Christopher R Taylor

In AD&D ('first edition' I guess) it took d4 rounds and you died. Period. There wasn't even a save.

The ability to eat brains was one of those AD&D PC killer abilities I always hated, like the "save or die" poisons and the various monsters with similar powers. Gygax was enamored with murdering characters off, apparently he though that would be fun to people or just was sadistic. I'd personally just treat it like eating anything, its a non-combat ability they have to off NPCs and bystanders, not something they can do in combat to a PC.

Jack Burton is a sidekick, Wang is the hero in Big Trouble...

That's pretty misleadingly presented. For every black man shot by the cops, 3 whites are. Since blacks are significantly more involved in street crime than whites, its even more stark a difference. Whites break the law a lot, but they do so in more white collar ways, which don't involve armed confrontations with the police. Yet still are shot many times more often. The really sad part is a black man is many, many times more likely to be gunned down by a fellow black citizen, but nobody seems to give a crap about that.

I agree, I think its a better game system for fun and game play, even if it doesn't really simulate real life expertly

Well, if I was designing a hyper-realistic role playing game, I would have very few actual stats and no "body" or "stun" stat. You'd just lose all stats eroding away and all abilities getting worse as you take damage until they all zero out and you die. Nobody has a Body score that goes down while being fully functional and effective. As you take damage you get worse and worse. The problem is, in game terms, that really sucks because you just get more and more likely to lose the more you're hurt.

What's amazing to me about all this is that 9 times out of 10 or more, the outrage machine cranks up screaming and waving its arms, only to find that the brutality wasn't brutal and the poor innocent lamb of a child victim was a monster they had to stop. But that doesn't stop the machine. There are still people fool enough to believe the "hands up don't shoot" lie.

Doesn't "beam" cover "cannot be bounced" already?

I don't see how that's any different than using Endurance out of combat. You don't need to keep track of END out of combat, either. Unless you unexpectedly get into combat and start out at a detriment -- which is worse for Stun than END.

Well yes, that's the point isn't it? You can build it with a limitation that reduces its cost... or with an advantage that increases its cost, then a limitation that reduces its cost. To me, the least complex one that doesn't pointlessly make it have a higher active cost seems the better one. But its up to the GM and player what they want to do.

It also makes it awkward to put in power frameworks, and makes it pointlessly difficult to dispel, suppress, and takes longer to drain. Active cost has more effects than just campaign limits.

I ran two in my recent Golden Age game. One was a guy with a magical wand that could make any animal become his servant, and the other was a ice projector that could create ice minions. The PCs tend to avoid the minions and plaster the summoner, if possible.

Well its certainly a way, but I would think requiring people to buy their active cost up for a power that's essentially weaker and penalized to use is a direction I wouldn't want to go as a GM or player.

Also the "Create a hero Team" thread would be useful. I agree with what others are saying though: build a bunch of standard archetypes and familiar heroes to give players a chance to get used to the idea and play.

Take a look at the "create a villain theme team" thread for lots of concepts and related build types. I would echo the suggestion of starting out lower power level, to match your campaign concept. It sounds like you're looking at less Justice League and more Justice Society (sans Specter).

Yeah McTiernan is a bit soft in the brain, you can get a feel for his vapid pomposity when you listen to the Die Hard commentary (I recommend you do not). He makes great action flicks but like a lot of entertainment types has a very inflated understanding of his own intellect and worth far out of proportion to its reality.

You can spend your own xps to buy things - usually special items part of the character, like excalibur for King Arthur, but you're usually going to either purchase gear with money or get it as treasure. As for the imbalance of power with items, that's not unique to Hero, its something every game that has loot deals with, and is no problem at all for a GM to balance. As a GM its your job to balance things out by restricting the power level of gear available, controlling how much everyone gets, having it break or be stolen, etc.

Yeah look up the rules on Area Effect and check out the "Surface" AE option for details.

OK I misunderstood. Increasing the limitation on someone else is a transformation attack per the rules right now. Minor, I'd judge. The problem is, the game doesn't simulate this kind of thing very well, which is why in the discussion of 6th edition I really liked the suggestion by someone here (I can't remember who) for using a modified Drain mechanic to do it. I'd call it "curse" and it would be a new adjustment power. The way Curse works is you roll dice like drain, modify it by power defense of the target, then apply the points rolled for active cost of the effect. You can use it for any detrimental effect, preferably those not covered by other rules (one of the basic hero rules - use the existing power for what it does, not another to simulate it). Things like adding complications to a target, adding limitations, removing advantages, etc. Any effect that would increase damage taken or lower defenses would be halved in effect, as usual (and the usual stat modifiers, however they would apply, such as END effects being halved). Each effect is specific, ala Drain, but could be bought with an advantage to affect more than one power at a time, or any one power of a suite of effects as per the Drain rules. So if you wanted to give people "extra time" on their blast, you buy Curse of xd6, and roll. You'd have to get the full effect of the power to make it now take extra time. For example: Curse of Slowness Curse 3d6 Blast gives Delayed Effect extra time advantage. this is a +1/4 advantage, so to give it to, say, a 12d6 blast, it would require 75 points of effect (60 x 1.25). That means a lot of dice rolling for the power, but it eventually would do the job. Naturally, it fades as normal; 5 points per turn, so you'd be working against time as you rolled 3d6 over and over to get the effect. This would be best used for things like "susceptibility to magic" given to a target, or smaller effects, but fills a gap in the rules - at least a gap far more noticeable than a lack of Damage Negation.

Pricing stuff in your game has several rules the way I handle it: determine the rough equivalent value of each coin. If, for example, you make your copper roughly 1 dollar in our world, that gives you some benchmarks for relative prices or actual ones. If it costs $2 in our world, its 2 copper in the game for example. you price stuff based on how common or easy you want players to get things: if you want a horse to be rare and valuable, make them really expensive (as in my campaign) you price stuff based on the setting: if in your world, almost nobody has plate armor, its really expensive. If everyone has a dagger, its dirt cheap. you price stuff based on the economy of your setting: what is easy to obtain in that area? How much mining, farming, etc is in that location or setting? For example, leather might be uncommon, but iron cheap and plentiful. If you have any trades worked up for your campaign (here's how blacksmithing is done, here are the recipes for alchemy, etc) that gives you raw prices to make the item and that will sell for roughly double or more to a customer, as a base. That works pretty well for me, at least.

Deleting annoying double post due to massive wireless lag this morning

The way I simulated abilities that reduced limitations (like, say, a magic item that makes wizards not have to incant to cast a spell) is to build the power of x active points with the limitation and without, compare the price (like, 100 active points with a -1/4 limitation and without: 80 with, 100 without), then the difference is the cost of the limitation. Then the raw cost is adjusted by other modifiers, such as focus etc. That gives you a power that eliminates the need for a limitation up to 100 active points.

I've done this several times. The way I do it is to use a limitation based on the cost of the stat used in the place of END, treating it as if its an Increased END Cost multiple. Then, if the stat is one that doesn't heal back like END, give it an additional limitation. Stun is roughly 2x END and recovers the same rate, so its a -1/2 limitation base. Body is roughly 4 times, but recovers slower, so its a bigger limitation. However, since when you run out of END you're tired, and when you run out of Stun you pass out, its worth a little bit more, so maybe -3/4 to -1.

Depends what you have in mind, but the easy way is a linked heal. Since you have to roll to hit with a heal on someone else, that makes it an attack and you can link it to another attack.

Those gorgeous dames from the Golden Age. That hair was amazing, without most of the tricks available to women today. In Europe, dye became basically impossible to find, so they turned to plant dyes like berry juice etc.