Erkenfresh

I'm a long time player of Eve and I think in my next Star Hero campaign I may want to emulate some of it's aspects since they work well and give more variety to combat. The optional rule for ablative defenses in 5E is that "and hit with maximum BODY damage that would exceed the defense knocks 5 points off the defense". Perfect, let's see how this might work out analogous to Eve now. In Eve, your ship has three layers to get through before your ship explodes in a ball of fire (and you get a mail stating how much insurance money you get, which is usually insulting and makes you wonder why you bothered buying insurance in the first place). First, you have shields which are tough versus physical damage types and weak against energy types. After shields you go into armor which swaps those defenses, weak versus physical and strong versus energy. Finally you get into the hull which has no defense whatsoever. This is a generalization as you can add modules to your ship to adjust resistances. You could have a much tougher hull if you so wanted for example. Force fields are 1 points per defense. This means a single shot would reduce 5 points of defense on your force field. There's several options you could go with here but I figured if you made shields have a 3:2 PD to ED ratio, then a shot would remove 3 PD/2 ED. You could also go with a 4:1 ratio, or perhaps even a 5:0 ratio, if you wanted shots to remove an even number of points. An alternative solution is, pick whatever PD/ED you want for the shields then have a shot remove 5 points from the type of damage it normally does. So an energy shot would remove 5 ED a physical shot would remove 5 PD. In my opinion, the former idea would work best at a 3:2 ratio. Now let's lay this out in HERO terms: Shields: Force Field (30 PD/20 ED), Ablative (optional rule) Armor: Force Field (20 PD/30 ED), Ablative (optional rule) Hull (just stats from the vehicle): 100 BODY, 0 DEF How would this play out exactly? The first few shots will likely not penetrate the shields but instead reduce their defenses. Now shots will go on into the armor, however not enough so that the "maximum BODY damage would exceed the defense" of the armor, at least for a while longer. Eventually, shots will be penetrating both and reducing both defenses with the shields going away completely first. Then the same with the armor finally going poof while some hull damage gets taken. Finally, you're into just the hull, taking maximum damage. Ouch! What are your thoughts on this idea? The coolness factor here is that various ships can slant towards shields instead of armor or vice versa. Players will need to think more tactically about using their plasma cannons versus their gauss guns. Furthermore, you may have "modules" to boost your shields or armor (I won't spoil that just now for you non-Eve players).

Re: Compound Power with limitations If it was my game, I'd want the side effect to last a day or so. Perhaps a Drain on STR, CON, STUN, or END with delayed return rate of 6 hours. You're basically getting 80 active points of stuff for 20 points. One turn is usually enough to get you through a whole fight, but that may depend on the speed of your characters. So to get a significant boost, I think having the rest of the day with some penalties sounds reasonable.

Re: Requesting help re: lost y cool combat chart. Cool idea, I'm gonna have to try this out.

Re: Laminated Color 24x30" Modern Genre Hex Mats (A Kickstarter) Someone on there asked about 1" grids and the owner said he could do that as well, in case that sways anyone.

Re: Usable By Others with a VPP to simulate a wish spell One charge that never recovers AND a side effect to lose CPs? You're already spending 27 on it so this seems redundant. Otherwise, I think it's a valid build.

Re: LET'S HACK: Terran Empire I think it's quite reasonable that Dr. D would still be around. With all that science, surely he's got a cure for aging. However, given battleships with RKA 12d6's, he wouldn't be nearly as tough as in the Champions timeframe. He'd have to be even more careful to manipulate things from behind the scenes. Or perhaps he's souped up his armored suit with futuristic gadgets, making him nigh invinicible. I have been thinking about the space combat in TE quite a bit today. EVE online has some real awesome space combat mechanics that would translate well into HERO. The idea is that each ship class has it's own function that it excels at. Frigates are best at destroying other frigates, but also for tackling. Battleships are great at taking and dealing out damage. And while battleships have incredible range, they have difficulty hitting those tiny frigates once they get close, making a swarm of frigates a threat for any battleship.

Re: Let's talk about movement "The biggest problem, to me, with movement is that you can have a SPD 12 character with a Run 12m (144m per Turn, or a little over 43kmph), or a SPD 6 character with Run 24 (same distance) but the second character does more damage if they pull a move through, even though they are both moving at identical velocity." Ahh but perhaps you could work this in. Let's say after the first segment you do nothing but move. Then in segment two, you are simply continuing that same move when you whack someone. If so, you really should get a move through at 24m instead of just 12m.

Re: Remote directed Weapons & Stretching If your opponent was deathly allergic to custard pies then you could hold them.

Re: LET'S HACK: Terran Empire Maybe I need to go back and re-read Spacer's Toolkit. I bought the book and used very little from it the first time around. Hmm, all this talk about Terran Empires makes me want to run another campaign in this setting.

Re: LET'S HACK: Terran Empire It's been YEARS since I ran a campaign in this setting, so I'm a bit rusty on it. It seemed to me that maybe the starships weren't detailed very well. Maybe they were relying on The Ultimate Vehicle to fill in those gaps. The starship combats we did have ended up being a bit dull. They were more of a slugfest where positioning seemed to have no tactical advantage (or disadvantage). Looking back, more of a Robotech-ish fighter combat would have been much more exciting. Imagine controlling the big gun on the carrier, which of course would be too inaccurate to shoot down fighters but would pack a wallup against an enemy carrier! I also felt like the hand weapons were a bit too lethal. It seems like you had RKA autofires where the average roll would deal significant damage against average defenses. Couple that with the targetting computer and you could toast most anyone instantly. I thought it would have been cool to encourage more melee combat, similar to Dune.

Re: Remote directed Weapons & Stretching What about an HKA with Focus and the Ranged advantage? Tada!

Re: Adding HKA... First off, you could remove the "Only Aid Self" limit on the spell. This way a wizard could sharpen other people's blades. The skill on the other hand only applies to the wielder himself, plus it requires that dreaded dex roll which he could fail about half the time mid combat. Also, in some settings, spell costs are divided to make them more balanced and affordable for that setting. Turakian Age for example divides real cost by 3. So the spell above would cost a mere 5 points.

Re: How would you Build Spidey's Web Shooters? Don't forget about the rule of "+5 points to double the number of items". Spidey does use TWO web shooters so simply double the multipower with that +5 adder. This along with the above suggestions of charges with clips should be plenty of "ammo".

Re: Move Though/ Move By Attack Nope, it should all add up together in a single KA. Otherwise the additional velocity dice would just be soaked up by armor and practically useless. The rules concerning how a character takes damage in a move through/move by instead apply to the weapon being used. If it's enough to surpass the DEF of the weapon then it takes BODY damage. If the total damage done exceeds the BODY then the weapon breaks but could be repaired. Beyond double the BODY, the weapon shatters beyond repair. Good luck!

Re: Battle of Detroit Haha that was well done. It wasn't quite what I had pictured in my mind, but it was darn close.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill Wow, I wrote this thread and took a day off from it because I was so busy yesterday. It's really exploded! Kind of like the Death Star or Radium. 6 month old babies on the death star? I really doubt there were. In this particular scenario, the fight took place in the Ultimate's base. The party had thwarted some of their shenanigans (non-violent thefts) and were ready to bring them in for justice. They had a lead on where their plane had last been spotted, about ten miles away from Millenium City. So, they tracked down the base and broke in. What I did not forsee was that it would come down to the last PC, the one who was least human, ending the fight. Like I said before though, I like being flexible. I don't plan super far out in advance so whether the Ultimates continued to exist or not didn't bother me. The rest of the hero team knows nothing about the murders. They were all unconcious when it happened. When they awoke, there was a loud noise as Radium's corpse was overloading. All they knew was they had to get out fast. Any cameras that might have caught footage in the base were destroyed by the explosion (unless of course they fed to an off-site recording device... hmm). Truthfully, I don't want the law coming down hard on them. In my opinion, that doesn't make for a fun or interesting game. "So guys, this week we roleplay week eight of your trial..." What would be much more interesting is one or two unexpected survivors putting a new team together to hunt down the party and get some revenge. They could do so under a different guise even. Make the party suspicious, but not able to just go after them immediately. This is a much more fun type of consequence of the player's harsh actions. In the end, yes, you may think heroes murdering the villains should be forbidden. I get that totally. But, I'm willing to be a bit more flexible and see how this plays out. As long as the players are having fun, it's working out in my opinion.

I had my heroes face up against the Ultimates in my last gaming session. One of the heroes is essentially a robot with no emotion, and more importantly, no code vs killing. The fight drug out a while and all the players were KO'd except the robot. He manages to KO the last Ultimate. He's really sick of these guys and decides to just finish them all off right there. Now I could say "no I won't let you" but I really don't mind letting my players have some freedom. It's within his character after all, maybe not very heroic, but whatever. Then I remember a blurb about Radium, a member of the Ultimates that's basically a nuclear bomb. When he dies, he explodes like a mini-nuke! The team comes out of their KO just in time to run to their vehicle and escape before getting disintegrated! It was just funny to me that the only character they've ever killed was a ticking time bomb. Maybe some of the Ultimates survived, I especially liked Binder and his glue gun... He'll certainly have a vendetta now.

Re: Under the Agony Star: a sword and planet campaign

Re: how to group characteristics for the puropse of adjsutment powers? Drifter, I highly advise against such a power for a starting group. You will get bogged down with so much math in increasing all of your stats by what would effectively be about 2d6 points (after the huge advantage multiplier). Instead, focus the Aid on one particular stat. STR works well because it's only 1 point, so it's real easy to keep track of. Good luck!

Re: Disarming a two-handed weapon (5thr) I think when you get to the STR vs STR roll, anyone who is holding the weapon with two hands should get a +5 STR to their roll (or alternatively -5 STR for one-handed weapons). That would be a fair house rule in my opinion.

Re: Under the Agony Star: a sword and planet campaign Aww man these are some awesome ideas too. Imagine there's cloaked ships watching the planet, just outside the reach of it's inhabitants, and they are all unaware of their presence. How would this be reflected in gameplay? Perhaps one security ship's cloaking device failed temporarily and was spotted in a telescope. Legends have built up about what it means and worked their way into the belief system...

Re: Hero-D&D system merge? In all honesty, the marking mechanic from D&D really makes no sense. I understand it's there for game balance and for the many reasons you give above. It's there to create the need for a defender class. That's all good and dandy, but speaking in real life terms I don't get it. Unless you somehow involve magic in the equation, me challenging a foe and him attacking someone else should give no penalties to the attacker. HERO let's you do so much tactically that such a marking system isn't really needed. Your defender could perform Move Throughs to push enemies away from softer allies. He could grab a foe to immobilize them without as much worry for the grabber retaliating since he can take a hit. In narrow passages, he could simply block the path as a human shield while his buddies pound on the foes from range. He could charge into a group of foes to draw their attention while his allies jump from ambush. And there are optional rules for performing a block or diving for cover into the attack to protect an adjacent ally. In my mind, these maneuvers make a lot more sense than marking.

Re: Under the Agony Star: a sword and planet campaign I had a spark of inspiration today just thinking about this cool campaign idea. There could be several reasons the rest of the universe hasn't returned to the planet. But, an interesting one would be quarantine. Everyone else believes the planet has some infestation and nobody would dare to land there, lest they too become part of the quarantine. Or... perhaps this "plague" is simply a rumor created by someone in power. For some reason, that someone has something they want exclusive control over the planet to do. That devious someone is also pulling a lot of strings with the people down on the surface. Maybe one of his most trusted lieutenants is a powerful ruler on the planet. How much would this matter to the players? Let's say the plague is real and they finally get off the planet to go to a better planet. Suddenly their ship is blasted to bits to prevent the spread of disease (you can try but you can't win!). Or in the case the plague isn't real and someone is manipulating affairs on the planet, it could become the plot seed for many adventures, even if the players never understand the true intent behind them. Or will they eventually figure it out? Will they willingly work for the evil mastermind or find a way to rebel against him? Hmm, so many plot seeds here my brain can't keep up...

Re: Hero-D&D system merge? Holding an action to attack an opponent trying to walk past you is Hero's version of the AoO. You can even use the attack to grab the opponent if you so desired. It also makes more sense than D&D where you could make your full move and still make AoO's.

Re: Hero-D&D system merge? My friends were also stubborn about leaving D&D/Pathfinder, but after a few gaming sessions with Hero, they really enjoy it quite a bit. If you're the GM, you pick the gaming system right? Just tell your friends to give it a fair chance. Here's some other things I would suggest doing: 1. Read the hero rules through and through (maybe you already did this). You don't need to memorize every last detail but you should know how to look up a certain rule quickly. 2. Ask your friends what concept they have in mind for their characters. Make the characters yourself and let them tweak the characters later. If they don't seem to like a certain power or skill they have, let them sell it back and spend the XP elsewhere (once they've figured out more about how the system works). 3. Keep some of the more complicated hero rules out of the game and introduce them slowly. Leave out things like abort, hit locations, knockback, etc for the first night. At the second session, then explain how aborts work. Third session, explain hit locations. And so on. When you feed your players the rules slowly, they are more likely to get a grasp on them instead of flooding them with information. Make these first few sessions super easy with plenty of role playing opportunity. The role playing will help them get familiar with the campaign world. And keeping it easy prevents a total party wipe just because they don't know how to Dodge. Before you know it, you'll have a fun campaign in a new game system that your players just might enjoy. I can't guarantee success but I can almost certainly guarantee this. Your players will have more fun playing the Hero rules as written than some Frankenstein cobbled together Hero/D&D hybrid.