Christopher R Taylor

Piercing at least came out in Champions III: for x points, your attack ignored y points of the defense applied to it. I'm pretty sure penetrating was in Champions III as well.

Yeah budgets are meaningless in the marvel cinematic universe. They can build, what, eight fifty-trillion dollar helicarriers?

The idea of a guy having 82 suits of super armor lying around is pretty new with the presumption that the character has 900 times the GNP of the entire planet combined in the bank to pay for it all.

Or, non-peaceful protests, as has been the case several times with BLM. Whose concern about black lives seems very specific.

Its true that weapon familiarities don't do enough to be interesting in a game. I have changed them for my heroic games so that they also affect utility. For instance, you cannot do simple repairs or use the weapon properly (like change the rate of fire on a gun, fix a jam, even reload it in some cases of very complex machinery) and combat use (you can only do use strike and haymaker, not block or other maneuvers). On the other hand, a -3 OCV penalty is too high for many weapons, so I made it -1 for common, -2 for uncommon, and -3 for rare weapons in that culture. Something similar could be done for armor familiarities, so that you can't do minor repairs, some you can't even figure out how to put on. Its not like putting a shirt on to don most armor, its straps and layers and such. Even some museums do it wrong when they set up a display.

Bronze age fantasy is massively intriguing to me, so much so that if I ever get to run another fh campaign, it might be that instead of playtesting my own stuff.

Yeah facing and such is kind of abstracted in games, its not really much of an issue for most role playing games including Hero. And the ones that do include it are ridiculously complex. I think that's what the Dex modifiers are for encumbrance, to represent a restriction on mobility of that sort, but I think maybe the numbers are a bit low.

Damage Negation is a new mechanic, it reduces the power of an attack before defenses by 1 damage class per 5 points spent (PD or ED). It's an odd mechanic I'm not sure why was added, but it is useful in some builds like this.

I take "closed" to mean that, instead of writing a supplement that says "use this with Hero" it instead acts as if its a new game, with all the rules, that are just Hero but tailored to and specific to that setting and game. So, instead of "Fantasy Hero" which is how to use the hero system for fantasy, you have "Joe's Fantasy Setting" which presents the rules as if its a new game, but its just Hero, specific to Joe. I don't know exactly what Steve means, but I'm pretty sure that's it.

None. Absolutely no chance that the Obama administration was going to indict his party's nominee for the presidency. Zero. It doesn't matter how much she lied (Comey's testimony before the Senate proves she did, repeatedly) or how incompetent and sloppy she was at minimum. The party comes first for both parties. That's the system: them vs us.

Yeah I think giving people the ability to buy dice of Damage Negation vs magic (all magical offensive abilities - flash, adjustment, entangles, mental powers, etc) is the way to go about simulating magic resistance. Michael Surbrook recently noted that in converting D&D to Hero, it works best to give each 5% of Magic Resistance 1d6 Magic Damage Negation. In a high fantasy or wild fantasy setting, that's your best option I think. But I would insist people had a good reason for it, not just "I don't want magic to hurt me." Like a racial ability or some item.

In my magic system, all DCV/Dex roll penalties apply to magic rolls wearing armor. Plus, typically a spellcaster does not spend points on strength because they need it for other things so the weight is significant to them, using up endurance and such.

Yeah its restrictive, but not enormously so. The weight is telling over time, but not crippling. You don't need help getting up, or a crane to get on a horse. I have, as I've noted elsewhere, watched a fit but not athletic man in period-accurate plate armor leap over a fence and vault on to the back of a horse. It causes some restriction of movement and vision, and has weight, but its not nearly as crippling as often portrayed.

That's no more true than with weapon familiarities.

I'm coming extremely close to doing that with my Jolrhos Fantasy Hero setting; releasing it as if its a game, but using the Hero system as the core. So its got the full information you need to build and play, but specific to my fantasy setting, as if its a separate game. Just Hero only for that setting instead of a game world using hero. I'm hazy as to the legalities and interest Hero has in doing that kind of thing but I think its a valid concept that might actually appeal to players more. You just need these books but once you know it, you can easily port into any Hero product.

I think Champions sourcebooks for interesting places always have a market. Not a big market, but a market.

It depends what you're trying to achieve. Realistically, even a modestly healthy person can move pretty normally even in full plate. I even watched a demonstration of a man leaping over a fence and vaulting onto a horse's back wearing full period plate (and he was not some super athlete). But if you want to create some sort of balance by penalizing heavy armor to offset its defense, then the present system doesn't do much of that. Personally, I think DCV, perception, and END penalties are more plausible than movement penalties.

Just give the package lots of mobile and high DCV maneuvers (stuff that includes the full move element, lots of dodges, escapes, and blocks defined as "avoidance that puts my attacker off balance"). High acrobatics, leaping, movement, and buy your movement abilities END cost down. No weapon elements.

Its not available in any of my games. I don't even know why its an option unless its just an attempt to simulate the D&D feat.

One of my all time favorite characters, but he's a bit hard to stat, over his history. Allegedly he has the speed of mercury, but almost never displays it (except for specific stories). Supposedly he has the wisdom of Solomon but frankly he was kind of a doofus in his early comics, easily fooled and tricked. Written up like his origin and description requires makes him basically the Justice League in one character, plus Sherlock Holmes and some other stuff on top. Written up like his comics, he's a lot easier to stat out.

Yeah using the spellbook as materials for spell research and studying new materials is a valuable idea as well.

I like ED being in games where its not used much simply for that reason: in a fantasy game, since ED doesn't come up much, that makes things that target ED more effective. If your armor and personal defenses are weaker against Energy than physical attacks, then a 5d6 lightning bolt will hit harder than a 5d6 club. That makes mages more capable without needing to give them more points.

Attack of Opportunity is one tactical device that 3rd edition D&D did a great job with. I added it into my heroic level games; I allow people to abort to make a single melee attack with no special maneuvers or skill levels against a target that moves past them or away from them when in hand-to-hand combat. Its not tremendously powerful, and it does require giving up your next phase, but it has been useful in the past for players.

Ultimately I may be one of the first players to at least publicly suggest the KA vs mental defense as a way of bypassing almost any defenses; I proposed it on Red October BBS as part of a character build I had (a bodyguard/assassin for the big bad guy in my campaign). But I really think that non-standard defenses should be default resistant (and only resistant); or to put it another way, you can't build a KA that bypasses them. That was the same place I suggested the infinite recursive absorb build as well. That's 4th edition absorption that lets you feed some of the points you absorb back into the absorb so it has no top end.

I figure there's no need for any mechanic, that's just his background.