GreyGuardian

Re: Assistance with CO needed. There was a bug. I had to agree to a renewing plan to get the retail key accepted. But then I went in and canceled the auto renew (but not my remaining time). seems to have worked.

Re: Poll On New Zones I agree that the post tutorial zone crisis areas are something they could use more of. I'd have liked to see Vibora bay as an option. Maybe that's modern city and dark and gritty is Hudson city (which would also be good). Other locations around the US and around the world would be nice - they don't have to have the "secret laboratory where the disaster is happening" located in Moscow - it can be near Moscow and thus side step all the real world details and still pull in the familiarity of the real world.

Re: PvPing: The Hero Games I tried it on my PA character because of the lvl 10 quest... and shockingly landed on a good team - I think we won all 3 matches at least 2 of 3. I placed about the middle of the pack. on most of those. Normally I am awful at pvp. Invulnerability and the barrage of attacks from power armor seemed to be a good set of powers for pvp. I thought there were other types of pvp besides the cage match team vs. team. Is it perhaps level related?

Re: Abilities Discussion Teleport is an awesome escape travel power. It works as well as flight if you don't miss the t key when you are high enough to be hurt but close enough to not have time to recover and press the right key. Flight is better if you write long winded chats while traveling. Also, when teleporting you can't exactly tell what will be around you when you materialize. Has anyone found a way to put a glow on jet pack costume pieces from one of the flight powers? I'd think jet boots would be the natural but it doesn't seem to allow placement other than on the feet. There are a lot of jet packs in the game so there should be a way to get them to emit a glow. My experience confirms what I've read about lightning reflexes. LR is great against single big bad villain types, not as good against swarms of henchmen. Personal force field is not good for a long fight as eventually it will drop. Invulnerability is sort of the opposite of Lightning reflexes - great against swarms not as good against big attacks. I suspect with a good block enhancer it should be pretty decent against big bad singles assuming you manage to block at the right time. I posted a link to what seems to be a really good what powers are affected by what stats note on the CO message boards in the stats thread on this forum.

Re: Free Retcon Announced I'd bet they delayed it so they didn't break something else. I'd rather get the retcon when they are sure it works right. Correction - they have posted a work around - they apparently did break the UI and thus the button does not appear... but there's a slash command that will get you retconned.

Re: Stats Discussion I'm pretty sure the initial stat picks and talents you pick up for stat bumps only affect the amount of the stats. The stats you choose as your super stats always increase your damage. Higher superstats = more damage. It doesn't matter which stats you choose as superstats as far as the damage bonus. Usually you'll want to push your superstats higher to increase damage bonus which means whatever bonus is on the base stat also gets pushed up - so if you choose dex it will boost damage and it will boost your chance to get critical hits. Stats do pretty much what they say they do. There are several posts on the Q & A board about which powers are directly linked to specific stats that is pretty useful - Stat guide and - list of powers that scale with specific stats and this one Player guide to characteristic focuses

Re: List Your CO Heroes! You might need the lighting to be set to high. My wife's laptop is limited to older drivers... and is older so I'd turned most of the advanced settings down... apparently turning down lighting removes the textures from costumes - like the jumpsuit and padded looks etc... I'd guess it's the same for muscles. It doesn't seem to be too much of a performance hit. Also, dual (or more) core processor might be more important than video card. My old p4 is a slide show even with a ati radeon 3850 (a recommended video card).

Re: What sorta rig are you running? My nvidia 7950 on my 6 year old pentium 4 computer died the day I got the beta code. Parts were bought and works quite well - i7 920 Evga SLI LE mother board 6 GB ram nvidia 275 drives, case with lots of airflow, 750w power supply etc. windows vista ultimate Not including the Vista and new 23" monitor the parts were about $1200 from micro center after rebates. Vista took about half a day to patch or so.... lots of patches from the original box I suppose. as a side note, I got an ATI 3850 for the old 3 ghz p4 - it was a slide show at the lowest video settings. as near as I can tell you really need a dual core or better processor - apparently they are working to fix a problem in game that should boost frame rates by a lot.

Re: List Your CO Heroes! Regarding the manual.... there really isn't one. They started an online one.... the tutorial text is more useful. As far as chat - if you use the global name (@whatever_the_name_is)the message does get through. The in game friends list was bugged... you would have friends but they were not visible... that might be fixed.. if you are logged into the CO website you can see your friend list and it does seem to accurately tell when people are on and what character. I'm @grey-guardian I've got too many characters so far a couple around 15 most below lvl 10 Grey Guardian - martial arts (unarmed) and teleport (which is way cooler than in city of heroes) based on a champions character I ran about 20 years ago in college. Knight Bright - power armor and I got a bit carried away with the art deco stuff. Kellrin - sorcery - primal - haven't respec'd yet. Black Kiss - darkness Big Electric Cat - Mystic + electric. seems to work so far. Professor Quibble - gadgets

Re: open Beta for Preorders? I pre ordered from gamestop's web site and got a response e-mail that said "Your unique voucher code is: Oops! Our system is out of codes. To request your code please send an email to orders@gamestop.com" I followed up with an e-mail to that address. Sigh.

Re: Lifetime Subscription Regarding MMO cost.... if you would pay $10 to go to see a movie that lasts around 2 hours the question is - will you enjoy playing the game for around 4 hours every month. If so then you are getting a reasonable amount of entertainment per dollar at $15. So even if your interest wains as long you like it well enough to drop in once a month for a couple of hours to punt some bad guys the lifetime subscription probably makes sense. It beats the heck out of thinking you canceled your WoW subscription only to find out they just got another 6 month fee which you didn't use.

Re: Particle Beam And then there is this - Berkeley Lab Targets 1 Meter Long 10 GeV laser based Table top Particle Accelerator for 2013 I'm not sure why you would think a particle beam would work better in atmosphere unless you are counting on it creating a plasma in air to deliver the energy as a heat blast. Vacuum would allow longer range for a particle beam weapon - air would interact with the particles and dissipate energy before the target is reached. And there's always Danger Room Blog - Lasers and Ray guns tag Regarding a source of neutrons - Fusion using deuterium and tritium as fuel... of course collimating the beam and shielding personnel from the neutrons is going to require a lot of mass. Regarding modeling a particle beam in hero - it's an RKA - probably armor piercing covers it. If you wanted a photon weapon (x rays or gamma rays) then you might add penetrating... Isn't this is covered in Ultimate energy projector?

Re: Champions Online - Server Names Last time I checked there will not be different servers - everyone in one place (with instances of the zones as needed).

Re: Hero Rokugan. There's also a "living" campaign for L5R called Heroes of Rokugan. I've played a few of the adventures and so far they are generally good - there might be some story lines and plots you can use. L5R (3rd edition not d20) is not a bad rpg system - the setting and its history is quite good.

Re: Scourges Of The Galaxy Actually I'd been waiting to order a few things until Scourges came out. In theory my order arrives tomorrow.

Re: Weight of a battlesuit Take a look at body armor weight in Dark Champions - probably the best number to start from.

Re: dealing with unconscious villains It depends. If you can milk the prisoner situation for drama and suspense then go with that. For example force the heroes into a co-operative agreement with an organization like Primus or UNTIL (so the agents follow when signaled with a SMDU (stronghold mobile detention unit). If your intent is for them to capture the villains and they've got a decent plan and behave reasonably then hand wave it with plot device cuffs, or villains that need hospital care before coming around etc. after -30 stun recovery is at gm's option anyway.

Re: What books and stuff do I need to run a complete campaign of the Champions game

Re: Noob Question Correct the skill levels with 'baseball bat' only add to OCV. Your game master may have to give you the stats for baseball bat, I don't remember seeing it specifically listed in any of the tables of melee weapons. If you bought 3pt levels (which would be a broader class of bashing objects - maybe all sports related club like objects (golf clubs, cricket bats, etc) or just all clubs) then you can use 2 skill levels to add 1 damage class (DC) which for a normal attack (like the baseball bat (rather than killing attack like a knife) is the same as adding 1d6. When using the skill levels to add to damage you can not at the same time use them for OCV, but you can change how they are allocated at the beginning of your phase.

Re: URBAN FANTASY HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See? Urban Legends and conspiracies as the driving myth behind the magic system. For example Ars Magica's magic system requires the magic to fit the "known" facts of the world. It's based on myths and rumors that were prevalent around 1200 AD. For urban fantasy driving myth are current urban legends. A subset would be childhood myths like the monster under the bed and the boogie man are both quite real. A monsters section base on Snopes supernatural horrors and other current myths. Psychic detectives Police use of the supernatural and evidence rules for supernatural evidence. (probably similar to changes made for super hero powers and such) Combat Magicians - military use of the supernatural. I started reading Gravel by Warren Ellis last night. The main character is an SAS soldier who is also a minor magician (as in real magic not slight of hand). He tends to interact with weird horrific supernatural occurrences. Which means shoot a lot of things with guns and use illusions and misdirection to avoid damage as well being a nasty SAS guy. Something on cover-ups and conspiracies in general probably fits in the mix as well. Perhaps something about the mythic creatures (elves, trolls, dragons, etc.) having disappeared at the end of the dark ages are now re-appearing and how they interact with modern technology. A section on modern real world magic (voodoo, Brujería, Appalachian folk magic, native American magic, as well as Aztecs and Mayans and so on). Some of this is probably in the Ultimate Mystic and a cross reference would probably be sufficient.

Flying cars and car sized flying vehicles suitable for your dark champions high tech spys and vigilantes Or if you are super rich you might be able to buy one in the real world ....

Re: How do I build this power: Always face away from me There's something you've missed - attacking from behind really means being surprised by an attack from behind - Steve Long said that somewhere (possibly FAQ or in the answers section on these boards). There is no facing in hero system (technically) aside from velocity (and you only fool with that if it matters). You need to define the effect that you are trying to achieve and then figure out which power to use. The telekinesis is similar to gravity attacks that pull things to the ground. However, if the only effect is forcing the target to face away from you then it won't impair movement, limit actions, restrain focuses, and won't decrease DCV like a TK grab and hold would. If you're trying to achieve a game effect it might be to make it harder for the target to hit you - that would be Combat skill levels with DCV only - requires a combat roll (and a successful hit) for each person affected. If you want to make the target easier to hit then you probably want the effect to include comabt skill levels only to increase OCV and requires a successful combat roll to affect the target. Alternatively you might make it a Suppress Dex while the gadget is stuck to the target with continuing charges or some such. Or a change environment that moves with the target (and decreases OCV, DCV, movement, and dex rolls. - at which point the dex suppress is probably a better bet possibly with a movement suppress as well). Reason from the effect and Good luck!

Re: SHADES OF BLACK -- What *Else* Do You Want To See? I ran this a few years ago and found that the villains and demons needed a slight boost to be a sufficient threat to the PCs. Especially noticeable and potentially plot breaking when the villains are outnumbered by the heroes. The few I remember - Talisman's defenses and possibly movement were far too low for her to engage in open combat with the PCs. Perhaps add some "news briefs" for activities of Talisman prior to the start of Shades of Black so the players have some context to put her in. The hell hounds didn't have enough movement or CV or SPD or all three, and their breath weapons being a bit weak (unless you had enough of them in the right place to coordinate attacks). It helps if there's an appropriate DNPC to use that's been established prior to shades. Possibly some suggestions for story hooks that could be used prior to shades that will mesh well with what happens in shades. A checklist of "findable" handouts (news articles etc.) that are available and when and where those things first become available would have been helpful. A list similar list of npcs that have useful information might be nice as well. An easy to photocopy section for handouts probably would be useful for the print version. hero designer files for the npcs that only appear in shades would have been useful for printing out a combat summary chart (there's a partially filled out one provided in shades)

Re: If I were to write 6th edition Terran Empire I'd... I was sloppy... yes mass is gravity field independent unlike weight. The point is to be able to use the encumbrance rules you need to know the encumbrance caused by personal equipment worn and carried....

Everything from exoskeletons, flight packs, to liquid computer controlled body armor. Perhaps this should be posted in Dark Champions as well... but a lot of this stuff sure sounds like science fiction to me. 3 billion dollar super soldier program