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Bolon

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Everything posted by Bolon

  1. Re: A base with stuff, or just a bunh of Immobile Foci? This actually sounds like what you might want to discuss with your GM. I personally think that if it is only usable at your base, I would be okay with it being part of your base. If the powers just have to originate at the base, I think Immobile Foci that is at the base would be more appropriate. Is the creature summoned going to be travelling away with you? Is the dimensional door only one way from the base or can you return from the other end? If the creature serves you outside of the base and the door opens other places, it is an immobile foci.
  2. Re: The Death of Knowledge Skills: You are without KS and are using this new high Everything skill. You see the clue but without the appropriate background knowledge of the KS, you have no idea what to google or research for the info. On "Elementary", Holmes is one of the smartest men in the world but it was Watson who had the vital piece of information. A blood sample took them to an army chaplin that was out of country on posting for the last month where the blood was fresh. They searched the army chaplin's home looking for a clue and all that Holmes figured out was that the person should be sainted if there were miracles. Watson, the doctor, saw a bone marrow donor ribbon and made the connection that receipants of bone marrow will actually produce the blood of the donor in their system since that is what bone marrow does. Both facts required the KS and anyone who says they would have googled that, would be a liar. It will never replace. A good GM always has a list of the KS and PS of the players so they can reference the skills as required. Calling out for who has the appropriate skill is good when the players are doing something they decide but you need to know your characters when it is something they would notice. The "looking at character sheets" will not work and often hurts the play. I am sorry but humans decide what they will research and it can be a bonus but they must have a frame of reference to use any other system and a need to notice.
  3. Re: The Death of Knowledge Skills: As an educator, having the knowledge of something doesn't mean you have the ability to use it. If it is based on getting a fact or single detail, I would allow it but to do something, it would be very useless. Let's look at the person who tries to diagnose an illness via an internet database. Does the person have the necessary secondary skills to interpret their findings? If your answer is that they can just look it up, then you need to add additional time. Does the person have speed reading or some other method to transmit that body of knowledge into the brain quickly but slow enough that there is comprehension of the material? If it is to do something, do they have the right tools including the physical dexterity to do the task? How many times have you done something that improved since you have tried it once? There is the same knowledge from the skill to remove errors in instructions and compensate for differences in technique, tools and situations. Having a skill also gives the user a degree of experience in the skill so they are not shocked by unusual results or just the nature of the task. How often do you just check if you are doing something right even though you have no signs of error? Our own confidence is a factor in taking the risk of doing things right the first time. Is the person a quick study or do they need to rehearse? I could see something like this in a character who was a chameleon or con-artist but even those, in movies and books, go through that montage of practice to learn the skill for their con. In fiction, it should be that same. Chipped skills in another game had it right by requiring a person to be chipped for so long before they would get full benefit of that skill as the muscle memory and confidence rose. A research method will never replace an expert or someone with some real life experience in a skill. Getting facts is one thing but having a full blown knowledge skill or a professional skill from a research device is illogical. To make it almost instantly retrieving knowledge is also crazy as it took me almost 10 minutes to type in this info. It has to be out of combat and taking time. I don't see crazy long times as the device would be a time saving modifier but it would require concentration and time. Even in a heads-up display or direct brain interface, there would be a moment of time to ask the question and then digest the information as our brains as just not that fast. To get what the player envisions would cost more than just a cell phone with google. How many people still have problems with autocorrect functions and fat fingers as they type? Imagine the Thing using a cellphone for research. LOL
  4. Re: IFF Transponders The question would be what kind of focus the IFF transponder would be. I also am wondering how impossible is it to shoot an ally. If you make the weapon incapable of shooting, that would be a personal immunity of some kind to be sorted out with the GM. That would prevent mind control or such from affecting the user. If the user decides, then, nothing else is needed. It is a sense and he/she can act on it as they desire.
  5. Re: The Red Queen Effect and Superhumans "However, I would like to offer a counter-example. The percentage of people in our society born with disadvantageous genetic traits -- from myopia to diabetes to malformed limbs -- is actually on the increase. The pressure of natural selection should be weeding these traits out, but our medical technology has compensated for them to the extent that such people can live relatively normal and productive lives... including the opportunity to pass their genes on to succeeding generations." I would like to comment on the fact that it is not necessarily a disadvantageous genetic trait but in the case of my own version of diabetes, it comes from an advantage that is no longer needed. Larger men or warriors had the ability to store energy in their livers for times of hardship. With modern living, we don't have times of hardship but just need to reduce our dietary intake to avoid overweight. That advantage of 300 years ago is now a disadvantage as it continues to feed extra blood sugar that is not needed and creates my type of diabetes. Those large football players and athletes don't live as long due to all the advantages that they don't really need anymore. For me, my current medication is focused more on shutting down my liver and extra blood sugar production as it is in improving my insulin production and usage. Why would some organisms like the virii and bacteria need to evolve when there are still a large target available? The Europeans and First Nations examples presents virii and bacteria in an environment without natural predators much like the current issues with rabbits and other animals in Australia that are destroying the native animals. The Red Queen effect would take effect if and when there is a need to evolve or die. There are enough normal humans in the Marvel world so that is not required yet. In a world where superhumans or mutants increased to create a threat, there would be a need to evolve. Those universes can have events as coincidence might cause but it is not needed in the system. It is an interesting viewpoint. To further this viewpoint though, look at the number of different huminoids from our own history that are now discovered and how it took hundreds of thousands of years for them to become homo sapiens as we know them as the only one left. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Early_species_of_Homo
  6. Re: Always knows a name I have a friend who always knows the name of things. It is KS - Bullsh-t as he is never correct but sounds great. Would the name have anything to do with what anyone else calls it? That sounds like he would need telepathy to give image directly into the mind so all would know what it is. Language is too complex to just do it that way. Have him spend too many points to instantly get the name telepathically and then telepathically alter what he says so everyone around hears the exact name as they understand it. That sounds like exactly what he wants and it would have no game effect except make him perfectly clear on what he is talking about.
  7. Re: Always knows a name What if 2 things have the same name? There are examples of the same word meaning something in one language and something different in another. Is it the language of origin or the language of the country where found? What if the 2 people have the same name exactly? Does it give birthdates and hometowns or even relationships to sort them out? Would an actor be his name or the name of the character he is playing? Could it be fooled and by what? This sounds like a bizarre power gaming attempt to get something for nothing. Ask him how he plans to use it in the game and build it based on game effects and not special effects. This sounds like discriminatory sense via another angle. If I called a horse a "zog" and it was my horse, would he get "zog" or horse? Would the name be the proper name or the common name or the latin classification of something? This is massively too vague.
  8. Re: Standard Effect and MoS I am assuming your Standard effect would be the damage of a hit without rolling hit damage. Have you looked at 3.5 per die as standard for statistical purposes. Each +1 would add half the dice as damage so once you are at +5, you have maximum damage. Is this the idea you are trying to create?
  9. Re: Advice sought: Uncommon Sense(s) Without the appropriate skill, the character would be able to understand but that would be having no language and no concepts to explain the data. Part of my degree in law enforcement included a course on how to interpret blood results. It gave me a general framework to interpret the raw data and then apply it to policing. With the blood example above, he would be able to identify the blood as from a specific person with a sample previously. He wouldn't be able to tell that the disease in the blood was something if he never encountered it. He wouldn't be able to tell me the blood type although he would know it. It would be of a scale of his own device without the skill. I would allow after time to have a familiarity and therefore start to use standard coding for his data. I definitely wouldn't be giving him the ability to link up his information with data via the internet or discussions with medical professions without at least a familiarity.
  10. Re: Advice sought: Uncommon Sense(s) I agree with what most say now. I would like to point out that a piece of logic doesn't ring true to me. It shouldn't matter how much he paid for the ability whether 60 pts or 600. Everyone paid points for everything they are doing against him and the game design balances it. If it did matter, I would just ask my GM to make me a character with all my points on one thing and argue that I spent more points on it so I should win everything. There is a point where the amount of points spent don't justify the return. Personally, I feel that was done here. To argue that he should get more just based on the amount of points he spent, is against the logic and principle of the game. You only get what you pay for and nothing more. It is 60 pts in senses and should give him that in perceiving. There is a point of overkill. You are as dead with a .22 to the head as a nuclear bomb blowing up at point zero. It would ensure that what he received was all that he could get from his senses and nobody in the party should get more but beyond that, it doesn't give anything beyond the ability to sense it. As a GM, I might say you get the chemical analysis of the food but what do you do with it? Sorry, no skill to interpret the data. The character then needs to find someone with the skill and recite his findings exactly. Without the necessary skill, he would still not present it in a manner that is precise and quick for the one with the skill. This could take a long time or miss vital information. Think of the wild goose chases you can send someone on. Remember, there are many things that are considered poisons or such that are considered acceptable in food and tobacco. You need to sit down and sort this out with your GM on what you want it to do and how it would affect the game. The Americans knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbour but it was a matter of deciding what to do about it. Mistakes can still be made when you get all the facts. It is how you deal with what you don't know that is the most important.
  11. Re: Advice sought: Uncommon Sense(s) I would agree perception to compliment a skill. If you look at my later post on this, enhanced perceptions allow you more data but without the proper skill set and data, you can't interpret it correctly. Look at the examples of easy mistakes that have been done interpreting data. The character might use inductive reasoning over deductive reasoning but needs to make a number of observations to create a hypothesis and prove a theory versus deductive that has a theory and uses the observations to prove it. That is the complication. Identifying is only the first stage. The character still needs to know what to do with the data and for that matter, which data to use. Without a skill, how would that person know?
  12. Re: Twinsense for Hero 4th editon. I would go Mindlink and just remove everything it can do except direction, distance and condition of brother. This way you don't have to reacquire with the Mind Scan or the sense everytime you use it. For game effects, you want to be able to just find the brother at anytime so why would you turn it off? Talk to your GM and let him decide. It shouldn't cost much since mindlink for a radio is not costly. By limiting to only one mind, it should be really cheap.
  13. Re: Advice sought: Uncommon Sense(s) I don't feel it is a penalty. He has only improved his perception with greater detail. That would include perceiving red herrings more as well as perceiving actual clues. It would remove many of the red herrings based on deception but not on the red herrings that don't have anything to do with the current case. Examples would be arresting the janitor with a substance abuse problem when checking out a place where the owner might be the drug dealer. It would sidetrack you with minor distractions you become aware of that would blow your cover or alert the "big bad" before you get to him if you take any action. Rachel has had problems with sensory overload but it is a complication. Even without the complication, the player would be getting a constant stream of useless facts that he would have to wade through. For the GM, you might want to have a laptop with a few google windows open so you can bring up unique details. For game effect, all that extra detail means nothing unless you can retain it and then apply it properly. Simple facts would jump out more but minor details would be harder to sort out. The wine the "big bad" serves, comes from a small area of France so you travel there to find his evil lair or does he just have very good taste in wine. Is it important or not? Without the skills to sort that out and retain the information, he would need a very large suitcase of real sample to be constantly comparing things to. Identification requires 2 parts. One is perception and those abilities would give the character in extreme capability but the other is a desire to note that detail. We ignore a lot of details in our daily life since we don't need to keep it. Think about driving somewhere. Do you remember every light, traffic sign or other car you encountered? You did as you drove but most will not be able to give specifics after the trip was over unless you had a need before the trip began. There is no reason to hold that memory and therefore it wouldn't be kept. Memory enhancers and appropriate skills might give you cause to remember more but without a reason or framework to hold that data, you would never keep it all. It is a memory overload so you dump unimportant data. If this case of perception, you are getting even more data and must be more selective about what you keep, hence data overload. It doesn't give you magic ability to know what is important and what isn't. We all cheat by just using what the GM says as important since he wouldn't mention it unless it was. Just like when you watch a tv show, you know who the bad guy is by recognizing bigger better actors for bigger roles. Think of the lab in Bones. When something is analysed, it still needs to be run through a computer to map out areas where that is. They have to figure out what is valuable and would actually have a data base to probe to get that information. Hodges is a conspiracy nut and has the special KS of government data bases know how to use his information to gain more information. The character with these senses wouldn't need the large lab with all the wonderful toys but would still need the knowledges and skills to sort out the information.
  14. Re: Advice sought: Uncommon Sense(s) psyber624: Unless he is tasting the suspect, the smell of the substance is the same. If he never makes those mistakes, it would only be between court appearance for assault and a 72 hour psyc visit that he would do his crime fighting. My degree is criminal justice and I know a bit about the principles and theories of forensics. False trails can be created if you don't do your full homework. Remember the snowboarder who was tested positive for drugs based on second hand smoke. Smell is in the air and not analyzing the body of someone without contact. That would require the Adjacent modifier. Without the Rapid modifier, I would be keeping the character busy with overload from all the information he needs to get through. That is yet another reason he would need a skill or memory talent to sort and organize all that data.
  15. Re: Russian Nazca-like Space Elk discovered I really have my doubts about anything new like this being discovered in Russia after the Cold War. There must have been thousands of satellites combing the Russian landscape and it is only discovered now. Makes me wonder.
  16. Re: Advice sought: Uncommon Sense(s) Surprise would be near impossible if it is perceivable. He would also be able to re-identify anything he encountered before basically. There would also be a chance of identifying anything that was in contact with anything he identified before. Without some kind of memory talent, this would become too much to manage. With the appropriate skill, he might be able to manage the increased knowledge in those areas only but still suffer from lack of memory ability. The GM would constantly be giving him a "deja vu" feeling since his subconscious would remember but he would be able to articulate it. These powers plus eidetic memory would be very powerful. As a GM, you could just say "deja vu" all the time and he would have to figure it out if he didn't have the appropriate skill or memory talents. It could be the girlfriend of a villain walking by or the girlfriend of the guy he stood next to on the subway today. He would never know. Watch "Alphas" as they have a character like that but she can only "supe" up one sense at a time. Would this guy take extra damage from flash attacks? There are a lot of interesting aspects you could play up. He could end up arresting someone who was in contact with some smoking drugs or be easily given wrong information via "every contact leaves a trace".
  17. Re: DEA and local police And every one of those scenarios have a "by the book" version to solve and therefore can end up in predictability. Predictability ends up in carelessness and deaths. Read the work of Richard Marcinko and you will understand why the SEALs avoid such. Watch Flashpoint where the SWAT team adjusts and doesn't know the scenario until it is time and they start the operation. That is how you plug leaks by keeping it secret until it is time and they train for everything too.
  18. Re: New Everyman skill I would argue that the AK-Campaign City would give you the knowledge of the world but with more penalties as you get farther from that city or region. Using your example, I am from Canada and the royal family are our royal family in England too whereas it is something you know about due to recent events in the U.S. If you go back 30 years, you might not have such a knowledge of the royals since it was recent events like Diana's death, the Elton John song and the recent marriage of one of her sons that have made them more recently known. You might need a skill like common knowledge or general knowledge if your GM is very literal. Running a Canadian or just a commonwealth character, I would assume some knowledge. A basic INT roll would be used for things outside of the other Everyman skills but is it really necessary to mess with the players and the characters by being so much of a prick or dick about things if needed to further the plot? It might need to be depending on your GM.
  19. Re: New Everyman skill Would Common Knowledge be only for knowledge that a character would know but the player doesn't since it is not a world of his reality? Or would it be a skill used for knowing things that the character could know that really doesn't fit into a knowledge skill category? I thought that would be called Area of Knowledge - with a place, Professional Skill with a job category or Knowledge Skill with a group of people. Why shouldn't you be rolling on their AK- Campaign area? That has been the skill we have used for the last 20 years as an everyman skill.
  20. Re: Using Hero System for Zombie Survival Horror Head Shot - Have you looked at "high shot" modifiers? The traditional headshot is a one-shot kill aspect. The greatest power of zombies is not their disease or ability to take a lot of damage but the sheer numbers and overwhelming their prey. Trying to take only head shots and fighting them with perfect kills ends up as a losing strategy. The characters will need to figure other ways to stop large numbers. Secondly, if it can't walk since you blew a leg off or such, you have all the time in the world to set and brace to remove modifiers. If it is too easy to drop them with head shots, you lose the panic and the atmosphere of a zombie attack. If the zombie has no torso and legs via massive damage, you don't have to worry about attack. Thirdly, this would be a great excuse for them to spend all the experience points in OCV level for called shots at the beginning. They would also have all the chance to learn it with all the combat. Remember, a zombie survival scenario is all about that initial adjustment and getting through it. Zombie Bite - I would use a transformation attack. You decide how fast it would transform someone and whether there are ways to reverse it. You could even have something where the amount of damage the character suffers speeds up the effect. It would end up in losing a lot of characters to start but there are usually a lot of opportunities to meet other small groups to align with. It might be a good idea to have the characters create a number of characters even if not fully fleshed out. We use a house rule that new characters come in with the same experience as old characters to keep everyone close. It might add and would also allow for some great role-playing where characters would sacrifice themselves for others. We don't penaltize players for that either with our rule. We did the same with other systems and some players needed a few characters to start and others needed only one. We did a game where you only had a 20% chance of being infected per bite. Of the 5 characters, 4 failed their first roll and the 5th ran. It was designed to have the players making those hard decision to kill one of their own, etc. but the dice said F you. Dice have a way of really messing things up. Be ready for it.
  21. Re: DEA and local police Depending on the force and size of the city, Hudson City is rather large with a lot of police, SWAT and probably even a shore/ docks element. The case is entirely within its jurisdiction at this point although you might have leads taking you to other places. Those leads/ connections would require other departments to get involved. The Feds want in and would exploit anything that might make it a "possible" federal case but the local PD want to have as much credit and press on it for their budget talks and the re-elections of their elected officials. As GM, you should decide based on what you are comfortable with. Do you want to run a "gaggle-f*ck" with all the agencies getting in each others' way or do you want something clean? Do you want high realism or are you going to keep the story moving by not getting bogged down in unnecessary details? Do you have a need to introduce a character from an agency to be used later or to become a connection later? Do you plan to link these other agencies to something later? Are you just trying to make more work for you and increase clutter so the storyline get confusing? Some enjoy that confusion and clutter where it turns other player off. Think back to the original "Die Hard" when the Feds came in. Do you want something like that? Some outsiders come in and do something stupid or predictable that the bad guys know and plan to use as a diversion to get away. It might be a good idea to have this as a backup plan since the Pack goes on. This way the characters might also see who they can trust and who are just "cowboys" that are looking for glory. What kind of flavour are you trying to create?
  22. Re: Adventure/Module Support If the issue is that most scenarios or adventures have a degree of poor quality since writing HERO system material is so difficult, maybe something should be done to make it easier. What are the secrets or keys to making good scenarios? Are there shortcuts or things that you as a Line Developer look for? Is there a template or a format you use that makes it clear and easy to use/read? Do you have a link to such on a website? Has it ever been included in a supplement? There is a segment who are looking for adventures that are easy to run and fun. Some are looking to save time and have things so they don't need to do prep-work to cut from the fun. Some are looking for examples to copy or emulate when they make their own games. If it is an issue of quality control, then how about just encourage those who post great stuff on the forum to post it on the Free Stuff page? If you make it easier, more will try and do it. If more do, more will enjoy and buy more. "Built it and they will come" or something like that. Recently I have been seeing alternative media such as gaming being used to teach the youth. Education is still falling back to old methods when today's youth are about electronic media, TV, video games and movies. Literature and storytelling are now using diverse medias. Why can't HERO be one of those medias? It might just require a format or a few basic techniques to open this version of storytelling wide open. I would hail a new age of gaming where gamers might return to the creativity and community and away from the business that is Milton Bradley. I might have gone on a tangent there, sorry but the point is a need needs to be filled.
  23. Re: DEA and local police Hudson City: Urban Abyss has a number of police with stats. I would just make some stock contacts and have them as the liassons or reoccurring. They can all have the same stats but just different names and badges. I was looking for the details in other books but it is best to just add the appropriate package and have a few agent sheets.
  24. Re: Adventure/Module Support I strongly agree. Companies should be trying to support with modules even if they have a system of players can produce one, get 5 free and sell them to others as PDF. The contributers get recognized and a few free modules. The company gets some free product and reason for others to purchase the modules and other products. The players get support and can play more with less prep time. The company could even cut some profit to the writer in royalties and might have a rating system so players can know if they are good versus crap. If I made a great scenario, I would love to have a way to put it out there and be recognized for it, maybe make a few bucks for my hard work. It sounds like a great plan.
  25. Re: DEA and local police BTW, there are no real prison names in Shadow so you can place it in your campaign world. They just need to be in the same prison. I don't understand where you got Sing Sing or Rikers from. You are the GM so you can put them in whatever jail you want.
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