Christopher R Taylor

I question the premise, I have no problem running low powered games with Hero and have done so for 30+ years.

Well and its not unreasonable to say that the mutation causes a signal of sorts, something that can be detected rather than a molecularly scan of the target. If you want to have such a concept in your campaign.

EDIT: heck, we can go with something incredibly classic....NO ONE seems to connect that Clark Kent is Superman? They have done a decent job of dealing with that over the years, particularly in the Silver Age when they did stuff like have Batman, his good buddy, dress up as Superman to fool Lois Lane. And I think Chris Reeves did an amazing job showing how it could work. But yeah after a few decades, even the slowest person would work it out. But they don't because its internal consistency for comics. That is the part that too many people don't get: the comics have internal rules that you follow to make them work. If you start arguing that Batman clearly would be spotted going into the Batcave or whatever, you start to challenge what makes everything hold together and work well.

Yeah I like this. There's no reason every hero would know why they are the way they are -- most probably ought not. "how come you can lift a car and fly, mister?" "I dunno, maybe I'm a mutant or something?"

You don't. The GM can just hand wave it and say "it finds mutants." But in a campaign like this one, it does make sense to me for a complication that makes you specifically targetable with these devices. And if you can be detected by a special device in a campaign specifically about the dangers of being a mutant, as opposed to anyone else, that seems to me to be a complication.

But they are not redundant. Each one has a different effect. Its like buying blast, ka, flash, and drain, not blast, blast, blast, blast. Distinctive looks just makes you stand out in a crowd. Social complication means you are mistreated for your status. Reputation makes people prejudge you and expect you to behave in a given way, etc. Of course, its campaign dependent. If you were in a game where nobody used mutant detectors or was hateful toward mutants it would not be worth any points. If you were in a campaign where men are a hated, hunted minority that has to disguise themselves, then having a Y chromosome would be a detriment. At least, that's how I understand how complications work.

Well the logic behind having two is what the complications do. Social complications cause problems for you socially, they make life difficult and affect interactions with others. Someone could have social complication: mutant and not actually be one, just be perceived as one. Physical Complications affect your character's being. Even if you perfectly pass as a human being and hence are not detectable as a mutant to most people, you still are one, so you can be detected as one with the proper technology. Its like the "some groups may not have a problem with you" choice in Social Complication: the reason you take that, even if all the heroes in the game are mutants, is because you will work at jobs, or have DNPCs, or interactions with people who are not mutants. Among your kind, you're not treated differently or badly. But your kind are just the heroes and villains, and there are a lot of other people in the world how are not that kind. So fellow mutants give you a haven, and you're treated terribly outside that social circle. Unless everyone in the world, or a vast majority are, mutants, it makes sense to take that because you'll have some places your social complication won't take effect.

I feel bad for her and her family but why not just come out and say it? Why the long silly kabuki theater and the fake pics?

The thing is, the only effect the No Hit Locations power has in the rules is "now you don't take different damage from being hit in a location." So like I suggested above, the way you simulate different areas causing different effects would be the "loses powers" option for Takes No Stun. You can still roll hit locations, you just assess what area loses power by that, not what damage is sustained. At least, that's how it seems to me.

I like Solomon Kane even better than Conan, I think he's my favorite of Howard's creations.

Legion is a bit of a silly concept but honestly it works really well. When done right it has a strong Manga feel (or, vice versa, I guess, since Legion predates most Japanese comic books). Yeah the whole "they're all kids with one goofy power and are the galaxy's cops for hire" thing doesn't make much sense, but once you go with it, it works really well. And some of the best characters in comics came from that -- as well as some of the worst.

You know, when I built him I didn't give him any. He has distinctive looks, but I guess he just keeps his mask on all the time in the Island of Dr Destroyer adventure. You're right he should have had a good 2-3d6 just for being so scarred and horrible looking

Just wanted to necro this thread in case someone gets the rebuild bug. Buncha guys from the old Enemies books waiting for an update. It should be interesting seeing how these old amateur rebuilds stack up against Surbrook's official Strike Force rebuilds, there are some crossovers like Yoosoo and the Blood.

I found it! The 6th edition conversion thread! 26 pages of character conversions, most of the art sadly has been internet scrubbed but the groups can be found in the downloads section and I have a bunch of the colored images on my pinterest page.

I cannot find it right now but there is a huge thread on this forum of updated characters to 6th edition, part of them from Euro enemies (with colored pics!). We were trying to cover any that were not reprinted somewhere else. Panda, Racoon, Sledge, Wyvern, and I think one other* [ed: Hideous!] are updated in the 6th edition version of Island of Dr Destroyer as well. *Oh yeah, and Vibron!

Yeah it is not cheap to build undead, and its fine if you don't buy EVERYTHING (does it really need to be immune to radiation, zero pressure, and be immortal?)

If you have bought "takes no stun" but loses powers, to me that covers the hit locations. You can use the hit locations to figure out what part is affected and starts to lose powers when they lose body, but the purpose of the "no hit locations" power is to specifically avoid the damage variants that hit locations result in; "a hit for, say, 5 BODY and 20 STUN does that much damage whether the Automaton is hit in the head or the hand" as the rules put it. And, of course, they don't bleed.

I just wanted to make sure I was not overlooking anything. Thanks all. If you want to be really technical about it, they should have no hit locations (it doesn't hurt an animated skeleton any more to hit it in the pelvis than the toe) and life support (no, that poison gas does not bother them), and maybe something to simulate being made of thin bones so arrow attacks are less likely to hit, etc but... you don't need all that unless you're a completionist.

Typically automatons require repair rather than healing: zombies, robots, constructs such as golems, etc. Vampires and such have their own healing mechanism (regeneration and healing when lying in their coffin, etc). In any case, NPCs usually don't worry about healing Body, its a very long-term thing.

There's an X-Men character called Forget-Me-Not who has that power. People just don't remember him, but he's in lots of their adventures helping out and doing stuff that later seems like luck or some amazing coincidence. Its a great concept well handled in the comics. He does heroic things but gets no praise or notice.

I usually buy automatons to 0 CON, REC, and END, then buy all their abilities to 0 END Cost. You can't push then, but usually they're mindless anyway so they won't have the willpower to push. Its a whopping savings of 18 points, so it doesn't exactly pay for any of their very expensive automaton abilities and life support but its a bit of a cost offset.

Looking over Victorian Hero, looks great, nice layout, tons of info. I especially like the mentions of Carnacki, a very forgotten obscure supernatural detective. I enjoyed the short stories I read of his adventures. There were several ghost detective types but Carnacki was the best. If you liked Western Hero, this is a great companion, they both are set roughly the same time period, but from different perspectives. I'm still going through it but great first impression and lots of great content so far.

Its an easy mistake to make. But when you write tens of thousands of words, you're going to make errors, and people who've never even tried find it easy to pick on that kind of thing. You know what professional editors say is an acceptable number of typos in a manuscript? About 3 per 10,000 words. They say that it is basically impossible to have a perfect manuscript unless its decades old and has been gone over constantly. A book like Victorian Hero has nearly 200,000 words. It drives me nuts when people nitpick stuff like that. Think about how many tens of thousands of errors multiple passes of editing caught, not the couple you spotted.

*yoink*!

Well, my thinking is that this is a complication that non-mutants do not suffer from, and that is a drawback that mutants face. Plus, it gives a specific mechanism to represent someone who can be tracked where others cannot.