Kevin Schultz

Re: Letter to yourself Jake the Troll - N/A - he's been a troll his entire life. There's nothing he'd really want to say to his past self, aside from standard teenage stuff. Icon - Ultimately, Emma can't see as her powers activating as anything but a good thing. She's saved a lot of people and is getting close to living out her Supergirl fantasy. However, the ultimate reason she thinks it good is that her manifestation crippled her mom and caused her parents to divorce. This, in turn, would be something of a breakthrough, as she would comprehend just how much she truly hates her mother. In turn, this would give her and her father something new to talk about for their councelling sessions. Shinji Miromoto - he's had his power his entire life: he's just learned how to control it since his mid-teens. He'd imbue the letter with a thumbprint of his own conciousness, thus allowing a form of time travel, along with a description to his younger self for how to activate it and integrate the memories into his younger self's conciousness. Hopefully, this will allow him to resolve a number of kharmic ties he made during that time, including inadvertantely killing a magical girl on Japanese national television. Widower - "Oh, HELL yes." He'd send a message back to himself 8 months ago, warning him not to make the stupid wish on the stupid wishing lamp.

Re: A Psionic Blade? Question - what's the justification for this power to do damage? It sounds like it would prevent someone's fate/destiny from manifesting. However, dying is pretty much the definition of one's fate. Thus, while it's a cool power, it doesn't sound like it would actually do what the game mechanics are saying it does. EDIT - I suppose it begs the question of "well, what does having a fate/destiny/future grant a character?" - the power of the blade would be to dispell/cancel/damage that. Thus, I'd say this ends up being a Surpress (Any Fate/Destiny power). EDIT II - unless you are defining your metaphysics as "anyone without a destiny automatically dies." But in that case, how does one 'heal' one's future, thus regaining BODY?

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!" I've done the following once or twice with Kathi, one of the GM's in my monthly gaming group: GM: "The enigmatic old man stands up, and mutters 'before you cross this threshold, you must answer me..." Kevin, interrupting: "Oi! Is the answer "Death"? It usually is, in these sorts of things..." GM, blinking for a moment. "Right, off y'go."

Re: My own character is too complicated for my li'l brain My personal favorite sense to be invisible to is Clairvoyance (No Fringe, Precognition only), representing the fact that the character has no fate or destiny, and thus their movements can't predicted. This is usually tied in with Invisibility to Danger Sense (future-sensing SFX only). However, it does require that a GM design scenarios that such a power would actually be useful; otherwise, it's an interesting waste of points.

Heya - this is something of a linguistic question over the nature of the word 'limitation'. Consider the following: 1. a non-mentalist character purchases +10 EGO (no OECV, -0), for 20 points. 2. Later on, the character purchases a heavily limited power in an EC that uses OECV; while the Active cost may be 40 points, the real cost ends up being only 4 points or so. Assuming that "does not add to OECV" is a -1 limitation if purchased by a mentalist, does the character's point cost go down as a consequence of the limitation now taking on that value? (10 - 4 = -6 difference). At first glance, it seems reasonable to me that once the character has a power that uses ECV, then it would actually become a 'real' limitation. But if looked at chronologically, the character is no more limited than they were before they purchased the new power. In fact, because they have a new power, the character is more versatile than before. But going down that road implies that limitations are dependent on the order in which they are purchased, which seems rather odd. Along a similar vein, it brings into question what the purpose of points are - IMO, they exist to show how roughly how much of an impact a given character has on the game. But in the above example, the character is capable of having more impact on the game due to a new power, but according to his point value he's now LESS able to impact the game, despite the fact that his capabilities have in no way dropped.

Re: Goth Yeah, when I write up 'group' DNPCs, I usually just take it as a single person, and just note that the "DNPC" can be one of several people in a given group: family, friends, neighbors, etc. While there may be multiple people a character knows in a given story or scene, only one of them will be put in danger as a plot point. EDIT - that being said, I tend to look at disadvantages and limitations as the player's way of telling me what kind of situations they want the character to encounter. As such, a -30 point disadvantage is a HUGE impact on a game; that means that 1/3 of the sessions will be centered around those people showing up and interacting with the character. I'd want to talk it over with the player, to ensure that's actually what they REALLY want to have happen.

Re: Confessions of an Online GM

Re: Goth Hm... According to the literature (FREd, pg 332)... Sounds like they're supposed to all show up at once, at least according to the last line there. Also, note that it's GM's option - if you want to roll separately for all of them, the default assumption would be to purchase them all separately.

Re: Have a Holly Jolly Security Breach The rod was a proof-of-concept; rather than be particularly useful, it was created to show that depleted neutronium could actually be made. The fact that it's a rod was merely a side effect of the construction process. And while it's fascinating to study from a physics perspective, one of the practical consequences of it is that it's incredibly heavy and neigh-indestructible, which is a useful property when you're a metahuman looking for something to smack a villain with.

Re: Goth I was under the impression that group DNPC's weren't rolled separately, but rather as a singular unit. The additional points come from the fact that a single DNPC can be saved more easily than a group can.

Re: The Uber-Blast True, true - I was thinking mainly in terms of Boss fights (or a standard spawn for a largeish group), rather than AV fights; in those, the Nova/Inferno blasts get used to take out everything but the bosses, leaving the others to handle agro while the blaster recuperates.

Re: Combining Perks/Talents and Disadvantages

Re: The Uber-Blast I guess my issue is that I try to address metagame issues in-game as much as possible. Thus, a limitation like "Only When Dramatically appropriate" would be valid, but only for a character whose powerset was specifically designed to be some sort of self-aware comic book hero of some sort.

Re: The Uber-Blast I'd be interested in seeing how this would work in an actual game. In on-line gameplay (ie, City of Heroes), it turns out that powers like this don't get held in reserve for last-ditch saves. Instead, they get used as opening moves, middle moves, AND finishing moves, as the ability to one-shot a target is more beneficial than the crash at the end. Team strategies get build up on allowing the blaster to do this as often as possible, as it's easily the best way to one-shot a minion group, or else stun-lock a powerful single target. With a haymaker, that's a 20d6 attack, and a mighty fine opening move. How many villains in the campaign can take that without being stunned? As a player, I'd be tempted to use that power 2x a round, with the "cooldown" turns being dedicated to dodging with an ally protecting me. Oh - and loosing the SPD might be problematic, as it requires a good deal of bookkeeping to handle variable SPDs in a turn.

Re: Doesn't he look familiar? In thinking about it, another way to model the "unconsciously misinterprets the Mistresses' commands is as follows: Follower (however many points): RSR (Int Check), Side Effect: failure on INT check results in misinterpreted instruction, -1/2. This represents the requirement that the character has to phrase the command carefully; a failure to do so results in room for 'interpretation', and things end up going poorly. Modifiers to the INT roll would include negatives for vague commands. But even the most well-thought commands can be misinterpreted by those who truly believe they have their mistresses' best interests at heart. "Yeah, she told me not to stop and do anything else. But I'm sure what she REALLY meant was not to stop unless it's important..."

This came up when attempting to model a "helpful" Familiar for a demonic-based PC: Follower: Familiar Hunted: Familiar (8-, Less Powerful, Minor harm, Hero easy to find) This represents the fact that the familiar is available at all times and will do what the character asks, but about 1/3 of the time it will be off doing things which it THINKS is helpful, but in fact is definitely not what the PC wants done. Can these be combined into a single advantage/disadvantage, or should the PC consider them separate entities? Obviously, "With GM Permission...", but I thought there was a discussion of it in one of the books...

Re: Doesn't he look familiar? Hm... good question - I thought there was a section in the book about "combining talents and disadvantages", but I'm not seeing it. To the Rules forum!

Re: Brainstorming European bad guys? My favorite (and only) villain duo from a short-lived hero game that I ran: The Nihilist - German existentialist with high-level energy projection powers: basically powered by negative cosmic energy. Think of the Nihilists from The Big Labowski (euro-trash German accents, constant harping about the utter meaninglessness of the universe, etc.) This is mainly an excuse to indulge in a funny accent and constant whining. Even the other villains in my game consider The Nihilist to be a putz. Quote: "Zis money? Why do you cling to it so? It is nothing. Shall I show you the nothing? I think not. That would be an effort. Now come, we must leave. Kraftwork is playing in Munich." Reginald Smythe - another stereotype: this one of the hyper-competent British butler. In this case, he's actually a professional Loyal Lieutenant: he keeps the rest of the servants (ie, the henchmen) in line, drives the getaway car, and in general ensures that his master's plans actually have a decent chance of succeeding. Why does he do it? Tradition, of course - his family has been in the henchman business for generations. In my campaign, he was working for the Nihilist when the heroes encountered him. Quote: "Very good, sir."

Re: Doesn't he look familiar? Whatever the points that you spend on the familiar, I'd recommend you model it as follows: Follower: Familiar (however many points) Hunted: Familiar (8-, less powerful, mildly punish, hero is easy to find) This represents the fact that the familiar is available at all times, as a follower. However, about 1/3 of the time, the familiar "helps" out by doing something the character doesn't want it to. With GM permission, you can actually combine the Familiar with the Hunted and purchase it as a single advantage (or disadvantage).

Re: Have a Holly Jolly Security Breach Jake the Troll - his house is already like this: he lives with his family (mom, dad, older sister, younger brother), and his mom really likes Christmas. He'd put on his Santa hat and go open presents, just like he's done every year since he was two. Icon - Completely beyond anything she's experienced; while she could detect the extra-dimensional energy, she'd have absolutely no idea what to do then. Her holiday experiences consist of her mom doing stuff like this as an 'apology'. It'd be her dad who would likely try to convince her to come down and open presents. The change would be that the gifts actually WOULD be what she wanted, rather than what her mother though would be an extravagant gift for her daughter. One would be a Supergirl anthology, plus a depleted neutronium escrima stick. At which point she'd probably start to cry, and her dad wouldn't be able to figure out why, and so they'd all have more material for their monthly counselling session. Shinji Miromoto - also has had dealings with the Winter Court, but would realize that THIS is a bit beyond their purview. He'd get his Dark Congress Quarterly subscription upgraded. At which point he'd call the Dark Congress, and inform them that some sort of supernatural entity has hacked their subscription network. Widower - "Haziz!" Would assume that the bane of his existence (Haziz the djinn) was messing with him. He'd get an undamaged family photo.

Jake the Troll would recommend the passive-aggressive approach of, when the subject comes up, agreeing with everything the parents say about how much of a failure she is, while at the same time wearing the "I know something you don't know" smirk. It's much more satisfying, plus she gets to be smarmy.

Re: Flying Dodge Hm... I think it's because shifting a multipower is a 0-phase action, and as such you can't abort to it along with a Flying Dodge.

Re: Flying Dodge

Re: Horizon Academy (Teen Champions) Notes

Re: Anyone ever tried a stat block auction in HERO? Other ways I've seen it done is to require that a character cannot have any two primary stats with the same last digit.