Erkenfresh

Re: How do you build Drives? As much as I joke about this power, I think it might be a good alternative. Wormhole Generator: Extra-Dimensional Movement (Single Dimension, Any Location corresponding to current physical location), x2,048 Increased Weight (77 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Hour, -3), Increased Endurance Cost (x5 END; -2), OIF Bulky (-1), Only within 1 lightyear of current position (-1/4)

Re: Making a Swarm Effective Make sure your swarms have Desolid (affected by area of effects). This simulates the fact that they are difficult to stop without blasting an entire area with fire or poison gas or what have you. Your swarm could be poisonous (Drain CON/STR/etc. with gradual effect and a return rate of 5 per hour), or diseased (Drain CON/STR/etc. with a large delayed effect and a slow return rate like 5 per day). Others have made good recommendations too.

Re: Is this Indirect? I could be mistaken but I thought the +1/4 version has to be in a straight line too. Let's say your gun has an X-Ray scope on it so you can see targets through obstacles. You know where to fire the gun, but if there's a wall in the way, the attack would just hit the wall since you picked the gun as the origin of the attack. +1/2 allows for alternate origins which I think would fit better. When you fire the gun, the attack "originates" on the other side of the wall. The special effect is that it found a way to curve around the wall. Of course, if this is just a heroic campaign, I wouldn't worry too much about costing out this equipment as long as the players understand how it works.

Re: Disadvantage that becomes an advantage? Umm yeah. I really don't think this will come up much. If the mage casting Cause Pain on his ally doesn't work AND he wants to hurt him for some reason, he'll just start casting fireballs. I just thought it was an interesting situation. You guys are taking it very seriously.

Re: Disadvantage that becomes an advantage? OK, so if this happens just one time over the course of a three year campaign, then one of these should have occurred for the attack to not work: 1. Morphine Man (who can't feel pain) buys Mental Defense with "Only against attacks that just deal pain (-2)" 2. King Dentist (who causes pain) puts a limitation on his Ego Attack of "Not against people who don't feel pain (-1/4)" To me, this is a bit ludicrous. Either Morphine Man is paying for something that only gets used once, or King Dentist is getting a cost break for something that only limits him once. Now, I would have to agree that if this situation occurs over several sessions, then points need to get paid or deducted somewhere. After using the spell several times, maybe those pain nerve endings get awakened for a short time or some such thing. And again, I'm not saying that Morphine Man takes no STUN. At some point his brain is gonna say "OMG, this is too much I gotta shut down" and MM will be passed out on the floor. If a single hit causes Stunning his brain will say "OMG, this is too much, I feel dizzy". I'm definitely not removing Stunning and Knockout just because he's got a disad to feel no pain. I think we are all in agreement on that point. By the way, I'm the GM. I'm just asking what you guys would do. I'd rather be prepared in case it ever comes up, but I really don't think it ever will.

Re: Disadvantage that becomes an advantage? I can think of plenty of other examples where a disad can become an advantage, at least outside of combat context. Example: Captain Confident is Overconfident and Arrogant. When faced with foes that are generally mroe powerful than him, he charges forward to victory anyway whereas most heroes would retreat in fear. Captain Confident has garnered an advantage out of his disadvantages. It's also worth mentioning that, Character A NORMALLY TAKES STUN DAMAGE. As Robyn pointed out, there's a difference between a weapon causing STUN damage which in turn causes pain and a spell that causes pain which in turn causes STUN damage. My case is the latter, and it has nothing to do with how weapons and every other spell will affect the character. With everyone touting to "reason from effect", I figured I'd see more people on the "sure he's immune" side of the fence. But, I can also see the "you should pay points for that" argument. I'm figuring this will never happen, so making Character A pay points for it seems a bit silly. Do you make your bricks pay for an EB when they throw a car at the enemy once every ten sessions? Probably not, you just let them do it because it makes sense to the campaign. Thanks for everybody's input though. I didn't know this would be such a hot topic.

Re: Disadvantage that becomes an advantage? Yes, that's part of the limitation too, the player doesn't know how much STUN and BODY he has left. This disadvantage provides no protection to attacks, the victim simply doesn't know he's been cut or bashed as severely as he has. The campaign in question is a Fantasy Hero campaign. One of my players has a "Cause Pain" spell. A friend of mine wants to play someone delusional enough to think he's a god and I figured "feels no pain" would make sense for such a guy. I doubt the player will ever have to Cause Pain the quasi-god but you never know.

Character A has a disadvantage "Physical Limitation: Doesn't Feel Pain". This is a disad because he's less likely to retreat from a losing fight, doesn't know his ankle is sprained and injures it more with further walking, etc. Character B has a power called "Cause Pain" which is just an Ego Attack. Now, Character B uses his Cause Pain power on Character A. I'm inclined to say that Character B takes absolutely no damage. Since he can't feel pain, the spell wouldn't hurt his STUN. But, this reasoning makes a disadvantage become an advantage. What does HERO-forum-trolls-united think?

Re: Desintegrator Weapons And for Feign Death, Extra-Dimensional Movement to a dimension where you're temporarily dead.

Re: Desintegrator Weapons I got a new idea for this. Just use Extra-Dimensional movement to go to a dimension where the target is disintegrated.

Re: Arabian Hero I was gonna recommend checking out Magic: The Gathering's set called Arabian Nights. But, it kinda sucks.

Re: Sweeping the floor Have the big guy target random hexes around him to attack. If he doesn't have AoE on his strength then tooooo bad and good luck.

Re: Desintegrator Weapons Drain BODY 20d6. Should take most people but the very toughest to -BODY in a single shot. Zappppp!

Re: Armor, Weapon, and Shield Durability/Breakability? Whew, that's a mouthful. I think Cosmo was right. Just have stuff break when you think it's appropriate. Just do a judgment call based on how long they've been using it or how much damage it's helped to prevent. PS: Cosmo was also right about UO. Maces destroyed armor faster but couldn't be poisoned like bladed weapons.

Re: Treating CV like levels The best way to model Power Attack and Expertise is just 3-point CSLs. When you choose to increase OCV, DCV, and damage, you aren't increasing the others (or at least not as much). So, it's already built in, no need to bother with fancy lims.

Re: The Ultimate Skill (micro review) I still haven't read too much but I noticed how big the Criminology and Lockpicking sections are. Great job Steve!

Re: Starting Combat Here's what I generally do: 1. Have the party roll Stealth or Concealment, whichever is more appropriate, and take the roll who makes it by the least or fails. This becomes the penalty for everyone else to notice them (-0 if there are any failures). 2. Have everyone else who might notice the party roll PER rolls. Whoever makes it by the most will detect the party first. 3. Take the amount he made it by and that becomes the max range modifier for hearing the approaching party. So, if he makes the roll by 2, he can hear/see the party from only 4" away. If he makes it by 4, then 8", and so on. In this case, "combat" starts at Segment 12 when the party is this many inches away. 4. If he failed the roll, the party gets surprise, assuming they don't walk in plain sight. They all go first regardless of DEX order in Segment 12. This makes the most sense and seems to work pretty well for me. Since my players are bad at stealth, they haven't surprised anyone yet, but it's good to know about how much space there is when combat starts. In the wolf case, if he's certain to attack and he's already picked up on the scent of the person, you should consider starting combat time right away, when his PER roll exceeds the range penalties. If the wolf isn't hungry, you might consider holding off for a while and let the player get the first strike.

Re: Armor, Weapon, and Shield Durability/Breakability? Ahh yes, the old UO "macing weapon" bonus where you can break their armor quicker. Sounds interesting but might be a bit of paper work. Besides, everybody will just carry an extra sword around if it gets to be a hassle. I guess if you want to be that realistic, then go for it.

Re: I have 4th Ed, do I need 5th immediately? I should mention that the Hero Beastiary is quite useful even though I found MMM to be not so useful.

Re: Ley lines and leyline nexus Ley lines are real?

Re: An Immaterial Question

Re: The use of accents/voices in your game I've always used Scottish for dwarves. I really don't know where I picked that up but it seems a common choice. Generally, I like to have different characters have unique sounding voices, especially if they are in the same room. This makes conversations with NPCs much less confusing. Sometimes I do a bad job of this and the players continually have to ask me who was just talking.

Re: I have 4th Ed, do I need 5th immediately? I've barely skimmed MMM. Currently, my campaign setting doesn't have any monsters, though that's soon changing. I'm easing in with monstrous versions of common animals, and then I might have big nasty things like dragons and such later on. You could easily run a FH campaign without any monsters or just make up the ones you need. IMO, MMM should have been at least double it's size to be worth the price.

Re: The Ultimate Skill (micro review) It looks like a very useful book. And, Steve wrote "You've got skillz!" on the front page which makes it an even better book.

Re: Space Wizards: Bows & Firearms I'd suggest sticking with Fantasy style weapons in space. Dune (the book, not the stupid movie) did an excellent job of making this work. For the readers of this post who haven't read the book, every warrior had a force field belt. The belt deflects all high velocity projectiles. You're bullet-proof. But, it doesn't deflect slower moving objects such as swords. The end result is everyone's running around using swords and shield belts. (Disregard the stupid movie where Duncan Idaho gets shot in the head through his force field.) The book also mentions "lasguns" which cause nuclear explosions upon contact with the force field belts. Yipes! Fortunately, nobody was suicidal enough to use lasguns in full force. So, simply put, people use ancient weapons because the latest defenses protect completely against the latest weapons. This has the nice side effect of forcing ship to ship combat to be through boarding parties instead of slinging plasma from hundreds of miles away. Your best bet is simply to use the HSEG since you've got it. It's pretty well balanced with enough variety to suit just about anyone.