Bartman

Sure enough, you remember correctly.

OK I just dug mine up. On the GM side the screen has these tables: pg1 Combat Maneuvers: including all standard, optional and martial maneuvers from the BBB. pg2 Combat Modifiers: Hit Location: pg3 Speed Chart: Damage Class: Recovery Time: Action Phase: Unconsciousness Effect: pg4 Skill Modifiers: Time Chart: Range Modifiers Object Body: Pages 3 and 4 are repeated on the players side as well as the front and back covers of the BBB. I have long since lost the cardboard cutouts and map. The booklet contains a character creation summary (and it does include tunnelling). It also has a number of record sheets, including a dozen different charcter sheets, AI, base, agent and vehicle character sheets, bio sheets, combat control sheets, campaign ground rule sheets and adventure recap sheets. A number of charts are also included, but still not the Strength or Throwing Charts. Just for reference the original GM screen had: Complete list of all Powers, Frameworks and Skills. (Of course back then there were a lot fewer of all of these). Strength, Falling, Throwing, Speed, Combat Maneuvers, Combat Modifiers, Knockback, Knockout, Presense Attack, Object DEF & Body, Mental Illusion, Mind Scan, Mind Control, and Telepathy charts.

Well I'm a little late but I'll toss my 2 cents in as well. I haven't bought SoB because: 1- Current cash flow issues. Babies ain't cheep. And there are several other products which have, do and will take priority. 2- Applicability. I am not currently GMing anything. So SoB is unlikely to be of immediate intrest. To top that off, my current character is hunted by BP. There is a high probability that I will be run through SoB in the next few months. So in all fairness I won't look at the material until my GM has done whatever he may care to with it. 3- PDF. There is a reason I still haven't gotten any of the Digital Hero stuff yet. This isn't a complete turnoff, but it does lower the interest in picking the product up.

I wouldn't use it. But if it floats your boat go for it. Combining Strength with Toughness and Perception with Willpower seems a bit too granular for me. I can see far too many instances where I would want characters who were differentiated in these catagories. But it is a concept whic may work for some groups, certainly the excellent Tri-Stat system does exactly with their three charactersistics of Mind, Body and Spirit. A couple of years ago I came up with a simplified Hero which I used for one campaign. It worked well and if I were designing a new RPG I would probably use something like it as the base. It was designed for a bunch of anti-Heroites. With a set of simplified powers it worked really well. It had the following characteristics. Strength Dexterity Toughness (Body and Constitution combined) Perception (Intelligence) Willpower (Ego) Socialization (Presence) Defense (PD + ED. Based on Toughness) Recovery (Also based on Toughness) Stun (Based on Toughness and Willpower) But in general I prefer the full bodied flavor of Hero.

Re: Not quite on topic. How did they figure out the range of the shot and the conditions at the time? Last I heard the only evidence was the arrow head they found inside the guy. This sounds more like some dramatic interpretation on The Discovery Channel's part.

Nope I just meant standardization. I have played in multi-genre GURPS campaigns and they were always a mess. Generally a whole lot of handwaving had to be done, or the whole thing would fall apart.

LOL. I guess I can speak for Seenar.

Steve already said it, but this sounds like a lesser form of gestures to me. I'd put a -0 on the EB as it is really not very limiting. That's just special effects. As a GM I wouldn't allow anybody who 'fires' things from their hands to hold something in the hand they are firing from. I'd give the Force Wall a -1/4 though. The character would have to maintain the gesture while maintaining the wall so that is worth something. But it is less limiting than regular gestures as it only requires an orientation rather than a lot of wiggling etc.

Well I think we are on the same page Hugh. But I want to point out I'm not talking about -3 stun. At -3 stun the character is still semi-concious. For one thing they are still aware of their surroundings. And there really shouldn't be a penalty for players for getting in a final blow against such an opponent. Or at least no more so than against a Con-stuned character. I'm really only refering to -10 or less. But all I'm saying is that if the villians act reasonably so will the heroes. Let me give an example. In a game I played a few months back I and another Hero snuck into a Viper hostage situation. The two of us attacked from suprise and took out over half the agents in the first segment (sweeps and multiple move-bys). I then gave a presence attack stating "Drop your guns. Don't make us hurt you." We then held our phases so we could interpose ourselves between the remaining agents and the hostages if necessary. But it wasn't. The agents saw no hope and did the smart thing and surrendered. The remaining agents did the same when they came to. Instead of trying to attack us they realized they were beaten and surrendered. I have seen campaigns where the only way to bring in an agent was to knock them to GMs descretion. And the villians were just as bad.

I find the players tend not to do that if GMs tend to let villians stay down when they are down. If opponents surrender when they are obviously defeated, then players won't bother knocking them unconcious. If the only way to capture a villian in a campaign is to knock them to -50 stun so they will stay unconcious, you can bet the players will do exactly that. That said I like it Wormhole. Tough guys still aren't going to take any real body damage from a 'stun only' attack. But if you hit grandma with a taser repetatively, she is going to die.

This was 4th Ed. The only Reputation was a disad. Presence was the best way to replicate the effect.

Of course the most likely scenario is that the guy gets out of combat uninjured. But he gets dysentary three weeks later and dies in camp. In pre-modern warfare most military deaths were completely non-combat related. But in game terms an untreated 4 body wound will leave a character dead from 'bleeding' fairly quickly. My point is that if you want average Joe to have a better than even chance to die if he gets hit by a broadsword, per the OP's request, you don't need to change anything. A broadsword is lethal to average Joe as it stands now.

Well I can't speak for Seenar, but I can tell you some of the things I dislike about GURPS. Some of these may no longer be true as it has been some time since I have played. 1- Costs are based on difficulty/rarity rather than utility. In GURPS, each point of STR costs twice as much as the previous point. An exceptionally strong character is virtually unplayable as nearly every point will be sucked up by STR. By comparison a 30 STR character in a Hero NCM game will only have to sink 30 pts into STR allowing him to have some other skills and characteristics. This has a tendency to encourage generalists who all share a number of abilites rather than unique characters with one or two exceptional abilites. 2- No standardization. SImilar effects can have wildly divergent costs. A 200pt GURPS mage will be at a vastly different power level than a 200pt Psionist or Superhero. In other words there is no real universality to the system. Compare this with Hero where you can put a 75+75pt Fantasy mage, Justice Inc. mystic, and Star Hero cyborg in the same campaign and expect them to be more or less equal in effectiveness. In Hero 40pts in a fire attack is always the same 8d6. In GURPS pyrokenesis, a fireball spell and a super's fire blast all have different values for the same effect. 3- No unified rule system. You want to do magic? You have to buy the magic rule book. Want psionics? Than you have to buy that. The same is true for virtually everything. With Hero literally all you need is FREd. With GURPS you really can't run anything without getting the applicable rulebook. Now none of these make me hate GURPS, but they do make me want to play Hero instead.

I didn't. The character wasn't a casual killer but he didn't have the specific disadvantage either. And I, the player, honestly had no idea that the attack was going to be fatal. It was a 5D6 RKA in a campaign where the average attack was 12DCs. And the villian had been throwing around 18DC attacks. I was only trying to get the x5 stun multiplier, hoping to knock him unconcious. He had shrugged off attacks that had done around 25 body (the brick's pushed haymaker). So I never even thought that the 18 or so body from the RKA was going to do much of anything. What I didn't expect was that he was going to have his primary defenses turned off, leaving him with only a little bit of rDef. Nor did I expect to roll quite so well. Nor did I expect him to have the vulnerability. I think when everything was said and done and all the multipliers were totaled I did about 80 Body and 200 Stun. It turned out to be the character's defining moment. He certainly never shot anyone with a full power blast again, unless he had already found his 8-10 DC attacks to be completely ineffectual. I think I only used it twice more in the year the campaign lasted. And the GM made me spend my next 15 pts of experience on Presence to represent my new reputation.

I have also found this works wonders. And it is fairly realistic. The vast majority of combat deaths prior to modern warfare were not instantaneous. Instead the guy would get a 3-5 body wound and he would bleed to death. If you are not getting enough body damage I would reduce Def rather than add DCs. Historicaly most armors were light and only provided partial coverage. Even states like the Romans generally only protected about 60% of the soldier. And they were one of the very few who provided universal steel armors. Far more common would be leather or quilted armors, perhaps augmented with a steel cap and/or breastplate. In game terms this is 8- coverage for the steel and 11- coverage for the leather/quilt. A normal in such armor will take an impairing wound at least half the time from a 1d6+1 KA. He will be bleeding. And unless he drops out of combat immediately to try to tend to the wound he will bleed to death in a couple of minutes. And because of hit locations body modifiers this is likely to happen even on armored sections. That is lethal enough for me.

Once, but I didn't know it at the time. I was joining a new group and asked what sort of chracter would fit in well with he group. One of the players suggested an energy projector with specific special effect. It sounded fine so I whipped it up. Evidently the player had figured out the group's nemesis' weakness. And the GM didn't want to give anything away so he didn't object. My introduction to the villian was after a battle where he quickly mopped up the rest of the team. My character arrived late and saw the villian preparing to 'destroy the city'. Realizing I would only get one shot, I used a one shot super blast, pushed it, and targeted the villian's head. Very quickly I realized several things: 1- The villian's primary defense was a force field. 2- The villian was terribly vulnerable to my attack. 3- He wasn't going to be destroying the city, or anything else, ever again. Not precisely the effect I was looking for. I did get to buy off my "ineffective in combat" reputaion though.

Well I think that is a given. Otherwise moving even a minute back in time will result in you appearing in the raw vacume of space, the Earth having moved out of the way in its orbit.

So what's it going to be named? Heineshire? Norheinebria? Heinevania? Peoples Democratic Republic of Heine? I would like to say great job to everyone on this product. But I pretty sure my GM will kill me if I read it*. So I can't. I hope it does well for you. *Don't worry I still bought it anyway. I have to support my favorite authors. It will just have to sit on the shelf for a bit.

Honestly? I would move to Vegas and bet. But then I'm not really very heroic at heart.

I haven't run a FH campaign in a bit over 2 years. None the less I am constant;y tweeking the campaign world, adding NPCs fleshing out spells, cultures, creatures, items, places, etc. This means that when I next run a campaign a number of things I wouldn't have fleshed out for just a single adventure. No doubt some of this has to do with the reasons McCoy pointed out. I want to know exactly what these things do. It makes them seem more real to me. And hopefully more real to the players.

I would agree with this. 4d6 sounds about right for the Plasma Cannon. 3d6 seems about 3DCs too low.

Well it is important to remember that the film did not precisely depict the events of the last alliance. In that particular case Sauron's finger was not choped off until after he had killed and been killed by Elendil and Gilgalad. Isuldur then walked up and severed the finger off of an already dead Sauron. Not quite as heroic as the movie portrays it. However ignoring that point and looking at just the movie. Hitting a hand is a -6 OCV. Hiting a specifc finger on a hand would be like hiting a leg on a full size character. A leg shot gives a -4 OCV so I would make hitting a specific finger a -10. Getting all the fingers like was done in the movie would only carry the -6. However losing a finger would result in an impairment. So I think you should do enough damage to impair the limb. Or 1/2 the character's total body. If you want to take off all the fingers or the hand, that would be equivalent to disabling or a single shot doing 1x the character's body.

As has been mentioned you can abort to desolid. In my most recent combat, we had to fight a villianess who did precisely that, repetatively. However that meant she could not do anything to help her associates. She was effectively neutralized. And when we were ready to take her out, those characters with affects desolid did so rather easily. Most teams should have at least one character with an affects desolid attack. And if they don't there is still a good chance that some character on the opposing team wil have the common effect that will affect the desolid character. And even then there are abilities that will still work including mental and presence. Against a well rounded team, no ability is really unbeatable, at least until you reach the 2000pt villians.

Sweetness. Thanks.

Gah! Where did all that whitespace come from?