Christopher R Taylor

There weren't any. 
Well, there was "firing two shots," for a typical fanned second shot. 
 
If you're interested:
 
We did it as a Skill that granted something akin to auto fire (five shots). 
Essentially, roll the skill.  For each two points you succeeded by, you could fire off an additional shot.  First shot (the initial trigger pull) was unmodified; each successive hit was at - 1.(realistically, it should have been - 2, but read on about wasted shots. ) as soon as you missed, all subsequent shots missed. 
 
Whatever your success turned out to be, you popped off that many shots.  If you missed the second shot but your skill roll said you fired four shots, then you spent those other shots.  Track your ammo, track your expense. 
 
 

...are you joking?  You want me to explain how hitting someone twice is better than hitting them once????
 
 
Well you can do it but it takes really fast, strong thumbs like a 13 year old girl after all her texting experience.  Realistically its not very feasible, though
 
A more realistic move is to snap the hammer back with your thumb for one shot, and then pull the trigger, ba-bam.  Extremely poor accuracy (your thumb will yank the barrel up) but works in close range and takes a really smooth, easy to work mechanism.

...are you joking?  You want me to explain how hitting someone twice is better than hitting them once????
 
 
Well you can do it but it takes really fast, strong thumbs like a 13 year old girl after all her texting experience.  Realistically its not very feasible, though
 
A more realistic move is to snap the hammer back with your thumb for one shot, and then pull the trigger, ba-bam.  Extremely poor accuracy (your thumb will yank the barrel up) but works in close range and takes a really smooth, easy to work mechanism.

The problem with a death trap is that it relies on the writer knowing how to get out and making the character figure it out.  Players are... less reliable in that aspect.  You often have to end up giving them die rolls to figure things out which is less than satisfying.  On the other hand, sometimes they come up with a way of trying to get out which you had not considered.  And if its remotely feasible or entertaining... go for it, even if you have to change things a bit to make it work.
 
Better you change your plans for the player to succeed on their own than force them along a predetermined path through die rolls to feed them info.

Just a quick update: I am receiving positive feedback from  the players so far. They say they are enjoying the game and want to continue. I am having a blast. It had been a long time since I have been excited about the hobby. Hero system rocks!
 

The only problem with death traps is both building tension and not getting to a place where the PLAYERS do not see the avenues for escape that the CHARACTERS would.
 
For building tension you can run time.  I find a better solution is to have a dice pool that the players roll at set points (often decision points or significant actions).  When someone rolls the pool, any dice coming up six is removed, shrinking the pool.  When the pool is empty "something" happens.  If the players have not escaped then you can kill them (bad GM-ing IMO), rescue them (slightly better), have the trap go off and lead them through escaping with heroic actions and damage sustained/resources lost, use their apparently unsuccessful actions to show why the trap does not work as anticipated, or some other plot advancing result. Phew! 🙂
 
People love reading about their heroes escaping from death traps, they often hate being in them unless you make the situation one of possibilities rather than impossibilities.  If the players do not immediately engage with the problem solving throw some vague hints, highlighting the key features of the trap.  As the pool shrinks you could offer more detailed clues, with or without the need for skill or characteristic rolls.
 
I give you all this as evidence where my enthusiasm for death traps have led, in the past, to less than enjoyable gaming sessions!! 😬
 
Doc

I have both my players trapped in the basement of the Egyptian pavilion during the 1939 World's Fair in Queens NY.  They still have to work out how to escape. Let the fun begin.

Yeah requiring points creates a sense of importance and sacrifice, it makes items dear.  Kind of like how if you give someone something valuable, they'll like you, but if they buy something valuable, they'll be very careful with the item.  Well, usually.
 
I think there's value in the concept, which is why in the Jolrhos Field Guide, I require people making magic items to have the points to spend, but if the item is destroyed, lost, disenchanted, etc they get the points back in some manner or another so nothing is ever truly lost.  Its a barrier to creation and a way of making the items dear to a magic item creator, but not a permanent loss of points.  And there are ways of lowering the point cost.

I see.  So a wooden stick has BODY, but a magic wand doesn't.  A metal pipe has BODY, but the barrel of a gun doesn't.  And a gun doesn't have BODY, but if it's mounted on a vehicle, such as a tank, then it does?
 
This sounds like a job for... COMMON SENSE!  Yeah.  This seems like a good rule to ignore.  It does make sense for a damaged focus to be less effective, but there's no reason for it to be all-or-nothing.
 
If a focus loses one power every time it would have lost BODY, then maybe the solution is to just build all focuses with a lot more powers.  Buy a one-point power multiple times (or different ones), or even a half-point power, if the GM lets you (like points of END, or even like END in an END Reserve).
 
Wand of Conflagration, with one power:  4d6 RKA, Area Effect, 0 END, Affects Desolid, Armor Piercing x2.  This wand becomes a stick with 1 BODY past defenses.
 
Wand of Detection, with several Detect powers, each costing 10 points or less.  This wand remains useful after several hits.
 
It seems to me that a much better rule would be for the focus to have BODY, and lose some % of active points, based on the % of BODY taken.  The Wand of Conflagration has lost half of its BODY, so now it's only 2d6.  Maybe it loses power in incremental chunks, so that 1 BODY doesn't impair it in any way, but 1 BODY at a time adds up to a 5-point chunk being lost.  Similar to how a living character with 10 BODY can lose 9 of it and still do everything he could do normally, assuming he still has positive STUN and END, and isn't Impaired or Disabled.
 
Or maybe it can gain a Limitation, like an Activation roll, or Increased END Cost, or a penalty to a required Skill Roll.  EDIT:  Or an OCV penalty if it's a weapon, or possibly even a DCV penalty.  Whatever is appropriate for the particular focus, and the genre and setting.

Only after he's been destroyed and is no longer, you know, animated.  But I agree with your theme here, what defines an inanimate object?  Is a corpse of a human inanimate?  Does a focus qualify?  Usually the intent when built is good enough to figure things out like this, until Johnny Munchkin decides to redefine things mid-game and an argument arises.

Rules on being stunned:
 
 
So; maybe.  I would rule that its going to be based on circumstances (is the horse rearing?  Running?  Dodging?) and the character's actions when hit.  If you're leaning off the side, you'll fall.  If you're sitting squarely and the mount is not moving or is just trotting, you don't.  If you're riding hard or the horse is turning etc, then maybe -- unluck roll or maybe even the horse's DEX roll depending on how well trained it is

For me this is a feature: no matter how skilled and experienced you get, you're still just people and a dragon's bite is still very dangerous.  But better spells, better armor, etc all can help make the difference between "bitten in half" and "able to still fight"

Actually, that isn't the way I read the Linked Limitation:
 
 
So, only the "lesser" power is limited. I think this is probably due to trying to prevent abuse, such as taking a very expensive power, linking it to something like a 2-3 AP power and get a (possibly huge) discount on the very expensive power.
 
That's my take on it anyway.
 
Lee

That's a distinction without a difference.  You're presuming that a weapon somehow is not included in the rules and there's zero support for that other than "so it makes other rules make sense"

However, as rravenwood points out, Two Weapon Fighting is about Multiple Attacks:
 
 
So that answers my first concern, and thank you.  
 
The second though... I get the thing with linked and all but being able to just cut loose with multiple attacks in one phase without penalty or drawback does not sound or feel right at all to me.  Them's how the rules are written, so they go into Western Hero as stated but it just feels all wrong based on THE ENTIRETY OF THE HERO SYSTEM OTHER THAN THIS RULE.  Being able to do more than the ordinary carries with it a cost, in every other instance.
 
Oh, and END Cost is not a penalty.  You always pay END, that's just part of the system.  Its fuel, not a penalty.
 
It also begs the question why exactly the penalties for doing so on other targets takes such heavy penalties.  Should they be so heavy?  Multiple power attacks on a single target take the same penalties
 
For example, I have a character with a blast and a killing attack.
 
If I use my blast and killing attack at the same time on a target, its a Combined Attack and takes no penalties PLUS only one roll and I can make another half move.
 
If I use my blast twice on the target, that makes it a Multiple Attack it takes -2 OCV, halves my DCV, and takes the whole phase.
 
Umm.....

That's a distinction without a difference.  You're presuming that a weapon somehow is not included in the rules and there's zero support for that other than "so it makes other rules make sense"

However, as rravenwood points out, Two Weapon Fighting is about Multiple Attacks:
 
 
So that answers my first concern, and thank you.  
 
The second though... I get the thing with linked and all but being able to just cut loose with multiple attacks in one phase without penalty or drawback does not sound or feel right at all to me.  Them's how the rules are written, so they go into Western Hero as stated but it just feels all wrong based on THE ENTIRETY OF THE HERO SYSTEM OTHER THAN THIS RULE.  Being able to do more than the ordinary carries with it a cost, in every other instance.
 
Oh, and END Cost is not a penalty.  You always pay END, that's just part of the system.  Its fuel, not a penalty.
 
It also begs the question why exactly the penalties for doing so on other targets takes such heavy penalties.  Should they be so heavy?  Multiple power attacks on a single target take the same penalties
 
For example, I have a character with a blast and a killing attack.
 
If I use my blast and killing attack at the same time on a target, its a Combined Attack and takes no penalties PLUS only one roll and I can make another half move.
 
If I use my blast twice on the target, that makes it a Multiple Attack it takes -2 OCV, halves my DCV, and takes the whole phase.
 
Umm.....

As for Linked, lets examine the effects
 
Linked allows two powers to go off at the same time, using the same attack roll, but one of these powers can only be used with the other one.
Advantage: you can use two powers at once with one attack roll (a combined attack) Disadvantage: you can't use them separately. So that looks like a push.  They cancel each other out. Which leaves you with this one final part
Disadvantage: you can only use the secondary power with the primary, never on its own Now, that's not a very significant problem, but it is one.  So that's worth a limitation.
 
90% of the examples of linked powers in the published materials are to simulate something like a scorpion's sting: ouch and poison.  The ouch is the delivery system for the poison.  Its even possible to argue that perhaps most linked powers, you wouldn't want to use solo anyway, so its hardly much of a limitation.
 
In other words, linked is a limitation... just not much of one, so it probably should not have been grandfathered in as -½ but -¼ instead as a base.
 
See, my problem with combined attack as stated is two fold.
 
Either it should carry some manner of penalty
Or the two weapon attacks etc should be abandoned as having penalties and dropped from the rules.

Because they don't make sense together at all.  Its one or the other, you can't have both in the rules at the same time.  Trying to find an excuse like "oh uh, its um, that's real weapon limitation!" doesn't fit the rules as written and is just trying to justify something that just doens't make sense.

As part of building the Western Hero book for 6th I'm putting in the rules for combat etc so its a self-contained book.  I've been playing Hero since around 1982, through all 6 editions, and run hundreds of games.

But this Combined Attack rules have me a bit... baffled.  There are two different "you can hit people more than once in a phase without autofire" rules: Multiple Attack and Combined Attack.  And the rules seem to kind of overlap and run into each other.
 
Multiple attacks allow you to do more than one attack in a phase, but with penalties (half DCV etc).
Combined attacks allow you to do more than one attack in a phase, but with no penalties, just restrictions like "cannot use martial combat maneuvers"
 
To make matters worse, the rules on Combined Attacks in the HSG2 are contradictory:
 
 
And the section on Combined Attacks seems to shift over suddenly into Multiple Attacks, using the terms interchangably.
 
Champions Complete isn't really any more help, as it simply says
 
 
Now, I want to have the rules properly presented and unchanged in the Western Hero book, and I want to make all options available to players but I don't understand this at all and I can't explain it or add it into the book if it makes no sense.  This seems ridiculously overpowered for one thing (no penalties, more than one attack at once with one attack roll??  But it also is very under explained how its different than Multiple Attacks.
 
Help?
 
I should note here that the whole "oh you always could shoot multiple times in a single phase, honest" thing always sounded a bit sketchy to me when it suddenly showed up in 5th edition.

After some wrangling, I was able to get everyone together. Our PBeM Golden Age game started today. I am  using most of the excellent suggestions from the above posts. 

since the Combined Attack is a strike, I don';t think you can use it to grab. However, you can strike someone with a TK attack so you might be able to use it that way

I was managing a comic/game store at the time. Every time I put an order in with Alliance for some sets they were always sold out.

Dude.  I missed the black and green ones.  Tha KS for the photo: even at the large size and with the Hexman on them, they are _much_ more attractive than the chrome yellow on medium blue.... 
 
Widh I'd been around when they were. 

Okay. Folks. 
Your friendly neighborhood moderator here.
I've had a request to lock this thread down. And I can see why. There's no rule against down voting someone, but we do have a stance against insulting or 'attacking' individuals (As opposed to disagreeing or debating what they say) and we're definitely crossing dangerously close to that. I'm not pointing fingers. But it does look at this point that we're getting into some circular arguments at best, and at worse, about to have some needless build up of personal hostility that can dim fun on all sides.
 
I'm not going to pretend I'm above that myself. We've all gone down that rabbit hole. But my advice, trite as it is, is if you're getting riled, back off from the thread. It doesn't mean you've conceded defeat or any such thing.  If it's gotten to a point where side X is in this camp, and Side Y is in that camp, and they're never going to agree, then you're no longer really sharing opposing views, you're trying to collect points from those that already agree with you  (And maybe 'show up' the other side) and that's a waste of our time too.
 
Apologies for the scattershot speech, sometimes  innocents get caught in the 'lecture fire', and I certainly don't intend that. But right now, this thread seems almost the opposite of productive given how negative it has twisted into. 
 
However, seeing posts that admit this has become something of a flame war, or questions from folk wondering what we're even talking about after four pages, makes me realize more than one of you agrees this thread has become circular and hostile... though the reasons WHY or 'who is to blame' may vary. Instead of assigning blame. I'm going to take put this thread out of its misery.
 
You're free to start a new again, fresh and clean if you like, and please bear my concerns in mind if you do. I can't claim to 'know' all of you but most on this thread I've seen for years on these boards and I've a respect for a lot of you but we all have our bad days, or 'well that escalated quickly' situations. I hope that's all this whole thing is, collectively speaking
 
 
If anybody disagrees with the locking of the thread, feel free to PM Simon, I am but a lowly mod.
 
 

Lucas is, putting it kindly, inconsistent when it comes to the Star Wars films.  Depending on when you ask him and what the context is, he'll trot out any of ten different versions of what he had planned or intended.  His first Star Wars script was incomprehensible mess and contained way too much for a single film, it was only with the work of editors and writers that they managed to get anything remotely coherent out of his ideas.  Then they used the rest of the ideas for his one Star Wars film to make the next two, but with better writers.  Then he started pretending it was always meant to be 9 films, but when called on it didn't really even have a plan or storyline.
 
And the prequels show it.  They just suck significantly less than the newest films.  The problem is that because he made so much money and had such a bankroll of rep and expectations he was given nearly free rein with those three movies and as a result they just did not stack up like the first three, not at all.  There are moments, but most of it is awful.

Well and Yoda wasn't being a jerk who didn't want to train anyone.  He was being reluctant to take on a student because he wanted to see if the student really cared and was trying to test their dedication and willingness to learn.  The fact that Luke was a bit petulant and immature made him sympathetic and realistic rather than "oh we don't need the sacred texts, she's Mary Sue and is better than all this anyway."  There's really no comparison between the two other than the superficiality of Episode XIII trying to remake the best Star Wars film ever made.

Well and Yoda wasn't being a jerk who didn't want to train anyone.  He was being reluctant to take on a student because he wanted to see if the student really cared and was trying to test their dedication and willingness to learn.  The fact that Luke was a bit petulant and immature made him sympathetic and realistic rather than "oh we don't need the sacred texts, she's Mary Sue and is better than all this anyway."  There's really no comparison between the two other than the superficiality of Episode XIII trying to remake the best Star Wars film ever made.