Narf the Mouse

I'm not sure I get this - Wouldn't using 2d6 mean that, for example, a SPEED 2 character would only move an average of every 36 segments, and a SPEED 1 character, never?

Some campaigns/settings, the characters are "Just That Good". OTOH, Penalty Levels with PER, Only To Counter Distraction? Heh. You've got good players, then, I think. Yeah, dawning realizations can be fun. As can scrambling to survive/keep up with a situation.

True, and the minimum time to notice could certainly be raised up the time chart. I was using "one segment", but one phase, one turn, or one minute might be more realistic.

Sorry, I've had several weeks of insomnia and I'm still recovering. Didn't quite get that you also meant the time chart allowing automatic success. My intent with that is that it would help prevent characters (and players) from completely missing the plot. Granted, that might be play-style appropriate, and I can see cases where I wouldn't use it. OTOH, sometimes characters taking a few minutes to notice is genre-appropriate, while not noticing at all, isn't. So, yeah.

Ah. Well, since the character would only fail on an 18 anyway, you could just discretely roll and check for an automatic failure yourself, before telling them anything. In addition, a "roll" of 14 is worse than the average, and worse than what they probably would get if they did roll. Those two, together, seem sufficient for me for some cases; OTOH, halving them also works, and I have no objection to your solution. It would probably also work better for "realistic" supers, or "realistic" campaigns in general. Ah; I misunderstood your point there, sorry. I thought you were thinking I meant for other rolls as well. Anyway. Yeah, 26- is a really high PER roll; I was mostly using it as an example of a character able to quickly and accurately evaluate a situation even with penalties. "quickly" and "accurately", of course, go down depending on the type and size of penalties. And, I don't believe in handing out solutions to players (in general); I did exaggerate some to (attempted) comedic effect in The Bat Ninja's description of the bank robbers. One other possible thought is that, since a PER roll of 20- or higher allows a "superpower" level of roll, simply give the character what they'd get with a Danger Sense or other Enhanced Sense roll using, say, half the MoS.

Halving the PER target sounds like a variant, to me, so it seems like what you don't like is the automatic success for high rolls? Edit: Also, this only covers PER, not INT, Tactics, or whatever.

I'd probably say "Yes" to "Martial Strike", and "No" to "Nerve Strike". Between there is GM's judgement and plenty of room for discussion, I think.

Credit: I found this idea on a blog, and adapted it to HERO. All mistakes and errors in this post are, of course, mine. Hopefully my write-up is comprehensible, and of, course, if you don't like the specifics, feel free to change them. If you've had an idea like this before, feel free to elaborate. And, if you like (or dislike) the idea, please comment and explain. How to resolve a PER roll if a character (PC or NPC) is explicitly paying attention is well-defined: Roll, or assume a roll of 10 or 11. But what does the character notice casually, when they're not paying particular attention to the situation? This, so far as I know, is left up to the GM. However, using this idea, the GM can simplify decisions, and make it predictable. For this, we'll be using "Knockout" Joe Brik with a PER of 13-, and The Bat Ninja with a PER roll of 26-. The scenario: Your character walks into a bank. There's the usual crowd of ordinary people, and five bank robbers in disguise, with concealed weapons. Let's say they made their disguise and concealment rolls by a margin of success of 3, to keep thing simple. First, we'll establish a baseline. Example 1: The character has received a tip that trouble is going down at the bank. If "Knockout" Joe rolls a 10 or less, he notices the concealed weapons and/or disguises. Fairly simple. If The Bat Ninja rolls anything other than an 18, he automatically notices the concealed weapons and disguises (and, probably, quite a bit more). Also fairly simple. However, what if "Knockout" Joe rolls an 11 or higher? Our baseline here is then simply the time chart. If he rolls an 11, after one Phase, he's got enough bonus to notice the problem. A 12, it'll take him a turn. And so on. This is probably a fairly common solution. In addition, since rolling over your PER just means more time to notice things, it would generally act to prevent characters from not noticing anything. Example 2: Now, for when the character is not expecting trouble, and has no reason to consider the situation dangerous or important. The simple answer here is to roll PER. While that might be appropriate for some characters and genres, having characters always be on high alert can be a bit silly, genre-breaking, break common sense, or indicate that the character should have "Psychological Complication (Paranoia)". We could apply a penalty, but that can give random and arbitrary results. What if we assume the character rolls a 14, and go from there? This covers 90% of the cases, which seems a good approximation. However, if the character's PER target is less than 14, we don't assume failure; that simply determines how long before the character notices something. For example, under this rule, if "Knockout" Joe walks into the bank to do some weekly banking, not expecting trouble, with an automatic 14, he'll notice something is wrong after about 5 minutes. The individuals are acting a bit suspiciously; their clothes are a bit too new and seem tailored to conceal; whatever details the GM considers appropriate for making it by 0. After 20 minutes, he'll have a better idea (possibly because the bank robbers pulled weapons and preempted him). On the other hand, if The Bat Ninja walks into the bank in his Bryce Dane public ID, with no previous indication of trouble, with an automatic roll of 14 and a PER of 26-, he notices that there's five bank robbers concealed as two accountants, a lawyer, and two construction workers. Each bank robber is ex-special forces (specified) of different nations (specified) and ethnicities (probably not racially- or nationally-motivated), carrying (weapons), trained in (hand-to-hand styles). Given that they are keeping a discreet eye on each other as well as the bank, they probably haven't worked together before, or not very often. They aren't immediately recognizable, so they don't generally work in North America. Probably a scratch crew, pulled together by someone else, possibly as a distraction. If he waits a phase, or a turn, he gets even more information. Bryce Dane then pulls one of his five hundred "exit plans", while mentally going over which of his villains are currently (or probably) out and active; minutes later, just as the bank robbers begin to draw their weapons, all the lights in the bank lobby go out simultaneously with a smoke bomb exploding in the middle of the would-be robbers... OTOH, if your characters are the bank robbers, you can now have a fairly good estimate of when the security guards will probably notice something's wrong, just by looking at the time chart... Original link: Link

...Oxygen...That means the atmosphere's breathable, right?

...Why do survey companies keep calling, when we keep hanging up on them?

Maybe they don't have an evil plot. Maybe they just wanted some mascots for around the office.

...You have enough mystical gigantesque milk snakes in your campaign that you need this one to be different from all the others? ...Sometimes, I think modern gamers are jaded. "Yawn, another giant snake..."

It seems like, in the end, no-one wanted the Federation and Klingons to know that the Organians were Space Gods; not even the Federation and Klingons. Which basically makes the Organians Right All Along about not telling the Federation and Klingons that they are, in fact, Space Gods.

Torches, fire arrows, heated sand, burning oil, catapulted casks of flaming oil, flasks of acid, That One PC who's gotten their hands on large quantities of two insulators and a water wheel... Granted, most of it is Fire/Heat. But there is non-magic energy damage.

...something tells me this one might be too obscure...

Link to original: http://nebezial.deviantart.com/art/it-s-simple-we-kill-the-doctor-no-wait-batman-420747605

So Rhode Island gets transported back in time...

It should be noted that the average monkey is stronger, muscle mass for muscle mass, than the average human. Although the solution to this mystery has eluded scientists, I think the answer is clear: Monkeys are nuclear-powered. The proof: Potassium is radioactive. Bananas contain potassium. Therefore, I move that monkeys be included in the list of the world's nuclear powers.

Well, there's worse fates. He could have caught the Dell laptop before it fell in.

https://twitter.com/sciencegurlz0/status/687739023826235393

Well, ok then. If a tree falls in the forest and there's no-one around to...

Well, public speaking happens to people a lot more often than death.

What did the orderly tell King Leonidas?

https://www.reddit.com/r/gametales/comments/3ythpr/dd_5e_introducing_the_bearlista/

How many Sith does it take to change a lightbulb?