WhollyRandom

Re: Roman Mecha - your comments please My idea was that prodigia are attached to units of power-armoured troops. The Romans still fight in a highly disciplined fashion - commando tactics would be unthinkable for standard troops, though elite, specialist or foreign-recruited troops would practice them. The Romans mostly fight against less well-equipped, lower-tech troops on more primitive worlds, so the combination of heavy armour, relatively good mobility and better-than-man-portable weapons offered by the standard legionary power armour makes a more rigid fighting style reasonably practical. The Iceni rebels would have access only to second-rate power armour and civilian prodigia (construction models, perhaps one or two stripped-down police models), at least initially; they would have to use hit-and-run tactics to fight the better-equipped and better-organised Roman troops, much as in Boudicca's initial rebellion. What happens to standard Roman troops who meet high-tech, mobile opposing forces is another matter and beyond the scope of the campaign I had in mind, though it might feature in the background; essentially, they wouldn't cope terribly well, though they do have truly vast resources. Perhaps an air of British troops in World War I and early World War II, discovering what happens when the enemy has given considerably more thought to developing new tactical configurations than you have? The mechs outlined above have jump-jets enabling them to fly at a low-ish speed for around six hours. This means that the Romans have flight technology; I don't see it as used widely in air-to-air combat, it's there to enable rapid troop movement and to provide a tactical advantage in terms of battlefield positioning. They would also have large airships for air-dropping troops but, for the most part, don't fight against enemies capable of fielding significant air power.

Re: Roman Mecha - your comments please Well, the first part of that is an oversight on my part; this should indeed be a Hand-to-Hand Killing Attack. The weapon is more or less fixed into the mech's hand, so I'm not concerned about it doubling as a staff, spear will be sufficient. I'll run the numbers on your (very helpful) suggestions this evening when I'm back at home and see whether the mech can still afford the spear

Re: Roman Mecha - your comments please Actually, that's just me misapplying a limitation. For some reason, I had it in mind that nonselective meant that the explosion hit everything in its area of effect. Darn, that's going to put the cost back up. So, what would explosion + nonselective look like ... a swarm of guided missiles, each with its own small explosion, adding up to patchy coverage of a larger area?

Re: Aliens, as in ... well, "Aliens" That's essentially the game I ran; I set it on Mars via Space 1889, essentially to throw the players slightly and, more importantly, to be able to use a liftwood airship to evacuate them at the end ...

Re: Roman Mecha - your comments please Um, no. They really can't swim. They could probably walk along the bottoms of lakes and rivers if the footing was solid enough, but that's it. I'd best reduce Swim to 0. These particular mechs should be a less tough than an Abrams - the idea is that they're fielded in formation and carry the day via mobility and numbers. I'll add the size and then drop their STR and body back - I'm very keen to keep them under 250 points if at all possible. These are intended to be second-line units, the kind of thing that a failing or distracted empire might field on a pacified world without any unique importance ... just to give players a chance. I also intend to detail some tougher mechs later; the sort of thing that even a failing or distracted empire might send to a world that had suddenly become a hotspot ...

Re: Aliens, as in ... well, "Aliens" Well, I've already run a similar game using GURPS; it worked well, but I had a few ideas for changes to the background and setup and felt like running it under Hero this time around ...

I've bought Hero Designer, which is worth it for calculation of points values alone, and I've been using it to design a few Roman mechs. The first, the Iaculator, looks like this: Iaculator Player: Val** Char*** Cost 25** STR 15 15** DEX 15 20** BODY 10 * 3** SPD 5 *12"**RUN122"**SWIM04"**LEAP4Characteristics Cost: 70 Cost** Power END 60** Iaculum medium-range missile: Killing Attack - Ranged 6d6, Explosion (-1 DC/2"; +3/4), Nonselective Target (-1/4) (135 Active Points); Extra Time (Full Phase, -1/2), Real Weapon (-1/4), Limited Arc Of Fire (180 degrees; -1/4), 4 clips of 6 Charges (-1/4)* 34** Fodiator Prodigium side-arm: Killing Attack - Ranged 2d6, Armor Piercing (+1/2), 4 clips of 32 Charges (+1/2) (60 Active Points); OIF (-1/2), Real Weapon (-1/4)* 8** Hasta MkIIIe Mech Spear: Hand-To-Hand Attack +4d6 (20 Active Points); Hand-To-Hand Attack (-1/2), OIF (-1/2), Real Weapon (-1/4), Limited Arc Of Fire (180 degrees; -1/4)* 2 36** Ferratus Medium Armour Plating: Armor (20 PD/10 ED) (45 Active Points); Real Armor (-1/4)* 8** Transiliator jump-jets: Flight 5" (10 Active Points); Extra Time (Extra Segment, Only to Activate, -1/4)* 5** Spirator back-up oxygen supply: Life Support (Self-Contained Breathing) (10 Active Points); Fuel Dependent (fuel is Common; must refuel Once per 6 Hours; -1)* 10** Radio Perception/Transmission (Radio Group)* 5** Videlicet Head-up Display: Multipower, 5-point reserve* 1u** 1) Infrared Perception (Sight Group) (5 Active Points)* 1u** 2) Nightvision (5 Active Points)* 4** Arms and Legs: Extra Limbs (4) (5 Active Points); Limited Manipulation (-1/4)* Powers Cost: 172 Total Character Cost: 242 Base Points: 250 Experience Required: 0 Total Experience Available: 0 Experience Unspent: 0 It's essentially intended as a missile boat, a medium mech with enough oomph to take out other similar-sized mechs or good quantities of infantry, but with limited shots. Once the missiles are gone, it can switch to a low-powered side-arm or to its spear for close range fighting. The second mech is the Intermator. This is designed as an anti-infantry mech, with a machine gun and variable grenade launcher, which can double as a civilian police mech: Interimator Player: Val** Char*** Cost 25** STR 15 15** DEX 15 20** BODY 10 * 3** SPD 5 *12"**RUN122"**SWIM04"**LEAP4Characteristics Cost: 70 Cost** Power END 64** Interimator anti-infantry autogun: Killing Attack - Ranged 3d6, Autofire (5 shots; +1/2), 16 clips of 64 Charges (+1) (112 Active Points); OIF (-1/2), Real Weapon (-1/4)* 38** Librator multi-function grenade launcher: Multipower, 67-point reserve, (67 Active Points); all slots OIF (-1/2), Real Weapon (-1/4)* 3u** 1) Inretator anti-infantry foam grenade: Entangle 5d6, 5 DEF (50 Active Points); OIF (-1/2), Real Weapon (-1/4)* 5 3u** 2) Fractus shrapnel grenade: Killing Attack - Ranged 3d6, Explosion (+1/2) (67 Active Points); OIF (-1/2), Limited Range (-1/4), 12 Charges (-1/4), Real Weapon (-1/4)* 2u** 3) Caecus flashbang grenade: Sight and Hearing Groups Flash 5d6 (30 Active Points); OIF (-1/2), Real Weapon (-1/4)* 3 36** Ferratus Medium Armour Plating: Armor (20 PD/10 ED) (45 Active Points); Real Armor (-1/4)* 8** Transiliator jump-jets: Flight 5" (10 Active Points); Extra Time (Extra Segment, Only to Activate, -1/4)* 5** Spirator back-up oxygen supply: Life Support (Self-Contained Breathing) (10 Active Points); Fuel Dependent (fuel is Common; must refuel Once per 6 Hours; -1)* 10** Radio Perception/Transmission (Radio Group)* 5** Videlicet Head-up Display: Multipower, 5-point reserve* 1u** 1) Infrared Perception (Sight Group) (5 Active Points)* 1u** 2) Nightvision (5 Active Points)* 4** Arms and Legs: Extra Limbs (4) (5 Active Points); Limited Manipulation (-1/4)* Powers Cost: 180 Total Character Cost: 250 Base Points: 250 Experience Required: 0 Total Experience Available: 0 Experience Unspent: 0 However, as mentioned in my Aliens thread, I'm new to this 'Hero' stuff and still very much feeling my way around the character creation system, so I'm looking for comments on obvious flaws - useless weapons, missing systems, wrong speeds and so on. I've left both mechs at SIZ 0 for now, since I'm not quite sure what to do in that respect - they're only intended to be about 10 feet tall, would that warrant SIZ 1? Ta.

Re: Aliens, as in ... well, "Aliens"

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here? I've owned various HERO books for a while; I now have a number of campaign and one-off games bouncing around in my head which could work with a number of systems. I've used d6 Adventure for a few pulpy games recently but wanted something grittier and more detailed to work up one or two of my stranger ideas. My long love affair with GURPS ended more or less the moment I picked HERO up, so here(o) I am ...

Re: Aliens, as in ... well, "Aliens" I realised that as I logged in to check for responses to my most recent post. Oops. How embarassing. So, how 'bout them Jets, huh?

Re: Aliens, as in ... well, "Aliens" Fair point on the relative values of the jaws that bite and claws that snatch, but I should probably have been clearer and stated that the 1/2d6 includes strength damage. The original HKA pre-strength is only 1 pip.

Re: Aliens, as in ... well, "Aliens" I like the Surbrook write-up, I suspect that I'll end up using that. The HKA for the claws seems a tad weak, but I must admit that I have limited experience of how Hero works in practice and how lethal a 1/2d6 HKA actually is ...

Please be gentle with me, it's my first time posting here ... I've done a quick search of the boards and can't find a HERO writeup for the aliens from Aliens*; could some kind soul point me in the right direction? * the fact that the search terms turn up half the threads on this Forum doesn't help ...