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Christopher R Taylor

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Posts posted by Christopher R Taylor

  1. Quote

    I've been watching the entire X-Men movie franchise in like 2 weeks, and it really made me think about this... in the movies, there are no other supers, just mutants.  In the comics, the "mutant panic" didn't feel so real because there were so many other supers

     

    Yeah there's a reason that the X-Men comics generally felt like they were not a part of the Marvel universe at large.  Although the mutant menace thing was not really a major factor in most of the stories, it only really works if mutants are the standout changes rather than all the other origin stories and people with powers.  So if you want to do that kind of paranoid, enemy of the people kind of campaign, it works best to isolate things, I think.

  2. The key with Multiform is to make sure that the characters are to design, not just "I wanna do a lot of different stuff".  In other words, use multiform to build a character with a theme and a concept, not just to have lots of characters.

     

    I did make a guy who could turn into like 20 different superheroes, each a different build, but... they were random. He never knew what was going to activate when he turned on his superpower, and the GM chose them at random for me.  The concept was kind of like Miracleman's body suit thing, where they were all in this stasis and he could tap into them, but had no control over who.  It was kind of fun, but sadly the campaign didn't last long enough to really explore how it would play out.  So it was a tight concept, and controlled.  The GM could at any time just say "you get to be aqua boy this time" at will instead of rolling a random character, even if we were in the desert.

  3. Quote

     

    Did the characters have to fight their way out of it or think their way out of it?

     

     

    A combination.  The street level part of the team handled the alien invaders (who turned out to be Gweenies) and saved lives, the heavy hitters kept Godzilla busy while part of the team looked for who caused this and dealt with him.

  4. Quote

    Had a villain once that had the ability to completely alter reality. He decided that the world was too bad a place and decided to transfer everything into cartoons.

     

    Yeah I had a guy like that, a reality manipulator who was fixated on movies, so he kept creating these cinematic events.  The biggest disaster was he had Chicago attacked by the aliens from War of the Worlds and Godzilla who rose up out of Lake Michigan.  I never did massive super grandiose stuff, I wish I had at least once.

  5. Its not a book per se but I have been reading Savage Realms magazines on Kindle.  They are sword and sorcery short stories bundled, a handfull every month.  Some are a lot better than others, but overall its fun stuff and worth reading.

     

    I kept up with the Dresden books for a while but got tired of the escalation of the story and it got ridiculous to me after a while.  Dresden wiping out a thousand vampires with a single spell claiming he could have cast it at any time but never had the acreage required.  The stories were at their best just as PI with magic street level stuff, not this huge storyline of epic proportions.  Butcher lost his way.

  6. Quote

    Stronghold also suffers from that vulnerability, its power negators and hot sleep chambers, which need a steady supply of energy. But at least Stronghold has multiple backup measures in case those devices fail.

     

    In terms of narrative, that's useful though.  The story needs a way for things to go wrong and people to escape for the genre to work.

  7. I cannot remember all of them but I liked the ideas in Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.  They had that cube on its corner in the Nevada desert, the shrunken prison in Ant Man's lab, an undersea one, one in the Negative Zone, one floating as an island, and one other.  I think Tony Stark designed all but the one Ant Man controls.

  8. Quote

     Or, the heroes are framed for a crime (or really committed one) and actually sentenced to Stronghold, and perhaps have to plan their own escape while dealing with the rest of the prison population.

     

    That is, in a way, the plot concept I have for the Escape from Stronghold adventure, but what has jammed me up is trying to figure out how much of Stronghold I need to put in.  I do not want to just duplicate huge chunks out of the 5th edition version, even though its good, because it would be way too much setup.  But you have to have enough to actually, you know, escape.  It was getting too big so I have to pare back a lot and keep the essence of how the place runs and is structured, because you cannot expect a GM to buy Stronghold just to run an adventure.

  9. Honestly?  I prefer to just not think about what happens to supervillains after they are caught.  The multiple types of prison in Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes was cool, but I just don't even wanna know.  They are defeated, and that's enough.  They come back eventually, and need to be defeated again.  Anything else results in some really depressing, awful stuff like putting villains into an enforced coma or locking them in an energy field at the bottom of the ocean, etc.

     

    That said I am looking closely at Stronghold to redo the Escape from Stronghold module, so it does come up.  As I understand it there are multiple layers of security where bad guys are kept.  If you are just Johnny Gadget, you can put them in general population in a normal prison.  If they have powers, they are put in the prison with the power dampers, and treated like regular guys.  And the worst are put into the super high security area.

  10. On 1/28/2024 at 10:52 PM, Pattern Ghost said:

    /imagine chaotic hellbeast that looks like a cross between an elephant with no trunk and a warthog --v 6.0

     

    This one landed closer -- sort of -- but 3/4 of the generations had trunks:

     

    Seems like "chaotic hellbeast" shifted the context enough to allow more of a hybrid, maybe?

    That is a lot closer to what I as looking for yeah.  But I like the A-10 Elephants :))

  11. OK so here's the example of how to build Transfer given in Volume One of the Hero System Rules:

     

    Quote

    STUN Transfer: Drain STUN 3d6 (30 Active Points); Unified Power (-¼) (total cost: 24 points) plus Aid STUN 3d6, Trigger (when character uses Drain, activating Trigger takes no time, Trigger immediately automatically resets; +1) (36 Active Points); Linked (-½), Unified Power (-¼), Only Aid Self (-1) (total cost: 13 points). Total cost: 37 points.

     

    Now notice in that build: its two powers linked together... with a trigger.  Why on earth have a trigger?

     

    Because in the linked rules, it states this:
     

    Quote

    If the lesser and greater powers are both Attack Powers, he must use them against the same target.

     

    Aid is an adjustment power, which in this case Steve is treating as an attack power: you have to roll to hit someone who doesn't want to be Aided, so it can kind of be treated as one. Since the Drain is on one target and the Aid is on another (you) then it has to have a mechanism to go off in addition to aid, by that logic.

     

    This is where we part ways.

     

    -First off, you do not need to roll to hit a willing target, per the rules.

    -Second, if your "target" is Self Only (-1) then its not a targeting power at all nor an attack power.  It literally cannot be used on anything but you.

    -Third, the purpose of this build is to simulate the Transfer power, which means it should be as clean and simple as possible to get the build across for ease of use.

    -Fourth, you can use any of your powers on your own phase without needing a trigger to do so.

    -Fifth you are fixated on Aid being an attack power, you could treat this as a Multiple attack in which you use several attack powers on any number of targets (including yourself) in the same attack action.

     

    I could go on, but I think you get the point.  Its a linked power, not a trigger.  That's pointlessly increasing the cost and complication of the power to no good end.

     

    Plus, there should be a small limitation on the Aid noting that it cannot Aid more than you drained.

  12. Just kidding with the title, but this is about Transfer.

     

    First off, I understand the reasoning behind dropping it as a power: its not flexible enough.  What if you want the points you gain to fade at a rate differently than the points drained off the target fade?  What if you want to give yourself several powers but only drain one?  There are a lot of possibilities, which without extreme complication, Transfer doesn't handle well as a simple power.

     

    However, that said, there's nothing wrong with having it in the rules that Transfer works as it always has, and if you want a more flexible build, here's how you do it (Drain plus Aid, etc).  This would have been a slightly more complicated explanation, but a more elegant and streamlined rule set.  A second, less attractive choice would be to build Transfer as a Talent, then show the guts of it, and how it works if people want variations.

     

    That's not what this post is about, though, so let me get to the main point in the next post.

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