ScottishFox

On the final boss fight of the pathfinder campaign I was taking my HERO players through they were so caught up in the encounter that they had completely forgotten the thing they were supposed to do to make the encounter much easier. We were down a player that day so 4 players vs the boss. Two players are down hard (enough negative stun to be in the REC / hour range) and a third is going up and down like a yo-yo with single digit negative stuns. I didn't have the heart to TPK them so I just paused and said, "Gents, remember that specific thing you got to take the impossible action to beat this guy?". After that the players are all, "Do the thing! Who has the magic ring!? OMG - it's on the unconscious sorceress!". They all lived, but it was chaos. The DM ad-lib is really important in both directions. Sometimes the encounter is anti-climactic without the boss living long enough to be scary or monologue a little. Sometimes you have to make the boss take stupid actions or taunt unconscious foes instead of TPK'ing the party so that there's a chance for them to win. Ultimately it's whether you're playing WITH the GM or AGAINST the GM.

What's working pretty well is that the Mist is an undefined horror. All they know so far is that without their preciously small supply of candles that the mist will severely mess with their perception of time. Additionally, I let one of the players make a Forensic Medicine roll to determine a creature killed by "The Sentinel" was a corrupted / mutated person. Long, ropey limbs, broken fangs and claws - former human and hinted that perhaps the mist did it. I modified the main roads to be chain roads in the sense there is a thick chain running from post to post along the entire road so travelers don't get lost when the mist is too heavy to see. What's working well: The creepy atmosphere, the lack of visibility and fear of an unfamiliar setting. The adventure could benefit from a couple player handouts and artwork.

Update: Currently taking my Saturday crew through the adventure and so far so good. They're all in the 300+ point range now - long campaign - so I'll have to beef up the monsters in some aspects (mostly just raw OCV/DCV - or convert their attacks to 1 hex AoE so they can actually hit the characters). But, the flavor of the setting is resonating well with the players and they quite eagerly traded off some of their spare magic items for candles to protect them from the mist.

Took my kiddo to the pool yesterday and played around for an hour. As I was resting my geriatric ass at the edge of the pool I noticed that 2/3rds of the parents were on loungers tapping away on their phones instead of actually playing with their kids or even watching to see if they were still alive. I would rate my affection for video games and electronics as unhealthy and even I have the sense to actually spend the time with my kid. FFS!

I'd love to see the checklist on that. I'm no fan of the NRA, but terrorist group - as though they were on par with Isis - seems really out of bounds. Even with more recent Antifa vs. Proud Boy dust ups you don't typically see bands of roving NRA members shooting people.

I tried this with my players back in the early 90s and we all agreed it was awful. Once while a player at a D&D table I experienced a more severe version of this from a DM who wouldn't give us any hint at all about how hurt a monster was. Like all monsters looked pristine until they suddenly fell over dead. Even in UFC fights you get an idea of how badly hurt someone is over time. They show cuts or start reacting badly to being struck (flinching, guarding, stumbling away dazed, limping, etc.). Even if this was done artfully - It's going to be more trouble than its worth in my opinion. The players are, after all, playing a game and should have enough information to make informed choices.

This is true of almost any decision making efforts. It's also a great way to stay gainfully employed.

You're making an excellent point, but I recall a situation where a hostage taker duct-taped the barrel of his shotgun to the victim's neck before the police arrived to make sure he couldn't miss.

The value proposition of Cover is to take a hostage or get someone to yield instead of having to kill them. I agree the rules around it could use some tweaking, but it's a dramatic tool. The classic, "Drop your weapon or I splatter Susan's brains all over the vault door! You, bank manager, start opening that thing now!" In super heroic situations this allows a grossly inferior opponent (for them) to be a real threat. Sure, Robert the Robber, is no match for InvincoLad, but the potential death of an innocent might be.

What I've done for my Fantasy HERO players who are D&D 5e converts is to create two multi-powers. 1st multipower is for spells that are instant. 2nd multipower is for spells that are constant. This works very well for them as D&D 5e limits almost all spells with a duration by requiring concentration - which is limited to a single spell. This is to avoid the buff-stacking and debuff-stacking complexity of older editions. There are a few exceptions, but the two-multipower system has been very popular with my players. It feels more like what they're used to coming from 5e. PS: I always find the translation of spells to be fascinating going from D&D to HERO. Our version of Magic Missile is Blast 1d6 - NND - Does Body - AoE Single Hex - Accurate - Autofire. This makes it nearly impossible to miss unless the character Dives for Cover. Although far from perfect we also went with a rough active point chart for spell levels: Cantrips: 30 or less. 1st: 30 2nd: 37 3rd: 45 4th: 52 5th: 60 and so on.

I sure would because it's very, very important I don't end up on the front line fighting endless hordes of giant murder bugs. InfoTech for me, sir!

Even in Starship Troopers you obtained citizenship as a reward for military service.

All combat level - Do you want +1 OCV or +1 DCV. Or, for the same price, +1 to BOTH all the time. The numbers don't work.

Reminds me of losing my D&D basic & expert games as a wee lad when the parents decided that D&D was from the devil. Still DM'ing 40 years later.

I think Archer was making a joke about having combat during mass at church - thus - mass combat. I've found the mass combat rules passable, but scaling tilts itself towards always splitting your units into 1/2 the size of the enemy to gain double the number of attacks with a minor loss in damage output and body. Usually, the best scenarios for my group have involved mass combats as a scene backdrop or encounter hazards rather than actual, detailed, Total War 2 style mass combat. Giving the heroes dramatic scenes to hold a line or rally a broken formation or stop the exploding orc from getting into the drain gate make for better storytelling.

Minimal adherence to journalistic standards would have prevented that from ever coming out. There have been so many retractions since 2016 it's no wonder that when they surveyed 1000+ people that Fox News was listed as the most trusted news source. Perversely, when they asked the same group which news outlet they considered the least trust worthy that it was.... Fox News again. Donald Trump says and does a lot of ridiculous crap. Resorting to making things up to save your dying media outlet just muddies the water when the truth comes out. It's no wonder that independent news providers on YouTube are starting to have substantial audiences.

You could use this same logic for flamethrowers. It's important for us to know who is and is not fireproof...

The chart is not comparing full years to partial 2019. It is comparing all years shown from Jan 1 to Aug 26 of each year so that the comparison is equitable.

That's a good point. Though, given the huge numbers of fires (10s of thousands) I wonder if the volume of samples doesn't drive towards a pretty consistent acres/fire number. Did a quick survey of some other charts on the internet and it seems like the #1 problem is not fires, but deforestation by people and their governments. I guess fire just makes for better apocalyptic news footage.

This is why my players buy them in Fantasy HERO. Did I hit the OCV/DCV cap? Buying combat levels. Sometimes they'll go with the 3 pointers for cheap OCV, but after they get tired of getting hit they will switch to the 10 pointers.

I couldn't agree more. This is excessive crunch and complexity being added to a system that already loses players to excessive crunch and complexity. If I build a death ray that only works against Kryptonians I shouldn't have to build a detect Kryptonian device. I just fire the stupid thing and see if it works or not. It would be like having a lethal ultrasound device that liquifies brains: 1d6 RKA - NND - Does Body - Only against organics with brains (NND is blocked by a full helmet or force field). Do I now need Detect Organic creatures with brains? Detect Helmets? Detect forcefields? Come on!

According to the article the fire activity is slightly below average for the last 15 years. Wiki also has this. While it is SUPER bad to be destroying the rain forest - I'm not sure why it was initially reported in such apocalyptic terms. 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2010 were all much worse and 2016 was nearly as bad.

Several factors come to mind: 1- Very relaxed culture. 2- Tropical environment is easy on the body. 3- Population is mostly Asian and they've retained enough of their cultures of origin to not balloon up to American sizes as a whole. Though a quick review of the list on Wikipedia says Minnesota - a godforsaken icy wasteland - is in 2nd place so there goes my theory.

This is a good point. The 6e books are great as a reference tool - like an encyclopedia set. They are terrible for learning how to play. 750+ pages is just too much material to expect players to read through, much less learn. D&D 5e made a decision to streamline their product and there are now more players than ever - by a lot. I recently skimmed my champions 4e book and it reminded me just how well it balanced crunch vs. readability.

My Google-foo has failed me. All I was able to find is this ridiculous video of Trump & Hillary fighting ninjas.