Thia Halmades

Re: Your Definition Of A Super Hero?

Superman risks losing his humanity every time he uses his powers to take matters into his own hands. If he can stop natural disasters why can't he stop wars? famine' date=' disease, etc... . He could easily lose his human perspective if he chose to be 'Superman' all the time instead of dedicating a small portion of his time to be 'Clark Kent' instead. If he ever truly loses his humanity he will become Super[u']something[/u] but it won't be Superman or a superhero anymore.

I think that was always the point of that element of Watchmen; "Here's my Superman. Watch him fall."

Re: Your Definition Of A Super Hero?

Super; 1. above, beyond, or over in place or time or conceptually. 2. to a great or extreme degree. 3. extra good or large of its kind. 4. of a higher kind (i like this one).

 

Hero; 1. a person noted or admired for nobility, courage, outstanding achievements, etc... 2. Chief male character in a poem, play, story, etc...

 

Well I was just looking to see what others thought a "hero" might be. I just always thought that it was more heroic to risk everything in helping others. I see that my scale was off. I've just been thinking too small. A cop risking his life stopping a speeding drug dealer while wearing a bullet proof vest. Is obviously not as heroic as Wolverine going toe to toe with the Hulk in the Canadian wilderness. Silly me.

First, what bigbywolfe said. Second, this is trolling of the worst sort and I regret not being a moderator.

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.

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).

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!)

Re: Almost There!

My dude is AWESOME.

Re: Free equipment side discussion.

Of course' date=' then Thug with a .50 cal. Desert Eagle can't kill a hostage with 8 BODY in one shot without GM fiat.[/quote']

 

And for Golden Age, maybe you want that. Technically, you can't do it with a standard round as it is -- you can reduce them to negative BODY, sure, but you can't kill 'em. We can go in circles like this all day long; the question will always come back to this:

 

1) What are you really trying to simulate, and

 

2) What's the easiest, rules compliant way to do what you want?

 

One of the ideas thrown around already was "hey, let's change damage based on who picks it up," which is no more or less confounding than giving all supers a campaign advantage vs. normal weapons, or reducing the general damage of the weapons themselves based on the setting. I'm surprised this was met with such resistance; that says something.

 

This. Is. HERO.

 

Who cares what the book says in regards to a specific build? This is a house rule and will remain a house rule, by everything I can see. I'm simply offering a different kind of solution. Most people in Golden Age comics who get shot are only wounded in the shoulder anyway. Surprising then that everyone is so up in arms over what is, effectively, just a different way of resolving a self-imposed problem.

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?

Re: Defence Stacking

Actually' date=' the interaction of Armor Piercing with 'stacked' defenses only makes a difference if part of those defenses are also Hardened. If they are not Hardened then the defenses are just totaled together and then halved as normal per the Armor Piercing Rules.[/quote']

 

Correct, because the rules themselves don't account for the differentiation among 'source.' So two 5/5 Force Fields do in fact add to the PCs current total defense (in this case, 10/10). So if hit with an AP attack, those defenses are halved.

 

You raise a good point; if one of those defenses has Hardened, then I would rule that only that defense resists; then it becomes 7/7. but that starts becoming headache inducing.

Re: Free equipment side discussion.

Changing the weapons has two weaknesses-

1:Mook on Mook action ends up being needlessly prolonged

2:The buy in; I can set a few guidelines for scale in 2 minutes or spend a few hours reworking the weapons charts.

I'm not promoting one over the other; I'm saying there's more than one way to knit a sweater.

Re: How to present combat to new players

Holy crap' date=' that's so ridiculously easy I might start doing that to my own characters. Why has this never occurred to me?[/quote']

 

Because we tend to overcomplicate things by our very nature. That's what I'm here for.

Re: How to present combat to new players

You will want to keep a combat chart with everyone's OCV and DCV in general, even for experienced players.

 

I know a lot of GMs like to keep their NPC stats secret, but would you be comfortable saying "OK - roll to hit a DCV of 6, that'll be a 10 or less..." whenever you get to that part of the combat? Assuming your mental arithmetic is fast enough, the extra dozen words shouldn't slow things down much. After a few combats, they should get used to the idea that a higher target DCV makes for a more difficult (lower) to hit roll. Once that sinks in, you can bring up the point that the attackers OCV also changes the difficulty of the roll.

 

Alternately, isn't the concept somewhat similar to D&D's THAC0? (I'm not 100% sure because I am not a D&D player). Could you use that as a launching point?

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*

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.

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.

Re: Free equipment side discussion.

I know how you feel.

 

My original intention was to offer the idea that has basically boiled down to "Real X (-1/4) equipment does half damage to supers as a campaign ground rule". This was offered up as an attempt to deal with the problem of free equipment being over powered in a superhero campaign.

 

Reading it again in the first post I spent way to much time describing the system I am working on for getting a certain feel in a campaign and not enough on the smaller idea I wanted to convey.

 

The conversation followed the original post and has spent way more time talking about the full system and not as much about free equipment.

 

At this point several people, Hugh and Sean at least, have suggested roughly equivalent systems using Damage Reduction. So the smaller concept is well

covered mechanically. The question still remains is this smaller idea useful for people in their campaigns?

 

And the conversation about the full system rages on.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.).

Re: Defence Stacking

I think you'd get full value of both (10' date=' instead of 5). However, a limitation could be added (Does not stack -1).[/quote']

 

That limitation is on my version of Combat Luck; however, this is very much Heroic v SuperHeroic, and since I run Heroic level games, it necessitated the creation of this particular ruleset.

Re: Defence Stacking

Happy New Yia, Thia!

 

Thanks you for the prompt and helpful reply. I feel this would be a good area to be addressed in 6th edition: it can really make a huge difference. My personal preference would generally be that only the most powerful effect works and that additional uses either have no real effect or (at most) add say +1 to the defensive total (a bit like additional applications of entangle).

 

Rep when I'm able

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.

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?

Re: Defence Stacking

There may be an official answer to this somewhere, and if so I would appreciate and rep a signpost to it.

 

The question is this: how do granted defences stack?

 

Now I know that if you have a character who has bought force field and armour they stack for defensive purposes What I'm really interested in would be the situation where you have, for example, two mages in your party who can both grant (UBO) a 5/5 force field. If they both hit you with that spell does the protection stack to give you a 10/10 force field? Is it any different if one mage casts the spell on you twice?

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.

Re: Mid 70's Equipment

Silverhawk, what was the status of rail technology at that point?

Re: How i can make The Ravager cows away

Well, to retype my note from last night that appears to have been devoured by the Internet Great Old Ones...

 

Another option I'm somewhat fond of, especially for Paladin or Holy Warrior "Turning" abilities (as opposed to the classic D&D Cleric model) is to reduce the bonus PRE down to a more campaign reasonable level, but add the "Does Knockback" advantage.

 

Gives a different feel, and adds a noticeable in play effect that gives it a nice flavor without having to go all the way up to "destroys the Undead" PRE effect levels... which in and of itself might be the problem. Normal PRE attack bonuses are pretty cheap, because no matter how epic you roll, the game effects are somewhat limited in scope. Adding a damaging level to PRE attacks without also adding some sort of Advantage doesn't quite sit right.

[takes a long, thoughtful pause]

Okay. Write that up, and give me an ingame example of how you envision that working in game, preferably in a vaguely narrative, but phase-by-phase format so I can 'see' precisely what you mean please, bro.

I think I want to adopt that, but I want to see what you mean, then add in my thoughts on what else we can do next.