Jhamin

The 5th edition is IMHO is far superior to the 4th edition version. THe statistics of the monsters are far more accurate and many of them have lots of optional powers in their writeups to reflect different versions of the monster in different genres.

The 4th edition version was among my least favorite 4th editon books. the 5th edition has become one of the most commonly used in my current game.

I'm with D-Man on this one (Dex Levels)

When we did a "Chrisis" type event during the conversion to FREd I lowered the dex ratings of everyone in the campaign by 5-8 across the board. Players were allowed to spend the points on other powers, but often spent it buying back all the powers that got more expensive in the conversion.

Street thugs now have dex's of 8-12, Viper & Until have dex's of 12-14, and the players are in the 16-22 range. One player is all the way back at 10. OCV/DCY dropped pretty evenly across the board and now a dex of 21 is actually superhuman and remarked upon as such. A Navy Seal would have a 14 or so, and one with a name might go higher. Nick Fury no longer needs handwaving to haing with Captain America.

Sure, it isnt' as point efficient, but then again it isn't that point efficient to buy less than 40 str or to ever spend anything on figured characteristics either. Lots of folks do both because it just feels right.

If you put a limit on the reserve, you have the option of putting it on each of the slots. Or not. As the individual powes warrent.

Do the individual slots likely have lots of inherent problems faced by the real world equivalents of the effects they are duplicating? If so I would probably put the limit on all the slots.

Originally posted by phydaux

The PCs will be sent to destory all the fire engines in the city. (While they do this, the master mind will torch several rival companies' buildings;) )

Legend has it that in ancent Rome (which didn't have a public fire department) one of it's most powerful senators made his fortune by organizing a private fire department.

Apparently they would wait until someone's house was on fire, then show up and demand an exorbinant price before they would put the fire out.

Obidiah Stane from Iron Man has stayed Dead, although his Iron Monger armor has turned up from time to time.

Do we count one-off villians? How many appearences do they need before they count? Otherwise, Stratosfire from one of the Old IM annuals has also stayed dead.

According to the info they released on their Email Discussion List, Stellar Cartographer is being worked on but still has some polishing to do before it is ready for prime time.

It sounds like the time until the release date can be measured in months, not weeks, but also not in years. Profantasy is pretty good about actually releasing their products somewhat on time, and their customer service is among the best I have ever encountered. (When I was having an odd problem they actually tracked down the programmer to answer a question).

Short answer, if you need a program in the next month or so Steller Cartographer won't be there for you. If you need it a year from now it may well be ready.

Re: In need of your help and guidance: Power Question

Originally posted by Tin_Foil

STR Pill: +20 STR (20 Active Points); 4 charges (-1), IAF (-1/2), Gestures (-1/4) (Modifiers affect Base Characteristics)

 

I'm using Hero Designer 1.47 and it ends up costing me a whopping -6 points. The point cost changes, for some reason, whenever I raise/lower my actual Strength cost on the Characteristics screen. If I unclick the "Add Modifiers to Base Characterestics" check box, it ends up costing 7 points.

By leaving "Modifiers affect base characteristics" checked, your are applying all the limits to your regular strength score as well as the boosed score. Since you get a certain amount of Str for "free" Herodesigner compensates by pushing the cost of this power into the negatives. THis checkbox is mainly intended for characters that have Hardened defences or advanages on their Strength.

According to my math, 7 points is what this power ought to cost, so unchecking the "add modifers" box is working the way it ought to.

Originally posted by Tin_Foil

Another question/problem I'm having is I'd like the effects to last for 20 mins, but to my understanding, when you use a "charge" of something, it only last until the end of the phase. Any help/insight in this matter would be greatly appreachated.

You need a Continuing Charge. FREd P.182, last paragraph in the right column.

Kim Possible

Player: Disney Afternoon Heroine

Total Character Cost: 190

Disadvantage Points: 75

Base Points: 100

Experience Required: 15

Total Experience Available: 0

Experience Unspent: 0

Now you got me thinking about it.

I whipped up this writeup of her:

Kim is actually pretty straightforeward for a heroic level character. She clocked in at around 190, so she should probably be 100+75+some XP. It would have been alot cheaper, but I made her pay for the Kimmunicator & her grapple gun, seeing as she and Ron seem to be the only ones who have access to them.

I set her Str and Con at 10 and left her Speed at 3. She is certanly at heroic norms, but doesn't seem all that much stronger or tougher than anyone else on the cheerleading squad, and I just cant justify setting them any higher. Her speed is good, but not blinding, so one point above normal seemed appropriate. I think a case can be made for 4, but she ran out of points as it was. Her real ability is in her dex and cheerleader martial arts. If she uses them along with her HTH skills she ought to be pretty hard to hit while she hops around the evil lair taunting her hunteds.

Followers are typically built on the same number of points as other characters and can have disadvangates. If they can have disadvantages, then in my book they can have DNPCs.

IMHO Ron is actually a moderatly capable character with some heavy disadvantages. Things like "underconfident", "Unluck" and "x1 1/2 effect from PRE attacks. (I thought about x2, but he has much more spine than Penfold from Dangermouse, the posterboy for "x2 from Pre attacks). If Kim is a 75+75 character in a 50 point world, I would put Ron at about 50+50

When Ron gets a makeover and becomes confident in one episode he actually ends up almost as cool Kim. In another episode he outright defeats Gill the Lakemonster on his own with no special power ups and armed only with his skills, his AK: Camp Wannaweep, and Rufus.

Even when he is in full dufus mode his dodge skill is pretty amazing. Considering that he is a normal, non powered guy with no martial arts (as far as we have seen) he still manages to duck and weave his way through Draken's minions, Monkey Ninja hordes, Exploding golfball fusalades, and everything else. Sure, he screams in terror the whole time, but he is still in one piece. A buddy of mine is of the opinion that the whole reason Kim brings Ron along is that he gives the bad guys another target to shoot at while only occasionally needing rescue.

I think Kim is best simulated as a high dex martial artist with combat luck. Other than that she has lots of general superspy type skills and has Wade to do most of the heavy lifting with research and various specialized knowledges.

The Kimmunicator is a VPP with limited control. Wade actually controls it, all Kim can do is ask him to make it do things for her. If you watch, most of her miraculous "do anything" abilites actually boil down to having Wade pull something out of his bag of tricks.

Kim has (as mentioned) lots and lots (and lots!) of contacts

She is of course Hunted by Draken. I would give her a second "rouges gallery" hunted on a lower roll. She has a raft of social limitations reflecting that she is fifteen and can't do alot of "grownup" things like drive a car. She also has a rival on the cheerleading squad and a watched by her prinicpal.

I would buy Ron as a Follower, with Rufus as his DNPC. Although Kim watches out for them both, Ron seems to spend alot more of his time rescuing Rufus than Kim does.

One of the often accepted Hero Rules of Thumb is that it is generally not a good idea to use one power to duplicate the game function of another.

I would make him buy Mind Scan. If he is concerned about the activation, have him buy it continuous and always on. He could even give it the limit "only to sense, -1" to prevent others from using it to attack him. He can't attack them through it either, but it's safer.

Originally posted by Jeff

...and Seeker's never brooded a day in his life.

Well, according to The Mutant File he did brood for a little while. But his version of brooding was wearing leathers & cruising the highways of America kicking outlaw biker butt.

Originally posted by TheEmerged

/humor on

 

And imagine, she's just COM 13. HERO *really* needs to start taking that stat more seriously...

 

/humor off

A good friend of mine rates artists by how well they draw normal, or even ugly people.

All the comic book folx draw supermodels, how many paunches have you seen that look right?

The main thing I have been trying to sort out in a conversion is how to handle the MDC/SDC stuff from the Palladium System? I for one would not want to keep the "insta-kill" effect you got when an SDC target takes MDC, but the idea that humans are squishy and need armor to stand up to supernatural threats is central to the game. You would need some way to simulate that.

Anyone have any ideas?

I agree with your assessment that RIFTS ought to be heroic.

I would say that you should abandon the "any character" concept. This is one of the main problems with the origional game. Young Dragons, Mind Masters, Rouge Scholars, and Full Conversion Borg are on vasty diffrent power scales. The beauty of Hero is that we can finally point balance these people. Decide which bunch you want in your PC group.

If you are thinking of:

Rouge Scholars & Wilderness Scouts, go with 50+50

Headhunters & Psi Stalkers, 75+75

MOM Crazies & Juicers, 100+100

Full Conversion Borg & Dragons, 150+100 or even 200+150

Just set the point level & let poeple make whatever characters they can at that point level. IMHO one of the overlooked but very interesting parts of this world is the vast diparity in power levels. A bunch of Coalition Grunts with some powerarmor backup may well find themselves up against elder elementals or even mechanoid swarms. Only their equipment and tactics keep them alive. If you set the points too high in a heroic level game you will quickly loose that.

Of course, I always wanted to run a PRIMUS game with 150 point PC agent teams vs. supervillians so YMMV.

I would agree that equipment should be free, but only if it is commonly avalible. Much is made of how rare Glitter Boy armor is, so it should probably cost points (but I might be persuaded to let a charater buy it as a vehicle). The same thing would apply to strange items taken from other dimensions, assuming they went beyond the capabilities of standard RIFTS gear.

We have an out-and-out Angel trapped in mortal form as a PC in my game.

She is very evasive when people ask her about questions of dogma, but reassures everyone that there is someone watching.

Originally posted by zornwil

How do you intend to keep this balanced in game-play so you're not too powerful? Just curious.

I'm curious as well.

This could be read as a really elaborate way to justify total immunity to everything by saying you are only immune to it just as it hits you.

Adaptive defences, the whole Borg/Sentinal power to become immune to attacks as you grow defences against what hurt you in the past is one thing, defences against everything before it hits you is something else.

This might be time to port an advantage over from another power.

Try using the Variable Effect advantage from Page 75 of FREd. I would throw this on top of the whole Energy-Manipulation power. Depending on how you would buy it you could either switch from energy to matter, or at a higher advangate level you could affect both.

It will be expensive, but you want it to affect pretty much everything, so that should cost.

Players in my games have been:

-Nightclub Singer

-Bartender

-Drummer in a band

-Absent Minded Professor

-European Diplomat

Originally posted by Steve Long

We're vaguely considering having the UNTIL cover being the boys-in-blue-and-white recapturing Ripper. Take that, VIPER!

I was hoping that PRIMUS could bring him in on the cover of Shelly's new book, but it sounds like that one is a ways off, and I guess you can't have him rampaging around all that time.

-Mechanon, more crazy yet diabolical schemes than you can shake a transistor at. And lots and lots of killer robots.

-The Destruction Company from High Tech Enemies , They looked and fought like a team, and you could throw them into almost any adventure as hired muscle

-Bullet (with my GI-Joeisnpired version of the Raiders), in my game, he was the conssumate professional. Mechassasin, Laser, and the rest were just eating the scraps from his table. His team was rivaled only by....

-Viper Force 2 from Viper All the comradare of a hero team, all the greed of Viper.

-The Ultimates - 5th Edition Lots of imaginative powers, lots of Psych Lims, and the IQs to do some serious damage with their plots.

- Hell Rider from Creatures of the Night, Tragic, yet beyond redemption

I would probably do the tracking device as a form of Clarsentience, only to know location of tracking device (-1), IAF (-1/2), must be physically placed (-1)

Note that having a bunch gizmoes like these practically begs for a "utility belt" multipower with 20-40 active points. Each slot being a different gadget you can pull out when you need it.

Originally posted by Klytus

Maps? It has MAPS??

 

Damn! Now I need to buy it.

Back when this product was first announced, Steve made a point that it was supposed to be half adventure, half map book.

Having read the playtest manuscript, I thought the thing came off as a bunch of maps with an adventure written around them.

And that is a good thing. Long after you finish the adventure you Characters will still end up duking it out with other baddies in the Park, at the Mall, or in an evil subterrenian lair.

I am running a 6 year old campaign with characters running from 425-450 points.

We started at 250. By the time FREd came out we were up to the four hundred teens. Bumping up the average to 350 still left our characters well above average.