DiTenebras

Re: How to get swords on your starship Fascinating topic. Of course, the short (and best) answer is to make it a defining characteristic of the culture, but since we're trying for semi-plausible... Getting swords on starships in your campaign means making swords more practical than firearms onboard ship. How easy this is depends on exactly how futuristic your campaign is and what sort of technology is available. Most of the discussion in this thread has revolved around the idea that the swords and guns involved are fairly equivalent to their modern counterparts (although I love the idea of the nano-tool). Maybe we should start thinking about how these things can evolve. First off, a historical look: Most shipboard combat during the "black powder" age of pirates and colonization was carried out by sword / belaying pin / boathook despite the growing availability of firearms, for one very simple reason: no need to reload. Certainly, anyone who had a firearm used it, but until they had a chance to pack more powder, wadding, and shot into their guns they had to use melee combat. In this case, while guns were used, swords were more practical for extended combat. Of course, all that changed with semiautomatic weapons. Swords do still have some decided advantages. A blade is easier to use in close quarters if it's fairly short, it's comparatively quiet, won't jam, and doesn't need reloading. Also, a blow from a gladius-type sword to an unarmored target will easily exceed the tissue damage caused by most handguns (not heavy calibur, glaser, or shotguns). Firearms are, however, easier to use, ranged, and offer better armor penetration with the proper ammunition. Plausibly (not semi-plausibly) getting hand weapons on ships involves once again shifting the balance of technology to the point that they are more efficient than firearms. There are several ways of doing this: 1) Outdate firearms - 9mm? 9mm what? OH! You mean a slug-thrower. People haven't used those in ages. I mean, some collectors may still have one or two, but they haven't been manufactured since 32... um... ever since they came up with ion-packet technology about 4000 years ago. Replace the dominant weapon technology with something energy base, and include the effect of supression fields (magnetic, tachyon, lepton-diffusion fields, whatever), or personal energy-diffusion fields for security personnel that render the wearer immune to most non-military grade "blaster" fire, but are ineffective against physical attacks. If fire-arms are outdated, but any punk can lay his hands on an ion blaster for 2 weeks' pay, you'll only see firearms in the hands of collectors (or, more importantly, assassins who are specifically trying to circumvent a VIP's field protection - now, there's a plot arc). 2) Make it costly to use ranged weapons - it's been mentioned before that flammable gasses are a very real danger in ship combat - well, what if the crew (who has a security division trained in melee combat) could flood a section of the ship with pure oxygen or another flammable gas. A muzzle flare or ion blast would incinerate (or at least crispify) anything in the area. Sure, it's dangerous, but it makes anyone boarding a ship think twice about firing. It may take out the defenders, but most pirates (not talking zealots here) would rather live to fight another day than go out in a blaze. 3) My favorite - make melee weapons the only alternative for members of the "upper class." This plays similarly to the "dune reactive only to fast things force field deluxe model plus plus" but with different trimmings. Let's say that military, security, and well-off space travellers have access to personal force fields. The technology can be based on whatever you like, but I'll use harmonic shielding (using a semisolid field of energy tuned to various sonic pitches) for this example. These personal force fields manage to lessen the impact of any attack (physical or energy based) to a negligible level. However, many duelists, officers, and well-trained criminals carry weapons modified with "harmonic dissonance fields" - the blade vibrates erratically and slides through harmonic shielding as if it weren't there. Also, the vibrating blade has significantly higher cutting power than a standard edged weapon. Here we have a melee weapon with a decided advantage. Even though it's compact, a harmonic dissonance generator is too large to be contained within a bullet. Also, it's expensive enough to be affordable only among the elite. The rank and file may mow each other down with ranged weapons, but a dissonance blade is the mark of a combatant to be feared. Since they pass through armor as well as harmonic fields with disturbing ease, the result of combat is determined by the skill of the combatants. Few people (maybe just the captain of the pirates and one or two of the PC's) will wield a dissonance blade, and fewer still will walk away from a duel versus another skilled wielder. That about covers my suggestions, although the fact that swords on spaceships are cool should of course take precidence over all else.

Re: Muscle control A couple more ideas for the master muscle controller: +10 strength, only to maintain a grab / hold / lift (doesn't help in establishing a grab, but the character could twist her muscles to effectively "lock" her own joints against movement) Another take on OddHat's idea of damage reduction: Damage reduction (resistant, choose your % level), only versus attacks the character is aware of (defined as the ability to consciously shift her internal organs out of the way of an anticipated attack). Depending on how precise and fast the muscle control is, you could also envision serpentine flexibility (carrying on the idea about being able to escape grabs/entangles and adding some defensive CSL's) or reflexes (psl's for sweep, or to be completely over-the-top, autofire 2 or 3 for her physical strength).

Re: Alternate System: Size Stat I've been looking for a better way to handle size increases for a while, so I'm glad to see a new viewpoint on the subject! Just a couple of observations: First, I'm a little worried about the "Normal Disadvantages" that are used to help justify the 30 point per rank cost, because these are disadvantages that would not scale with additional size. Why? Well, the disadvantages could be best described by Physical Limitation (friggin HUGE; all the time, greatly impairing) - 20 points (or 15 if you call it frequently), and Distinctive Features (A tad on the large side; not concealable, causes extreme reaction/fear) - 25 points. Both of these combined would give you 45 points of limitation. Great, huh? Problem is, they don't scale. The same limitation would apply whether you were 4" or 400" tall, without a difference of point cost. When building a new power, you should try to keep non-scaling costs separate (best used as adders if they're beneficial or character disads if they're not). You've listed your "Normal Disadvantages" in your corrected post as accounting for 30 points at rank one. The same limitations are accounting for 300 points at rank 10, for what should be less than 50 points worth of Character Disadvantages. Secondly, as far as the overall cost per level goes, the difference in what you spend and what you get is a bit too much. At level 10, the chart lists: 160 STR (No figured characteristics -1/4) 40 BODY (No figured characteristics -1/4) 32 PD 64 REC 220 END 170 STUN 110 CON (Only VS Stunning -1) -30 KNOCKBACK +339" RUNNING ...this alone is 1,447 points worth of abilities, and doesn't even begin to count the 160" reach or the 32 hex radius for physical attacks. Altogether, you're getting about four times what you pay for, even at lower levels (except for the first two). I think the size chart is a good concept, but needs to be reworked a bit. First off, you may want to try buying STR, BODY and CON with figured characteristics rather than buying the separate figured characteristics. Since you're viewing Size as a characteristic rather than a power, there's no problem having it give figured characteristics as well. Also, you may want to look at the various abilities given by the size characteristic (speed in particular) and see if they're true for ALL larger characters or creatures - Just because you're four times as tall as something else doesn't mean you can run faster, recover faster, or work longer, or that your flesh is more difficult to damage (sure, you can take more damage, but that's what the extra BODY represents). If you try to pare down the ability to reflect things that are inherent to larger creatures, I think you'll wind up with a characteristic that's both more realistic in cost and more allowing of customization for different creatures.

Re: Reducing Movment speed... Drain or Entangle? Hmm... Interesting power concept! An entangle could work for either version of the power (gravity manipulation is one of the possible sources of entangles listed in the power description in 5ER). The problem there is that you're stuck until you completely break out. No slow movement, just stuck or free. Drain movement powers gives the effect of slowing a person until their points return, regardless of whether or not they are still in your gravity field / spatial distortion. This is completely perfect (!) if you describe the power as manipulating someone's personal gravity field. If you want to have a location / area spatial distortion or gravity well, may I suggest a Suppress? An AOE supress strength (Gravity Well) can slow your opponents AND reduce the amount of damage they can do with a swing. Add personal immunity and your gravity manipulator can walk up and thump a brick into (eventually) unconsciousness. A target who can still move (or push his strength to slowly move towards the edge) will eventually get out of the effect, which seems to reflect the description you gave. An AOE suppress (all movement powers simultaneously) can easily mimic a spatial distortion, and can slow any movement (not just strength based like running or leaping). You may want to link a Change Environment with a couple OCV penalty levels to mimic effective inreased distances or disorientation while in the distortion. Is this helpful for you?

Re: Subspace Engine Design Help [HERO: Combat Evolved] Yipes! *hides under keyboard* I didn't mean to imply that the effort wasn't worthwhile. I just wanted to make sure that the (obviously rather frustrating) process of figuring exact slipstream stats was important to your game (I've seen a friend get a mental block statting "flavor tech" and get so frustrated that he dropped the entire campaign). You're right, we haven't met. I'm new here and I like to feel out some problems before diving in. Thus, the probe to see whether the extra detail was needed. I apologize if that came across wrong. Now that we've established that you do need accurate stats, I'd like to take a stab at the technology. The way I see it, you'll need four components to fully describe a slipstream drive: How to get there, how to move while there, how to explain the variance, and how to power the drive. First Component: Of course, EDM, as others have stated. To create the "slipstream envelope" or portal into the slipstream. EDM, to corresponding location on a single plane (the slipstream) and back again - 22 active points. This is also where we'd add the side effect of the huge groundshaking explosion (see below). The side effect goes here because the explosion would only occur when entering or exiting slipstream within an atmosphere, so has nothing to do with the FTL component (see below). I'd hesitate to provide an actual limitation value for the side effect. It's huge, but so are the mass combat potentials. Second Component: The faster-than-light travel within the slipstream. This part of the drive system seems the most problematic. FTL is the way to go if you want to be strict about the speed. The only problem is when it comes to faster/slower slipstream drives, since two active points more or less represents a complete doubling (or halving) of speed. If you want that much difference between ship types, great! (maybe a massive generator can impel a battleship through the slipstream many times faster than a patrol ship's meager power output). If you want the ships to be closer in overall speeds, I'd recommend using the guidelines for creating a new power: Build what you want, with all the perks or flaws, then use it as a base cost for a new power. Let's take a look at FTL. 10 points for the speed of light, then 2 for every doubler. Great, but if you're simulating HALO, you won't want someone to be able to cross a light year in an hour by pumping a few extra points into the drive. Let's take a benchmark speed of 32 x the speed of light. This sets one light year at roughly 11.4 days (.877 light years/day - pulled this number since the possibility of a two week per light year time frame was mentioned, and it's not too far off) for 20 active points before any advantages. Let's give it the limiter "only while in the slipstream" -0 limitation: despite the inaccurate navigation you do have the advantage of not having to worry about flying into stray asteroids when nearing a planetary system (until you some out of the slipstream). Still 20 Active points. So we've got a 20 point base cost for a speed (our benchmark) of 1 light year in 11 and a half days. If we break this down into increments, we can create a "slipstream flight" power for the campaign, and translate it into speed in "hexes" for visualizations' sake. Let's put the benchmark speed at 10" - 2 active points per inch. This allows simulation of slower drives as well as faster ones without getting into full doublings of speed. You can have a slower 7" slipstream drive that covers a light year in 16 days or a faster 23" drive that covers the same distance in five days. The third component is the varience of speed in ships with equivalent drives. If you're willing to accept the "slipstream travel" suggestion above, a simple solution would be to use a required aid power: Any slipstream drive must have an integrated Aid (succor) Slipstream Travel 1D6, 0 end (ends/resets when vessel leaves slipstream), persistent, No conscious control (ship crew will know it is active (activates when entering slipstream), but cannot choose to surpress the aid to gain a more "predictable" transit time. Effectively, this will add 0"-3" to the slipstream travel power. (At most, an extra 0.109% of a light year per hour of travel). The aid is an added power to "Slipstream Travel" and is rolled as soon as the vessel enters slipstream. As part of the power's special effect, the amout of speed gain is unquantifiable using the available technology. Fourth Component: The power source - My recommendation for the power source is a dedicated, but very small, Endurance Reserve. Why small? Well, as outlined above, the Slipstream Travel and Aid (Succor) cost no endurance, so the only END cost involved is from the EDM. This might indicate a momentum based drive, or that it takes a minimal amount of energy to propel a body in slipspace (lacking laws of physical mass, inertia, and such). The EDM itself could be bought with increased endurance to make a jump cost more than just a few END each time. As to recharging, give the END Reserve's Recovery the limitations Extra Time (recovers each hour or day, whichever's more appropriate - I have no idea how long a ship in HALO drifts between jumps), and Only Recovers when not in Slipspace (-1). ...The explosion described seems like a nuculear reaction (surrounding atoms getting ripped apart or fused together on the edge of a dimensional portal) If you want to stat the explosion, I'd make it an energy-based RKA, Explosion, Megascale (to the appropriate size, probably kilometers), NND Does Body (Defense is hardened Energy Defense Force Field/Shield - while a minor fusion reaction may not theoretically have much concussive force, not many physical barriers would be solid afterwards). The dice of the RKA depends on what you think is reasonable for point cost or possibility of survivors. Whether this counts as a "side effect" for the EDM or a weapon inherently linked to the Slipstream technology is a separate can of worms. As to the inaccuracy of Slipstream navigation, that may be best described as a feature of the Slipstream "terrain" - sort of like a permanent "cloudy night" that provides penalties to navigation rolls. One last note: Using FTL or an equivalent movement power as above doesn't really represent a limit on "distance of Slipstream jumps" - it's more of a continuous fly till you get there form. If ships need to make multiple jumps, is it due to the drive capabilities? If so, you might drop the FTL entirely and go with a mega-scaled Teleport with the extra time limitations. You could still use an Aid power to introduce a little variance to the time/distance traveled. If it's not based on the capabilities of the drive, do the ships have to drop out of the Slipstream to re-orient themselves? Perhaps the farther travelled within the Slipstream, the larger the Navigation penalties to determine what the proper point is to leave the Slipstream. A prudent captain might make several jumps to ensure the most accurate entry point, while a more foolish or desperate commander might use a single jump and risk dropping back into "real" space a few light years away from his intended destination. Hope this is useful.

Re: Firing Into Melee, a rules quandary Just a quick note here: The whole base issue of who's more likely to hit an unintended target when firing into a melee only occurs when the shooter misses by less than the cover modifier. Unless I'm mistaken, this by definition means that you would have hit your target if your favorite brick (or martial artist, or whatnot) hadn't stepped into your shot. Gee, sorry, Frank! Problem is, our largeish friend got in the way, partially blocked our aim to the villain, and now risks getting a third eye. The concealment refers as much to something moving into your way mid shot as something blocking your view to begin with. If I'm wrong here, let me apologize in advance - the rest of this post won't mean much. In the example way back of itchy-trigger-fingered hero vs mook, in order to reach the stage of rolling to hit an unintended target, the shot would've hit without the cover bonus (not extraordinary for our hero, but pretty lucky for the mook). This immediately places both shots in close proximity to the target. The mook's won't be a whole lot wider than the hero's - if he had missed by seven points, he wouldn't be re-rolling for another target in the first place. On the other hand, the hero missed *because something was in the way* - even if you're a good shot, there's not a whole lot you can do to avoid hitting an interposing target other than trying to shoot wide, lessening your chances to hit your intended target in the first place. Anyone who's ever tried a shooting range with targets that move past each other should recall the frustration. While I'm not incredibly experienced with firearms, I can say from paintball (don't hurt me) experience that even the better shots on the field find that it's a whole lot easier to hit what you're aiming for than to *not* hit something that gets in the way. Once the shot's off, it's a lot more about your friend's reflexes and survival instinct than about how well placed the shot was to start with. I've managed to duck out of the way of a couple of these, and have been nailed in the throat trying. From this perspective, I think the flat 0 OCV roll with a bonus equal to the concealment modifier that made you miss seems to be the most functional option that's been presented. It puts everyone, regardless of skill, on an even playing field once the shot's been missed due to cover. The marksman (our hero) is less likely to have the near miss in the first place then the mook, but if the miss happens, it's no more or less likely to hit a friend than the mook's (more likely to occur) near miss. Whew. I talk too much at time.

Re: AI's and Vehicles, and Automations Oh my! Phenomenal Cosmic Powers - On sale, Cheap! Hmm... That could be a problem. First off, buying armor as a vehicle just to get higher point caps or more points is power abuse, pure and simple. No GM should allow it. However, some players do have legitimate reasons for buying suits (with reasonable powers) as vehicles. If the suit isn't often worn, is meant to take damage separately from the character, is vulnerable to cyberkineticists, etc., it might be acceptable, depending on the game. Keep in mind that a powered armor suit that is worn 90% (or even 50%) of the time isn't a vehicle. It's a second skin, and should cost as much as your first one. The /5 point cost really has to be a GM's call, and shouldn't put the character past the overall power level of the rest of your group. As for other vehicle types, you might try enforcing the down sides of having your powers in a Vehicle. First off, Vehicles tend to be big. No using your tank to chase down a tunnel-crawling fiend, and if you roll (or fly) your vehicle into the local shopping mall, you'll be amazed at the bill for damages. Vehicles take damage separately from the character (and the base repair time is one body per day), so a single skirmish can leave your hotrod weakened for quite a while. Vehicles can be taken away (Stolen, mind-controlled if an automaton, towed ) or immobilized more easily OIF power armor can - you can't drive after the fleeing villian when you've got The Boot ! They also tend to be remarkably clumsy. Ever try to type in a bombs deactivation code when you're in a 30' tall mech and your fingertips are six inches across? Two house rules you might try: Vehicles' (and followers') powers have to stay within the active point cap for the campaign. I don't care if you did buy a 300 point vehicle - I'm not going to let you give it a 150 point laser cannon. Too bad. One character can only spend a number of points on vehicles up to the maximum active point cap. 60 point cap? you can spend 60 points on a 300 point vehicle, 30 each on a 150 pt hovercar and a 150 point sub, or 60 on a pair of identical 225 pt superbikes. Gadgeteers still have plenty of room to buy other nifty and useful powers (and should probably spend some of the spare points on powers bought with an OIF power armor focus). Just a couple ideas!

Re: Subspace Engine Design Help [HERO: Combat Evolved] I'd have to agree with Dust Raven here. With variable travel time not wholly dependant on distance or speed, EDM seems like the closest mechanic if you want to avoid straight FTL. While you could go with a mega-scaled Teleport with the Extra Time limitation (special effect of extra time occuring between jump and re-entry, not before power is used), that's just making the whole thing more complicated. The one problem that EDM has is that it doesn't take into account relative speeds of different ships, except by "hand-wavery." The question this brings up is: Does it really matter? Are your players going to be pushing across the galaxy to deliver a message to the armada before it falls into an ambush? Do they need to outrun enemy ships headed towards earth? If so, is it important enough to your plot or players to have accurate speeds? If the slipstream for your story involves going from Point A to Point B and skipping ahead two weeks, it's not worth it for you to go through the effort of making realistic...ish stats for the drive. Extra miscellaneous stats and rolls just take extra time, and most players would rather be getting to the action at the other end of the jump ("Will we find our fleet victorious or will we awaken to the sight of a thousand shattered hulls?"). Take the EDM and make small speed differentials part of the power's special effects. If the journey itself is important, you should probably go with a form of FTL or Teleportation that reflects ship speed. If you've dropped an alien/enemy/destructive toddler into the ship who's jettisoned the oxygen storage tanks, then it becomes much more important to know how long it'll be until the players can get to normal space. Focus your resources on the adventure. Wherever it happens to be.

Re: Examining existing rules I think that's a near-perfect solution! I like the solid bonus=penalty focus option. I'd suggest making it a skill or martial maneuver with a minor point cost. Or maybe allow most characters a +1/-2 bonus and offer the +3/-3 for a few points. This is simply so Joe Average Purse-Snatching Man can't easily dodge/focus himself up to 9 DCV while still making half moves away from a pursuing do-gooder! I'm all about avoiding getting hit by Grond, though.

Re: And this is my special eff... er, I mean, my Sidekick. I love the idea! I'd be a little wary adding a recon ability (if little Timmy's enough of a non-entity to not be a follower, he's probably not reliable enough to scout without supervision or to stay awake while watching the back door of the villian's hideout). Depending on the flavor of the campaign, the sidekick could even work as an unbreakable focus (has the annoying habit of stepping behind YOU right before someone tries to shoot him and the cursed luck of somehow managing to survive being placed in every death trap imaginable) - works well with the person being simply a special effect, and we've all seen plenty of incredibly lucky sidekicks (or annoying tagalongs) that can't be gotten rid of when you're on a date, let alone killed by your arch-nemesis... right?

Re: Examining existing rules

Re: Examining existing rules Just to add another viewpoint, I agree that dodge is fairly effective as is, but is terribly mis-named. It's more of a "try not to be hit by anything" than a dodge (which implies having something specific *to* dodge). I would, however, disagree with adjusting the way dodge or block function when aborting to them. Why? I believe the existing mechanics already highlight the problems inherent in aborting an action: It sets the character up to be outmaneuvered. When aborting to dodge, the character loses her next action completely (except for the DCV from dodging). Meanwhile, the attacker (assuming similar speed) has the next phase to regroup, outflank, or *gasp* retreat without pursuit! In addition, the character has to consciously leave himself the opportunity to abort (can't after a full phase action or attack), implying that the character was fighting carefully enough to keep his options open. I would like to see a built in alternative to the general dodge that focused on avoiding a single foe's attack, at the cost of being more vulnerable to attacks from others. Perhaps it could work something like Cover in reverse, in which you focus on your opponent, roll your DCV versus the opponent's OCV (with a penalty), and can automatically avoid the next attack provided he or she remains focused on the attacker (1/2 DCV versus all others). Something like this could not be aborted to, and would remain vulnerable to multiple attacks or multiple opponents. The other obvious alternative (a maneuver that increases DCV versus one opponent but reduces it versus others) would have to have a higher DCV bonus than dodge to be at all tempting, which could be problematic (See above post about the martial artist storming a gun emplacement). Any other ideas about how to work this out, or other alternatives?