Kenn

Re: Teen Champions PCs vs Minuteman.

The question I have, are there other groups of PCs, using your specific copy of the Champions Universe? Lots of people use the Champions Universe setting, but your Champions Universe has your group of PCs on it. That makes it unique. Unless there are other groups of PCs who could, theoretically meet this group of PCs.

If you alter the Minute Man, in a contained universe, it shouldn't matter. Unless you're afraid your players will say "boy on a good day, Defender wouldn't do as well as I just did" or something similar, it shouldn't matter becaus ethey'r ethe only ones who might know.

If you share this specific world with anyone, then you should discuss the situation with them, as you probably don't want to alter the tone of his game.

Re: Superfluous Powers

Whether Armor is Force Field with Advantages or Force Field is Armor with Limitations gets pretty funky.

10 PD 10 ED Force Field is 20 points (active and real) and costs 2 END to maintain.

10 PD 10 ED Armor, costs END (-1/2) is 30 Active points and 20 real points and costs 3 END to maintain.

But, add a @ 1/2 END advantage (kicking it up to 37 active and 25 real points) one gets that END cost down to 2.

10 PD 10 ED Armor (with no modifiers) is 30 points (active and real) and has no END cost and is Persistant.

10 PD 10 ED Force Field, @ 0 END cost (+1/2), Persistant (+1/2) is 40 points (active and real).

Essentially, if the defense is persistant, make it armor - it's cheaper. If it costs END, make it Force Field, it's cheaper.

Re: Martian Manhunter Question and other oddities

I always thought Rann was supposed to be too far away for Supes to easily reach. However Green Lantern is a different story seeing as Oa is away at the centre of the Universe. Still, you don't want to be reliant on your mates all the time, eh?

 

Spaceflight travel times are one of the most bizarre things about comics and in general characters speeds vary tremendously based on the needs of the story. I recall one in particular were Superman and GL were off doing a tour of the solar system on their lunch-break or something similar which is just bizarre given that Supes can't travel at those superluminal velocities (or so he'd have us believe!!!)

During the silver age, the 4.5 light years between Earth and rann would be paltry to Superman, who regularly traversed the galaxy. Post-Crisis, he lost the ability to travel at superluminal speeds. During the Infinite Crisis he apparently regained the ability, as the Supermen flew Superboy to Krypton's star system (some 50 light years away) in a matter of minutes.

the Ostrander title of a few years back was a lot of fun whilst it lasted.

Amen.

Re: Martian Manhunter Question and other oddities

That was the problem with a lot of legacy Silver Age characters as they began to truly integrate the DC universe. I always wondered why Adam Strange didn't ask for a lift from Superman, rather than trying to catch that Zeta Beam every month.

Some characters work better in a vacuum.

Eventually, Dr. Strange (Adam, not Stephen) got a lift from Hawkman and Hawkgirl (the silver age Katar and Shayera Hol), but after not too long fell back into his zeta beam habit.

Maybe he just didn't know Superman or GL* well enough. On Rann he was a big deal. On earth, he was nobody.

* Except Flash nominated him for JLA membership.

Re: Thoughts on the Speed Zone

If you have this ability in a Teen Champions campaign, can you only go 20 mph, as it would be a School Speed Zone?

Re: Martian Manhunter Question and other oddities

I've not read many of the early J'onnz solo stories, but in the silver age Justice League stories, his flight abilities weren't powerful enough to get him home to Mars.

Of course, I don't know that he ever asked Superman or Green Lantern to fly him home either.

I think it had to do with him having been in exile from his own society, even before he was brought to Earth.

Re: Life Support for Robots

Diminished Eating (consumes electricity) 2pts (3 if there's an END reserve)

Diminished Sleep 1-2 points of downtime (3 if meant to run continously)

I think the consumption of electricity is better reflected through various powers and physical limitations. A robot doesn't eat food. It wouldn't affect the food stores.

Your robot should switch to Linux instead of DOS.

Re: superman

His telescopic vision and his extended hearing should not be in a multipower together.

I don't know if I missed it or if you didn't include it but there should be Ultrasonic hearing.

I'm not sure the idea of Superman maintaining an 80 STR under a red sun is accurate to the comics. Silver Age he went from Super to normal (say 15 STR) like that under a red sun. These days, its more of an extreme STR drain.

Also, the STR not working vs magic is a little vague, but that's probably because his vulnerability to magic is written differently all the time.

Re: More Help Please

Not to go on a physics lesson but the original four forces are Gravity, (Electro-)Magnetism, and (Strong and Weak) Nulcear force.

 

I always thought Strongforce would be a cool theme (and name) for a character.

His sidekick, Weakforce, gets laughed at, though.

Re: Genres HERO GAMES may want to avoid (intended to be humorous)

Naked Advantages HERO (formerly known as Nudist HERO)

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues

Actually you cannot take two attack actions in the same segment period, unless the GM is allowing layered SPD, which is very fringe.

 

That aside you don't have to declare what you are holding an action for; you can just hold and wait. When you eventually chose to act you make a DEX off if someone else was in the process of acting and if you win you interrupt them with your action. If you don't end up interrupting someone elses action, you can still take your held action as late as the very end of the Segment immediately before the next Segment you have a Phase in.

Yes. I know.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues

The point some people are trying to make is simply to point out that all the existing mechanisms for stopping "run arounds" require that you have a held action' date=' which isn't always feasible.[/quote']

 

Yes, it isn't always feasible to have a held action. And you cannot, generally, make two attack actions in the same segment, so if you want to be able to react offensivly to a run around (or defensivly in the same segment you attacked) you're probably out of luck.

 

There is another possibility. If it's that bloody important, and your GM will let you have it, there's the power:

 

Attack of Opportunity: 2d6 Killing Attack - Hand-to-hand, Trigger(+1/4) - someone tries to get around me right after I attacked; OIF - bladed weapons of opportunity. (37 active points; 25 real points.)

 

Re: Unintentional Power-Gaming: How To Deal With It

Either remove the armour pirecing, or cut the number of dice down in the hand-to-hand attack. Without the move through or passing strike, its already the equivilant of a 16.5 DC attack. As I understand the "standard Superheroic campaign" power levels, you're already well over. If you cut the hand-to-hand attack down to just 3d6 AP HTH, then the just-stand-and-punch move will be 6d6 AP or the rough equivilant of 9 damage classes. Not great, but not bad either. But this is a speedster, who's forte is movement. Which means he shouldn't be great when he's standing still. But when he moves and does his 11d6 AP passing strike he'll be awsome, and his 14d6 AP "sacrifice" move-through will be spectacular. The way a speedster should be.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues

Of course' date=' as you correctly point out, you can use a Held action, but that really isn't what Attacks of Opportunity are meant to address (they have Readied actions in d20 for just such similar situations). It's more of a, "Oh $#%!, they're trying to get to the mage. Better do something!", rather than a, "After due tactical consideration and party debate, I have determined that protecting the mage is my foremost priority and will therefore Hold my action until the foul creatures attempt to attack him."[/quote']

 

Excuse me? Held actions are precislly for the "Oh $#%!, they're trying to______. Better do something!" maneuvers. People get the "I need to go first" stuck in their heads. It doesn't represent heravy tactical analysis. It represents knowing what your opponents are doing before you try to run them through.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues

I know that some of my players will have a hard time getting into the mindset where people can run past them unless they take a Held Action.

They're going to have a hard time getting into the mindset where, in a fight, holding an action is usually a good thing. The differences in game, particularly combat mechanics are very different.

They're going to be used to saying "okay, I use one action to parry, and the other one (or two) to try to attack." In Hero, that description would be stretched over six-to-twelve (or more) segments, and each little part resolved as it comes up.

Re: All Scots don't have 17 str!

The loss of damage classes represents the fact that melee weapons do damage because the muscles are used to swing the weapon. Same mechanics are why your kid brother doesn't hit the baseball as hard as your big brother using the same bat.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues

In D&D, if you move past an opponent (or do something else like cast a spell or read a scroll while adjacent to an opponent), then your opponent gets a free attack against you. He still gets to make his regular attack on his regular initiative, the AOO is a freebie. A nice idea in theory, says the wargamer half of my brain; a lousy mechanic in execution, say the RPG half of my brain. And that, as they say, is the kind of argument that can only end in a gun shot.

I think you just convinced me that the lack of a specific Attack of Oppotunity rule is one more of the strengths of HERO.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues

What are "attacks of oppotunity"? There are rules for suprise attacks and rules for attacks when the target is considered out of combat. I would think most attacks of oppotunity would fall under one or the other or both of those cases.

As far as going around someone, the ease is largly based on what they are doing. If they're activly trying to prevent someone's passage, they they're going to be standing their waiting (holding an action) for the person to try, and when the person tries they'll engage in some combat action to stop them (grab, strike, what have you.)

If the person being gone around has already attacked that phase, or has a lower dexterity than the person moving around them, then yes, getting past them isn't that difficult.

The thing to remember is Hero System combat is based on a second-by-second, blow-by-blow passage of time, noticably different than the way combat is declared in D&D.

Re: Power Defense

I'm with Mr. Neilson. I rarely see it used because so few character concepts call for it.

Re: Napalm vs. Tanks

Yes' date=' it's all balanced pretty well against the weapons effects as listed. My problem is that I [u']also[/u] think that heavy weapons are way underpowered. Sorry, it's more a philosophical thing for me.

 

[DERAIL]

According to 5ER, you can get Kevlar suits worth up to 11 rDEF; yet an M113 APC only has 10 rDEF? And a light tank only has 14 rDEF? IMO, it would be more realistic to have that APC around 20 rDEF, the light tank around 30 rDEF, and the Abrams around 40 rDEF. But then you have to increase weapon damage for rifles and heavy weapons, to the point where one shot will kill any PC around, which sucks from a game standpoint - realism ain't everything, after all. Also, then the Hulk wouldn't be able to rip apart a tank like a can of sardines, which detracts from the supers genre.

 

In other words, it's just the crusty wargamer/military historian in the corner saying "Tanks should be tougher!" Pay him/me no mind.

 

[/DERAIL] (Sorry for the disturbance, folks. )

I think the problem comes from the more-or-less exponential nature of the system. The 70 STR brick is 4096 times stronger than the average 10 STR cop. But his punch is 7x as many dice. +12 DC for something 4096 as powerful. That works out for +1d6 Killing Damage for every 8 times increase in power. With that kind of scaling, there's going to be variences.

Re: Does your GM play too?

When I first began GMing, the person who'd been my GMing mentor had had a GMPC in the group he ran, so it was very natural for me to include one. I got rather annoyed when the team elected the GMPC the team leader...

By about the 3rd session, though, one of my players took a turn at running the game, and having the GMPC around made it possible. This was all back a few years (Reagan was still President.)

It wasn't that long before other players (the one who tried in the third game, and my GMing mentor, and others) were all running campaigns on the same game world. That's how the RC Universe was born.

Today, 19 years later, there's been 110% (mentor guy left in 1989, came back a few months ago) player turnover, but the campaign's still going. The GMPC is still there. Lots of ex-PC NPCs that I can rotate in or out as needed.

Re: The Use of a Focus for Teleportation...?

She said a focus, but I'm not sure if she means focus, in general usage, or focus the Hero System game mechanic.

The most direct way would to buy floating locations with the focus limitation on it to represent the "homing" device, and then use the teleport multipower that OddHat described.

Other options would get clumbsy quick (like actually building a 1 freq. radio transmitter, and having the appropriate sense to sense the mechanism.)

Re: The Night of the 1001 Character Pics…

Savinien' date=' I'd like to extend my sincerest apologies to your friend, and all of the other artists who's work has been posted in this collection without their names. I would love to have credited each and ever pic, but this was definitely a "grab the pic as you see it" collection. A lot of times the artist's names weren't there anyway. That's why I had Wilson add the disclaimer that I only gathered, and am taking no credit for doing any of the artwork (other than a handful of them that I actually did do).[/quote']

 

Well, I was the third RCU-ite to see the site, after our buddy and Savien. I think its pretty cool, actually. Kind of amused, too, since you grabbed some which my reaction is "they grabbed _________?" but I'm entitled to be my own worst critic. It is a handy resource, though.

Re: Superman Returns Score

The score in Superman II happened shortly after Superman gave up his powers.

BTW: Anyone know, in "Superman Returns," how long was Superman gone, and how old is Lois' son?

Re: Genres HERO GAMES may want to avoid (intended to be humorous)

Fornicating Furries Hero (a la "Fritz the Cat")