Doug Limmer

Re: System streamlining? Someone hit my probability pet peeve ... 10- on 3d6 is a 50% chance. Not 10.5-, not 11-. No rounding needed. 11+ on 3d6 is a 50% chance. That is why the average is right in-between at 10.5. The average of a 1d20 roll is also 10.5. Similarly: 10- on 1d20 is a 50% chance. 11+ on a 1d20 is a 50% chance. I've always assumed that Hero gives an extra (12.5%) bonus to hit to the attacker because Hero gives reduction of damage that D&D/d20 doesn't give. Of course, now that I think of it, 12.5% may be too high ...

Re: Fantasy Hero Grimoire review discussion

Re: Fantasy Hero Grimoire review discussion Not that I'm Markdoc or anything, but if you look at all the numbers from 3 to 18: 3 4 5 6 | 7 8 9 10 | 11 12 13 14 | 15 16 17 18 The numbers 3 through 10 make up half the numbers, and the numbers 11 through 18 make up the other half. A 10- roll is 50%. [Assuming fair dice, so that the distribution is symmetric.] 11- is greater than 50%. (Specifically, 62.5%.)

Re: Psionic Beasts I don't think HERO (the company) could do such translations without explicit permission from the other company. Creatures from Myth and Legend from Surbrook's Stuff has the Intellect Devourer, at least.

Re: Limit to Selling Strength? (or any attribute) There are some questions & answers in the FAQ on negative Strength; I know, since I asked many of them. As near as I can tell, the only difference between having a 0 STR and a negative STR is how much you can lift. Your base damage stays at 0d6. Your base leaping stays at 0". Your base figured characteristics stay at 0. Given that, I'd say that negative STR shouldn't give you back a full point for each point of STR that you go negative. Although I'm not sure exactly how much it should cost. (Argh. The server goes down right when I'm trying to double-check the FAQ.)

Re: Well, I finished reading Conquerors, Killers and Crooks, and...

Re: Carpenter's Tools and the Hero System Toolkit I've long thought (and I'm sure the idea has been mentioned on the boards before by others) that HERO should have two character sheets: one for character creation, and one for actual use in play. The in-play sheet would have most of the character creation information suppressed. It sounds like what you want, for beginners, is the list of powers replaced by a bunch of entries from The UNTIL Superpowers Database (or whatever is appropriate for your genre). Then then 'advanced' book would explain the entire construction system, and have all the powers in the 'basic' book worked out. That's not necessarily a bad idea. But, you'd need a separate 'basic' book for each genre, or one really, really, really big book with all the examples in it. Personally, I think the current 'build' books (superpowers, spells, vehicles, gadgets, and to a lesser extent ki abilities and super-skills) can fulfill the same purpose, with only a little more difficulty.

Re: Power Limitation Formula Question You calculated the costs correctly. If a -1/4 limitation meant you actually took 25% off the price of the power, then a -2 limitation (such as 1 charge) would mean you took 200% off the price of the power, thus not only giving you the power for free, but actually giving you bonus points back!

Re: Using Images to Change Environment? Images creates a sense effect. You use a PER roll to see if you can tell whether the image is 'real', but it doesn't make the image go away.

Re: Attn: Logan Darklighter...or other Golddigger fans. 1.) He's written a couple "Perfect Memory" books, although I'm not sure any came out recently. If you can find issue #50, there's a quick run-down on people, places, and times in the back. 2.) I don't know if there's a lot written about it. 3.) Well, in her first adventure, she was looking for a time machine in a dragon's lair. In the next set, she found El Dorado (where Stripe is from), Atlantis (magic and giant monsters), Shangri-La (mystical library), and Eden (where she fought werewolves), all in one trip. I'll let you judge if it's gotten more outlandish. (The power level's gone up some, though.)

Re: Ninja Hero Question: A monks staff I don't remember what it's called, but the rings are there to make noise. From what I recall, those who use it (Buddhists?) don't want to kill any living thing, so they don't want to accidentally run into animals or such.

Re: Accidental Change and Vulerability At least he isn't powerless against the color yellow. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) More seriously, I'd factor in the 'only when in armored form' condition into the 'commonality' part. In other words, instead of asking "is getting hit by a magnetic attack Uncommon, Common, or Very Common?" I'd ask "is getting hit by a magnetic attack when in armored form Uncommon, Common, or Very Common?" (The answer, of course, depends on your campaign. The GM may decide there is no price difference.)

Re: Magic Items Sourcebook? There is an Enchanted Items book listed for Mid 2005 on the 2005 Release Schedule.

Re: Enhanced Perception vs. Telescopic If you're trying to make a wolf howl, wouldn't Images be a better fit? Add in Megascale (+1/2 should do), and Set Effect (-1) and No Range (-1/2). It shouldn't cost you much more than 3 points or so. It may cost more if you want to add PER roll modifiers to make it easier to hear, but it should still be less than 14 points.

Re: We're Gonna Need Guns I don't know how 'futuristic' you want to get, or whether you already know about this, but this article on electric bullets http://www.discover.com/issues/jun-04/rd/electric-bullets-save-lives/ may be of interest. It's unclear from this short article whether this would be a NND instead of a RKA, an NND on top of an RKA, or just a good special effect for a high STUN multiplier.

Re: OK, Math And Science Experts: Cubic Hexes

Re: Ultimate Brick -- What Things Weigh Tokyo tower is only a bit bigger (13 meters) than the Eiffel Tower, but weighs 4000 tons vs. 7000 tons for Eiffel. (Information from http://metropolis.japantoday.com/biginjapan/biginjapaninc.htm.) Watch out for its spoon-bending properties!

Actually, I don't think this is true. The plural of C is Cs. I can't find my Strunk & White to back me up, though. (My dictionary lists both, with Cs first, although my dictionary probably also has "alright" in it.)

I had one show up by accident. Amidst a large group of 'separatist' mutants, one had bird wings and was named Pinion. Another had pain-inducing powers, and was called Wrack.

There's some parts of Ninja Hero which would be useful, too. Who wrote that again?

Hmm. Let's see: changing from subtracting 3d6 to find KB to subtracting 2d6 to find KB is roughly equivalent to doing an extra 1-6 BODY on the attack, but only for knockback purposes. On average, that's an extra 3.5 DCs. That's about a 4d6 HA, "Only to do knockback (-1)." Add in the automatic -1/2 from HA, that makes it 8 points. (Regardless of how powerful your attack might be.) I used a -1 modifier, since I thought it would be more limiting than 'does no STUN'. But then, 'does no BODY' is -0, so you may want to bump it down to -3/4. You could price the ability off of martial arts DCs instead, I suppose. And, you'd probably have to take into account adding to any Killing maneuvers, which may complicate things. (multipower with a +1d6+1 HKA? Total cost 10 pts?) And, I don't remember how the 'base damage' is calculated relative to HA in order to reach the maximum of 'double base damage'. Of course, the GM could always hand-wave that away. So, I'd guess 10 points or less, as an estimate. Just a thought to start off with.

I just skimmed through Digital Hero 9, where the 'move through time' power was purchased. It was about 400K points. The 'stop time' power was 7.5M points. Which makes me wonder whether moving the universe through time to 1 millisecond in the past, and with a trigger to do it again after 1 millisecond has gone by, and set up in a continuous, uncontrolled manner, might be cheaper. Just a thought. And it has nothing to do with pokémon.

Pet peeve alert: You can have an infinite amount of something, but still not have all of them. You can have every single one of the whole numbers out there, but still not have 1/2. For that matter, you could have an infinite number of white socks, and yet none of them will be black. More to the point: if that statement is true, and somewhere everything happened, then just find the copy of yourself who has already collected all the items (there'll be an infinite number of each item, right?), and get them from him.

I wrote one up, and gave it to Michael Surbrook for "Surbrook's Stuff". Here's the URL: http://www.devermore.net/surbrook/adaptionsanime/sakurak.html It is the first (and, so far, only) adaptation of a fictional character I've done; I'm still not completely happy with it. I've thought about doing other characters, but as you've noticed, there's so much to do, I haven't done anything with it. (And, I'll admit, I find some of the relationships ... creepy. Particularly as a professional educator.) Maybe when I complete the DVD series, I'll be re-motivated to work on some of the others.

Why are you choosing jumps of 2-3 points of Intelligence per standard deviation on the low side, yet choosing jumps of 5 points on the high side? If you're going to pick a set value per standard deviation, shouldn't it be the same on either side of the mean? And how do you choose the 'right' number of points per standard deviation? And wouldn't a normal curve (which you are using) mean that there would be people with negative intelligence? Maybe you should use a different distribution.