ScottishFox

Gnome nailed it. They don't get to do anything on that Segment 12. Which, imo, is way better than the current D&D 5th edition version where they can recover from being surprised before the attackers they don't even know exist get to do something. And this poor handling is magnified by the Alert feat which says that the surprised character can't be surprised and gets his full action to do something against enemies he doesn't know exist yet.

Limited Stacking rule I came up with roughly based on the fact that armor weight doubles every 2 points of resistant defense. If your lesser defense is within 2 points of the greater defense then you can add one point only. Defenses do not stack beyond that. Ex: You can put a chain shirt (5 rPD/rED) on top of your studded leather (3 rPD/rED) and it will stack to 6 rPD/6rED. You can't put on 5 robes on top of your studded leather (3+1+1+1+1+1) to get ultra-light plate armor. You can't put 1 robe on top of your plate armor (8+1) because the robe is so light and thin that it adds no appreciable benefit.

In the audio HRC clearly says, "She's a favorite of the Russians". 'I'm not making any predictions,' Clinton said, 'but I think they've got their eye on somebody who's currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third party candidate. She's a favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.' Not sure why Hillary even cares about Tulsi at this point. Tulsi was trending under 2% until the Hillary - Russian thing bumped her - briefly - into the 5% range and resulted in a lot of free attention.

I'm currently running a Pillars of Eternity 1-converted-to-HERO adventure for my Saturday crowd. We all agreed that Multipowers made additional spells too cheap. I'm using a custom multiplier of 0.4 (divide by 2.5) and the level 1 spells are coming out at about 5 points each. We'll see how it scales or if I have to adjust that for the higher levels spells. The big difference for me is how the magic compares to readily available non-magic options. Spells that provide resistance defense are very strong and cheap. I use the old 4th edition encumbrance rules so armor comes with substantial drawbacks. I restrict these fairly tightly so that wizards aren't better tanks than the guy in plate armor. Spells that provide damage output I want to be pretty cheap until they are better than a bow and arrow. Charging the mage 10 points for Eldritch Blast and the archer 0 for flying-pointy-stick when they do the same damage is no good. However, the mage has a big advantage in flexibility. They get one-hex AoE's, NND attacks, mind altering spells, entangles, etc. Finding the right balance is tough and finding the spot where the group of players *believes* the game to be balanced is an art form.

Just watched the Impulse series on YouTube Premium and it was great. It's heavy enough on the drama that it completely pulled my wife in and she hardly noticed or cared about the sci-fi elements. Reminded me of Smallville's golden seasons.

Last night my kiddo baked chocolate chip cookies for my wife and I AFTER she cooked us dinner. And the Insta-Flow I bought cleared the clogged sink in about 2 minutes. Topped the day off playing The Outer Worlds. Great stuff.

DM for group using the game they're playing (both of my groups were from D&D 5e). Then offer to show them HERO. Finding HERO players in the wild is VERY hard.

What is happening with the media outlets?

I've received matching feedback from several of my Fantasy HERO players. They enjoy the game system, but they'd never even consider being a GM for it. Too complicated and too much haggle room. Systems with hard rails - like D&D 5e - do take a good chunk of workload off the DM. There's little haggling as what does or doesn't constitute a legal/fair/balanced character is set in stone.

My wife and I watch almost all of the UFC events. I've been an avid watcher since 1993 when it launched. He got starched instantly and it was bad!

I've been pretty shocked how some of the media outlets have spoken about the dead leader of ISIS in ways that make him seem like a nice and respectable guy and not the leader of a terrorist group so villainous they give Nazi's actual competition.

I feel like that guy had been hunting for so long that he forgot that deer are actually quite dangerous. He was using a muzzle loader. Not exactly great if you need a 2nd shot in under a minute. Tragic ending for the guy, but at 66 you have to take some precautions.

My company's Canada office turns out to be south of where I was born in America. That little pointy spot of Canada is as far south as the bottom edge of South Dakota. A large chunk of the USA is further North than that.

I will say that the OCV penalty for head shots relative to total OCV/DCV became problematic at the end of our War for the Crown campaign. The players with buffs, magic weapons, martial maneuvers and combat skill levels were hitting 15/16 OCV. One pleasant side effect is that the Multiple Attacks all but vanished against tough opponents. Go 1/2 DCV which allows the OCV 14 monster to hit me in the HEAD on a 11 or less? Pass. Characters were over 350 points in a HEROIC campaign and were all sporting about another 100 points worth of magic items.

I remember losing to "gasoline" and not because I didn't know how to spell it. I just thought that since it was pronounced gasaline that they would accept that spelling as well. Nope - turns out they're very rigid thinkers when it comes to spelling.

Listening to it now.

I would guess not a Feat per se, but class features such as a rogues sneak attack or a paladin's smite.

I looked that over when I was doing my recent FH campaign because in 4th edition the encumbrance penalties were fixed numbers and they HURT. My years of martial arts training in light to medium armor told me that it isn't just the weight of the armor, but the bulk, vision impairment and overheating (END loss) it causes. Ultimately what I ended up using was the 4th edition numbers with a 1 tier reduction if your strength was high enough (13 STR for light armors, 15 STR for medium armors and 18 STR for heavy armors). Calculating armor penalties as a percentage of carrying capacity is not a good approach, imo.

Combat Luck at 1 rank (3 rPD/rED) is great for the no armor and light armor types that want to not die instantly when they get hit. Think Fantasy martial arts monks or Rogue McRoguerson who wears fancy attire and wouldn't be caught dead in armor. One fun option - Allow up to two ranks of Combat Luck in a campaign with the limitation that they block damage points 2-4 and 6-8. This means that damage points 1 and 5 get through. This better simulates rolling with the hit or otherwise turning a lethal hit into a glancing blow. Deadly Blow has to be carefully balanced. I've allowed it with Rogues and Paladins in my campaign, but it has to be constrained so that it's not always in play. * Sneak Attack - Requires an ally to be attacking the same target or an attack from stealth. Only works on small damage finesse weapons (dagger, stilletto, short sword, etc.) * Holy Smite - Only works against the undead or fiends (devils & demons). Deadly blow rapidly gets out of hand if you allow it to be working all the time as each DC in a heroic campaign is a big deal.

5 point seemed like a good balance between flexibility vs. coverage. The HERO could spend 5 points for a melee combat level and have either +1 OCV or +1 DCV - whichever was better at the moment - instead of having a +1 OCV with everything. And, generally, Stan the Sword Man is going to be using his sword like 95% of the time. Charging double to cover the 5% of the time he might have to resort to throwing something or firing a crossbow doesn't work.

So one thing that has me concerned lately: Steve hasn't responded to a question in the rules section of the forum for over a month.

I was referring to the movies and TV shows. The comics were quite popular among us nerdy types back in the day, but the franchise has struggled in the movies as of late. Some of it is the quality of the story writing, but some of it is that the core schtick - as of late - doesn't feel right anymore. Everyone hates mutants because racism doesn't ring true. I believe it is *part* of what is hurting their sales. All of this comic talk just makes me want to go watch the 1st Avengers movie again. That was perfection.

The PIllars of Eternity series had an interesting idea for their gods. They were all created by an ancient and powerful society of animancers (soul magic) along with huge machines to improve the transition of souls from the world to the Beyond and In-Between. These machines eliminated the Hollow Born problem they had in their reincarnation cycles (people born without souls) and the god's fed on the left-over energy of souls passing through the cycle (The Wheel). It's interesting because they are man-made, but the scope of their powers, awareness and immortality definitely makes them Gods. The plots of both installments are heavily tied to the true origin of the Gods and the relationship between mortals and the Gods created by their ancient ancestors.

That article was great @Pattern Ghost. Crazy to think that they can get TEN YEARS in prison for demonstrating and have to get non-hospital medical care for fear of being caught.

I think this is part of why the X-Men series never reached the level of success that the other super hero franchises did. The hatred of mutants = racism just doesn't work well in that world. Mutants are basically super-humans and most people would be VERY happy to have them in a world full of alien invasion threats, Ultrons and other non-human threats. Oh, you're a human like me, only you have super powers? Hell, yes! Save me from that! ~points to zergling hoard racing down the street~.