Agent Chains

Re: Arquebus, Musket, Cannon Thank you. Very helpful.

Re: Arquebus, Musket, Cannon Thanks for the info. I guess I will be increasing load time, with a loading skill to make it shorter. ImperialKhan where did you get your info on shot size? A number of websites that I visited gave size of bore for historical cannons and a couple gave weight of the ball as well. A 3" ball being about 5 pounds, a 6" ball being about 32 pounds and so on. They basically all said that after the switch to smaller iron balls the smaller cannons could be put on wheels and transported with relative ease. Well, relative ease compared to the huge cannons that had been firing the large stone balls before that. I would assume that the 3" (5 pound), 4" (9 pound), and 5" (17 pound) cannons would be the ones small enough to be wheeled around on the battlefield. Anything firing the 6" to 8" balls sounds more like the seige cannons that would need a bit more work to steady. It sounds like your information may be different or was that along the lines you were thinking? I don't need to be completely exact, but I want to be in the ball park.

Re: Arquebus, Musket, Cannon Thanks. I haven't run a fantasy game in a while now and forgot to look in fantasy hero. I will assume that Steve did more research then me. I just browsed the internet a bit (and did more on Venice history then technology). For cannons I think I will put the loading time at a minute, but lower the activation roll if they don't wait longer then that for cooling. Maybe I'll lower loading time for the matchlocks to an extra phase, instead of a turn, if they take loading as a skill and make a roll, otherwise keep things like Steve has them. His activation rolls look good, though I think I will have them explode on a 16 or greater and just not fire on the other rolls. I had been debating the activation rolls, but couldn't decide.

I am starting a campaign based in 1495 A.D. Venice, Italy. I was wondering what peoples' thoughts were on the damage and modifiers for the arquebus, musket, and cannons. My research says that the arquebus of the time fires a 1 inch ball about 100 yards, the musket wouldn't be invented for about 30 years but when it is would fire up to a 2 inch ball about 200 yards, and cannons have upgraded from using large stone balls to smaller iron balls from 3 to 8 inches. This upgrade in cannon technology is doing a number on castle walls. The main advantage talked about for the arquebus was the lack of training need to use it properly as compared to the crossbow and bow, so I was thinking that it probably does about the same damage as the crossbow. This was what I was thinking for them. Arquebus- 1 1/2d6, -1 OCV, 2 phases to load Musket- 2d6, +1 range, 2 phases to load Cannon 3 to 4 inch- 2d6+1, +1 stun multiplier, -2 OCV, +2 range, 2 phases to load Cannon 5 to 6 inch- 2 1/2d6, +1 stum multiplier, armor piercing, -2 OCV, +2 range, 2 phases to load Cannon 7 to 8 inch- 3d6, +2 stun multiplier, armor piercing, -2 OCV, +2 range, 2 phases to load Anyone else ever dealt with this time period? Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks in advance

Re: Penetrating vs. Force Field Sorry. I was in a hurry when I posted and did misstype several times. Yes Force Wall is what I meant. And Invincible not Invisible is also what I meant. Thank you for the many ideas. I know I could easily overwhelm hamster boy with things like indirect and armor piercing killing attacks, but due to the fact that he has no other defenses(and so so body and so so pd), that could just end up out right killing him(which is why the penetrating is being kept to 1d6 because the second shot will have nothing to stop it). I would rather have him willingly redesign his character a bit due to general suffering. The entangle blocking sight is very nice, that will drive him nuts(you can tell I have been playing fantasy hero for too long, my champions has gotten rusty). The filling it with water sounded awesome until Hugh pointed out the porous fact. Of course, porous does open up the gas attack which I had just assumed it would block, but if he can't sufficate then gas can get through. The force ball was built as follows 15pd/15ed, 2 hexes to make the ball, and 1/2 end. I know in some campaigns 15 might fall more often, but in my campaign attack levels only have a small chance. Which is of couse why he chose to do this. But I don't want to jack up the attacks and screw over the other players, so I am just looking to arm the various minions with a wider variety of weapons and powers. I guess I am looking for the smaller powers because I want this guy to have to worry about the little minions as well as the big bad at the climax. Actually, I suppose this will help me get back in the groove of champions again. Now that I am introducing Viper I think various gas and entangle grenades might be the order of the day for a while. Thanks again everyone.

Hello everyone, I would just like to make sure I have a rule correct and then get some input on some creative vengence on a player. You see I had some players that didn't like having an arbitrary point limits on their powers. So, I said fine no limit. BUT if you spend too much making one or two huge mega powers you will have few points left over to do anything else, will be fairly one dimensional with big gaping weaknesses and no secondary or backup powers. And I will exploit and torture you with said gaping weaknesses repeatedly. Well, all but one of the players paid attention to my warning and just made one or two slightly more powerful signature powers along with the rest of their stuff. Then there was the guy that put all his points on two powers. A massivly tough force globe(force wall that must be a one hex globe) and TK. I was nice for the first couple adventures and now am starting the torture. First I tossed in a teleporter. He didn't much like it when suddenly someone was standing inside his force globe with him or when something got teleported inside him. The second one is my rules question. For some reason I have never used the penetrating advantage much, so this is my question. Viper agent fires special 1d6 penetrating ammo(22 active points) at cocky superhero standing behind his huge 100 active point force wall. Agent rolls 3 body which bounces, but does 1 body penetrating. Force walls have no body so the force wall drops and the special bullet hits superhero doing 1 body and leaving him wide open as he has no other defenses. Do I have that correct? I was also thinking(for irony sake) of having a villian with a neural disruptor at some point(1d6 or 2d6 intelligence drain at range). If possible I want to use low point powers to kick his but around the block a bit. I think it funny to use powers that are much smaller than his huge "invincible" defense to mess with him. Any creative help on other 50 active point or less powers to drive him nuts would be appreciated. Oh yes, almost forgot. He has a very high ego score so mental powers are hard to use against him.

I like the low-powered campaigns for campaigns that are going to last for a while. I ran a fantasy campaign that started at 25/25 points and lasted for 3 years. They were around 250 points at the end. It was fun to look back at when they were nothings and how they had survived to go after the big stuff. For short campaigns I tend to go for the high powered stuff. I am not sure why.

Yep I would say you are right on with using gestures. Usually with gestures the character just can't use the power at all if restrained. Instead it sounds like you will have this character's powers shooting off in random directions if restrained. That sounds just as bad as not working to me. Allies could be hit and such.

I would have to go with the multipower idea listed above. The phasing and all that are the internal part of the character and should be bought individually or as part of an EC so they can be used at anytime. The multipower could be used for the gross tossing around of ectoplasm. EB, TK, Entangle(sliming), Ego Attack maybe(ectoscream), and so on. One reminder is that if she wants any of her slots to affect the real world while desolid that is a +2 advantage. You might want to consider increased end multiplier on such powers to make sure they are not abused. A character that can float around desolid(which in many cases means untouchable) and EB people at will could be a bit unbalancing to your game.

Be Flexible The advantage can be a bit confusing at first. I think you have to remember to use a bit of common sense. Using the +1/4 point advantage for arcing your shells over a wall is the same as using the +1/2 indirect to simulate a high tech missle that can steer itself and attack its target from any direction. Just because you have a hardened wall around your base, doesn't mean that my missle can't fly over the wall and land on your head. You see in the above 2 cases you are using indirect to simulate not having a direct straight line to your target, not having an actual different origin of the attack. Now if I was using indirect to simulate my dimensional laser beam that can phase through solid objects and shoot up your base behind your pretty defensive wall, well you would stop me cold. The reason being that I am trying to basically change the point of origin from the tip of my laser cannon to just beyond your wall, with my high tech dimensional warping technology. Your high tech wall would stop that, however(you sneaky bastard). Let's switch to fantasy. Wizard1 casts a 2 hex long, 1 hex high, hardened force wall in front of himself. Wizard2 then smiles and casts Call Lightning from the sky(+1/4 indirect always comes from the sky) and zaps Wizard1 no problem. However, if Wizard2 would have tried to use his lightning bolt spell, in which the lightning always gathers 10 feet in front of him(+1/4 indirect) and then shoots forward, to bypass Wizard1's force wall, then the hardened advantage would come into play stopping the lightning. Am I making sense? A hardened defense will stop an indirect attack only when that attack is trying to simulate going right through the hardened defense. If the indirect attack is going around and therefore not even touching the defense, then the hardened advantage doesn't have a chance to even try and stop the attack. Remember that Hero is a flexible system that relies a lot on how a power in defined by the player and GM as to how it actually works. Hope my rambling has helped some.

EB Works Best I Think I think you missed one of the advantages that Dust Raven put on the attack. NND (out of sunlight). That means that there is no defense except something that blocks the sunlight. So, no armor or force field would protect the victim unless it completely blocked sunlight as well (which would probably make seeing a bit difficult without burning out the eyes). So, as Dust Raven's curse is built, the victim would constantly be under attack. Just the earth or buildings or really thick blankets or whatever could act as armor to block that attack.