Erkenfresh

Re: Duplication Hijinks I'm not sure "conservation of mass" is really a limitation. Is this an impoverished area with severe lack of food? How often do you expect to run into the problem of "not enough food to create a dupe"? If it's modern America, he could just stop by White Gastle and pickup a case of 30. As you stated above, it actually becomes an advantage for being able to pick a new size/density for the duplicate, but you're already paying points for those as separate powers.

Re: How do GMs out there handle late arrivals You guys have made some pretty reasonable suggestions thus far. I mean lopping off body parts is definitely within the realm of HERO after all. How many disad points for "no legs" (ooo and sell off running for more!) I like to really punish the newcomers though. I mean, why should they be at the same power level as the players who have been loyal and faithful the whole time? Highest player may have around 500 points so the new guy gets to make a normal. 25 + 25 AND they have to pay for equipment with points. Sounds about right.

Re: Terraforming That's a pretty cool article. It seems the only hope we have is to find planets that are just like Earth already. Or we could create human variants like in Terran Empire.

Re: How do you feel about House Rules? I feel like the rules are grounded with much forethought and plenty of playtesting over the years. But that doesn't mean the RAW can cover the playstyle of every HERO gaming group forever. House rules are great to account for such differences.

Re: Bows, Brace, and DCV Doesn't brace also require a free hand or at least something to brace against?

Re: Wish List: Other Licensed Content The fallout tabletop game (in its current form) is not really conducive to tactics. It takes very few levels to get to where you can just hit people every time. At that point, it's just a big slugfest. Think D&D minus magic and you're just about there. I think a HERO adaptation would breathe a lot of life into the setting though.

Re: Tiered Equipment or "How to fit Arrows and Antimarter in 60-90 AP" Why not just have every tier up add 3 DC and 3 or 4 DEF? It's a lot simpler I would think.

Re: Resource Pools in Star Hero

Re: Resource Pools in Star Hero Weapon Familiarity: Catapults. You just never know when you might need one in the 24th century.

Re: Resource Pools in Star Hero Also, you could fatten up the WF table some I suppose. It could have a dependency tree. But this might be more confusing than just using the resource pools. Do you require both resource pools AND weapon familiarities generally?

Re: Resource Pools in Star Hero Cool that sounds exactly like my reasoning Chris. Do you go with a 60 point starting pool with 1 character point per 5 resource points? I'm thinking more like a 40 point start with 1 cp per 3 resource points would be more balanced. Any thoughts?

Re: Mystical tests of character? Of course once the player has made the choice of self-sacrifice, the rescue shows up early and saves them both.

Re: Resource Pools in Star Hero Yes, that's a very good point too. Once the players get their hands on a 3d6 autofire 5 weapon, they'll be looking for a 3 1/2d6 and so on. I guess this is what I love about running superheroic campaigns. No loot. They find unique interesting things that are plot points, but you don't have to worry about exactly how much cash they have. I think RPP is a way to bring some of that into a heroic campaign as well. Dark Champions mentions starting people with a 60 point pool and it costs 1 point for each extra 5 points in the pool. This seems a little bit too lenient in my opinion, as 60 points in Star Hero gets you pretty much the best stuff right off. Any thoughts on where to set the starting value and cost?

Re: Resource Pools in Star Hero It's always easy to run into a scenario where you want the opponents to have equipment to make a fight challenging, but you don't want the players to just loot their stuff for future use. I realize you can limit ammo or have the weapon stolen or destroyed, but that can get contrived too. Using resource pools, you can have that heavy weapons guy who spent a bunch of points just to get good equipment versus someone taking a different path and going for high STR and melee combat. Truthfully, why bother paying points for psionic "choking" attack when a rifle can do more damage without costing any points at all? Is it just for those times when you simply can't get your hands on any weaponry?

I'm planning on starting a new Star Hero campaign soon and I'm trying to think through some of the details. Previously, one oddity was how cheap personal equipment was compared to ship stuff. You could easily afford the best hand weaponry that was commonly available well before any type of ship upgrade. That is, however, quite realistic as well. In my prior campaign, there was a bit of sameness amongst the part members as well since they could all pick up that same autofire laser rifle and fire away with something like a 1-point WF skill. I'd like to give players a reason to choose things like martial arts melee styles or psionic powers. I think resource pools (as they were called in 5ed) would be the way to go. This way if you spend points on a Telekenesis power, you might not spend as much on resource points and thus have to stick with a crummy laser pistol instead of the uber rifle. I'm curious if anyone has used this in their Star Hero campaigns or if this sort of thing is really only useful in Dark Champions where the concept was originally invented? Has it worked out well or did it just add more drudgery for your players?

Re: Real life cybernetics! It was: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2169028/Japanese-inventor-creates-robot-feel-fear--pair-mechanical-buttocks-clench-spank-them.html

Re: Real life cybernetics! Yipee! I'm ready to slice my hands off now for the upgrade.

Re: Planetary Value?

Re: Stop Hits If you just want to stop the incoming attack, it's simply a Block. If you want to hit first, it's a readied action. If you want to deal damage and prevent the incoming attack, then this may sound odd but perhaps Missile Reflection with the No Ranged limitation on it would suffice.

Re: Ablative Defenses and EVE Well, I had an idea that you could give each ship a limited number of slots for "modules". I don't see much point in introducing power grid and CPU requirements, but perhaps a Active Point limit makes sense. Or simply limit it to a number like 3 modules. Then each player could upgrade his own ship as he sees fit. Want more damage? Fit some gyrostabilizers on there. More speed, an afterburner. And so on. I think it could add a lot of variety to the starship combat in HERO but without going too overboard on all the detail Eve includes.

Re: Ablative Defenses and EVE Andy, that's a great way of looking at it with far less bookkeeping. I had been leaning that way before taking a break from planning this campaign. For a shield tanked ship you may have this: [TABLE=width: 100%] [TR] [TD=align: center]54[/TD] [TD=align: left]Shields: (Total: 60 Active Cost, 54 Real Cost) +30 BODY (Real Cost: 30) plus Physical Damage Reduction, Resistant, 50% (30 Active Points); Only to reduce damage dealt to shield's BODY (-1/4) (Real Cost: 24)[/TD] [TD=align: center]0[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: center]39[/TD] [TD=align: left]Armor: (Total: 45 Active Cost, 39 Real Cost) +15 BODY (Real Cost: 15) plus Energy Damage Reduction, Resistant, 50% (30 Active Points); Only to reduce damage dealt to armor's BODY (-1/4) (Real Cost: 24)[/TD] [TD=align: center]0[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: center]57[/TD] [TD=align: left]Shield Booster: Healing BODY 4d6, Decreased Re-use Duration (1 Turn; +1 1/2) (100 Active Points); Self Only (-1/2), Only to repair shields (-1/4)[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] Perhaps the linked disadvantage would make more sense on the compound powers. It really only changes the real cost which doesn't much matter though since nobody is paying character points for their ships. Hull of course is just the base body of the vehicle, so nothing special there. By the way, real men hull tank!

Re: Nighthawk's Rogue's Gallery I thought he was hunted by Mechanon in one book or another. I'm not sure if I made that up or not.

Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy Was there ever a supplement that showed basic PCs at the start of a campaign tailored for that setting? For example, wouldn't it be nice to have like 8 characters at Standard Heroic level in the Turakian Age setting of various archetypes or jobs? Perhaps each character could have an addendum saying at a higher campaign level with 50 more points, simply add the following stuff. Perhaps another section could detail options to make the character more skill based or more combat based or whatever. I understand every GM and every player is different but having a baseline like this would be extremely helpful. Does it already exist?

Re: Ablative Defenses and EVE True, ablative is not a drain but it's very similar. The only difference we're worried about here is the fade condition. Can you use Aid to restore DEX that's been drained completely to 0? Of course! I'd think it would work similar in this case too.

Re: Ablative Defenses and EVE I suppose the problem becomes that it's just a huge slugfest. But the base TE rules are already that minus any kind of variety in defensive structures. Why? Perhaps one ship has a huge shield array but a small reserve to keep it recharged while another ship flips those roles. It adds variety. I suppose you could just build the power as Armor instead of a Force Field. Ablative wears away 5 CP worth of defense per shot. With Armor, that would mean 3.333 which is a major PITA versus Force Fields being exactly 5. I suppose you could handwave and say armor degrades at 3 defense points per shot. How you get the points back? I was considering this. What if you had an Aid force field power with the "only to restore to original values" limitation? I know the rules say "ablative doesn't come back until the next day!!!!1" but hey it's my campaign and I think this use of the power makes sense. Two of the main ways to tank your ships in Eve is armor and shield repairing which is simply self-healing your armor or shields during combat. It's a pretty integral part of the game. Then again, the only effect this has on HERO would be dragging a fight out for a very long time.