Jaxom

Re: Speed and breaking a gravity well.

Re: Post Apocalyptic Hero I was thinking about this when I answered the first time and I decided not to include it. The value of metal is going to vary wildly from place to place. If it's possible to explore Manhattan to any degree, then pure metals are going to have very little value. The value of metal has always been based on the difficulty getting it. Unless something strange happens in your apocolypse though, the value of aluminum is going to be incredibly low. How much aluminum foil do you think is sitting in all the grocery stores and flats in Manhattan? Gold? As of 2000, Manhattan had 1.5 million residents (at night). If you can only explore 10% of the residences thoroughly then your Three Villages people have 10x as much gold as the typical person today in scavenged jewelry alone. If they could hit safe deposit boxes then that goes up some more. Iron, how many wrought iron fixtures are there? You can also strip cars and melt most of those parts down (when they aren't fiberglass) for a wide variety of metals. Metals of all kinds are going to be incredibly *common* to people from Three Villages, especially compared to someone from upstate. The other issue is that the only way metal is going to be meaningful is if you can melt/smelt and work it. Even with preserved knowledge and texts you're going to have other issues. You can't temper metals in any large amount because you can't control temperature as readily. Heck, most cool alloys are going to be right out because of the impossibility of annealing them. Forget Anodizing also. You're also going to get strange impurities in things because of anodizing and alclad stuff that you might not know to look for. You can't do x-rays even if you know the theory. Echo Cardiology is right out. Producing any drug that needs a centrifuge is out. Incubating eggs for sera is out. Theory and knowledge is not your issue. Power is. Also, there is no such thing as mining. All the minerals that can be easily gotten *have* been easily gotten because they are the most profitable to extract... Etc. And of course there is no deep mining because you don't have the power needed to force clean air down there. If you want to think about this in more depth, hit http://www.metal-mart.com/Dictionary/dictlist.htm and just look at all the things that are not possible in your PA universe.

Re: Speed and breaking a gravity well. Ok, see... I have to disagree. Some people geek out and argue about SFX but the truth of the matter is simple and in black and white in every ship write-up. Appealing to "real physics" is a Pandora's Box that you don't want to touch with a 10' pole (and THAC0 -20). To make a system playable we make some simple assumptions that on further inspection are *way* rubbery. That was the point in the silly quote in my first post (which OldMan obviously got, by the way). Physics has an answer. The game does not. You are using the HERO system. Your vehicle has SPD and some kind of movement power. The power lists a movement in inches. This is the number of inches it can move per phase (distance per time, a speed). Maybe it has limitations on it. Unless you have taken such spiffy limitations as "not usable in atmosphere" or built it in such a way as to use more END than post-phase-12 REC, then it *can* leave the gravity well. Now, this may mean that you didn't correctly build what you wanted for your SFX, but that is a different statement... The point I am trying to make (and have been since my first post) is that with 1" Flight which you can use every phase without ever having to turn it off you eventually leave the gravity well. Flight doesn't have any parameters dealing with acceleration under normal rules. Anything dealing with structural integrity and such is SFX or Limitations. You can make some really sneaky calculations, see below, but there is a good reason not to. The *wrong* argument is that d = vt + (at^2)/2. We're going to start with someone standing (at rest) on the ground and who starts flying straight up. We know that (without special Limitations) the distanced travelled is just the number of inches of Flight. We know that the time spent flying is either 1 second (so segments look like fly, hover, hover, hover, fly, hover, hover, hover) or 12/SPD to yield more "continuous" flight. Using the latter and solving for acceleration that reduces to a = 2d/t^2 = Flight (in inches) * SPD^2 /72. Cool! So a 1G engine needs a of about 11 yds/s/s or 5.5 inches/s/s (remember, the units on SPD are (/s)), right? Wrong on many counts. From rest on the planet's surface, you use up 1G of acceleration just to take the weight off the landing struts. If you actually accelerate that fast from the surface pointing straight up then you have an acceleration of 2Gs (but worse things are going to make us abandon this anyway). But then what happens the next phase? Answer? You quit accelerating. You don't get *faster*, you just maintain the same speed. Technically, unless your acceleration was instantaneous (we're going to come back to this, by the way), you actually decelerate a bit and then speed back up the next phase... You're distance covered is constant (by rule) but you'll find that since you're looking at a quadratic equation, holding time and distance constant (X" of flight per 12/SPD seconds) your velocity starts oscillating (probably with a bit of decay but I have nout gone looking for the critical points of the solution) because you accelerate too much the first phase and then decelerate too much the next, etc. Since the above makes no sense, the only thing you can do is pretend that acceleration is instantaneous. It's rubber physics, but at least it fits the power description. Now, the second half of most arguments in this kind of discussion lead to, "Yeah, but it'd tear itself to bits," we might should look at that. The fact is that you *can* answer that if you really feel the need to do so (but you won't like the answer). The situation is that we have a nice big ship at total rest in the launch pit. It instantaneously accelerates to some fixed velocity. Specifically, the *engines* accelerate and we're going to hope that the ship does too (since that's the crux of the "tears itself apart" argument). We can assume no inertia (in which case the argument is moot) or we have inertia. Barring really wonky physics or disintegration of the ship, the physics is entirely reversible so takeoff and landing can be viewed as time-reversed events. (For this to be physically true I need a ship that doesn't have landing struts and comes to rest directly on its engines, but that's close enough.) Take a ship moving at whatever speed you want and bring it to rest in the landing pit instantaneously. And since we must have inertia for this argument to matter, *THAT* should ring bells.... Knockback, anyone? Yep, the mechanics of instantaneous acceleration is what happens when you get knocked back into the bulkhead (since deceleration is just acceleration in the other direction, this shouild make a lot of sense). So, if your ship is moving along at Mach 1 (chosen randomly, much less than escape velocity which is where we started) then you're moving 360 yds per second... 180". That's right... If you can hit Mach 1 instantaneously, that is the same as hitting a brick wall with 180" of knockback left to take. Your ship still intact? I thought not. Why don't we do something like this all the time? Imagine taking the power Leaping and arguing whether or not your hero's legs should break every time he lands. Heck, I know some GMs add flavor-text about he concrete spidering every time the hero lands but they don't add the same flavor text when a hero goes flying into a wall and it's the same physics. So, now that I have pegged out the geek-o-meters, can we stop worrying about whether or not ships can land? Your ship sheet is only going to help you if you start trying to apply real physics and if you go that route then you're going to have far more serious problems than "can I land this thing"... And if we persist in continuing with this, then I demand to know how you feed the ship's crew on a prolonged voyage and whether or not they are going to suffer rickets and why they are not a fine red mist on the inside of the hull every time you accelerate.

Re: Speed and breaking a gravity well.

Re: Speed and breaking a gravity well. Actually, speed and breaking the gravity well have absolutely *zero* to do with one another. Energy, sure. Speed, no. Why? If you fly straight away from the earth at 1 foot per *hour* and your speed never changes you *will* leave the Earth's gravity well. It's that last part that is hard, the speed never changing. Escape velocity is literally the speed you have to be going if you never ever turn on the engines again. It only applies if you are a rock and your launch mechanism is a giant sling-shot. If you have the luxury of an engine that you can burn continuously then you don't even have to exceed the speed of sound. (E.G. Chuck Yeager has flown a large number of test planes into space. The clear indication that you have done this is that your jet turbine flames out because it requires air. The "space plane" is just a normal plane with an engine that doesn't require air from outside the plane to function.) What *does* matter is the ratio of power per gram of fuel you use. Note that this kind of thing never comes up in Spaceship design docs for games. Arguing about whether or not a ship in an RPG can reach escape velocity is like arguing whether the red laser beam does more damage than the blue one. You have no relevant stats, no way to get the relevant stats and the system doesn't use the relevant stats in ship building anyway.

Re: Post Apocalyptic Hero Dunno how seriously you want to mirror the current world... If you're hand-waving the similarities, ignore this next bit but if not then you might want to get some maps of the areas you're using... Nuke Power Plants are dangerous in a lot of ways... Either they melted down or they have the potential to do so still, etc. Determine what happened to the military bases near you... What other local features were targets for foreign attack? Without trucking, food production is going to be a serious problem for any metropolis. Where in the NYC area are you going to find enough land to produce food for 12,000 people (I don't know the area, just didn't think that there was much available *farmable* land). A quick web search suggests that the best farming methods we've got can feed about 10 people per acre (sustainably). Without some serious experience/training you're probably looking at 2-4x that... So 12,000 people is 1,200 to 5,000 acres of land being farmed. (Central Park is 843 acres total but some of that is the lakes, etc. Manhattan itself is about 14,000 acres but not much of it would be farmable even in 40 years unless there was serious change.) I *don't* know if those areas are based on the availability of advanced tools like a John Deere. Might have to scale up a lot more for archaic tools. To be honest, I expect that most large cities would die out completely because we're better at being violent than managing in emergencies... Guns will be more common than anyone who knows how to farm for miles around NYC. People who start starving are going to come looking for food with guns and those are not typically going to be the enlightened people who think about keeping the farmers alive to make more food. (Yes, I wear a little badge that declares me to be a complete cynic and I am proud of it.) What are you doing for the guns? Are we talking cartridges or hand loads? Even with the right tools, the variance in the loads is going to cause much more severe in range penalties. Are you producing better explosives than black powder? Are they relying on stockpiled ammo from 40 years ago? This is just questions about the intial setting. I have been toying with the idea of setting up a PA Hero setting of my own but I have enough other stuff going on that I have not crunched any numbers... Just got some high level ideas. PM me if you'd like to chat in more detail about actual campaign ideas and evolution beyond initial setting.

Re: Build me a power - Paralyzing Touch Interesting discussions for sure. I *did* a search after the reminder that I could () and found an old thread that discussed the power constructs that I had thought of and mentioned the modifier I wanted (not BOECV, but just Against Ego) which makes my initial builds much more viable. I am certain that going this route is asking for things to be expensive. As has been pointed out, it kinda bypasses the typical defenses like PD and high STUN/BODY (which is intentional). I am only looking for a duration on the order of seconds or possibly minutes, not longer. I agree with Doc that the CourtFool has an elegant build but I don't think it is what I am looking for since the goal really is to bypass the typical defenses (which is why my original ideas leaned toward NNDs) and rely on strange things like "missing nerve cluster". The "must make KS: anatomy" or something similar is appropriate though... I'm not looking for a use-always, first-strike option... I'm looking for a counter... Specifically, my evil GM has put me in a situation I really don't like (the whole team is up in arms, in fact)... We've got an Evil Mentalist (recurring) who has decided that he likes the idea of reanimating fallen combatants (including heroes?) and using them like puppets... Firing their guns, using powers that he understands, etc. Code Against Killing and the possibility of facing innocents and heroes all mean no killing to stop them. We need rapid, effective means of disabling or immobilizing foes until they can be disarmed or otherwise neutralized. This includes the 800 pound gorilla of a STR/CON brick with 30 points of rPD. We've got one off thinking about ways block the mental powers... Until he can do that, I was thinking about potential martial arts solutions.

Ok, I've been poking with things and trying to build this and have been unable to get the actual effect I am looking for. The SFX that I want is a combat nerve strike that induces paralysis. Think of the nerve-strike used by "The Operative" in Serenity. I've been trying to build this with an Entangle but I am missing something... I figure it's probably NND, Takes No Damage (Any Attack) but I can't figure out how people get out of it. (It's certainly not being attacked physically. It might be a willpower (EGO) feat but that seems to include other problems like being blocked by Mental Defense .) I'm not attached to the idea of the Entangle, it's just where I have focussed my attention. Because of the nature of the desired effect, I have also considered calling it a Presence attack but I am not sure how to build a Presence attack that is based on CV... Any other ideas are also welcome.

Re: Linked Powers question (in and out of Power Frameworks)

Been thinking about a bunch of different ideas and ran into something that I need to pick apart for better understanding. I'm not sure I get Linked powers as attacks at this point. Below are a number of examples where I *thought* Linked powers was the right answer but when I go to apply it I run into questions. First idea... I want is an attack that has multiple components. E.G. A White Phosphorus Grenade which is 1) An explosion (EB or RKA), 2) Everything catches fire (a Change Environment (ignite stuff)), 3) A big, bright flash on detonation (Flash - Sight Group or maybe Normal and IR sight). Each of these bits can be defined independently as I did above, but is Linked the right way to combine them? My initial idea was to build the explosion, take the Change Environment and the Flash (probably smaller powers) and Link them to the explosion. I *think* that is legal but then when I go to apply the Advantages and Limitations I begin to wonder... Take the initial Explosion. It has lots of Modifiers... Explosion, Range mods as Thrown, Charges, Real Weapon... When you go to add the Linked modifier to the Change Envirnoment or the Flash, do you also add all the relevant modifiers to it? The Flash, for example, is also an explosion but maybe with a different rate of drop-off. The linked powers here also hit whatever the grenade hits so if you miss the throw, everything still happens. Does the Linked imply that there is one attack roll and everything uses the same roll? Since different powers might have different OCV mods for some reason, does this literally mean that the linked powers only hit if the primary power hits? Is there some other modifier that implies this (already defined somewhere, not GM fiat)? Take a different example now... A Weapon with a Life-Stealing aura... Maybe a 2d6 HKA with a linked 2d6 Drain. Now, the Drain only happens if the HKA hits. If the HKA misses, it might miss entirely or hit something inanimate which cannot be Drained. In that case do you still pay END for the Drain (assuming that you didn't buy it off because you argue that you have channel/will the sword to drain)? Ok, now for more fun. If I move to a cool future-tech weapon that uses coherent light, say... I can fire it as a blaster *or* wield a fixed blade as a light-saber. Now, since it is an either-or, this screams Multipower to me. It's one item with a dual-function switch after all. After some consideration, I decide to build it as an AP HKA and RKA with explosion *and* localized flash (ok, bad physics, but it still sounds fun if a bit rubbery). The AP HKA is easy enough, just don't exceed the Active Points in the pool and you are fine. The combined RKA + Flash is an issue though... In more detail... If this is *mostly* an RKA explosion with a bit of flash added, the point differential is huge. You cannot do these as separate powers (say an ultra RKA with 60 Active and an Ultra Flash with 20 Active in a Multipower with an 80 point cap) because then the ranges would wind up different! The flash cannot hit 2/3rds of the targets in range for the RKA. Besides, if they were separate powers you'd roll two attacks. But you cannot Link two powers in the same Multipower (at least so says Hero Designer although I didn't dig through 5ED to find the reference). Is there some other way to link these two which *is* allowed in the Multipower? Do you throw the Flash out of the Multipower? If so, do you then have some other limit which states that the combined RKA and Flash still can't exceed the Active Points of the Multipower or do you just rely on the GM and campaign caps then?

Re: The Things I've Learned Playing a Var.Power-Pool User Just because you can give every party member SPD 10 using AID, you might not want to. (Because sooner or later the GM will fix you in a way you are not happy with.)

Re: The Things I've Learned Playing a Var.Power-Pool User Having a Cosmic VPP means never having to rework your character for a Rules Edition upgrade. (Just the pre-calculated powers which have been recomended elsewhere here.)

Re: Question about Armor in Champions I'd be very careful about some of the ones that Bill is listing... Clear sign that this should not be a Limitation on the power is when he mentions things that are *other* limitations... Distinctive Features is just that... Take Distinctive Features instead of a limitation on the armor. The limited sense of touch might make sense but if that is the case, then you should be selling back the sense, not taking a limitation on the armor power. I *might* allow the limitation on the basis of the inability to go under a common surgical procedure but then you ask why is this limiting? It means no secret ID as a human. There may be other things that I am not thinking of, but I'd avoid allowing Always On on Armor.

Re: Experience increasing The best resource I ever saw for something like this is Robyn's Laws of Good Gamemastering, by Robyn D. Law. It was written generally and was not intended to be limited to any single system. The question here (and certainly what I heard in Robyn's first post on this subject) is that there should be rules in the system for how to handle this. I don't know if that was what was intended but that was certainly the impression I got from the post. I'm all for giving advice and today there are millions of good ways to get that advice, whether you hunt down a copy of Robyn's Laws or you go hit a half-dozen forums. The problem is (and Robyn's Laws sum this up far better than I will) that if you write rules into the system for how to make one gaming group happy then at least 50% of the rest will be unhappy. There is advice in most sourcebooks and sometimes it is better than others. No arguments. But rather than trying to make rules to control advancement, it is far better if the GM is pointed to resources like these forums, Robyn's Laws, the local gaming club, conventions where people give seminars on good gamemastering and other places to discuss things like this. My first response to this thread was quite specifically to ask what the goal of the rule would be. I know that the folks that I play and run with have a wide variety of tastes. Some like rapid advancement. Some crawl out into corners. Some build jack-of-all-trades characters who are incredibly well rounded. I would never use the system proposed because simply put it penalizes anyone who desires a one-trick-pony and that would make the campaign no fun for 2 of our 8 players. I also pointed out that if you decide on a house rule like this and then start handing out more and more experience to appease a player who *wants* to be able to corner then your more balanced characters are going to advance far faster than you expect. These are questions I know to ask because I have had experience. There are plenty of people on these forums who have been gaming for 20 years or more (I personally know of at least 5). Make use of the experience around here when you have questions like this.

Re: Experience increasing There are a couple of possible mechanics for something like this depending on what effect you want to have on the game. First, it sounds to want to focus on each skill separately so that it is more expensive to raise a 40 STR than it is to raise a 10 PRE. This mechanic penalizes people who want to corner. Make sure it is what you really want in your world (whether it feels real or not, remember what it will do to your *game* experience). It means that people will be penalized for cornering... Never again will you see the simple STR/CON brick. They'll instead spend time taking new tricks because it is more point efficient. This will also open the can of worms asking how you handle figured stats. Is it cheaper to buy END, PD or ED directly than it is to buy STR/CON? Does the price of buying PD depend on the current PD or only on the portion of it that is not derived from stats? Do you want to do this by raising the cost or just lowering the amount of experience you award? Functionally it's the same difference. Of course, if you raise the cost and then you end up handing out more experience so that the players can still crawl out into the typical corners all that you have done is add bookkeeping work for yourself (and the hassle of trying to figure out how much experience to award this time).

Re: Blocking Big Objects Sounds like a club to me, not an AE. See Bigdamnhero's post below about using a greyhound bus instead of a light-pole. I'd have to look in more detail at the block mechanic to see whether or not there is any ruling that would affect my decision on whether or not a speedster could use it. If it entails stopping the attack on other people in the same or adjacent hexes then no way am I allowing the speedster to use block mechanics. Mostly because the argument that "I am knocking them out of the way of the same attack" strikes me as a much more complex action which is going to require something more.

Re: Blocking Big Objects

Re: Blocking Big Objects Warning, this is a cinematic response, not simply rule-based. I'd allow a normal block (like the dodge) which only protects the character performing the block (put those arms up and protect yourself but the general area still gets mangled)... If you had a held action I'd allow the interrupt as mentioned above to break or grab the improvised focus which *would* protect the area.

Re: Normal with powered "Friend"

Re: Normal with powered "Friend" At one level or another you could interpret prayer that way as well. Somehow I think you're opening a bottomless can of worms if you try to define this without paying the points for the "invisible friend". If you want to have any direct control over the invisible friend then you need it to be something different. When you go visit a contact, the GM plays the contact, right? Not the PC? Do you want this to be your character or do you want the GM doing all the cool stuff? For that matter, the system defines the costs for contacts based on the availability, power and devotion to you. So, you really want to let your characters claim to be very devout priests and take an angel or a God as a slavishly loyal contact with an easy activation roll? Where do you draw the line? And if you allow that, who runs the angel or God when they are on the scene? Quit worrying about the SFX for the critter and ask the questions. The invisible friend is the prime mover. He's got some kind of DNPC or Henchman (depending on who is playing the normal) that has some influence on him. The rest of it is just descriptives.

Re: How to end a dystopia... Heck, sure there are going to be lots of people invested in keeping MetalStorm out of the hands of the unwashed masses... The problem is that it takes only one. Interstellar space-flight was developed to serve the corporations and after one generation of even more lucrative business using the tech, along comes BOB. BOB is whoever you want him to be from whatever corporation makes sense at the time. He looks at things and says to himself, "I could have a whole world to myself, with all the resources, but why be greedy. There's plenty to go around and heck, I'm probably going to be able to keep myself in a position of power and privilege but so many other people could have so much more without any noticible cost to myself." BOB starts providing war materials to the plebs, preferrably the plebs working for someone else and supports them in an uprising. Maybe BOB is doing this because he really has the interests of humanity at hear. Maybe he is doing this because when you are two planets away a bunch of plebs with heavy weapons making life difficult for your adversaries sounds like a sound political idea. Of course, the US has exercised foreign policy like that for years... Training Osama bin Ladin to fight is great while he is fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. But when that is finished somehow his plans might change or evolve and he's still got the training and whatever weapons are still left (or he can still get his hands on). So BOB, for whatever reason, supports a revolt by the masses. Maybe across known space, maybe only in a limited region. He supplies them with weaponry and they win. Now all you have to do is figure out what kind of government(s) evolve to your final state. Maybe you start a galactic communism like the Federation. Maybe you go back to elected representation or "city-states" or trade federations or who knows what. Maybe you go through one massive transformation (why are a bunch of cyberpunk street-runners developing this kind of "enlightened" government) or maybe you go through a series of successivly more peaceful and enlightened states to get there. [added in editting to address some earlier comments] The reason I point this out is that once you reach a sufficient level of technology, the have-nots can never compete. It is simply too difficult to overcome the gap in weaponry without external help. Even in the situation where some company comes up with something like asteroid mining, first the odds are that it is a big corp (i.e. those with the resources to do the research or to steal it and sabotage the opposition). Second, the company that comes into power is going to establish something just as rigid and self-serving so you have only traded one corporate structure for another and one that is probably no kinder or gentler. Look at it this way... In most cyberpunk playing, corps tend to give an incredible amount of power to the runners... Sometimes it's data or programs, maybe arms, who knows. But without the backing of a major corp nobody in cyberpunk is going to think of trying to go after another major corp. There's no chance of success.

Re: Normal with powered "Friend" I thought about this a while ago and posted here to get some feedback. Specifically what I was after was monsters from the id, a la Forbidden Planet. What I found, after a lot of experimentation and looking at the rules, is that the easiest way that I could see to build this kind of construct is as follows... First, ask the question who is acting. Who, or what is the hero? The answer is the imaginary thing or the id or whatever. So you build *that* with your hero points. Then you take the norm as a DNPC and you take all sorts of Lims based on how the norm controls you. Maybe he can give you direct orders, etc. Anything else turned out to be something abusive... If you build the creature as a henchman or something the point conversion gets abusive... If you go with Duplication or Summon then you wind up doing strange things pointwise that can put you far out of balance with everyone else in the campaign. If you're trying to make this as a PC, then I strongly suggest for balance purposes that you create the "monster" using your base points and create the norm as a DNPC/hencman. If you're asking for an NPC then the sky is the limit and you have all the other options mentioned here.

Re: They wont die Wait, did you just say that you were going to watch a collection of Trek episodes looking for continuity? Didn't you read Curufea above? Spare yourself and just go in for an elective lobotomy now. On a more serious note, I would blame it on the writers too... There was just never any overall continuity like you find in the Joss Whedon scripts. As a result you get filk songs like "Makin' some sh*t up". It was so bad that even filk singers noticed that they'd write themselves into a corner and then make up something to get themselves out of their jam.

Re: So that's what you think? First, an aside... I dunno whether this is intended or not, but this is a terrible misuse of the actual physics principle... What is actually meant (and is violated by HERO) is that if you deliver a blow which causes 10" of knockback you had to be braced against the same amount of force when you delivered the blow. Now, regarding the actual powers... If I recall, Absorption doesn't get you the equal bit and I dunno how to fix that. You probably need to do this in a cosmic VPP in order to make it applicable to all the potential special effects and powers that can provide damage. Your GM (if this is not an NPC) is likely to get apoplectic when you try that. Taking that a step further, you'll absolutely have to violate campaign power limits in order to be able to Absorb maximum possible damage for the campaign, particularly with a +2 Advantage for Cosmis VPP. Finally, I'd have some concerns about the viability of this build since I can't remember if you'd have to have an action to alter the Absorb to deal with a bullet after being hit by a fireball. You might still be subject to getting gang-banged.

Re: A question of genetics part 2 OOoooooo, I can't believe it. My good buddy Cancer missed the answer that immediately struck me... The second this technology becomes available, the goes ape on everyone involved. You aren't allowed to fertilize an embryo without bringing it to term or that is murder. Even if there is no church capable of this (either politically or through masses), it is very likely that the process will be limited by those in power to benefit a select few (either influenced by money or political influence, even if the process itself is cheap). The social ramifications of this kind of behaviour could do amazing things... Eloi and Morlocks who evolve either from political stratification or religious stratification (ummm, that'd be interesting... atheists as Eloi because they would participate in the Eugenics and religious sorts as Morlocks)... Also, consider that in a society where this becomes possible that perhaps they have a better understanding of the genome. Rather than limiting to facial feature, build and IQ you can tie it to "luck", spacial relations, problem solving... You can also tie it to temperment of course (this is already possible and is known among animal breeders). Maybe you start breeding lucky people (I'm convinced that one of the guys I game with is a minor telekinetic since not only do *his* dice roll what he wants in lots of circumstances but it is also the case that when GMing his players roll what he wants them to far too often). The other stuff that Cancer mentions is also going to bite you. Talk to a dog breeder for examples... Breeding for one trait very often brings along others (Dalmations that go deaf but have perfect markings, Cocker Spaniels with mental instabilities and agressive tendancies but perfect coats). Deciding what traits are linked in your universe is up to you and could be an interesting exercise if you define the linkages and then let the players take the roles of heads of the consumers for 10 generations or so... Your players could, as it were, pick their own genetic poison and wind up with a race of supermen who are all 6"4' with blond hair, blue eyes, STR 20, INT 20, DEX 25, and a penchant for heart disease and stroke before the age of 30. Finally, to take things a step further... Keep in mind that this technology is probably not going to be used 100% of the time, whether because people can't afford it or because they are not allowed it or, more likely, to quote GATTACA, just because there will always be "love children" who are concieved the old-fashioned way. As your gene pool gets pruned down by the selective breeding you are going to make things much harder on natural conception. If the powerful are doing the eugenics and then breeding only among themselves you'll see something like Renaissance European Monarchy where people in power were suffering hemophilia and epilepsy because of tight interbreeding in a limited social peerage. If they are bringing in "impure" bloodlines from the under-privileged then their immediate offspring will be healthier but they will be putting more limits on their gene pool because the eugeneics will have more impact on the general populace (bastards of the eugeneic population will be more likely to only carry their special genes). And finally, if for some reason your entire populace *does* have access to the technique you will begin eliminating genetic variation much more rapidly and, as a result, make natural conception much riskier much more quickly. Small effects might be visible after a few generations of such eugenics. The large effects like Cancer and I are talking about are not likely to rear their heads until 10 or more generations of large-scale eugenics have taken place which could be an issue given that it is unlikely such a program could exist for more than a few generations without being discovered (or simply seeing some kind of radical shift in paradigm if the distinction is taking place because of some philosophical reason or perhaps violent revolt if the masses find out about it and were not included simply for political reasons).