GreyGuardian

Re: If I were to write 6th edition Terran Empire I'd... Things I'd clarify or tweak in a new edition - fuel vs. reaction mass. An antimatter reactor having enough fuel to last 6 months of normal operation is perfectly reasonable - fuel is the substance that is undergoes the energy releasing reaction. If you rely on rockets of any form (antimatter, fusion, chemical, whatever) you still need a huge amount of reaction mass - the stuff ejected out the back of the space craft to push it forward. There is no way rockets would remain in use more than a few decades once reactionless drives became commercially feasible. The cost and weight savings of not having to move all the reaction mass with the ship would be enormous. If the reactionless drives were limited in their delta V per turn, then having maneuver rockets would make sense; however, you would get to orbit using the reactionless drives. Ship size should be a measure of useable space and or volume not just area. I'd add mass and volume constraints for all the modular systems - possibly with an explanation on how to tweak it for different settings - similar to how fantasy hero presents multiple magic systems and the game effects of the rules used to get the "feel" of each system to be different. Some representative deck plans would be nice as well. To keep things simple use flight in atmosphere normally and as a space drive have inches of flight equal to delta V with no cap (other than light speed). 60" of flight is not 1 gravity of acceleration unless you can increase velocity by 60" each turn. Possible use an assumption that space combat generally requires all participants to be at a relative stop compared to each other aside from use of flight under the normal rules. For example while all the ships are in motion with respect to each other their all moving at about the same speed in about the same direction with respect to planets, stars and such. Speaking of which, hyperdrive mentions that the velocity of the ship while in hyperspace determines how far the ship actually travels... which gets complicated when the hyperdrive engine keeps the ship in hyperspace up to a maximum time and specifies a maximum distance. That means if you upgrade the normal space drive you can go the maximum distance allowed by the hyperdrive in less time and that conflicts with how the drive is bought. Actually more than that since momentum and velocity transfer with the ship, if you spend time in real space accelerating to close to light speed you probably can get to the maximum distance allowed by the drive before the minimum time has elapsed... of course once on the other side you have a lot of deceleration to do. Having the hyperdrive propell the ship towards the desired exit point in hyperspace as well as to enable entry and exit of hyperspace would eliminate that complication. Normal space flight would work for manuevers but would not affect the distance or time in hyperspace. The distance from a planet / star that hyper or jump drive can be used has a huge effect on how long it takes to move goods from once system to another. System to system time has lots of implications on what is likely to be a reasonable type of cargo. All these changes would require a revision of the economic system. It should be balanced so that operation of a merchant ship, or group of mercenaries, etc.... should be sufficiently profitable on average to have a middle class lifestyle. Maybe lower middle class for unskilled crew. However, it should be insecure enough that a few bad cargo's could cost the ship and thus the business. And add weights for all the equipment (assuming 1 gravity) - weapons, defenses, supplies etc.

Pulp Science Fiction Magazine Covers Anyone know if there's some sort of internet (or physical) archive for the old pulp magazines?

http://www.charlespellegrino.com/propulsion.htm

Re: Name Something You'd Allow That The GM At The Convention Didn't Using player generated characters would be possible if character creation guidelines could be provided to everyone registered for the game at least a few weeks before a convention. Those character guidelines would need to be more restrictive than build a 350 point super hero using any hero system rule or variant. A "living game" like the rpga d20 living greyhawk might be possible if you had enough people with enough spare time that could write clear guidlines and coordinated scenario releases / publication. With that said, expect convention games to use pre-generated characters because it solves several potential problems. 1) No character legality check needed, 2) game master knows what the characters are capable of and can balance opposition to provide whatever level of challenge is desired, 3) player character agendas and dynamics can be set to get players "into the character" and give them each something unique to strive for as well as providing built in role play opportunities within the player group.

Re: Weapon Design Question Good Old Wikipedia has an article on Plasma "A plasma is typically an ionized gas. Plasma is considered to be a distinct state of matter, apart from gases, because of its unique properties. Ionized refers to presence of one or more free electrons, which are not bound to an atom or molecule. The free electric charges make the plasma electrically conductive so that it responds strongly to electromagnetic fields. Plasma typically takes the form of neutral gas-like clouds (e.g. stars) or charged ion beams, but may also include dust and grains (called dusty plasmas).[1] They are typically formed by heating and ionizing a gas, stripping electrons away from atoms, thereby enabling the positive and negative charges to move more freely. Lightning is an example of plasma present at Earth's surface. Typically, lightning discharges 30,000 amperes, at up to 100 million volts, and emits light, radio waves, x-rays and even gamma rays.[11] Plasma temperatures in lightning can approach ~28,000 kelvin (~27,700oC) and electron densities may exceed 1024/m³." If you handle a lightning bolt as a normal damage energy attack then normal damage is reasonable for a plasma weapon.

Re: GMing for Dummies Or you could try and find a copy of this: Robin's Laws Good Game Mastering

Re: Pulp SF magazine Cover Art Another pulp magazine covers site... seems to have things other than science fiction.

Re: Using N-ray vision to read a book on a shelf If you only wanted to be able to speed read books (even when closed and on a shelf in a dark room) you might also build it as a detect written words, with sense, discriminatory, analyze, and rapid (probably a lot of rapid). You can do a lot of funky things with detects that are not tied to an existing sense. You can also create game (or plot) breaking powers.

Nifty Science Fiction Pulp Magazine cover art

Re: PDFs on Kindle Go to engadget - seek Asus EEE PC (or something like that) 7" or 9" screen runs linux or win xp and costs about $400.

Re: I got some players!!!.... But I need some help.. http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1553382&postcount=2 Good advice for a convention game and a clean format for a character sheet - it may help to keep things simple. There are combat summary sheets posted somewhere on the Hero site as well as a short intro to the rules that are very useful... as I recall they include the how to take damage discussion. Keep them focused on what is going on (the story) rather than how the rules work. Knockback is good for Champions, hit locations, wounding etc... probably not so much - if you were talking about street level type heroes (dark champions) then heck yes... but start with the basics before worrying about options. The published 5th adventures are actually pretty darn good.

Re: Massively Article On Champions Online Biggest problem with WoW compared to CoH - It takes too long at the high levels to go and do things. With CoH I can log in, complete a mission, and deal with drops (dump in base storage or sell) and be done in 30 minutes. About that fast even when I get in a group probably because travelling takes a lot less time in CoH.

Re: Creating a Shield Aren't skills that are used as powers listed under the powers tab in hero designer? That might solve the problem with the skill / power warning. Also 5 point combat skill levels are the smallest levels that can have limitations.

Re: Musing on Movement: Is Velocity "Persistent" Unless it is going to matter a character moving at combat speed can be presumed to accelerate and decelerate so they end their phase at 0 velocity. 1st the situation should provide some sort of dramatic tension and then it's probably one of these sitations when velocity matters: Accelerating so you can go to non-combat movement next phase and whenever moving at non-combat velocity. Move through, Move by, being thrown movement modes with a turn mode when used in a small space - this includes flying characters that dive towards the ground and need to have room to pull out of the dive. most vehicle movement

Re: New Campaign Help I wouldn't worry about them buying gear ... if you control their money supply you can keep them as poor as you want / need to. It's a good idea to have the players coordinate the particular things they will be good at (a sneak, a pilot, a convincing negotiator, a doctor, etc.) you probably don't want them to know anyone's background other than their own... and if you assume brainwashing, torture, bad nutrition and beatings, well they might not even remember their own background completely - which means you can do reveals on background as the game goes on... You need to be sure the players are ok with having pasts radically different from what they assumed if you need to for story reasons... just reassure them it doesn't change who the character is in the present even if he was a mass murderer canibal type.

Re: 3 spell potions arent working... I suspect you are over thinking the problem. Berserk - Grants 1 overall combat level (8 point combat skill level), uncontrolled - lasts 12 hours (or use a continuing charge), Unless you are using optional combat rules there are no combat penalties for loosing stun or body aside from being con stunned and being knocked out. I just wrote out an exceeding complicated solution and then realised all you need is 20 points of PD and 20 ED that stops stun only. You can raise the amount of PD and ED if need be to avoid taking stun. The user will still take 1 stun for every point of body that gets past his armor, but that probably can't con stun or knock out a normal character. If that appears to be an issue you can adopt parts of the complicated version - which is: the second ability is aid constitution maybe 10 dice total - uses standard effect which means 10 dice = 10 x 3 = 30 points which equals 15 points of con (because 1 con = 2 points). Delayed return rate so that it lasts at least 12 hours. limitation - does not add to figured characteristics, only to avoid being con stunned, uncontrolled fades instantly after 12 hours (usually adjustment powers fade in 5 point increments). And 4d6 aid stun (which is healing) which is triggered by any damage that would otherwise reduce the character's stun to 0 or less reduced endurance to 0 endurance, lingering (see fantasy hero) that lasts 12 hours. If you want you can have the user die if Body drops to 0 but that might be overly lethal. I'd use ranged killing attack (RKA) for the fires. 12 turns in TFT should probably be 12 segments in hero (1 turn). Damage shield, with range, and 1 hex area effect, continuous, uncontrolled - need to feed in enough endurance to last 1 turn (character's speed (spd) x the endurance cost for one phase) to start a fire, lingering (see fantasy hero) for however long the potion lasts (12 hours or whatever). You don't need to make them persistent. The damage shield means that anything entering or staying in the hex takes damage. For the magic fist, as I recall that was a ranged telekinetic fist - so energy blast vs physical. If you want it to cost more endurance for each step of larger of the blast you can buy it as 4d6 eb, normal endurance, +2d6 eb at 2x endurance, +2d6 at 4x endurance, +2d6 at 8x endurance. Then the caster uses only as many dice as they want to pay endurance for... 4d6 costs 2 end, 6d6 costs 4 end, 8d6 costs 8 endurance, 10d6 costs 16 endurance. You can of course vary how many dice and how much increased endurance you put on each increment. I wouldn't worry about the d6-2 for each die of effect as that was a balance issue in the The Fantasy Trip (assuming that's what TFT is) system. Of course it's been a few years - by which I mean many years, since I've looked at those books...

Re: Power Creation Question Unless the curl up power is mystical or magical in some way then I'd say armor is a more appropriate way of buying the extra defense as it doesn't require endurance every phase. If he is totally oblivious to surroundings when curled up then the concentration 0 DCV limitation works pretty well. If he is aware of his surroundings, can recover, communicate, use skills that don't require physical movement, then you probably want some variant of concentration - after all not moving is still going to leave him at 0 DCV. Or you can just write a custom limitation like, Curled in a ball -1.5 (which means can't attack, can't move) - or whatever seems to be an appropriate limitation value for that. Note - if he can recover while curled up it will only work if he uses no abilities that take endurance and he takes no stun and no body while he is recovering. In hero the value of the limitation is tied to how limiting the restriction is. If he the restrictions are so limiting that he will only use the power once every 10 sessions then you want higher value for the limitation. If he uses it effectively every combat and you have at least one or two per game session then you probably shouldn't put more than a -1/2 or -1 limitation on it. For the second power the manuever is indeed move through usually... but you can also use move by if he is not running directly into the target... which means he could theoretically roll around and hit multiple targets with a multiple move by. I recommend extra movement only useable for this manuever. If he can't go up walls or across water with it, buy running. If he can roll up walls etc, buy it as flight only in contact with a surface. - His curl up armor might come in handy for this manuever (but that of course would remove the can't move limitation from it) because he takes half the damage he deals from a move through that hits and 1/3rd of the damage he deals for a move by. Remember reason from the effect you want back to the powers to build it.

Re: Fantasy Hero Wasn't there a fantasy hero senario or two published in digital hero? Other useful books - The Beastiary (and or asian bestiaries) and Minions, monsters and mauraders (err, the book with giants and such in it)

Re: Double The Hero Excitement! Strange you should mention Hite and Cthulhu - Trail of Cthulhu written by Ken Hite is being released on Feb 1 published by Pelegrane Press.

Re: Do you use miniatures? the single layer tackle boxes you can get at target or walmart work nicely for clix figs.

Re: Clinging damage shield Page 143 in Hero System 5th revised - damage shield and clinging to create a tar baby like effect. It does not say if the strength of the damage shield is the base 10 or the character's strength as the base. In the example of usable on others the base strength is 10 and is independent of the character's strength.

Re: Do you use miniatures? For champions and science fiction games I use paper minatures. Mostly Steve Jackson Cardboard heroes. I supplement this by creating a character in City of heroes and taking screen shots that get pasted into a paper minatures rtf doc and printed on cardstock. I posted my swarm of viper agents on these boards somewhere.

Re: Do any of you still play 4th edition and FH Circa 1990?

Re: Songs that inspire(d) you to make a Champions Character Back in the late 80's (when I was in college) I would routinely go through my album collection, pick an album, and have a nearly instant super villain team. Flaming Telepaths was the title I used for the story arc and Harvester of Eyes, Subhuman, Astronomy, and Dominance were the villains of the piece... It was the first times I managed to really get across horror in an rpg... at least two of the players had eeeewww reactions to my version of Harvester of Eyes. A mass of branching tentacles which ended in either eyes or knives. I suspect if I was creating harvester after Neil Gaiman had created the Corinthian it would have been a bit different. Other albums / song titles I remember using Synchronicity (Police), Lighning's Hand (from a Kansas album), and Peter Gabriel's album with the melting face (security perhaps?).

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game I've got a lvl 34 or 35 defender on Victory. I'm on the hero boards channel - my global is @greyguardian. I can give you a hand with those darn loyal citzens if we happen to be online at the same time.