Dino

Re: Self Defense Course

In the real world a lot of self defense instructors (especially women) have backgrounds in "defensive" arts like Aikido and Jujutsu so throws and joint locks are common maneuvers. If the character has been trained in Model Mugging/rape prevention techniques then she will have good ground fighting and close strikes. I usually give such characters a combination of moves from the Wrestling and Jailhouse Rock styles.

Re: What Do You Do with a Dog in a Dungeon?

If I remember the rules to Talisman correctly, you can have the dog take your place in the dungeon so you can continue adventuring. Also, when you need to feed two of your followers to the vampire, the dog and the jester count!

Re: Horror Setting?

DEMON has some excellent horror themed plot elements focusing on the Champions Universe.

Also, the Ultimate Mystic has a lot of good stuff on occult conspiracies.

Re: Phaser Disintegration in 6E

How about building a separate "Disintegrate" slot for a Phaser Multipower as Extra-Dimensional Movement' date=' Usable As Attack, to the "dimension" where the character exists as discorporated atoms?[/quote']

 

Or better yet, to the corn field!

 

By the way, this is in fact how my old game group wrote up the disintegrate (or "glow and go") settings in Trek games, for exactly the reasons you describe.

Re: Blocking and relative strengths

Works for straight up resistance blocks like a boxer or someone using a large shield, but defensive blocks (like you would see in Kenjutsu or most "soft" martial arts) shouldn't be affected by relative STR as the goal is to redirect the attack rather than stop it. Also, how is making blocks less effective going to encourage players to be more defensive? Seems like the thing to do is crank your damage as high as you can so that your opponent cannot block it and go for a first strike.

Re: HERO SYSTEM MARTIAL ARTS -- What Do *You* Want To See?

SAMBO really deserves it's own write up separate from wrestling. Marine Corps Martial Arts and Modern Army Combatives are significantly different from Commando Training to get their own write ups as well. MMA has evolved into a standardized art these days so I would love to see that.

On the subject of maneuver elements: I would really like to see the return of the Block/Strike maneuver. Jeet Kune Do and Kajukenbo both teach "stop hits" and Krav Maga calls it "bursting", but it all comes down to blocking an attack while simultaneously striking your opponent.

Re: Nudity for your benefit

We used to require that naked advantages have the Variable Special Effects (+1/2) advantage applied to them, for those very reasons.

Re: Anyone know about Systema?

It is worth noting than Kadochnikov's Systema makes no claims to mystical powers and in fact prides itself on scientific teaching methods and techniques. Based on videos and what little english language articles I could find, it seems to rely heavily on basic leverage principles to redirect an attack, then take the attacker down and kick him when he's on the ground. (A time honored martial arts tradition!) The most impressive maneuvers are the rooting and shoving techniques which seem to have a lot in common with Tai Chi Chuan. Here's a package I wrote up for my games:

Cost Martial Arts Maneuver

Kadochnikov's Systema

5 1) Grappling Block: 1/2 Phase, +1 OCV, +1 DCV, Grab One Limb, Block

4 2) Counterstrike: 1/2 Phase, +2 OCV, +2 DCV, 4d6 Strike, Must Follow Block

3 3) Grappling Throw: 1/2 Phase, +0 OCV, +2 DCV, 4d6 Strike; Target Falls; Must Follow Grab

5 4) Disarming Throw: 1/2 Phase, +0 OCV, +0 DCV, Grab Weapon, 15 STR to take weapon away; Target Falls

4 5) Root: 1/2 Phase, +0 OCV, +0 DCV, 25 STR to resist Shove; Block, Abort

4 6) Shove: 1/2 Phase, +0 OCV, +0 DCV, 25 STR to Shove

1 7) Weapon Element: Blades

1 8) Weapon Element: Clubs

1 9) Weapon Element: Staffs

1 10) Weapon Element: Clubs (Chair)

1 11) Weapon Element: Chain & Rope Weapons (Belt)

1 12) Weapon Element: Assault Rifles/LMGs (as melee weapon)

Martial Arts Cost: 31

Cost Skill

Kadochnikov's Systema

3 1) Breakfall 11-

3 2) Climbing 11-

2 3) KS: Kadochnikov's Systema 11-

4 4) WF: Common Melee Weapons, Small Arms

Skills Cost: 12

Re: How to build MMA Style Martial Arts

Here's set of MMA manoeuvres I created for a PC of mine. It contains two unique manoeuvres: The Ground n' Pound (works like a Crush but must follow throw instead of grab), and The Sprawl (like a Root but resists throws instead of shove). The rest are all standard moves that appear in various striking and grappling arts in the UMA, though some have had their names changed.

Re: Firing rates of semi-auto&bolt action

How would people build a bolt action rifle to reflect the firing pattern?

Give bolt action rifles a limitation that they can't use the Rapid Fire manoeuvre. That way a SPD 4 character using one is limited to a max of four shots in a 12 second turn, but characters using autofire can squeeze off multiple rounds per phase (with a corresponding loss of accuracy).

Re: Sixth Edition Showcase #2: New Combat Maneuvers; Objects As Weapons

Strafe! Oh how I have missed you...

Seriously, It really bothered me in 5th Ed that you couldn't shoot on the move. When the Moving Shot martial maneuver vanished from the main maneuver list between printings of the UMA, I really started feeling paranoid...

Re: Top 5 Favorite 5E Supplements

Dino's Top 5

1) Hero System Resource Kit (I get more use out of the game screen than any other Hero Product.)

2) Ultimate Martial Artist (Real world martial arts writeups are cool even when I don't agree with them!)

3) USPD (A book I first thought I didn't need, now I can't run superheroes without it.)

4) DEMON (Best. Sourcebook. Ever.)

5) Dark Champions (Guns!)

Re: Zombie Horror Survivor (Left4Dead)?

Post Apocalypse Hero has a good section on running a "Zombie Apocalypse" setting. You might also want to check out this website.

I've run a number of zombie games over the years and I've found the most important thing is to have a definate idea for long term story development. You should think about things like "Where did the zombies come from" and "how do they work". If your zombies are the result of a virus then that leads to different plotlines than if you go with a supernatural explanation. The shock of haveing to fight zombie hordes can carry a game for many sessions, but eventually your players are going to ask "what next".

Re: Advice on how to gm 9 to 10 players in a Superhero campaign.

I have run several large groups over the years and the one thing I can tell you more than anything else is this: If you want roleplaying to occur (and it sounds like you do) you have to find a way to get your players to interact with each other at least as much as any NPCs you put in the game. My last game group fell apart because the players didn't really like playing with each other. Strange little personal conflicts that never came up outside of gaming took on a whole new life at the table. In the end, it was like trying to run nine solo games at the same time!

Use the time you have playing in the current game to take mental notes of how each player interacts with the others and what kind of plots/playstyle interests them. And by all means when it comes your turn to run, get players to give you detailed character concepts long before you do character generation. Look for ways to tie character backgrounds together (the old DNPCs are co-workers/friends plot works wonders) and common goals/enemies that you can use to get groups of PCs working together during a session which hopefully will help motivate the rest of the group.

Re: Extended breathing: Howzat work?

Characters holding their breath must spend 1 END each phase in addition to their normal END for things like STR and movement. So a PC with 30 END who is doing nothing but holding his breath at the bottom of a swimming pool will run out of END after 30 phases and start burning stun (and then body).

LS: Extended Breathing pushed back the rate at witch you have to spend "breath endurance". So if our hero had LS: Extended Breathing (1/minute), he could chill at the bottom of the pool for half an hour before taking any damage.

LS does not help with the END cost for things like using your STR, so to create a dolphin-like character who can swim and fight underwater you would still need a lot of END/extra END only for swimming/reduced END/ etc.

Re: Solanum Zombie (1st Draft)

Suggestion: replace AoE: Radius with Voice Range advantage from Fantasy Hero. That way, it's the Ref's call on how close the zombies have to be to freak people out. You could even rule that with Voice Range multiple zombies increase the effective range without amplifying the effects (i.e. number of dice).

Re: Shield-Fu

Here's a quick shield fu martial art:

Shield Fu

4 Shield Bash: 1/2 Phase, +2 OCV, +2 DCV, Weapon +2 DC Strike, Must Follow Block

4 Parry: 1/2 Phase, +2 OCV, +2 DCV, Block, Abort

5 Rush: 1/2 Phase, +1 OCV, +0 DCV, Weapon +v/5; FMove

4 Brace: 1/2 Phase, +0 OCV, +0 DCV, 25 STR to resist Shove; Block, Abort

4 Shove: 1/2 Phase, +0 OCV, +0 DCV, 25 STR to Shove

4 Weapon Bind: 1/2 Phase, +1 OCV, +0 DCV, Bind, 20 STR

0 Weapon Element: Shield

Martial Arts Cost: 25

Re: Campaign idea

killershrik has made a setting called metacyber that you need to check out he has some great stuff there

Link

Re: Hero System Sources for Computers/AIs

Question: who pays for the AI? Does the PC pay the points for the Vehicle' date=' and out of the Vehicle's points come the 5:1 points for the AI? Or should the PC be paying the points for both the Vehicle [i']and[/i] the AI?

According to 5ER, you calculate the cost for the computer and vehicle seperately, and add them together. Both get the 1/5 cost break.

Re: Half-Move and Sweep

I don't know what's funnier, the fact that people came up with three different ways to solve the problem without checking the existing skills, or the fact that all three ideas are sound and rules legal...

Re: Veronica Mars

I was just thinking of writing Veronica up the other day (and maybe Dean and Sam from Supernatural to boot). Give me a couple days...

Re: Solo Hero campaign

What Lord Morham and Blue said.

Also, I cannot overstate the importance of NPC's to a solo PC. With no other players in the game to bounce ideas off of, your player is gonna need NPC's to act as confidants, advisors, friends and allies, as well as opponents and informants.

Re: Integrating "normal" things into a "Super" world

Pretty cool rules there L.L.

Another thing I have done with Real Weapon limitation is rule that weapons with it require weapon familiarity even in a superheroic campaign. That way supers have a reason to have WF's even if they paid points for thier own super-guns.

Re: Opinion Fluff: Game Philosophies

If you bring drugs you are out and expect police to show up at your door or maybe even drag you off.

Dude, where do you live that you can get the cops to arrest someone just because you say you saw them with drugs?

I couldn't get the cops here to show up to my place of business and deal with the six foot six, bi-polar, heroin jonesing street person who was making verbal death threats and trespassing on private property last month.

Re: Opinion Fluff: Game Philosophies

1) GM: The GM is the final authority on all decisions in the game he alone is running.

Actually, we have two GMs in the group, so whoever's running will usually consult with the other GM, but the current GM has the final say for his game.

3) Guideline Rule Interpretation: A set of guidelines are used to show what things fall into Closed Rule Interpretation and/or what things fall into Open Rule Interpretation.

We have house rules that apply to the group as a whole, as well as options set for a given game by the current GM.

1) Membership Group: Potential players are excluded until Authorititative Permission is granted.

New players are given a tryout under a particular GM, and all current players have the ability to "black ball" the new player if they aren't comfortable.

2) Freeform: The Authority strives to streamline play by only debating rules as ambiguous situations arise during game play. The Authority decides the resolution and the game continues with that decision.

Now that I think about it, maybe our group dynamic is more tournament than membership.

I think this has potential as a handout similar to the campaign guidlines sheet from the resource kit. A formal way to let new players know what kind of gamegroup they are getting themselves into and what is expected of them. One of the most awkward parts of gaming with new people is teaching them your group's "style" of play.