Durzan Malakim

It was a great game, @Steve. I liked all the noir tropes, especially the client with secrets and the cops that are just as frightening as the villains.

Our enhanced human is a literal faceman. I hope that he enjoys playing against his usual type. I also hope that I can do our esper weapon justice as an undercover corporate hiding from his benefactors. Does this make me Matt Damon's character in The Departed? I guess only time will tell.

Lower point characters have the advantage of buying improvements that are relevant to the game world they are in. Higher point characters are often guessing what elements are going to be in the game. If you guess wrong, then those points are essentially wasted. Not to mention that higher point characters have to face even more higher point foes, or literal hordes of lower point foes. I would only start at higher points with a GM that I've played with a lot and could trust to accurately tell me what game elements I should prepare for.

I'm with @dmjalund on this one. A selective AOE makes sense. Maybe there's an extra time full phase or extra segment limitation on it. Certainly the whistling is incantations, which we know is required. No whistling, no arrow.

Thanks for the epic game @Steve. I honestly think the ending was perfect. This way you can narrate the ending that best serves the next adventure set in the fifth frontier war.

@Steve wants to simulate items that cause pain but appear to do no actual damage. I don't know his motivations, because each of the examples he provides has a different purpose. The Dune Agony Box is a test of self-control. Maybe that's more like a Ego test or an opposed test of resisting Interrogation. The Star Trek Agonizer is a punishment and perhaps a type of transform where you become someone who obeys rather than face the pain. The Harry Potter Cruciatus Curse is a straight up attack meant to incapacitate your foe. An endurance drain would probably make more sense as an attack than as a test of will or a punishment.

The goal is the same as what it's always been: to inflict pain without causing damage. Draining END is just one of many possibilities to model this. At the end of the day, this is a question that doesn't need a definitive answer unless and until the GM needs a game mechanic for it. To be honest I thought that the NND martial maneuvers were the traditional HERO system answer for pain-based attacks. An NND attack reduces someone to zero stun, which prevents them from acting until they recover. An endurance drain can reduce someone to zero endurance, which prevents the target from acting when those actions cost endurance. The target can still spend stun as endurance to push through the pain, which to me is an elegant solution.

There's a certain pleasing symmetry to using the Endurance attribute to endure pain. How about an Endurance drain? After the target's endurance is gone, you start draining their Stun, which maps well to pushing someone past their pain threshold and into unconsciousness.

In the books and Netflix series a cortical stack effectively grants you Life Support immortality by way of an obvious inaccessible focus. The books describe rich people having banks of blank clones for them to download into. One punishment in this world is to forcibly remove someone’s digital self from “their” body and adding the now empty body to the public bank of available bodies. The first book has the main character walking around in someone else’s body and having to deal with their nicotine addiction and attraction to another character. This might be a transform attack in Hero terms. Transform from human body to cortical stack digital human freight and vice versa.

I'm used to players surprising me when I GM. I'm not used to surprising myself as a player in @Steve's game. This week I surprised everyone when a standard lightsaber duel instead became my "Han shot first" or "Captain Mal kicks a man into an engine" moment. My character, retired Imperial Marine Brigadier turned space Pirate Captain Nemos was supposed to duel his hunted Judas Cain, a former Imperial Navy Captain and possible Zhodani infiltrator. Before the fighting started, Judas began villain monologuing about how the outcome of the duel didn't matter because he had several clone backups to carry on his search for vengeance. Not only would he keep sending clones after me until he killed me, but he'd also hunt down my crew to avenge the death of one of his other clones that we had killed with a nuke. I don't begrudge the man for having clone backups because I also have a clone backup, but we have very different views on the nature of clones and whether the sins of the father (the original) fall on the child (the clone). My character thinks of his clone as more of a twin brother with his own identity, wishes, and desires. Given their shared history, their goals are mostly aligned, but had my character died in the duel, he'd not expect his clone to carry on the grudge or avenge him. In fact, he'd explicitly not want him to carry on the grudge because Captain Nemos has a greater mission he wants to complete. I even recorded a message along the lines of "if you're hearing this then I'm dead" to tell my clone to carry on the greater mission. However, when I learned that the duel wouldn't end the grudge, I realized that there was no point in being honorable and fighting fair. So I asked my fellow PC @L0rd_Magg0t to "take the shot" from his sniper overwatch position. I used the distraction to decapitate one clone, and then next phase I disarmed (literally) another clone that was acting as his second. I was surprised by how much outrage I felt about the duel not mattering. It felt like Judas was bragging about being able to cheat until he won, so I decided to cheat first. I learned in that moment that this character has a weird code of honor. This code of honor includes the idea that clones are not disposable copies of the original that are enslaved to carry out the original's will. It also includes not suffering the insult of breaking your word. For Captain Nemos the outcome of the duel was supposed to settle the matter, but Judas Cain broke his word by not being willing to abide by the outcome of the duel. It was a great role-playing moment for me, and I look forward to seeing what consequences come from this choice. I think this is the most morally gray character I've played. No one thinks of themselves as the villain of their story, but Captain Nemos is just one "ends justify the means" choice away from being a bad guy. He has principles, but if you're on the wrong end of them he looks pretty villainous.

It turns out that the original Harrison Vanderbilt IV was the evil clone all along. Unless we alter the clone's memories or personality, I suspect that we'd end up with two runaway grooms galavanting about the galaxy. How many clones variants will it take until we end up with our own version of Kang the Conqueror? May I suggest Harrison the Holocaust? Or I suppose we could go the Star Trek mirror universe route and create a clone for each of us.

I love PC decision-making. It's easier to turn your foppish dandy of a cousin into a cyborg-zombie than to just tell him and the rest of the family of freeloaders that they get nothing but a place to stay. I look forward to Gaston's future hijinks even if the most likely scenario is returning to find him resting peacefully in the local cemetery. Without some outside help, I don't see the Vanderbilts getting the better of EDI. I almost got our crew out of the low berth prison business, but Krrsh pushed our disloyalty buttons. We can't be leaving tasty breadcrumbs behind for Judas Cain to sweep up. As it is we're leading him to a potential stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. I'm sure that won't get us and the entire sector into any trouble.

I look forward to the Basic Version and the follow up Kickstarter.

I'm eagerly looking forward to these two releases. Having a web-based hero designer is an accomplishment by itself. Support for VTT play is also wonderful.

Without superpowers, a reach melee weapon, modern firearms, or terrain features to exploit, one person doesn't hold a breach. You can always say that the brave hero makes a PRE attack and forces opponents to freeze or engage. Perhaps getting the result of strongly consider what you say is enough to make your opponents challenge you one-on-one.