Bartman

Originally posted by Monolith

Imperial Navy IAV Apocalypse:

25 DEF, +38 DEF Ablative, +20 DEF Hardened, +25 PD/ED Force Field Ablative, +15 PD/ED Force Field. This vehicle has 123 total DEF and has 250 BODY. If you want this vehicle to be destroyed by the sun you need one which does far more damage than just 20d6 RKA, like a nuke, or 25d6 RKA, like a space torpedo.

Um... No you don't. Lets assume that the Apocalypse just appears on surface of the sun. Lets also assume the surface of the sun does 15d6 RKA 2xAP, 2xPenetrating.

Segment 12 the Apocalypse takes 15 Body and the ablative defenses drop to a 15- roll. This continues for 17 seconds until the Apocalypse boils away. And if the ablative defenses fail at all during those 17 seconds than it starts taking 22 body per segment which will shorten the prayers of the crew by a few seconds. Now I don't know about you but that seems perfectly adequate to me. After all the Apocalypse is supposed to be a virtually indestructable super tech starcraft. Having it last a turn to a turn and a half on the surface of the sun seems perfectly reasonable to me. Not that it could ever reach the surface as it would be easily destroyed by the constant bombardment on the way in.

And all this was done without ignoring the logrithmic base that Hero was founded on.

Originally posted by Shadowpup

I think the idea is that at 20d6 Killing, something might survive...

And that is a problem why? It is an established point in both the sci-fi genre and comics that some things can and do survive in the sun. Anything that has the 80+ pts of resistant 4x hardened ED, frankly deserves to survive.

Physical Lim, Psych lim, Social Lim could all simulate aspects of a being a weirdness magnet. Watched by Weirdness is also an interesting idea. The one time I had a similar character he also had 6d6 of luck and 6d6 of unluck.

Originally posted by Monolith

Fuzion? Go away you evil creature!!!!

Well I did say just a bit. I still think Fuzion was fairly bad. But there were a few good bits in it.

No reason to feel guilty. Heck, I like Tri-Stat for many of the same reasons you stated. In fact my ideal RPG would be a mix of Tri-Stat and Hero with a bit of GURPS and : gasp : Fuzion thrown in for good measure. Enjoy. Play whatever RPG brings you bliss.

Yep. If I remember correctly this was heavily discussed in the Star Hero forum when the book came out. It obviously doesn't follow the logrithmic damage chart. After some quick tweaking I think I concluded that it should be something closer to 20d6 Killing with only a couple levels each of penetrating and AP. But outside of galactic champions campaigns it is unlikely to come up anyway.

Champions is a solid book. And I would highly recomend it to anyone who has not GMed in the genre before. It has lots of good bits and discusses how to weave a campaign. However if you already feel comfortable with that, there is a lot less value. You may find the sample characters, the 5 Champions and a half dozen villians to be useful. And the random character generator is solid. So in the end it all depends what you need. I myself didn't pick it up until I saw a used copy. Every other book I picked up new.

I haven't done either of the two mentioned. But I have updated a number of others. It only takes about 10-20 minutes per character, unless they use really odd constructions. My methodology is simple.

1- Enter the character as is, or as close as you can get it, into Hero Designer.

2- Alter any really odd constructions. Generally this requires use of Change Environment or some other power that didn't exist 20 years ago.

3- Add about 2DCs to most constructions. Anybody else remember when an 8d6 EB was an effective attack?

4- Add any powers which the character should have. Change Environment for example.

5- Add skills, talents and perks as appropriate for character description. It is suprising how many nuclear physicists in earlier editions didn't have any science skills. And that probably explains why there were so many power giving radiation accidents.

In general this adds 50-100 pts to each character.

Yeah, I have to weigh in on the "reign him in side." Now I don't like caps of any type. But he agreed to play using them and frankly is violating the spirit and the letter of your campaign rules.

Originally posted by Dust Raven

If you can't Abort to them, I don't see any reason why not. You'll have to be holding an action to use the Block Element though, otherwise you can only use the Strike (or however you bought it).

With the ones in the UMA you can't abort. And they seem quite reasonable to me.

In Strike Force they had a MA (Pak Tu?) which had an abortable block/strike combo. The manouver was valued at about 7pts. And it was one of the most broken things I have ever seen. From the moment the book hit our group, everyone found an excuse to buy the 20pts worth of martial arts required to get it. And then our GM promptly banned it. It was that unbalanced.

The 90s edition of Ninja Hero also had abortable block/attack combos, but they recomended that only the craziest wuxia campaigns allow them. I played in one short campaign which allowed it. And it was still as broken as ever. In short as long as abort is not included I think it's fine. But if you include abort block and an attack element I wouldn't allow it.

Originally posted by TheEmerged

See, the method you guys are using is a little "too" hidden for my tastes.

Gah... I'm inclined to agree. lemming's method is too much work. Now I'm sorry I even brought it up.

By the way Emerged, that does not hide the text for anyone using the White Style instead of the Default style.

My current character is a mage who's costume is a magically summoned suit of armor. It isn't traditional armor though. It appears basically as a black body suit with a sliver and red full helmet and plate on the left arm. Look at the Checkmate knights and replace the gold with red and you basically have the character. This works to hide his ID as well as provide a bit of protection.

His replacement, who is waiting in the wings in case anything untoward happens to my current character, uses a white and blue bodysuit with no mask. Basically he wears it only to identify himself as a super. It provdes no protection or anything else. And as he is not concerned about his ID, it also provides no disguise.

Originally posted by dugfromthearth

+5 OCV for a 5pt maneuver is more obscene the +5d6 dmg for a 5pt maneuver?

 

 

I can easily consider both to be obscene, I don't think the OCV is worse then the extra damage.

The problem is the extra damage is already availible to anyone through the move through/by maneuvers. All the martial forms do is buy off some of the OCV/DCV penalties. This is equivalant to buying several penalty skill levels, something a non-martial character could do for 3-7pts. To get the +5 OCV or DCV a non-martial character would have to spend 10-20pts.

Re: EGO in Initiative Order

Originally posted by Blue

I said no, feeling that allowing him to rely on a 2-for-1 cost characteristic when everyone else is using a 3-for-1 cost stat would be unfair to everyone else.

Except everyone else is using a 2-for-1 cost characteristic. Remember that every 3 points of Dex gives you 1 point of speed for free. Thus the net cost is only 2 points. And Ego is generally far less useful than Dex. I would let the player act on Ego.

I would also look at using the standard effect option. I just find it more asthetically pleasing to have something like 10d6 EB +18 stun only for con stun, rather than 10d6 EB +6d6 only for con stun.

Re: To Serve and Protect

Originally posted by GrooveD70

Anyone know where I could get a copy of "To Serve and Protect"?

Black and Read in Denver had a copy on their shelves a couple of weeks back. But that's probably a bit too much of a drive for you. There are also some online used game stores you could try like Cyberdungeon, Noble Knight, Sentry Box, Dragon Trove, and Titan Games. One of them is bound to have it.

I have fond memories of several of the late 3rd Ed Champions adventures.

To Serve and Protect,

V.O.I.C.E. of Doom,

Wrath of the Seven Horsemen, and

Target: Hero

all got extensive use in several campaigns.

I like the idea in concept, but it seems too fiddly to actually do in an already long combat. I can subtract 17 from 43 far faster than I cancount 17 beads. Besides my gaming table is too small to add a couple dozen cups to it as well.

Re: Re: VPP Fireworks

Originally posted by Gary

Not to be too picky, but AP on a 1 pip attack is completely useless. Even if the target has only 1 resistant ED, it would be halved to 1 ED since rounding is always in the target's favor.

It would still be useful for stun. A 1pip RKA would do 1-5 stun. Dropping a 6ED to a 3ED might allow the attack to do some stun it otherwise wouldn't. So not completely useless, just mostly useless.

I haven't had a chance to read a word of it. But my GM is running us through it. No doubt he has changed it to some degree, but from a player perspective it has been quite entertaining so far. I absolutely will be picking it up as soon as we are done RPGing it.

Re: Shameless cheesy-ness

Originally posted by DigitalGolem

A variable +1/4 advantage will allow the 1km mega-scale to be re-defined each time the power is used, to any value up to 1km, or down to anything over 1 hex. I'm not sure if this is a "valid construction", though.

It's pretty valid. Hero Designer allows it. You do have to pick a specific range for the power when if purchased though. I have a teleporter who bought precisely this. His lowest scale is 10m per hex. And his top scale is 10,000km per hex.

Originally posted by Steve Long

We've got a document on the "Free Stuff" page, The HERO System Genre By Genre, that discusses how to use the rules to simulate various genres; it includes several sample characters. You might want to download it and see if it helps you.

Here's a link to the file Steve was talking about.

If you run across anything in particular you are having trouble with, go ahead a post it. You've already gotten responses from the author (Steve Long) and several people who have decades of experience with the system. We would be happy to explain any particular point of confusion.

Re: Thank you, Bart, for the clarification!

Originally posted by Magmarock

But now that I understand what you are doing, wouldn't it be cheaper and more simple to just by CLs to negate the penalty?

I mean, the only reason I can see for buying it the way Bart describes is if the Player wants to include the additional cost with the power's cost in a MP slot. Is this the case?

Well actually I will be buying a number of CSLs as well. This guy is going to be a sharpsooter supreme. Not that he'll be able to do anything once he hits it, 10d6 is rather weak in this campaign. In this case spreading fits the effect I want, electric bolts bouncing from character to character, so I am going with it. And no this will be a standalone ability outside an MP.

Interesting. They all sound like titles you would find in Harry Potter though. All the titles are in English for example. Where are the titles like the Necronomicon, Sepher Yetzirah or Sigillum Dei Aemeth?