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Vestnik

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Posts posted by Vestnik

  1. Superpowered Worlds

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Superpowered Worlds

     

    To be honest' date=' I can't recall. I know if you do a search for "Emu" you'll pind it.[/quote']

     

    Exactly the same image is being used as part of an advertising campaign here in Russia. It was a bit weird to see it seeing it as your avatar. :)

  2. Superpowered Worlds

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Superpowered Worlds

     

    Do these super-strength-powered people live in an environment with correspondly powered-up animals (predators etc.), or are they at the top of the strength/food chain and nothing else can threaten them? Methinks that might make a difference.

     

    Interesting thought experiment BTY.

  4. Build a Mundane Object in Hero System

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Build a Mundane Object in Hero System

     

    You buy the door with a Limitation to reflect that it cannot be "closed" if any physical object is in the way.

     

    In other words, this (behavior) is a property of the door, not of the piton (nor of any number of other objects that can also be used to interact with the door in obvious ways).

     

    How would you buy the door itself? 1" Tunnelling through whatever DEF material, OAF Immovable Focus?

  5. Build a Mundane Object in Hero System

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Build a Mundane Object in Hero System

     

    Yeargh.

     

    What?

     

    Okay. Wooden Pencil

     

    Cosmetic Transform, NND (Defense is being a surface on which graphite cannot mark), Item into Item with Marks, 5 pts; Requires a Skill Roll (As appropriate: Writing, Doodling, Art, Perform, etc., -1/4), Only To Determine Presentation (Images and text appear regardless, -1/4), Expendable Focus (-1/2, New Focus Easily Obtained), Fragile (-1/4), 50 Charges (Pencil can write roughly 50 "pages" of material before needing to be replaced).

     

    Is that what you're looking for? Can you help me understand why I just modelled a wooden pencil at 12:06 in the morning?

     

    Aha, you should put this in a Multipower with a deadly 1-pip HKA as well!

  7. VVP and AP limits

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: VVP and AP limits

     

     

    Sure Mr Anything can do anything but that guy with the EC will still turn out fin if they duke it out.

     

    Yeah, but they can always whip out a 1" Megascale Teleport or XDM and opt out of the situation.

     

    That's why I don't like instachange VPPs. Plot-busters and escape-anything artists.

  8. Adjustment powers vs. Megascale

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Adjustment powers vs. Megascale

     

     

    2. Dispel flight is always going to be difficult to justify: it stops magical flight, winged flight, jet powered flight....that's why I tend to be a bit particular about dispels and supresses and ask for some indication of how they work - the PC gets a limitation if they don't effect everything that flies. In fact I think there is a strong argument for making all adjustment powers sfx based.

     

    I've thought about that. If I have a Drain that is a poison, does LS: Immunity to all Poisons automatically protect against it, or is that a limitation on the Drain?

  11. Rarity of Magic?

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Rarity of Magic?

     

    Add to that, population pressure. In 1900, the population of all of Africa was about 70 million. Today, nearly 100 million live in just the Horn of Africa alone. In Sudan, there are roughly as many people as the entire population of Africa north of the Sahara 100 years ago. Mix increasing pressure for resources with a tribal system and with improved weaponry, and you have a fine recipe for mass bloodshed (a la Darfur). The tribal differences which sparked the massacres there have existed for generations - but without competition for resources, it'd still be individuals taking pot-shots at each other, not "slaughter everyone, take verything that can suport life and burn their village to the ground".

     

    The population gains have not been quite as dramatic in other places, but the same effect is in operation. On television, I recently heard the same complaint from Afghanistan - a tribal leader saying they didn't want to sell opium, but with 2000 people in a village that used to hold 500 when he was a boy, they couldn't live on what the valley would grow: they needed money to bring food from other places. That money - and the same need - presumably afflicts the people in the next valley, and in a culture where the appropriate birthday present for a 12 or 13 year old boy is an AK47, and a death demands retaliation, well...

     

    cheers, Mark

     

    Yeah, it's very much generated by a traditional lifestyle incompatible with new conditions. After Chechnya got de facto independence in 1996, the Chechen kinship groups immediately fell to fighting each other (specifically over access to financial flows) and raiding surrounding territories for livestock. Now, they've been doing that for hundreds of years, but then they were using swords and muskets. Whereas interwar Chechnya was filled to overflow with heavy ordnance. Sort of like if Apaches (the tribe, not the helicopter) had rocket launchers and machine-guns. (You also had the Islamist money coming in from abroad, and that radicalized the situation further.)

  12. Rarity of Magic?

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Rarity of Magic?

     

    Actually I think that has a lot more to do with religious and cultural conflicts then the presense of absense of commonly available "lethal force". People in those areas have been killing one another for millenia before the invention of guns. Introduction of commonly available lethal force just means that the distinction between the "warriors" and the "peasents" has blurred.

    Culturelly speaking Guns are the universal equalizer in a sense, when just about anyone has a good chance of killing just about anyone else you'll see one of two results.

    In an already relativly stable group, the introduction of weapons will tend to deture people from becomming criminals because there is no beneit.

    In an already unstable or heavily conflicted group, the introduction of "lethal force" will pretty much give them all the excuse they needed to start 'paying back' all the indignancies they and their ancestors had 'suffered' over the generations.

    So really, I think if were going to talk about the effect of magic of a society or culture we have to look at what the society or culture was like before it's introduction, and what forces drive that cultures existance.

     

    Changing technology rather alters the equation a lot. Tribal societies at a Stone Age level of technology can spend centuries raiding each other in a constant state of low-level warfare in which maybe 2-3 people get killed a year. Change the spears into AK-47s and grenade launchers and you get destruction of whole villages.

     

    Relatedly, places like Chechnya have clan-based societies with a code of revenge killing. If someone from Clan A kills someone from Clan B, Clan B has the right, nay, the obligation, to kill the guy or be entitled to some form of compensation (so many sheep or whatever). This is manageable when you're dealing with the occasional death by musket. If a squad fires a rocket launcher into a gathering of another, revenge just got a whole lot bloodier. Because you likely can't identify the precise perpetrator, and take it out on the whole clan.

  15. Challenge: "Pope" as a Package Deal

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Challenge: "Pope" as a Package Deal

     

    From Wikiwikiwiki:

     

     

     

    Keith "sounds over-hyped" Curtis

     

    Yep. I'm not Catholic, but non-Catholics tend to really overemphasize the infallibility thing. It hasn't even been invoked in the case of abortion.

     

    IIRC, the cases where it was invoked involved the Eucharist, Mary's ascension into Heaven, and then there's another I can't remember.

  16. Challenge: "Pope" as a Package Deal

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Challenge: "Pope" as a Package Deal

     

    Papel Infallibility - The Pope CANNOT be wrong on matters of official doctrine. He declares something is religiously correct, and it is. Or, depending on how you look at it, any decision he makes on matters of faith will be nudged by God to be correct.

    Seeing as Hero doesn't do absolutes well, this could get expensive.

     

     

    Infallibility has only been doctrine for 160 years or so, and has almost never been invoked -- a grand total of three times, I believe.

  19. How much would this VPP lim be worth?

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Hello all,

     

    I have a build question. This is probably very simple and has been addressed elsewhere, but...

     

    I'm building a character who is a shape-changing alien construct from a galactic empire that ceased to exist billions of years ago. He survived to the present day because he was in status (think Larry Niven's World of Ptaavs, from which I stole the idea).

     

    One of his powers is that he can reconfigure his body into a number of programmed modifications (claws, enhanced senses, an acquatic mode and so forth). He already has a large number of programs (I bought this as a VPP with a set list of powers). The programming knowledge and technology needed to create new programs have been lost billions of years ago, so, assuming it is not recovered somehow, no new configurations can be entered.

     

    I've bought this as a 30-point VPP + 15 Control Cost, Powers Can be Changed as a Half-Phase Action (+1/2), No Skill Roll Required (+1), Cellular Adjustment and Gross Body Alteration Powers Only (-1/2), Only Powers Listed Below (-1/2), Powers on List Cannot Be Added to (-1) (Total Real Cost 42 points).

     

    Do you all think this looks about right? Is that final Limitation too much?

     

    Big thanks!

  21. Need some Scandinavian Villains !

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Need some Scandinavian Villains !

     

    . . . I think I once suggested as a Swedish supercrook the Bureaucrat -- his powers consisted in boring people to death with statistics.

     

    Hr could villainously visit Tallin, drink all the beer and harrass the poor Eesti waitresses. Wait, no, that's real life. ;)

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