Jhamin

Durability and Agility seemed to have alot to do with the individual. If you could just upload superleap then the rest of the team wouldn't have been as interested in whether or not Neo could make the just across the street on the first try or not. A duplicate with some powers and a VPP is probably the way to go. You might also look at extra dimensional movement, leaves body behind. It is the most direct, but then you have to deal with all the powers that are limited to not work outside the Matrix. That would get messy real quick. It seemed like equipment and sensory powers couldn't be simulated, you had to bring them with you and if you lost one it was gone, so you probably want to limit the VPP to skills only. It seemed like training (ie XP) could improve your jumping and durability and that you still needed to know how to apply your uploaded skills even after you had them. Therefore, you may also want to force people to buy CSLs outside the VPP as well.

If I may wax nostalgic for a moment. Years ago, my very first escapade outside of D&D was Marvel Super Heros, which wasn't all that far. My second foray was an old superspy game called Top Secret/SI by TSR. This game simulated James Bond style gaming over Tom Clancy, but it was still a level of lethality we had never before seen in combat. Everyone made charcters and it was agreed that we would play a sample combat that would not "count". The players found themselves in a gunfight with thugs in a hotel bar. One player, who was still very much in D&D mode ran out of ammo and decided he didn't want to take a round to reload. His character was sort of a good guy mix of Odd Job and Rambo and so he pulled his knife and charged. He promptly took a shotgun to the torso and dropped. He would live, but it would take months of time to recover (no healing potions or clerics ya know). It was truely a beautyful moment as the other players looked at their sheets and contemplated the fact that that would have killed any of them. After that everyone focused on finding cover and bought up their stealth over their Karate. It was alot of fun.

Hmm. Trebuchet, ever played any Freedom Force?

I sort of assumed it was a combination of hacking the matrix (taking the appropriate skill packages out of the digital recreations of pilots and formatting them for easy upload) and copious file sharing (if one hacker team scores a good program, they distribute it to everyone from Zion.)

If that is all he can do, then you are fine. It gets messy when you start buying other powers and abilies. Also, you need to define what can hurt the character.

One of my favorite character names as played by one of my players is: Dr. Toxin He was a chemistry based gadgeteer. I always thought the name was funky, with a bit of an edge, yet still gloriously four color. Everybody called him DT for short.

I would think that about the only way something like this would ever float was if they did a series of superhero gaming clix. Silver Age Sentinals, Mutants and Masterminds, Champions, Aberrent (if it's still alive) and so on in a mixed run. I suspect that would be a licencing nightmare on the part of Wizkids though. I mean, DOJ doesn't even own full rights to many of their 4th edition characters.

I'm not an artist either, but my Girlfriend just graduated from the College of Visual Arts on Summit in St. Paul, and a mutual friend still goes there, so there are other schools. Not that there are any good and cheap ones.

Although, not to beat you up too much, I also think the PSI charcters should have been in another book. Either in an expanded entry in CKC, or in their own supplament like in 4th Ed.

A valid point, but I think the utopian angle was a definate choice. It was just how Hero decided to do it. This is their "bright and shiny" superhero city, later on they will release their "urban abyss". You can't be all things to all people without reducing how effectively you do any of it. In Metropolis there just aren't any Arkham Asylums. The two just clash. Batmanesce "gritty" gaming has a long association with Hudson in Hero Games and I think they would have angered alot of people by trying to change it. I for one run a game where the Kingpin would be really out of place, and am glad I don't have to edit him out of Millenium city. Anyway, Hudson and the Harbinger are old favorites of Steve's, so I doubt they are going anywhere.

Re: My Millenium City feedback... That is probably because Hudson City from Dark Champions is supposed to stand in for Gotham. (And Fells Point stands in for Bludhaven). Hudson was extensivly covered in 4th Ed Dark Champs products, I suspect we will see alot of it when 5th Edition Dark Champs comes out.

Hero system is VERY easy to munchkin. Steve Long has stated that his design philosopy in 5th edition was to provide rules that allowed you to do as much as possible without telling you what you can and can't do. That is wonderful when you need to do something outlandish, but causes real problems if your players are trying to create a combat machine rather than a character. There is nothing in the system to stop them, they have to stop themselves. This isn't meant to be an accusation, it is very common for people to take a while to adjust to the idea that Hero allows them to make the character they want. Most systems ask you to make the best character you can, and I for one didn't even realize I had been trained into that mode of thinking. I think this has to do with Hero's roots. The first book to actually be called "Hero System" was a 4th Edition product. Champions was the 1st game in the series and was all about superheroes. It did it very well and later products were released with similar rules that covered other genres. They were all alot alike but weren't realy compatable. 4th Edition worked very hard to establish a common set of rules that worked for any genre. The consensus was that it succeeded, but the rules were released with a picture of a superbattle on the front and 1/5 of the book was devoted to superhero gaming. Given the popularity of the various genres in 3rd edition it only made sense to package it that way but it didn't help the perception that Hero was only for supers. Most of the old timers on these boards got into Hero by playing Superheroes. Many of us still primarily play heroes because it is the most familiar. Many fans were happy to see that FREd still featured supers in the art, but not overly so. It makes it alot easier to convince new players that you can do other things. 20+ years after the game was introduced, many people still believe that Hero=Champions=Superheroes.

You can run entirely off of combat skill levels and the basic maneuvers from FREd. There are also a couple of martial styles like boxing and dirty infighting/fisticuffs from the UMA that would appear in the weird west. And another convert is born....... What exactly do you mean by OCV/DCV "thing"? If the bad enemies that are supposed to be challanging have similar numbers it will all work out. I suspect that you are clinging overly much to lots and lots of skill levels. The total OCV and DCV of the combatants after all the modifiers are accounted for is all that matters, how you get there is unimportant. There isn't much of a difference between everyone having +10 to OCV and DC or +1 to OCV and DCV. As long and everyone has about the same scores Relative to eachother it all balances out. Heck, if somebody's dex is so high that their base OCV/DCV is equal to everyone else's including levels, that person doesn't even really need levels at all. I personally run a Superhero game where the average OCV/DCV is around 6-8 (be warned, that is about 2 points lower than the "official" average, I chose to do that intentionally) Out of my PCs: -One has a base OCV/DCV of 6 and uses lots of martial arts maneuvers. -One has a base OCV/DCV of 6 and one "all combat" skill level -One has a base OCV/DCV of 3 and 5 "all combat" skill levels -One has a base OCV/DCV of 9 and gets by on that (she ends up always hitting and being really hard to hit back, and has lower defences than average to keep it fair) Enemies are built similarly.

Of course another implacation is that there are worlds that are defined by the fact that they are never visited by anyone, that is what makes them unique. The question is, which kind are we on?

I'm not really familiar with fading suns, but if you want to stop high velocity weapons, you have a couple options. Your plan with the forcefields will certanly work, but I might buy them with the limit "not vs. low velocity attacks" That way it works if they shoot you but not if they stab you. If you want it to protect you from the worst of the damage but still take some, you can buy 75% damage reduction, also "not vs. low velocity attacks". I might also build in some bonuses to DCV that only affects melee, to reflect that you need more skill to hit an opponent in a shield. Holding actions is fine, but if everyone has to do it all the time it gets repetitive. Increasing the DCV of the wearer means you need a more skilled attacker to compensate. That has the same effect, but still allows you alot of variety in your actions.

That writeup is pretty much an old-school Star Trek (Kirk & Spock) phaser with the serial numbers filed off. It isn't so much that it is rare as it is one end of the equipment spectrum. Just a clarification: Star Hero is a genre book. It covers the entire Sci-Fi Genre. Alot of the weapons are not meant to work together, they are intended as examples of what you might find in a Sci-Fi game. You are supposed to pick and choose what gear appears in your game. If you are playing a game that works alot like the Alien movies, a Star Trek Phaser is not avalible anywhere at any price. They just don't exist. And if you are in a Star Trek like universe then every starship officer carries one. They are very common. If you have a world like that then other things change. Phasers are so powerful most people don't bother with armor since if you get hit it won't help you anyway. (notice the 6d6RKA is bought as a No Normal Defence vs. force fields. If you have a force field it bounces off, if you don't you take full damage with no protection, pretty much how it used to work on the old Star Trek) Correct. If it is a "normal attack" blaster. Weapons like these don't pack much of a punch. For a point of comparason, a normal martial artist using a powerful attack maneuver can do 6d6 without much trouble even without enhancement. The 15PD/15ED armor is really meant to protect you from kiling attack damage. You can only apply your resistant defenses against the body damage from a killing attack. If you have resistant defenses, you can apply the total of your normal and resistant defense against the stun, if you don't, you have no protection at all. A 2d6 RKA is the same point cost as a 6d6 EB blaster, and does a similar amount of damage on average. The difference is that if an unarmored opponent gets hit with the EB his ED will help protect him from both the body and the stun. If he gets hit with the 2d6 RKA he has no protection from either one. You may be thinking "but the 15 PD/15 Ed armor protects me from both pretty effectivly". You are correct. A 6d6 Eb and a 2d6 RKA both weigh in at 30 active points, that is pretty mediocre. 15PD/15Ed armor weighs in at 45 active points, that is pretty strong. One of the basic rules of thumb in Hero is that your attack powers should cost alot more than your defences. In most superhero games the rule of thumb is that defences should have about half the active points of attacks, and just think how much damage bounces off most superheroes. If you want your games to be lethal then your defences need to have less than half the active points of your attacks. That 15/15 armor is meant to be military grade heavy armor. Military grade heavy weapons in star hero inflict damage in the range of a 3d6 armor piercing autofire attack.

At the time of the 1st novel, there were scattered but established settlements all over the northern hemisphere of the planet. You are thinking of the capital city which was built inside a natural geological formation call "the shield wall" which was a ring of mountains high enough to block sandstorms completely. It was the capital, but by no means the only large settlement. The southern hemisphere was indeed one vast desert with few "safe zones" to build cities in. The southern waste was considered uninhabitable due to Worm activity and was rarely even visited by spice miners. The fact that the native Fremen nomads wandered freely through the southern hemisphere and had large settlements there was a shock to the powers that be. Conventional thinking was that if you did too much damage to the northern settlements in an attack you run the risk of not having anywhere safe when the next sandstorm hit or a worm wandered by. There was also mention of a ban on Atomics in warfare that was enforced by the Noble houses. I got the impression that if you violated that agreement you would invite the wrath of all the Nobles everywhere. Thus no nukes. Even the Harkonen attack that wiped out House Atredes was seen as an unbelievable move because the cost of transporting that many troops ate up decades worth of profit from the spice trade. Atredes defences were built up with the assumption that nobody would ever invest that much in an attack that might fail. They didn't count on the emperor loaning his elite troops to house Harkonen, or being betrayed by one of their own. WIthout both the implication was they might have withstood the attack. The universe of Dune wasn't short on weapons of mass destruction, but there were such technological and balance of power issues to deal with that most combat occured on the level of shielded, knife-weilding platoons. The scary thing about Paul, and later Lato II was that they had enough precognitian that they could weigh the pros and cons of tipping the balance of power in ways that were unavalible to anybody else.

Turned out I was remembering it wrongly. In the first novel, when House Harkonnen was blitzing house Atredes, Duncan Idaho picks up Paul and Jessica out in the open desert after they escape the Harkonnens. A massive blast is seen and Paul (shocked) asks Duncan if he used the family Atomics. Dunan replys that no, he just noticed that their enemies were making liberal, almost flagrent use of Lasguns. As they were retreating from their fortifications anyway, he set up a shield running on automatic in a place he knew they attack later. Duncan mentions something to the effect that if the Harkonens dont have strong lasgun discipline they deserve what they get.

I think everyone knows about that as a concept. You even get the idea it may happen on other worlds, but not on Dune. One of the things about the books is that alot of the action in the early novels takes place on Dune (hence the name of the series) and the one thing you absolutely do not want to do is nuke the planet to glass. The entire economy of the known universe would collapse if somebody destroyed all the spice, and the spice can only be mined on Dune. In fact, at a couple of points power is siezed from the old regime just because a rebel is willing to do that and the old guard steps down rather than see it happen.

For what it's worth, when we went to 5th Edition in my game I had everyone universally lower their Dex by 6. In our case, the lowest Dex char went from 21 to 15. Most were much higher. Similar issues, but it sounds like we didn't have quite the escalation you do. We did it just because half of us didn't care and the other half felt better about bricks with 12 dex and mutants with 17 rather than the (current) standards of a 10 Int being enough for anybody who'se character isnt' that smart, but if you aren't that nimble you still need to rival the Dex scores of professional atheletes just to land a hit every now and then. It sounds like you have issues in the same area. Basically if you lower everyone's dex a preset amount it will make the folks on the lower end of the scale alot more vulnerable to normals. Alot. If that is a problem, don't do it. If you want your old PCs to remain untouchable you will need to either give them alot of CSLs or just accept that they will get hit from time to time and find other ways to make them invincible.

I'm just curious (not trying to flame), what is the appeal of Neutral Ground anyway? It all just seemed so illogical to me. (You will all bow down before the Destroyer, but until then lets play some chess)

Fair enough. I used that standard for years. I personally feel that the 8 stat normal thing does go along way toward fixing some of the problems with granularity at the low end of the system though. It solves alot of the "I'm mainly an investigator, but I still want to be in good shape so I have to spend 15 of by 25+25 points just to not be as wimpy as normal people" issues. YMMV

It originally didn't stand for anything, the web community was just being cute. The old 4th edition book was called "the BBB" for "the big blue book". When it was revealed that 5th was going to be black and even bigger, a discussion broke out as to what the abbreviation should be. Steve Long (trying to be wry) said that we could call it Fred for all he cared as long as we bought it. The name stuck. It has been retroactivly decided that it should stand for "Fifth Rules Edition" but dont let anyone tell you that the abbreviation started there:) This should probably be in the FAQ.

OK. Avoiding "I knew a guy" arguments (and that includes "I rode along") it seems like one of our problems is defining basics. According to FREd, there are six basic categories of "normal". If we throw out Elderly and Small child we are left with 4. Check page 224. Now we have to decide is the Average police officer Averate, noteworthy, skilled, or competent? I doubt they are as good as a competent normal, that is the high end of the scale and beat cops often are not as skilled as their superiors or members of special units (who were once beat cops but have since been promoted) We will set aside what category they will be in, and just say for arguments sake that they are in a category higher that the average beat cop. That leaves Competent, Noteworthy, and Skilled. The question now becomes, what does a police officer need to have. In Hero terms. Now we have to ask some questions. Stats - In Hero "normal guy" has 8s in everthing. Is a Cop as good as normal guy? Or better? If he is better he is either noteworthy or Skilled. Which one? Hard to say, we aren't given any criteria which is which. What kind of stats does a fireman have? Is he stronger than a Police officer? How about a soldier in a combat unit? They are normals too. Where does everyone fit? Moving on: A weapon Fam? Probably. CSLs with weapons? Harder to say. They certanly do practice, but you probably need to practice alot to even get the weapon Fam in the first place. How much do you need to get CSLs? Does the average hobbyist at the range have them? Does the average military recruit out of basic? Does the average infantry soldier? Before we can answer the question for the Police, we need to figure this out. A CSL in all combat? Harder even to guess than the ranged CSL. If the average Cop has one, does that mean that the average martial arts student does as well? They probably spend more time on the mat if they practice three times a week. On the other hand the police probably need to worry about it more than the rest of us, so shouldn't that count for something? Or do they? How often does the average Police Officer get into a fight anyway? How does this all relate to the total # of points it takes to be a Police Officer? If we acknowledge that it is a skilled profession that takes a 2 or 4 year degree to qualify for then does that put it on the same footing as other 2 or 4 year degree level jobs? How many points is a Police Officer compared to a Junior Engineer? Or a Pharmicists assistant?

As for the "how do I deal with it" thing, Star Trek characters were supposed to be avoiding combat with natives and less advanced species. That whole prime directive deal. Against equal opponents, you shoot them and they die. Not that different from alot of other genres only you have the option of them dropping unconscious rather than outright killing them. You note that there aren't any gunfights in old school star trek. It is just over too quick. And the budget didn't allow for it. Food for thought: In the show, this is how it actually seemed to work in the Origional Series series and eary Next Gen. While there is no in world logic for it, it seems like somewhere along the line phasers aquired the the " full damage only vs. rocks" limit because the metal barrels everybody hid behind seemed to be able to stop the blasts and Later Next Gen and onward showed people surviving multiple phaser hits. I suspect the powers that be decided that instakill weapons shortcircuted too many stories which is kind of what you are worried about, so they just stopped being instakill. This allows everybody to have neat FX gunfights, regardless of the logic.