Barton

Last weekend, we had a battlemap game where various heroes (not in any supergroup) got together at a park to protect a park statue from being stolen from villains. Among these villains is one of the campaign's most powerful bricks: Armageddon. This brick is from an old book "Trouble for HAVOC" (although he no longer has an 8 Spd!). Anyways, my detective character minifig is closest to him; I decided to have him go up against him and I say aloud, "This is nuts, but my character's going for Armageddon."  Really, one hit from this brick and my character will go down.

Here's where I pull off a few brilliant moves: my detective character has Cinematic Brawling. So, I delay until Armageddon is ready to attack, then use the Eye Gouge attack and blind him for 5 phases. He's blinded and misses. Next attack phase, I use Hoise & Heave and throw him away from me. This allows another character to use a blinding light (Darkness ) on Armageddon when he can see.
 
In the meanwhile, my detective turns on another supervillain who throws things to entangle heros. My 6's move is to make a half-phase up to him from behind and clear his throat. When the villain turns around, my detective slaps him in the face saying, "That's for attacking a woman."  Next phase, my character delays until the villain reaches for his chemical ball to entangle my detective so I use Disarm on him and he drops the ball, entangling himself.  (Every villain we fought, we found out later, had Unluck!)

Quite frankly, I thought my detective character was going to be *splat* quickly but somehow, quick thinking made him shine in the other character's eyes.

Simple: 

5 END for 1 Point is how the rules define the cost and how it's implemented in HD.  But you don't have to buy END in increments of 5, so if you purchase +1 END, the cost is 1/5 of a Point....which does not round to 0 -- nothing is free.  So +1 END costs 1/5 of a Point, which rounds to 1 Point.  Similar for +2 END (2/5 of a Point, rounding to 1 Point)....and +3-5 END.

Apart from general rounding rules in HERO System, abilities like END and STUN have specific considerations regarding nothing for free, so +1-5 END = 1 Point, +6-10 END = 2 Points, and so on. All in accordance with the rules of the system (and something of a PITA to code in).

Thank you very much for that explanation!!!! ... I have terrible eyes so before the UI font thing on another thread the cost was blurry for me!!! sorry for any misinterpretation

It depends.

It depends on the character doing the blocking.  It depends on the attack being blocked.  It depends on the surrounding situation/environment.

It is entirely possible to block a punch with no limbs - simply moving into the strike at the proper time, preventing it from gaining any power (and leaving the blocker in an advantageous position).  It is also entirely possible that having a single arm occupied would prevent a character from being able to effectively block a downward, angled strike.

So:  up to the GM's dramatic sense (story telling).

Its okay Hugh, I'm not an infant.  I understood what you were doing.  I was just telling you what I was doing.  You asked a question: why ever buy penetrating on KA, and I said, because its cheaper, like for like.  Then I said, its more efficient to buy the system I proposed but more costly, then said "you're right, its too cheap." 
 
You can go on with your analysis all you want, but I'm done here.
 

The problem would be with the Adder-based (or optionally Adder-based) Skills, including those that changed from that structure in 6E.

I've got an update posted which should allow for Custom Adders to be applied to Adder-based Skills without interrupting the cost calculation shenanigans that need to occur on those abilities.

The thing is, if you break it down just to the core of the rules its still about 75 pages.  The reason its bigger is not because the rules became ridiculously complicated, they still run pretty much the way they did 2nd edition.  Its just that everything has been very carefully explained, with suggestions, with ideas behind how to run them and how to combine the rules.
 
But the bare basics?  Still the same.  That was the whole idea behind Champions Begins, to provide the core rules in a fun way, combined with an adventure and it was WAY less than 80 pages for the Player Book.  Building characters is more complicated, but you can still pull it off.  Its just a question of how much explanation and detail you want, and I think a Sidekick-like "here's just the fact's ma'am" book would probably be a smart intro to everything.  Put it all in there, but without the heavy detail and examples and "how modifiers work with this power" section, without the section on overall rules about how powers work, etc.  You could bang that thing out to a tenth the size of a standard Hero rule book.
 
Its not that the rules got worse, its that the effort to help people see how things interact and how to work with exceptions etc got more detailed.

Someone suggested this on Twitter/YouTube. It's a site where you can look up Tanks/Aircraft/Naval Ships/Weapons etc by Era as well as by weapon I believe. Probably usable for Western and Pulp Hero along with Deark Champions. It boasts 5,500 entries.
 
https://www.militaryfactory.com/

There are some unique circumstances that made the D20 SRD's possible that aren't present in other games.  First the game became open source and second the business model of the companies involved. D20 revenue is based in modules where HERO is based on campaign settings. Sheer volume makes one feasible while the other has proved a challenge. Also the toolkit nature of HERO means giving away the game for free as an SRD would pretty much doom any chance at a module business. Hero's variability works against it in forming a consistent universal setting.

A few ideas:  
Middle of a college campus (particularly if the new super is young-ish and could be one of the students, though it could also be a faculty member if older) A car dealership.  Hey, easy to draw the hexmap, with lots of cars (new or used, up to you) to toss around or go boom.  The new super could be shopping for a new car when the bad guys approach him. Museum (you can get plenty of general floorplans, at least of all the public areas, online).  Could be art, natural history, tech, whatever is local for you.  In addition to saving bystanders, the heroes also have to be mindful of priceless items on display. Subway station (if the campaign city has subways).  Particularly if express trains are roaring through at the time of the fight. Airport.  Don't forget those fuel tanker trucks and fragile jets all around. I've got to take off for a bit, but will try to post more ideas when I get back.

Tricky line to walk when you're bring up concerns that would affect the organizations in game, but let's try to keep politics mostly in The Non Gaming Discussion area thread made for that if need be.

Weather:  severe!!! cold snap, massive blizzard or ice storm, possibly pea-soup fog (but that might be closer to a civil, transportation disaster in the making)
Geological:  volcano, tsunami (they're triggered by earthquakes)
Natural:  a massive, deadly red tide (algae bloom)
Industrial:  nuclear plant incident
civil:  ship running aground in the Suez Canal
 
Filling it out more might be more a matter of identifying various types.  Equipment failure...could be power, could be something like water treatment.  Spills...hazardous chemicals (liquid or vapor), blown well head  --> oil spill (or Exxon Valdez).  Wind and water under weather are pretty nebulous.
 
 

I was playing around with Daz Studio today and did this. Each hex is 2m, with a 1/2 scale, Normal (2m) and Large (4m).

It's a bit of each. An "assault" rifle is good to maybe 300meters (effective range) Recent conflicts have had engagements beyond 300 meters, to take advantage of that. And modern body armor is getting good enough to stop 5.56 beyond 150 to 200 meters.

this is for a movie so I don;t know how authentic it is

I once ended a session by having the PCs find a letter that contained vital information.  They had spent the whole session looking for it, felt good they had found it, and one Player transcribed the letter as they were certain it had more clues than were obvious.

The next session they formed a plan to act on their new information & I had a NPC interject to remind them of an important thing they were overlooking (I didn't want to waste a session with them going down a blind alley).  They insisted that *wasn't* info that they had.  I insisted it was in the letter they had just worked so hard to get.  The players all looked at me in silence & the one who had transcribed that letter held up her notebook page & proved that info *wasn't* among the info they had gotten from the letter last session.
 
Knowing I had screwed up & left out a vital point, I (rather lamely) had the NPC declare there was "a hidden fold" in the letter that contained the information.
 
The Players all laughed for about 10 min at my weak save & from that point on if I ever tacked something on to an ongoing info dump someone would mention that "there must have been a fold".
 
This has been a running joke now for 25 years.  I married one of them.  The woman with the notebook was our Maid of Honor.  In the years since I've gotten christmas cards that say "Merry Christmas! and a >obvious fold in the card< "Happy New Year".  I texted my wife 4 things to pick up at the store a couple weeks ago, then remembered something else 10 min later & got a text back "was there a fold?"
 
I try to take it with good humor......

Die Hard: the story of a family away from home witnessing miracles ("You asked for miracles; I give you the FBI") and the rise of a savior.

He's right, you know. 

Never forget what happened one Christmas at Nakatomi Tower...
 

 

Just thinking that if you used more detailed rules of damage, a Cleric could be even more useful for healing. A cleric could be valuable for healing broken bones and curing poison and disease. Or even cure a withered limb. Yes you recover your Body but that doesn’t mean that you broken limb is healed properly.

Healing END in combat can be very useful, if a GM is smart enough to use the 1 END/5 STR rule.  And healing stun in combat is pretty darn handy too.  Plus if as Ninja Bear notes, you use impairing and disabling rules having a priest to heal that stuff can be very welcome.

I strongly recommend this product. It is great for fast character design and it also gives you many sample builds.

Very BIG size mods on the grenade. Hard to hit.

Very BIG size mods on the grenade. Hard to hit.