burn off the atmosphere you probably only need 2-5d6 killing. But throw uncontrolled and continuous on with 0 end so you can get several hours - days of burning.

There are dozens of others of course but the key to all of them is megascale.

Re: Wimpy numbers

Originally posted by Tom McCarthy

Obviously, there's something drastically wrong with my calculations, since I'm orders of orders of magnitude off from Jim Cambias's numbers in Star Hero.

I've always figured that Jim didn't know or forgot about the logrithmic nature of Hero. After all his bacground is on the GURPs side and 1000d6 would be about right for the Sun in GURPs.

And frankly people tend to overstate the DCs for all attacks over about 10-15 DCs. If you look at FREd. All the hand guns and rifles follow the logrithmic rule. Then for some reason it jumps. The Abrams gun should be around 5-6d6 killing instead of the 8d6 Steve gave it. By the log rule nukes should be between about 30-40 DCs rather than the 60 they were given. And frankly that bugs me. High level supers should be able to take a nuke. I can think of several who have done so. Heck, hundreds of thousand survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki (although not unprotected at 'ground zero'). By exagerating the strength of these attacks you exagerate the defenses you need to defend against them. And whenyou do that you lose one of the great strenghts of Hero, the ability to cover such a huge range of genres with a single ruleset.

Originally posted by Markdoc

Seriously though, if it really worries him, suggest he buys regeneration from the dead for his duplicate (instead of for the power), as long as it fits the special effect.

My thought exactly.

You don't lose the points when you lose a duplicate. They are still there, they just aren't worth anything anymore. So you can't heal the points back anyway. So I see two ways around it. 1- Buy regeneration from death on the duplicate. 2- Buy multiple duplicates with the understanding that only one can be active at a time. For the same 20 points as he was going to spend on healing he can have 16 duplicates. And if he loses all 16 of them, then for five more points he can have another 16. And frankly if he loses duplicates at that rate he's just being careless.

I agree that 3pt penalty skill levels are a better fit than limited combat skill levels. Actually I pretty much agree with Monolith's writeup. I'd have to see the other 25+25 characters to decide if this is unbalanced or not. As it stands now you will be about doubling the effectiveness of your attacks (when it works).

Originally posted by Space Cadet

I'm not thinking about updating the earlier adventures so much

as I am thinking about updating the characters from certain

adventures to see just how nasty (or lame, as the case may be)

they would look once they're converted over into 5thEd.

Right now, I'm looking over the Blood characters from the Blood

and Dr. McQuark supplement for my first updating attempts.

I'ld love to see your updated version of the meanest hobo in hte universe. Why don't you post them?