DasBroot

If your players are fine with it and you want to mimic the FATe system stress and consequences you can do something crazy: Stun damage (stress) becomes Body damage (consequences) when you go below 0. Not at the same rate, of course, but perhaps at the body rolled rate ignoring defenses (edit: Too high.) or at 1/10 the stun rolled as body ignoring defenses (better - too low? Half body rolled instead... 12 on a DC12 blast does 6?) ie: Supermonkey has 60 stun and 20 PD. Over the course of the fight he's taken 0 Body and 60 stun. The Monkey of Tomorrow is on his last legs but refuses to go down (Conceding in Fate). He's then hit for 20 stun through his defenses, which should KO him nicely - but this is Supermonkey. He grits his teeth, takes 2 body (see - kind of low), and fights on! Body is, by default, between adventure healing much like Consequences are.Running out of stun becomes a big thing. The problem is that in HERO there's no shortage of ways to heal up said body, as mrinku pointed out. In a heroic game, though, where defenses and attributes are lower and perhaps body healing is rarer I could see it working.

Oh, I know... but it still comes down to 60 m/segment/phase at the hard stop at the bottom in the end. Who's to say that hypothetical car or charging hero didn't also previously cover 210 m at 60 m/phase before hitting you? I do get that you had to fall several segments to get up to that speed, whereas Ram-Man, the Man That Rams!, just bull rushed you in a single phase for +10d6 (whereas the most you'd take from falling is 5d6 if it was your first phase falling) - but it still bugs me that impacting/being impacted against at the same speed does different things. Hence, a quirk. Not a deal-breaker.

I'm not sure why leaping is 2 m for 1 AP, to be honest. To cover 30 meters as a full move you can pay 30 points (flight/teleport), 18 points (running), or 13 points (leaping). To cover 60 it's 60, 48, or 30. Flight gives you 3d movement and can flat out remove you from melee reach so should be more expensive. Teleport isn't affected by gravity on vertical moves and gives you unparalled freedom of movement (only special jail cells, barriers, or entangles can hold you. Even a wall won't stop you if you're willing to blind teleport) - that's a pretty good advantage too. Running provides none of that but has 'no turn mode' baked in, which could be handy in certain situations (you know, like... indoors). It still costs 1/1, though - it's only cheaper because you have 12 'free' levels. Leaping requires an attack roll and can't turn. is that enough to justify the cost difference? (Funnily enough, though, Leaping is sort of like Teleport with Restrainable, Must Pass Through Intervening Space, and Decreased Acceleration (you can't teleport as far if you can't teleport at least 3/4 meters). - which does indeed give you the same pricing as Leaping, doesn't require an attack roll, and isn't affected by gravity - so... there's that. It also doesn't have velocity and can't be used in /v maneovers ... so there's also that). Quirk I love above all else - there's always more than one way to build a power.

Hmm... let's see how many we can find... :Take it all! 1 2 The original post (hard to find in good quality) ... 3

I'm not even going to try to fully comprehend that but my high school dropout brain is nagging that if you receive 8 meters of knockback you are knocked back 8 meters. Not 8.1 or 9. Wouldn't that mean that the kinetic energy of the impact plus all factors that dissipate said impact (so you don't fly into orbit when exposed to any knockback result - gravitational pull, air resistance, desperate prayers to an unloving universe - anything that stops you from moving 9 meters instead of 8) - is nearly played out at that point? So if you hit a wall 8 meters away when you had just enough force applied to you to go flying 8 meters (not 9) would you not have bled off a lot of your momentum at that point? Should that not reduce the force of impact against the object?

No, just infuriating. She deserved more. Much more.

It's very common against evil drainer characters in fiction (are they ever really beaten any other way? Their greed and gluttony leads to their destruction - it's classic) and while I could see a damage shield, certainly, there's always another way... one that costs the hero nothing. What if the villain had a limitation instead that if they absorbed more than a certain amount they take damage instead? But then why would they ever? No Conscious control on the power. The GM (scriptwriter) decides when he'll keep "draining" himself to death - based on the story conditions and heroism of his opponent (PRE attack?).

A character with 12 speed and 60 running is also travelling at 'terminal velocity' ... but they still do str+10d6 on a move through. That's the 'two cars hit you at 100 km/h' thing I referenced in an earlier post - the car with the lower SPD but same maximum velocity does more damage when it hits you by virtue of having to travel farther per Phase it moves. By your example the hero with 5 SPD has to move farther to match the true velocity of falling and therefore does (and takes) more damage (24d6) than the hero with 12 SPD (10d6) who is moving just as 'fast' (720 m per turn). He also takes a -14 ocv compared to the -6 ocv of the spd 12 character. (The speed 5 character also reaches the door that his teammate just opened at the end of phase 4 130 meters away on Phase 5 first despite them both moving at the same per turn velocity.) That just feels off to me on ALL accounts (OCV the least, in gut feel - he's moving in 60 meter bursts instead of 144 so maybe he has more control). And in all cases falling that last 60 meters once you're at 60 m / segment (because you don't stop falling when it's not your phase) still trumps them both (30d6)

Indeed. You have to buy AP or Penetrating for your entire blast to get the full benefit - why wouldn't you have to buy their counters for all the sources of PD/ED you wish to apply against said blast to get the full benefit? As for number 2, though - we used to accidentally only apply rPD/rED against stun from killing attacks. The result was lots of people had lots of resistant armor. Once we corrected it the meta-game changed to mix resistant and non-resistant to save some points. So instead of a brick buying 30 resistant in a 12 DC game he'll buy 20 resistant and 10 non (10 points is 10 points. 20 if he buys both the same way). On the plus side, though, it did allow someone who WANTED to take a little body from most killing attacks buy 10 r and 20 normal = he bleeds without being taken out by the stun, so I don't mind it.

That's why I took a chunk out of my original post that addressed that: It just leads to a further mess whereas the more actions a vehicle can take (higher than 2 speed) the less damage it inflicts (and therefore takes) on a move through in a situation where it's moving at a non-combat rate (ie: driving into a wall) compared to a vehicle with less SPD but the same velocity. Also most drivers have speed 2 so either a) they can only drive the car at half the speed of a driver with speed 4 in a speed 4 vehicle (even out of combat, if you've based the vehicles maximum velocity around taking 4 actions with non-combat multipliers) or b ) as I mentioned above the guy with speed 2 will hit twice as hard because to be going the same speed he needs to be moving twice the distance on each of his phases. Neither are particularly appropriate outcomes - I have no doubt that a professional demolition derby driver (combat driving and a higher speed) will find more opportunities to take shots at me or avoid my clumbsy attempts to hit him, provided his vehicle is nimble enough (higher speed). I also have no doubt that we can both drive his speed 4 car down a highway at its maximum velocity and that if we hit a wall the same thing will happen to the car, us, and wall regardless. The vehicle rules in general are pretty clunky, though, and worthy of their own post (this one!) - it's why I threw in the example of a super strong character ramming you being less devastating than hitting the ground at HERO'S terminal velocity.

HERO's a great system but it definitely has some quirks that people find amusing, distracting, or annoying. One of mine is falling damage vs move-through damage. HERO assigns a max falling speed (terminal velocity) of 60 meters per segment for 30d6 damage. Oof. The thing is... a move through attack that impacted at 60 meters per segment (ie: a character using a movement power, a car, etc) inflicts strength + v/6. So a car with a 'str' of 20 inflicts 14d6 if it moves 60 before hitting you. That's half the damage of striking the ground after falling the same distance in the segment. Why? What makes falling so much more dangerous than being hit by a car travelling at the same distance in that segment? Or a hero strong enough to lift the Statue of Liberty (70) with the same action (14d6 + 10d6 = 24d6)? What's yours? (Open for discussion of anyone's specific quirk as well as adding your own.)

So it looks like I'm wrong but some other GMs handle it similar to how I do because it 'feels' right to reflect a loss in velocity due to distance travelled before hitting a solid object. It's like baseball... a throw from the outfield hits your glove with a lot less force than one thrown from first base to try and stop someone stealing home - even if it's thrown with the same force. Heck, it's like *bullets* - that's why guns have 'lethal' ranges: after that distance the bullet has slowed enough that it's *not as likely* to have enough force left to inflict a lethal wound. The original quandary makes more sense to me, though, realising the the rules do indeed state that distance travelled has no bearing - it definitely makes knockback more dangerous against a lightly armored opponent. It's funny to see where each GM digs in his heels with regards to superhero physics - for me, it's momentum (knockback, move through). For others it's mass (the crumbling building when you pick it up, even just lifting something with a weight greater than your own far enough away from your own center of mass - the front of a catapult has to be heavier than the effective weight of the arm at load or it will fall backwards, despite the arm being strong enough to take the weight of the boulder).

Justice League vs Teen Titans Despite it being set in the same setting as JL: War I enjoyed this one a lot more. The characters were more recognisable and the plot moved along with less issues. Trigon was well done and it was nice to see that they didn't embrace the very early and universally critique'd Nu 52 portrayal of Starfire.

Andromeda for the slipstream (submersion in my setting) drives Robotech (Macross Saga) for the space fold (wormhole) drives - especially the first disastrous use of the SDF-1's. Battletech and EVE online for various political faction inspiration Star Wars / Firefly / Gibson's sprawl trilogy/ EVE online for the people on the ground and the feel of their tech (ships, hand weapons, cybernetics, etc).

... upon typing that I went re-read knockback and I have no idea where I got it from. It's literally how I've always calculated knockback since the 80s. I like it, and it makes sense to me (probably why I've never questioned it in my head), but wow... I think I've been wrong for literally decades. Was knockback ever calculated like that (First, second, third edition?) or did my group literally pull it out of thin air?

You're not wrong but when it comes to hitting objects you also apply the 1 per 2 hex rule for the distance travelled before hitting the object. edit: I actually think I'm wrong but I'm leaving this here anyways so someone else can chime in on it (see post below) Examples using 8 hexes of KB (wheeeeee!) and a 4 pd/ 4 body wall. Hit the ground farther down the road: 8 hex / 2 = 4d6. Hit a wall 4 hexes away: 4 hex / 2 (2d6 ) to get to the wall + 4 hex remaining / 1 for hitting it (4d6) = 6d6 Hit the same wall 6 hexes away: 8 - 6/2 = 5d6 Hit the same wall 8 hexes away: 8 - 8/2 = 4d6 ... the same damage as if you'd just bounced down the street (which makes sense as you've travelled the same distance / expended the same energy before hitting something: you don't take double damage just because you hit a person or parked car instead of the road. Edit: actually, it looks like you might. Which makes little sense to me.) Hit the same wall when your back was to it (0 or 1 hex away) = Full 8d6 (with a maximum body of 8: the wall's body + pd).

Follow up to this - it's live, it's being used, and so far... I'm surprised at how well it's going. As I hoped the base level of power and number of 'goodies' between different builds isn't significant due to heavy limitations. *Everyone* felt a point crunch, for a change, so number of powers is down but variety in powers is up - way up - because nobody could afford it all. A full price point investment on a power seems to have made people very conscious of that power - to the point where entire concepts are being wrapped around powers that deserve a concept but previously everyone took with -2 or more just in case it ever came up. The power armor brick's attacks and defenses are undeniably of a higher quality than the 'what the heck can I apply to bare skin' standard mutant brick but in most situations (non-exotic ones like armor piercing or penetrating) they stand equal - with similar base defense numbers and attributes. The power armor brick didn't find himself with enough points to float extra stun, endurance, con, body in comparison due to limitations freeing up a hundred points to do so. The magic focus blaster did indeed basically replace a cosmic pool for Blast powers with a +1 variable advantage blast - but since my changes don't affect active costs for purposes of calculating END and such it's very pricey to use (so half is being used as 0 end). It's powerful - very, very powerful - but once against with the non-reducable base points being the limiting factor it's comparable in output to the blaster who is only using -1/2 limitation on their multipower pool with a few blasts in it. One hole that that thankfully nobody exploited was 'NND', though - a base 60 point 12d6 NND definitely has an incredible advantage over a 12d6 vs conventional defenses. Perhaps not over a 12d6 armor piercing autofire attack for the same +1 advantage level but still.

Oh, he had every choice - it's probably just the first time self-awareness has entered the picture. The message is loud and clear, though - despite controlling both House and Senate he has no real power to push forward anything of his own that even a few sensible people disagree with. Checks and balances are working - all he can really do is make the US look like fools on the international stage (Bad. Enough). Quack quack, Mr President. Quack, quack.

Hmm. I like it. I've been using the rules as written, as Brian quoted, and people hold off using Aid at the start of combat (a phase 12) because they 'immediately' lose 5 points of it - the same thing with drains.

... protected their IP (especially since they were developing a show of their own)? I might be way off base but if you don't defend your copywrite and trademarks can't people sue for them to become public domain (or at least sue that they don't need to pay you to use them?) I won't be watching because it doesn't look interesting and I've finally realized that I don't need to watch something just because it's part of a setting I like (Thank you, Stargate Universe).

Even I, a somewhat killer GM who is very particular about game balance, don't have a problem if someone wants to sink so many points into luck: 1) It's cool. 2) Let's face it ... most of the time the heroes were going to handily win anyways. Why not let it be memorable (the posing supervillain is hit by a meteor) over mundane (everyone hammers him with their strongest attacks for between 1 to 3 turns until he falls over. Keep in mind it already, as written, IS a lot like taking No Conscious Control (-1 GM chooses when, full effect rolled) - but without the benefit of the points saving: As the text says "any time outrageous fortune could save them when he doesn't expect it" Overwhelmed in combat? GM's call. Completely missing the plot point? GM call. An opponent is about to get away? GM call. Put that way it's kind of a raw deal - so I'd be inclined to let them try and trigger it themselves from time to time (and maybe suggest something like charges). Otherwise Luck is just a special effect. Piano falls on villain? Blast with Luck SFX. Bomb goes off but the couch you dive behind miraculously takes the brunt of the impact? Luck SFX on defenses. Can always find a cab when you need to? Luck SFX on Running. Win every lottery you enter? Luck SFX on Wealth.

It definitely had a few great scenes and I appreciate that Storm Troopers got to hit things for a change. It definitely also had the strongest and most structured story and most organic dialogue - I just don't know if I'd see it again and again, like I have the original trilogy. I'd slate it above any of the prequels (and I didn't mind the prequels at all) and just slightly behind Force Awakens (Rogue One was as stronger technical movie, in my opinion, but Force Awakens I found more 'fun'). That's the thing about 'inbetweenquels' (I doubt I'm the first one to make that up) - you already know how it begins and ends. I don't care much about spoilers, overall - a good film or book will stand on its own (and if the entire story can be ruined by knowing the twist you didn't have a story - you had a neat idea that you padded with thin writing in either direction) - but with Rogue One I didn't really get invested at any stage: trailers, release, or post-release - I really enjoyed it, truly, but don't care if I ever see it again and didn't really feel like I was missing anything having not. Having seen it I still don't - but it was very good film and I'm glad to have. I felt the same way about the Hobbit series - one movie should have been enough, so one movie is all I bothered watching: I knew the story, after all, so... if I see it someday, fine. If not, oh well. How It Should Have Ended called it, though ... if you've seen the film you'll know who says this in their parody and when "''Sup, noobs?"

Yeah, I've given serious thought to going back and picking up a basic electronic repair diploma - system administration doesn't seem as solid as it used to (especially with credentials obsolete over a decade - *I* keep current, my certifcations... not so much). But... toddlers. Mortage. Car. Elderly parents. Injured sister with two kids under five herself.

Rogue One I liked it and I'd happily see more films (or better yet a TV show) set in the Star Wars universe away from / tangent to the main story - as long as they were the *right* films. I'd watch a police procedural set on Coruscant, but don't give me the West Wing set on Naboo.

JLW is probably my least favorite DCAU film. Which means I guess skipping the Nu 52 wasn't a bad decision.