Jump to content

Thia Halmades

HERO Member
  • Posts

    8,650
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    3

Everything posted by Thia Halmades

  1. Re: New Combatant. Which phase does he start? I think that g-a really hit this; it's a two step process. 1) What phases does the new combatant act on, and when did he enter the fight? (in this instance, six). So if he's showing up on 6, we'll assume (barring a move-through) he took a half-phase to open the door. If he has a weapon ready, I would allow a roll (INT) to 'size up' the situation quickly. Or if he has the Talent Combat Ready or similar. 2) Then, when is it dramatically appropriate? In most cases, I would force a delay to his next available phase (most likely 8 or 9) before acting in the combat itself. And. Sadly. I actually agree with Sean.
  2. Re: Your Definition Of A Super Hero? I think that was always the point of that element of Watchmen; "Here's my Superman. Watch him fall."
  3. Re: Your Definition Of A Super Hero? First, what bigbywolfe said. Second, this is trolling of the worst sort and I regret not being a moderator.
  4. Re: The brown note I dunno; depends on what you're simulating, doesn't it? Are you rendering them non-functional for a brief time (Mind Control)? Are you squicking them and everyone near them out? (Change Enviornment?) Are you, in fact, changing the color of their pants? (Transform?) I wouldn't build it at all. But if I were to design something similar, I'd settle on a specific result I wanted first, then go backwards.
  5. Re: My danger sense is tingling Well, don't forget, Danger Sense is a roll. I'd approach this differently: Distinctive Features: Plain Dealing Villain; whenever the Plain Dealing Villain engages in an action that would alert Danger Sense or similar Detect abilities, those gain a +X (+5, which is considered the height of high end bonuses) to detect. In all cases, it is clear that the character intends that no good come from their actions. This aura of ill will is detectable by commonly used senses (i.e., everyone knows who the Plain Dealing Villain is when they walk into the room, and those people with Danger Sense, etc., get a specific bonus if the PVD engages in an action, because they're all waiting for it anyway).
  6. Re: How to Link powers in this case So you've got this guy and he does the thing and because of that he gets the stuff. Cool! That's one of the easier questions I've gotten today. You have a few ways to do this. First, yep, you can take OIHID and the rest of the hummina hummina so only in his 'heroic state' does he have his powers. Niffo. I would pick the most expensive power of the group, and call that the 'base,' and then link everything else to it, with the stipulation "can only be used when main power is used at full value." This puts OIHID as the requirement for the core, then Linked as the requirement for the rest of the mess. Or. Go with Multiform. *shrug* Saves a lot of aggravation, especially if he intends to branch out (today I'm a Bear, tomorrow a Dragon, next week, a KAIJU!)
  7. Re: Almost There! My dude is AWESOME.
  8. Re: Contacts Sorry, only just saw the question. In answer to said question, my ruling would be as follows: The Contact has access to the Human Resources department; that's not an organization to me. That's actually a really well defined contact, who may have 'access to important institutions,' per page 80 of 5ER. Another Team would be a single contact, who has contacts of their own (their own team members), and Access to Important Institutions. That's still not a full organization. Purchasing the organization element removes a single individual, and it becomes the group itself. So you can call into the White House (Contact: Capitol Hill) and collect information as necessary, rather than trying to contact "The President" or "Senator Clinton" or "my girlfriend, the speech writer." Does that answer the question?
  9. Re: Free equipment side discussion. I'm not promoting one over the other; I'm saying there's more than one way to knit a sweater.
  10. Re: How to present combat to new players It is very similar, actually; THAC0 was "To Hit Armor Class 0," and began at '20,' with the assumption that most 0th to 1st level creatures had an AC of 10-7 or so. It's why Magic Missile was so important in 2nd Edition; because Wizards dropped THAC0 every... 3 levels or so. Rogues & Priests had different progressions (Priests were 2 pts/3 levels or some such, and rogues were 1/2). Only Fighters went up at a straight 1:1. Tragically, the only times we improved our chances to hit were when we either had an enchantment or an enchanted weapon. Of, how happy was I when Feats were introduced? *sniff*
  11. Re: How to present combat to new players If you're just talking about laying out whether or not someone can hit, you may want to do this: Have everyone, individually, get out a 7 square line, and on that line, write down the following: 8 9 10 11 12 13 14; eleven is in the middle, because it's the most common roll, then the next 3 up and 3 down. Below the 11, each player writes THEIR OWN OCV. Assuming an OCV of 6, they then add one, or deduct one. This way, they can look down at the chart and know (fairly instantly, or with some additional math if they roll real well) what DCV they hit. It's a visualization of the same mechanic we use in our game; 11 means you hit a DCV equal to your OCV. Each adjustment up or down from 11 increases or decreases that, followed by any additional modifiers. It's a really long way to say, "Okay guys, draw a chart, and I'll walk you through it from there. After you draw the chart, we'll take a few minutes to do some test rolls, and include some modifiers just to be on the safe side (such as Dodge, Block, and so on)." Hope that helps.
  12. Re: Free equipment side discussion. Let's not forget, and this builds off of something (I think!) Diamond Spear was saying, and it's this: You can go ahead and nerf down the weapons in SuperHeroic games. Go ahead. I think we've committed this sort of bizarre error, that for the sake of convenience we're going with the assumption that a .50 cal Desert Eagle should always deal 2 1/2d6 (or 2d6+1, whichever) regardless. Those rules are GREAT; they can certainly make the weapons consistent from game to game. But they can also stop making sense in certain genres. One way is to say "the supers take less damage." Another is to "Golden Age" the weapons themselves. Instead of giving the Supers crazy defenses, nerf the guns.
  13. Re: Free equipment side discussion. Well, actually, I was the first one to suggest the whole thing be done as Damage Reduction 50%, Only v. Normal/Real Weapons. That was me. And that was dismissed at the time in favor of something that seemed to me, and may be IMO, overly complicating a simple issue. For me, this was always a genre specific example, which I feel given the nature of what we're discussing, still holds. The issue isn't that HERO isn't simulating this well without this rule; it's that comics are hard to simulate, no matter what. I've seen Big Blue shrug off tank shells, I've seen him get blown through buildings. I've most assuredly seen Hulk ignore just about every kind of damage imaginable, and I've seen the X-Men get plastered and be afraid of Real Weapons; you don't see them get shot terribly often because not all of them have Resistant Defense. The reason I say this isn't going to work for what I do is just that; when I do supers, I do Iron Age (or at best, Bronze). This is very Golden Age to me, and would have a very specific application. I don't think it's a bad idea; I just don't think it's a question for the rules, but for the genre. The other bit I don't get is why there's such a hooplah over it; I think Diamond Spear had a good point, which is why I've stood behind the DR 50% concept; anything else becomes a case of excessive bookkeeping. The whole "a super picks it up" vs. "a normal picks it up" to me rests on genre conventions, and not rules manipulation.
  14. Re: Free equipment side discussion. Um... First, the PC would buy the Tank as a Vehicle (1:5) and be good to go. But there are many, many ways to simulate that, including OIHID (while in a tank) and, yes, OIF: Tank of Opportunity. With the right concept? I'd allow it. I allow OIF: Weapon of Opportunity. A tank's not so different.
  15. Re: Buying the Aid Power I'm with Prestidigitator; I think there may be a misunderstanding here. You can certainly purchase PRE, Only to Make PRE Attacks, or Only to Resist, but if the stat goes up, it goes up. It must specifically be noted otherwise if it is limited in some way.
  16. Re: Expanding Normal Characteristic Maxima To be Devil's Advocate for a moment... I like NCM; I always have. I like knowing what the 'guideline' is to differentiate from human capability and super/inhuman capability. That said, based on what you've described, Katherine, I would go with something more akin to 'mere mortal' than 'NCM' and raise the cost from 20 to 25, especially if they're in a Supers campaign.
  17. Re: Horror Hero: Handling SANity To build on the Lightsaber Messiah's point: It looks very much like you're building from the Ravenloft model, and then blending in some elements of COC. As an adjunctive rule, the character can take Transform Damage as they fail checks. Then, since we're talking about gaining insanities rather than being a proper 'transform,' it's BOECV; it's an EGO transform instead of a BODY transform. Brian clutched his Mogen David tightly, and the points of the star bit into the flesh of his palm. He could no longer tell if it was sweat or blood that made them so damp. With his back against the cold concrete basement wall, he took another muscle straining look around the corner. It was still there. Still making breathing, still chewing. He heard a sharp crack, a grunt of exertion and then the sound of meat tearing from meat and hot blood sprayed across his face. He tried to suppress his scream of horror... The player makes a Horror check, as the scene is quite grisly; Brian, the PC, is a Competent Normal for our purposes, but a professional public speaker; he has 12 PRE and 11 EGO. Normally, the base attack would be made by the monster (PRE 15, or 3d6) with the environment (dark & unknown; 1d6) the action being taken (eating a... well we don't know, but it's nasty; 1d6) and then the sudden physical reaction (the sound of the snap & spray of blood; 2d6). That's a 7d PRE attack against Brian's 12. My thought was this, depending on how complicated you want to get: 7d6 averages to about 24. There's no way he can survive that; it doubled his PRE score. My thought, then, was to count the Normal Damage BODY as part of the roll; that then counts as Transform damage. This is tracked over time; it isn't an instant effect, but it may need to be checked so if someone is getting beaten down they aren't a gibbering fool at the end of the game (although, you know, that could happen). But it provides a solid mechanic that you can see at the time it happens, and then we (collectively) can put in things that 'heal' the Transform damage. If they beat a bunch of mooks and shut The Gate of Ebille, that's a Transform Heal. Making a clutch roll, that's a Transform Heal. I envision it being persistent, but not so constant that you become incapable of doing anything else. It's reserved for critical points (getting beat by double your score, etc.).
  18. Re: Defence Stacking Well my rules go along with something very similar to that: 1) Only the best in class holds; so if you're hit with 2 5/5 Force Fields, you still only get 5/5 in defense, because really, that's all that was paid for. No one spent the points on 10/10, so side-stepping it that way seems like high cheatery to me. 2) Only the best 'power' in a given set of special effects holds, barring special circumstances. Combat Luck is bought as Armor; so is Plate Mail. If you're wearing Plate Mail, then your Combat Luck doesn't apply (although by RAW, it does). 3) The same spell/effect doesn't stack or overwrite; they're both running until they stop; so if you have a 5/5 force field that goes for five minutes, and someone else casts a 5/5 force field that runs for 1 hour, they both run. If someone throws 'dispel force field' or similar, I give the player the benefit of the doubt, and the weaker spell goes first (the five minute version). If it were a 5/5 and a 7/7, I'd have to check the rules, but the assumption is the more powerful (in that particular instance) goes first. But that's the gist. I skipped Force Wall because those are 'all or nothing' defenses; it either stops an attack or it gets busted, so putting multiple force walls in a row doesn't change anything in terms of the rules.
  19. Re: Free equipment side discussion. This happens to me sometimes. I start in on a thread, I read the OP, I get a concept of what we're talking about, I post. Cool. "Here's what I heard, here's the general solution I would use." Somewhere in there when I noted it 'was summarily dismissed' it's because, to my mind, this has now been grossly overcomplicated. Said another way, it almost seems that there's some leve of 'd20ization' going on here; it isn't sufficient to draft a rule governing the effect of normal weapons on supers; it seems (as Diamond Spear pointed out) that now the core concept is to figure out, on the fly, how weapon damage is applied to a target based on who fired it. Okay. So what if I'm a Super in disguise? Can I choose to make my damage 'only normal' damage? All I see at this point is a lot of back and forth and very little progress in terms of the discussion itself. So someone explain to me again: What, exactly, are you trying to accomplish?
  20. Re: Defence Stacking According to Steve when I asked the same question (and I apologize I have no link) there are no rules for, or against, Stacking in HERO RAW. I have a suite of house rules that I can give you if you're curious, but you are correct: By rule, as there IS no rule, two 5/5 forcefields grant 10/10. There would be no difference if the spell was cast multiple times, other than common sense, dramatic sense, and so on.
  21. Re: Mid 70's Equipment Silverhawk, what was the status of rail technology at that point?
×
×
  • Create New...