Sam On Maui

That measn no intdirect on the attack. As Mindscan EGO+20 level says: "If he wishes to attack the target with a non Mental Power, the attack must be able to reach the target, and the Range Modifer applies."

You can actually shoot through barriers (I think the rules are somewhere under Barrier or in 6E2 under Durabiltiy of natural obstacles) and that might lessen the impact if the material is hard enough.

The issues with targetting through a barrier only affect the OCV/DCV calculation. Even if you can target through obstacles, your attack still has to punch through those.

FYI, the default Barrier Power does not block senses (those are extra adders). So you can actually target somebody through a barrier. Your attack still has to punch through the barrier, however.

Gotcha. Hrm... I think it'll be simpler/more efficient to have it not, though. We've got 10-13 players on game night @_@

Okay that is confusing. LOS is blocked by not having Sight of the Target. Like Invisibility, Darknes, being flashed in the Sight, Targetting a Decoy, etc.

 

As Hero needed to keep the rules abstract (to include many possible targetting senses), it can get a bit hard to read. Or make sense out of - I tried going heavily by "rules as written" and we still ended up arguing about some corner points:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/93975-making-sense-out-of-senses-in-6e/

Sorry... maybe "she'd need a clear line of fire" would be clearer? So, she couldn't be fooled by decoys, invisibility isn't a problem, no need for night vision, etc., but she still has to account for buildings in the way, intervening objects, etc. She would know X is there, but that's it. The rifle/gun/penguin ballista still needs a clear path for the shot.

Managed to email with on of the other GMs. My replies are in italics.

I can see and agree with a lot of those comments. However, we are not the usual gaming group. Keeping it a normal 4d6 RKP isn't bad (add armor-piercing for extra PC-killing power), but the big thing is indeed the whole thing about taking damage without any way of knowing where it came from, or doing anything about it.

Gotcha. Hrm... Did you see that old Arnold Schwarzenegger film "The Eraser"? They had those rail guns with that left a trail behind them... also seen in Quake II, as I recall. There's also Unreal Tournament's Shock Rifle... basically there's an obvious straight line between point A and point B for a moment or two before it fades off.

The main tools we would have against this is Mysterio, and that's about it.  You could probably take out Mysterio first, then pick off the weaker heroes while we run about helplessly. He's the only one that would really detect where they are, so this could be a very effective build. I'm not saying "its too much" or anything, as we have a very resourceful group. We could do RPG rules-bending for things like having Pixel's imaging computers try to backtrack the bullet vectors, that sort of thing.  Or Crimson just brings down the city block.

Also, Aussiemandeous and his "get me a satellite image!" could happen.

That'd work for me as well. Its really hard to make something that you guys will actually have some degree of fear about and yet not make it totally game-wrecking. Of course, the sniper might be yet another in the anti-Crimson Corp. Per your suggestion, this is why I only do auto-fire and coordinated fire on Crimson and not anyone else. (note: Crimson is that GM's character, and he's explicitly told me multiple times not to be afraid to single his character out because of how powerful she is)

But with something like this, you do want to keep a Plan B in your pocket in case it turns out to be too overwhelming.  Limited umber of shots? A visible muzzle-flash that we might spot?

As above. I've been working on ideas to slow down her down her rate of attack. Also, needing to establish a clear LOS? Maybe a laser guide? Over the course of a mile or so that small laser spot should/could get a lot bigger...

And no, the "monster brick" is only invisible to SIGHT powers, so mental powers are unaffected.  Now, depending on how you want the sniper to target, does she need to SEE the target, and her mental abilities just help her aim better, or does she get a mind-lock on the target and lets the bullet go there?  And, of course, Crimson ain't afraid of 4d6. (note: Crimson probably wouldn't worry about anything short of a 10d6 RKA)

She'd need LOS for the rifle, but otherwise? No sight needed. So, if Pixel had holographic decoys? She wouldn't be fooled by that. If Crimson was invisible? Doesn't help. Pitch black? No worries. Also, the mental powers help predict movement - this is why I'm thinking OCV vs ECV/DMCV.

Hmm... so, maybe changing from a conventional high-powered rifle to something more comic-book/sci-fi-ish might help? It'd be in theme for the enemy group.

Margarita Man

 

Nibblin' on sponge cake

Helping a thug make

The smartest decision he's made in some time

Yeah he'll get off scott free

But that doesn't bug me

'Cause the three he'll turn in are the worst kinds of slime.

 

*snip*

I love your brain :3

Didn't I already answer this?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says it looks familiar

Yep. I find posting here and at RPG.net works best. Thank you for your post there!

Again tho, there's a huge difference between "tough, challenging fight" and "unable to fight back." There are few things players hate worse than taking damage from an unknown source and having to way to return the favor. As long as the PCs have some way to locate the villain and fight back, you're probably okay. Just use caution.

They do. Super speedster, a monster brick that can turn invisible (and if I understand her build correctly, even psychicly invisible), a mentat psionic attacks that don't have LOS restrictions, a super scientist who can erect force fields, and more. Add in a 4d6 RKA isn't actually highly threatening to most of the players, and we don't use hit locations...

As I recall a lock with mind scan is two ways (no book available at work).

So do not be surprised if the party telepath leads the party to her and helps tear her arms off.

That's the plan. Honestly, the psi doesn't even need the rest of the team to fight back...

We've got at least one mentalist (got two-three new players coming in this week, so can't guarantee there won't be more). Almost every game he "does a mind scan of the area" to look for hostile threats and such. Honestly? I'm counting on that.

1. Per the story I've been laying out in this thread, there are people looking for the means to control telepaths.

2. She (and the others like her) are meant to be anti-super operatives. As such, he'll be exposing himself.

3. Her "tell" is that when she's doing this she's going to effectively look like the Eye of Sauron to another psi.

She'll be a glass canon, physically. Mentally? Not quite sure yet.

edit: I should note that I'm not even the hardball, OMG-LETHAL gm of the group. They freakin' LOVE it when he GMs!

Sweet

Prepare for your players to hate you.   Whether that's fun-hate or game-ending-hate depends on your players and how you handle it.

They generally seem to enjoy the combats I make where they've actually got a real threat they can't just plow through. No risk, no glory! In the past I've made:

* A squad of mercs with a specific specialty of anti-supers weapons and tactics.

* Nano-based robots that absorb physical attacks, turning the energy into an entangle (complimenting the anti-super mercs nicely).

* A 1,000+ point big-bad guy with ablative armor, damage reduction, and his main attack being a line AOE with no range mods that got his stun back when his followers self-sacrificed themselves.

* Aztec themed warriors who engaged in group tactics.

Two of the players are absolute monsters as well...

I'm trying to formally make a psychic sniper for our supers game as a dangerous NPC enemy.

This is the core concept: the character (an enemy NPC) is a telepath. Using her powers, she zeroes in on enemies and shoots them from WAAAAY far off. Because she's telepathic, she has a better idea of what they're going to do, where they're going, etc.

The power I want to make is two-fold:

1. It targets enemies via DMCV / ECV. Essentially she's targeting their minds. Easy enough.

2. The longer she sits and "aims," the higher her OCV will be. Possibly her damage. However, I can't figure out how to do this.

Help? When I GM the players seem to like enemies that actually challenge them...

Hmm... can I get away with just printing the 1st book?

Groovy.

I actually work at a commercial printshop, so I can get it printed on our equipment here. Its just a matter of do I want to do it here or at home, you know? We're more geared for printing out hundreds or thousands of something, not a single copy of X, and pricing is set accordingly. Thankfully, I do get a discount...

I mean, jeez, I wish we had more orders for perfect bind books - I could print and perfect bind my copies :3

Maybe the wrong place for this...

I've got a black and white printer, and noticed some books (with beautiful product values) absolutely DEVOUR my toner. Also, they don't do well as grayscale. How is 6e? Colored backgrounds and the like?

Also, how many pages am I looking at here for both books?

At worst, I might have to print it at work and pay out of pocket (we have a gorgeous Ricoh commercial printer).

We're actually working on that with an introductory book for Champions with an adventure characters, etc.  One to act as a tutorial.  If you want to lend a hand or see what we're doing check out the thread.

I'll check in on that, thanks

With all due respect, I think you guys are missing the point. If I understand correctly, what the OP is asking for is not "Can you make existing mechanisms a bit easier to deal with on the fly?" but "Do players need to interact with the actual mechanisms at all?"

 

And the answer is no, they don't. You can run a fully hero-compatible game without making compromises like dropping SPD, without making any changes at all to the game mechanics, and still get through character generation and play a scenario in one evening, easy-peasy. I know whereof I speak, having done it myself. And others have done it too.

 

The software analogy is pretty apt: users of (say) MS word, don't need to know anything at all about the code running the actual program, or indeed, 99% of the functions available through the GUI. They just need to know how to open the program and start typing. As they grow more experienced, they can learn where the various functions are to be found in the GUI, but a lot of people learn only a little of that ... and that's all they need.

 

I am planning my next fantasy game at the moment (in a fairly desultory fashion, it must be admitted, due to an overdose of computer gaming) and the plan is to use some of the readily available pathfinder material, to reduce my own workload. The goal is NOT to use Hero to simulate pathfinder, but to draft a "pathfinder -like" front end, so that I can pick up a pathfinder module, if I want, and use it with very minimal modification. So I am not interested in simulating mechanistic stuff like saving throws, but instead simply drafting a series of "sliders" if you like, that I can use to translate material on the fly. The front end that the PCs will see will look enough like Pathfinder that they can easily jump right in, based on their prior experience with that system, even if mechanistically they will play somewhat differently. But the major difference - which is where the GUI aspect comes in - will be that I am neither requesting nor expecting players to provide me with full builds. There will be no "Longsword; 1+1d6 HKA, 0 END (+1/2), Focus OAF, (-1) real weapon (-1/4), active points 30, real points 13" stuff. It'll just say "Longsword +4d6K" on the character sheet. The players can tell me what they want in terms of character archetypes, they can pick from a (wide) variety of packages and if they want a custom "feat" or ability, I'll put it together for them.

 

cheers, Mark

More or less. If I understand the state of things, some of the Linux distros out there don't even require you to look at the command line anymore if you don't want to. OSX has a terminal hiding inside if you want. Windows has Powershell.

Will read up later on - thanks

you want faster character gen

get Hero Designer

 

 

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/store/product/1-hero-designer/

I've got that, but this idea is not for me. Its for my friends who I'm trying to get into HERO. Moreover, the HERO Designer doesn't necessarily make things much easier if you're new to things - its still very much a tool for folks familiar with the system, IMO.

Not a front-end in terms of setting... I was thinking of a simplified front-end. Training wheels, if you will. At least for character creation. So, instead of trying to decide between X for Stat Y with no obvious reference? Use the in-book descriptions: Weak, Challenged, Average, Skilled, Competent, Legendary. Buy up or get points refunded depending on whether you go up or down, with each increment being 5 points of stat (thus costing 5*stat multiplier).

Honestly, I think a less-granular game would suit a good variety of campaigns or at least players.

That or maybe archtypes with stat increases presented sort of like perks? I think Chill does this (been a while since I looked at my book)...

I was just going through a HERO thread on RPG.net and an idea popped in my head: if you compare HERO to Unix being run with a CLI, its very powerful but takes some learning. Hard to dive in. This is part of why there's GUIs, right? Do you know of any "front ends" for HERO to make it a little easier to teach folks? Or at least get them through character creation faster?

I'm planning on making one, but at the same time? Why reinvent the wheel, you know? Certainly, as often as folks go for break-points in their characters once they know about them, removing the unnecessary granularity might not be a bad idea in terms of presenting character creation.

Just a set of training wheels, that's all. I've got one HERO group, and another group I play with that is somewhat intimidated by the system.

Thoughts?

Ah well. I won't lose any sleep over it

Non-exclusive publishers pay a 35% rate, so on a game costing the oddly specific amount of $33.74, they keep $21.93. So, they actually come out a little ahead.

Champions Complete is $20 in both stores, though... Which is odd since its in print whereas the other two aren't.

And Fantasy HERO bought. I'm a little surprised its $13 more expensive at DTRPG than the HERO store, but oh well... That's HERO's choice...

I've been told the mass combat rules for HERO aren't very good. Not sure which edition, though, so maybe its better now?

Okay, so Fantasy HERO Complete is coming out soon, right? And Fantasy HERO is available via PDF. I've got Champions Complete as well as HERO Basic - which book would be better for me to get? What do they offer overall? How do they compare and contrast?

I guess the duplication sort of confuses me a bit

3rd game was probably the least subtle game to date. I gave them 100 points to gear up. Must be an important mission, right? Wow! 100 points! So, energy rifles, grenades, armor, shields, energy swords... pretty much everyone was armed to the teeth! 

Their job was to escort the Alpha Complex's oldest clone (a whole 3 years old!) around his old workplace. He retired 6 months earlier, and Friend Computer thought he might want to see how the place had changed. Well, he's old (by troubleshooter standards he's practically immortal), curmudgeony, and was quite fun to  yell at them with. I'll be honest, one of the players must have decided his troubleshooter snapped or something, so things went downhill quickly. It was an honest to goodness mess, promise.

Its late, I'm tired, and I can't really remember everything at this point. Needless to say there were TWO complete team wipes, the old man was thrown into an energy conduit, aaaaand... well...

At the beginning of the tour they saw a giant cannon aimed at a nuclear reactor powering a shield generator. If the section should ever be compromised and taken over by commie mutant scum, the cannon was supposed to shoot at the reactor, setting it off, and destroy everything that part of the complex, lest the commie mutants use it as a shielded base of operations.  Further down, they saw a shield generator protecting the cannon, so commie mutant scum couldn't destroy the cannon meant to destroy the nuclear reactor powering the other shield generator. Gotta think one step ahead, right? Next stop down was a missile launcher aimed at the shield generator, so if commie mutants took over the cannon, they couldn't do so with impunity, protected by the shield generator. Next stop after that was a holo-display talking about how great the Alpha Complex was, and how they killed more commie mutant scum in a week than died during WWIII (they must be breeding like rabbits or clones in Alpha Complex!). Additionally there was a giant sign about Alpha Complex's WMDs pointed back the way they came, and another sign for cake and ice cream pointing towards the end of the tour.

Despite the old clone dying at the hands of a PC in the first stop, the computer insisted the tour must finish. Those were mission parameters.

The Commie's mission was to destroy the weapons of the capitalist running dogs. The first Enterprise was supposed to get all the PCs to spend all their money at the gift shop. The second Enterprise was supposed to recruit the first one, MLM/pyramid-scheme-style. The Brony was supposed to make friends with the party. The Illuminati guy was supposed to keep his eye on the Brony (I had meant this literally, but... anyhow...). The HP Lovecraft dude was supposed to show that defenses were an illusion.

Long story short, yeeeeeaaaah... one of the players triggered off the obvious sequence of events. I ended the mission with the Brony making an INT check when he saw the cannon going off. Instead of running, he just sat down with his snacks as the world went white in nuclear fire. The epilogue was their clones (they're all between 3 and 5 right now) being ordered to go and finish the tour, radiation suits being passed out. Ice cream would be served in lead containers at the end.

Next week will be the end of this run, and they'll be fighting the 40k spoof... Friend Emperor approves. 

I wish they'd either kick start a reprint or do print on demand for these two books. I di like and appreciate the longer descriptions and explanations.

Are there any conversion guides out there? Or is it a matter of they go up and GW sends out C&D orders shortly thereafter?

I'm looking to run Deathwatch for some friends, but don't care for the system much. I'd prefer to not reinvent the wheel and making a port when someone has done one (and probably better). Any suggestions?

He's already challenged the other players, " first to six? First to six wins?"

Second game was wonderful. I had them roll a d4, a d10, and another d10. Why? Because that would be the page in the Champions Powers book I'd start browsing for their mutant powers. So one guy could change his clothes instantly, another could not stumble/hit his toe in the dark, another can hear really well, another can shut down his senses, and one can... I forget.

So, they all woke up from the same dream of accidentally outing themselves as mutants. And were like, "wow, glad that was just a dream! Hey, wait, why am I handcuffed with a bag over my head?"

That's when the Secret Society Job Fair started

A bunch of the secret societies did little presentations, including the HP Lovecraft Historical Society (which I absolutely made up), and they were all told the only way they were leaving alive was to join a secret society. No pressure! One player didn't choose, so I made the Benevolent Society of Ponies Brotherhood, whose sole goal is to foster friendship among all Alpha Complex citizens. THAT'S what you get for not deciding, punk!

Now, everyone was in their underwear, out of their mandatory jumpsuits, which is of course, treason. So, when the security systems reactivated, Friend Computer noted all of them were guilty of indecent exposure and failing to display rank, "please wait for security to come and arrest you." Naturally, everyone ran, and instead of a combat it was them trying to escape.

Well, there was one fight... one of the troubleshooters tried to get a bucket of red paint from a scrub-bot, but oh dear, the scrub-bot was a member of Corpe Metal, and that wasn't a bucket of red paint... For the record, brooms do 3d6 Normal, but illegal and treasonous weaponized dustpans do 1d6 Killing. Good thing he started running - he only lost half of his BODY, and was down to 1 STUN.

Another player was stealthing and failed his Perception roll... he had the super-hearing, and heard himself going "AAAAAAAH!" as he fell into an open man-hole, right into the sewers. When he came out, he went to the nearest hygiene station, explained his normal jumpsuit was too filthy/contaminated to wear, and the sympathetic bot gave him a cleaning like no other. Like, a 6d6 Normal damage cleaning.

A player who joined the Illuminati had another bag thrown over his head, and they attempted to sedate him to "rescue" him from the incoming security forces. Sadly, he kept making his CON rolls, so by the third time they told him they were going to use something more powerful to knock him out. Like a steel chair. But, hey, 30+ STUN worked!

Hell, the only casualty was one of the players mouthing off and breaking the 4th wall in game. Oh dear, he's gone insane! Well, thankfully, clone #3 was much more mentally coherent...

It was a silly, ridiculous game, and they all laughed throughout most of it. Good times, good times. Certainly, a nice break from our D&D 5e campaign which is fairly serious right now (Hoard of the Dragon Queen). I'm not sure what next week will be, but I still absolutely want to spoof 40K for the 4th and final game of this set... Because Friend Emperor is waaaaay better than Friend Computer, of course. And flaming hot plasma for the Mutant Heretics that say otherwise!