Scott Baker

On 4/21/2022 at 1:32 PM, GM Joe said:

I don't know the details of how Patreon works, so I'm curious why with 29 members, there's only $121/month instead of $145. Do people who support lots of different Patreons get a volume discount or something?

 

 

Super late to the show, but, as a long time Patron--and have to go pledge for Hero--I believe that currently the total shown is supposed to be an estimate of what the creator will receive after all of their fees, etc.

Steve is also correct that you can contribute $1 or more if you want to, which will also affect the total shown. It can also happen that someone will sign up at a particular pledge level and then give more. So those totals never did line up, even when they were showing the actual pledge amounts.

That's a little harsh.  The Transfer power build in Champions Complete does say "standard effect:  same roll as Drain dice".  Offhand I don't recall what it says in 6e1 or Champions Powers; it might actually use the "standard effect" verbiage there also.

Maybe, but the OP is the one who stated it isn't documented.

6E1 doesn't use that phrasing and it isn't covered in the SER description. Powers uses it without any additional SER definition. APG II references 6E1 as an example of this use of the SER, even though it isn't used that way in 6E1.

There is no official rule about Standard Effect 2, BUT all the write-ups I seen of the Drain/Aid combo power used Standard Effect to do the two effects on one roll thing.

So this "fact" isn't RAW, which automatically makes it a house-rule. That's perfectly acceptable, but shouldn't be presented as a fact. It also invalidates your original post. No one is confused about a rule that doesn't exist.

OK 2nd edition book says for Power Drain (the original name): recover 1 point per segment, starting the segment after effect.  For each 2 (x cost of characteristic drained) it can be delayed 1 segment.  Destroy recovered at the same rate as your body did (REC per month).

It was Characteristic Drain in 1st edition (c.f. #23).

Drains used to recover based on your recovery, in pre-4th edition.  Maybe 4th too, I can't recall.  That led to a horrendous effect where you could drain someone's Recovery and they'd just slowly die.

that would be incorrect from what my 4th ed hero system book says

Drain has never been based on recovery of the target

it is based on a return rate of 5 pts per post 12 or longer

 

copied from my 4th ed pdf

 

[cut]

The 1E Characteristic Drain used to last for 1 of the drainer's phases, but could be bought to last longer.

The 2E and 3E Power Drain returned at a rate of 1 point per segment, and could be bought to delay the start of the return.

I don't watch Walking Dead, so I don't know if her role there is large enough to be concerned about the split focus, and likely inevitable conflict between series scheduling. (Maybe not initially, but somewhere down the road.)

No, its more than that.  Drained inanimate objects never recover, as I understand it.

As Steve noted in his answer, Drain is not based on the target's REC. The effects fade over time.

Even things like meta-rules: sometimes Superheroes don't feel that super, especially against reasonably realistic military tech.  I ran a game where, if you had the 'supergene' all damage you took from non-superpowered attackers was halved after other defences and all damage you caused to objects and non-superpowered opponents was doubled after other defences.  It created a feel that the heroes and villains were really powerful without simply handing out more character points; supervillains were terrifying to normals and could only really be tackled by superheroes.  You could bring in a horde of alien invaders with superior weapons and that could crush the armies of Earth but get thrown back by a supergroup.  This sort of campaign meta-rule can substantially change what the characters feel like in play.

 

It would be nice to see something like this discussed in an official book.

6E2 200 Real Weapon

6E2 210 Real Armor (a less-defined description than Real Weapon, to be sure)

CC 113 has these as well, but taking out the toolkitting text lost the more explicit reference you are looking for.

FHC 134 suffers the same loss of the toolkitting text.

I haven't run any Christmas-themed adventures (that I remember), but I must say that I think all Christmas adventures should feature Foxbat.

3. No. RAW states you have to use the advantage, so it's always a triggered power.

3.1 Yes. That's what Naked Advantages are for.

Steve just addressed this very thing with regards to a question on Barrier in the rules forum: http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/94472-barrier-question/

1)  The "Trigger" has to be "easily verifiable" with commonly possessed senses. For example, "Snapping your Fingers" or "Clicking your Heels" are legal Triggers, but "Thinking About Moving" is not. As such, you cannot define the Trigger as simply "Taking a Zero Phase Action", you have to define what that Zero Phase Action is.

 

2)  The fact that the Trigger Expires should not be considered to be worth any "Less Advantage" value on this power construct, because it doesn't cost you anything to set the trigger. However there is no reason to have to set a different trigger every time either; it could always just be "Clicking Your Heels" or "Snapping your Fingers", which would mean the actual advantage value remains the same.

 

3)  Zero Phase actions can only be performed at the beginning of your phase, or after a half phase action, they cannot ever be performed after an Attack. Adding or Removing Velocity are special Zero Phases actions which can each only be performed once per phase, so regardless of how you build the Trigger modifier you can still only activate the movement power once per phase; since you cannot deactivate the movement power until you reach 0 velocity, and you can't accelerate or decelerate twice in the same phase.

 

Beyond those points; As a GM I would probably never let a player purchase such a power construct (or anything remotely like it). The whole thing stinks of the worst sort of power-gaming

Using the movement is a Full Phase Action (for your full movement) or a Half-Phase (for half your movement).  Trigger just activates the Movement Power; it doesn't let you actually do anything with it.  

 

It's like, when you hit someone with your Blast?  Technically, you're activating the Blast (for a Zero Phase) then using it to attack with (for a Half-Phase combat action).  

Aside from the issues that Cantriped (munchkiny) and Chris (still takes time to execute move, no matter how it is triggered) brought up, leaping can also be problematic in combat since it requires an attack roll. Even over relatively short distances (17-20m) a character with a base OCV of 7 will miss over 1/4 of the time. With a OCV of 5 you miss 50% of the time.

 

Players generally don't think Leaping is such a good buy for combat movement once they realize that. Non-combat movement also takes an extra phase for each doubling, so other forms generally end up faster and more accurate at the base level.

 

- E

What they said, only with more colorful language.

The duel between Inigo Montoya and the Dread Pirate Roberts in Princess Bride

https://youtu.be/lC6dgtBU6Gs

A few points to consider:

• That supplement was published in 2003 (and written in 2002). No matter how close it may have been at the time, 13 years have passed and Detroit has surely changed in that time.
• Detroit was blown up in the CU--at least a good chunk of it. Millennium City is a re-built Detroit, so I don't know how faithful to the old layout Darren even intended it to be.
• You should be able to do a rough comparison just by using Google and looking at the MC map.
• Darren's still around, so he may see this and provide more definitive answers.

I don't like Complications. Or to be more accurate, I don't like them today. I've enjoyed such systems in other games, e.g. Shadowrun and think they can really add a lot to a game. But in this instance I very much want all such things to be handled as a result of character decisions in game. I have clear ideas from what I want from this campaign, I am fanatically Watsonian in my approach to gaming, to the degree that at this point I don't want in-universe story events / circumstances to be balancing factors for outside game reasons. Story has supreme primacy to me and I cannot allow an exchange rate between it and mechanical advantages, no more than I can could agree to give a player +1 to hit for showing up with cake. It's an invalid exchange to me. At least for this campaign. I recognize that I may appear like a person showing up at a fancy restaurant and then asking for ketchup with my beautifully prepared meal, but I'm afraid I am such a barbarian. From my reading, I can ditch complications without any game balance effects, yes? It's essentially just a bribe from the GM to the player to give extra points for actually engaging with the world or adding some depth to their PCs, yes?

Then don't require them to take any. I wouldn't choose this route myself. The complications are back-story/personal traits that really can give the GM hooks for the character, and provide a starting point to help the players role-play the character. At the lower point levels for Heroic characters (especially if you start out even lower), the required complications total will be low (to non-existent). If you're worried about something like Hunted when you want the characters to be unknowns at the start of the campaign, just say, "No." Same for any Complication, Power, Talent, etc. that doesn't fit the campaign.

Remember, anything that comes up during gameplay is just that. The characters don't magically get more points because they pissed off the King's Guard during an adventure and are now hunted on sight by them. 

Haven't seen anything about a Klingon captain. Only captain I've seen cast is Michelle Yeoh is a recurring role; Capt. Georgiou of the Shenzhou. Doug Jones and Anthony Rapp are the only other castings I'm aware of.

There were a number of (unconfirmed) characters back at the end of October, first of November. A Klingon captain is one of them, although it was generally reported as there will be a Klingon captain, not that they would be the captain of the Discovery. Some people just automatically assume that any "captain" rumor/announcement is for the captain of the Discovery, and report it as so. Just as they initially did with Michelle Yeoh's character.

And I forgot to say, "Welcome!"

The other two things that stood out to me very starkly were these. "A starting PC is like a seventh level D&D character". TOO MUCH! TOO MUCH! Can I make the PCs start off as equivalent to level 1 D&D characters? I have a whole goblin-war path planned out. Do not pass 'Go'. Do not proceed directly to Dragons. But if I do that, it sounds like progression out of the box is very slow. How tweakable is that? Secondly, that bit about "evenutally fighters will be swimming in lava". That's never going to be where I want my game to end up. Fighting giants? Yes. Battling beyond the point of human endurance against an endless tide of orcs like John Carter in the movie, uh, John Carter. But not out and out "lava only does 4d6 damage and I can soak that much easy" sort of stuff. D&D 5e has this concept of "Bounded Accuracy" which is one of the few things I really like about it. It's essentially "everything counts in large amounts", i.e. a hundred goblins will take down even a very high-level fighter. Anything like that in Hero? Maybe depleting endurance through combat or something?

 

The interpretation of a starting Heroic level character as a 7th level D&D character is only 1 person's interpretation. Don't take that as gospel. Others already mentioned changing starting points, etc. to adjust the starting power level. You also need to take into account that the Hero system goblins are also built using the same system, so things probably aren't as out-of-whack as you may first think.

As far as progression, don't panic and stop thinking in D&D terms. Unlike D&D you don't need hundreds, or thousands, of experience points to improve your character. Those small amounts work just fine for most folks. Plus, unlike D&D, you can have gradual improvement rather than some sort of level-up big-bang.

As far as swimming through lava, etc., that's up to you as GM to control. And it's not restricted to Hero System. Others have already given you the best advice...just say, "No."

Unless you allow someone to build a character outside of the norms you seem to want, or give them equipment to make them effectively invulnerable, i think that you'll find your normal heroes won't be going toe-to-toe with vast hoards of goblins an winning. (And there is actually an Endurance characteristic).

One additional thing to be aware of, although I don't know how this may have changed in D&D 4e/5e: defenses, such as armor, reduce the damage taken in Hero System, they don't make you harder to hit. This isn't wrong, it's just a different approach. (And cue someone telling you how they have armor (items) in their campaign that does make you harder to hit--because, yes, you can build something like that in Hero, it's just not a defense (characteristic) such as others have mentioned in this thread).

No.

Trying hard not to get my hopes up too high, based how awful the last few DC/WB movies have been. But the new trailer looks reeeealy good...

Me too.

When Heroic-level games first appeared, it was not deemed necessary to know the point cost of equipment that was bought with money rather than Character Points. General accessibility to such gear was assumed to be available to heroes and villains alike, and so "balance" would all come out in the wash.

 

I'm curious to know how many such campaigns were rendered unplayable by this simplifying assumption. I'm guessing virtually none.

Not a one, in my experience.  We also didn't have characters optimized for damage, or for defenses, or for whatever particular game mechanical niche.  Like, I never remembered building a character to try to hit a damage range; in the heroic games, even Fantasy Hero 1e, we didn't have DC ranges, defense ranges, etc.  You built your character and that was that.  You might have been building a driver, or a hacker, or a faceman; or you might have built a hand-to-hand fighter or a rifleman or a swordsman (but not a Martial Artist, even if he did have Martial Arts).  

 

(Actually there was one Danger International campaign in which we did go way over the top; I wanted to see if I could build a character in DI who could survive jumping out of airplanes without a parachute.  Breakfall 25-, using the Extraordinary Skill rules, 20 BODY, and as much over NCM on PD as I could afford.  That was way outside the norm, though.)

I'm still out of Likes....

First, I agree with Greywind and QM who posted while I was still writing.

You seem to be combining two things. "Tragedy" in the origin does not necessitate that the hero fights evil because of that. Given that, a quick look at the last 4 PCs I created (boiled down to the basic tropes):

1) A time traveler who has to save the future -- born of a tragedy and driven by tragedy.

2) A hero continuing the family tradition -- no tragedy either in the actual origin or his motivation.

3) A mutant who, as QM noted, first exhibited powers in a time of stress, but doesn't remember that and is not driven to do good because of it.

4) A scientist working for an organization that is fighting evil. He gains his powers through a radiation accident. So, tragedy in the origin(???), but he's not motivated to fight evil because of it; he already was.

The Show was a genre mashup of the very popular Super Spy which was ruling TV at the time and of course Westerns which had always been popular. It was a very well done show with great characters and good writing. It would have stayed on the air longer, but IIRC Ross Martin (Artemis Gordon) had a heart attack and couldn't continue.

 

It's great RPG fodder esp if the players are into the Wild West and are looking for something different than the regular Western Storylines. As an RPG it could be fun doing a mashup between this show and Mission Impossible(Tv Show over the Movies). Where the players are "Secret Service" agents who unravel plots put there by enemies of the US Government. Give it all a slight Steampunk veneer with some fantastic critters tossed in to keep it interesting. You have the Gun Fighter, the Disguise expert, Demolitions expert, Faceperson, Technician. etc. Keep the character types spy feeling, but give it a western spin/flavoring

Ross Martin did have a heart attack and missed some episodes in the 4th season, but the cancellation was due to the violence. If anyone wants the basic overview, Wikipedia seems to have it covered with nothing glaringly wrong at a glance; no need to search and try tp piece everything together yourself unless you really want to.

The Headquarters of the International Super Agency after it's been infiltrated by a decades long conspiracy.

 

What, too soon?

Only because it makes me think of Gary Shandling passing away this year.

I never did get the original Strikeforce PDF even though I was backing at that level. Was there an email at some point?

Jason shared via Dropbox on 21-Mar-2016. Dropbox sends an e-mail with the link.

Hyperman's construct is an NND, but for an attack against a defense, wouldn't each of those d6 be applied separately against the defenses of the target?

Yes.