PhilFleischmann

Re: Fiddling With 6th - Skills (first of ??) Just because I want to change Languages to rolled skills doesn't mean I want to get rid of the language chart. I meant it when I said I want Languages to be treated like other background skills. The language chart serves as a guide for complimentary skill rolls and similar situations. If someone had SC: Human Physiology and no other Sciences, I would still allow him to make a roll to know (or figure out) something about Ape Physiology, at a slight penalty, of course. I would even allow him to check for knowledge of Dog Physiology, at a larger penalty. By the same token, a person with Spanish and no other languages would have a small penalty to understand Portuguese, a larger penalty to understand Rumanian, and a very large penalty to understand German. (In fact, German might be too distant to allow a roll at all, but you get the idea.) BTW, I don't have any problem at all with 1/2 points. Anyone who can deal with quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, but can't deal with half points has an attitude problem, not a math problem. I'm not saying I want more 1/2-point things added to HERO (more, that is, since we already have COM and END), but that it wouldn't be an unbearable burden on the game. I usually don't use them myself, except when a munchkin player tries to get free points by calculating limitations so everything rounds in his favor. I've had players do this before (and yes, I used to do it myself ) - deliberately created a dozen powers that have a cost ending in .5 so the player essentially gets 6 points for free. Certainly these people can't complain about "extra math" since they're already doing it!

Re: What do you call this genre? So, why exactly is this not steampunk? What's the difference between steampunk and this "industrial fantasy"?

Re: Fade Rate OR Recovery I can see how a guy with a high REC might overcome the effects of poison faster. After all, high REC usually reflects high STR and CON. But this really depends on exactly what is being adjusted and what the SFX/mechanic of the power is. OK, so you're a tough guy, you shake off the STR-Draining disease faster than most people, but how does your physical might (ability to recover STUN/turn, END/turn, and BODY/month) help you overcome a psionic EGO Drain? If I turn the firehose on Flameboy (Drain vs. All Fire-based Powers), why should his REC help him? If I electronically disrupt your power armor's abilities (FF, Flight, END Reserve, Zappular Rays, Comm System), your personal REC has nothing to do with it. And the idea that Aids wear off faster if you have a high REC is ridiculous. It's like saying that a strong, healthy person won't respond as well to medicine as a weak, sickly person! OTOH, perhaps there should be a way for characters to buy up their recovery rate from Drains and Transfers (let's call them "Drainsfers"). I would make this an Advantage on REC. Say +0.25 for a limited group of powers/characteristics vs. a specific SFX of Drainsfers, +0.5 for a broad group of powers/chars or vs. a group of related SFX Drainsfers, +1 for all powers/chars, or vs. a large group of SFX of Drainsfers, etc. all the way up to +2 for all powers/chars vs. any Drainsfer. If you buy this Advantage on your REC, and the Drainsfer is within the SFX group you specified, and the thing being drained is withing the group paid for, then you gain back your REC/turn instead of (or in addition to?) a mere 5/time interval. Example: ToughGuy wants to be able to shrug off Drainsfers that affect his physical body to reflect his general toughness. Instead of (or in addition to) buying Power Defense with the Limitation "Only vs. Physical Characteristics and Body-based Powers," he buys a +1 Advantage on his REC, so that it applies to any Physiological/Medical effect on his physical/body-based abilities. ToughGuy has 60 STR and 30 CON, giving him a base 18 REC. TG buys his REC up to a nice round 20 for an additional 4 points. The Advantage on his REC costs 20 (his REC score) x 2 (cost of each point of REC) x 1 (the Advantage) = 40 points. Now whenever TG is hit by just about any natural poison or disease or physiology-disrupting Drain or Transfer, he'll gain back 20 cp's per time interval, rather than 5. This applies to SonicMan's dizziness-inducing ultrasonic vibration, as well as the flu, snake venom, tear gas, and the evil Dr. Malpractice's lung-capacity-diminishing ray gun (don't ask me how it works). If these Drains are bought with the default recovery rate, TG will regain 20 cp/turn. Such a Drain bought down to "5 cp/day" will allow TG to recover 20 cp/day. However, he'll still have the normal 5-point recovery vs. HeavyMan's gravity-based STR-Drain, Madman's emapthic fear aura (PRE Drain), or the Gnolevets atomic disintegrator (BODY Drain), since these aren't medical/physiological effects. I think this idea could work pretty well, except that I probably made it too expensive, since for the same 40 points, Tough Guy could have simply bought 40 points of Power Defense. OK, so make this one a +0.25 Advantage to REC instead, thus it only costs 10 points. Maybe +0.5 (20 points) if Drainsfers are especially common in your campaign. (They aren't in mine.)

Re: Fiddling With 6th - Skills (first of ??) Thank you. The only real problem I have with skills in HERO is Languages. I don't like the way they are priced. FREd says that an 11- roll with a PS is enough to competently hold a job in that skill. And that's only 2 points. Therefore I say that 2 points should be enough to be a competent user of the language. I'd like languages to have the same structure as other skills, i.e., give them a roll 11-, or 9+INT/5. For a 1 point familarity with the language, your vocabulary is somewhat limited: it will be obvious that you aren't a native speaker, you might not understand various figures of speech or wordplay, nor will you be able to fully appreciate great literature written in the language, but you can negotiate a transaction and ask where the restrooms are, and generally get your point across. For 2 points, you can be a fully competent, fluent speaker of the language, you understand idioms and most plays on words, but you aren't a master writer, poet, or wordsmith in the language. A truly great writer/poet/author in the language will have a much higher roll. If Einstein has a SC: Physics of 18-, then Shakespeare has Language: English of 18-. Those numbers might not be exact, but you get the idea. Oh, and literacy is free or not depending on genre, setting, and character conception.

Re: Fiddling With 6th - Skills (first of ??) My two cents: Two ways to smooth out the jump between the 8- Familiarity and the 11- (or 9+CHA/5) skill: 1. (Completely within the rules) Even 8- Familiarities can get bonuses for easy situations or taking extra time. If I have only 8- with Math, I might still solve the problem if you give me a week. 2. (Rule modification) Change Familiarity from a flat 8- to 7+CHA/10 or less. That way, the relevent stat is still important, but doesn't provide the same bonus that it would if you had the full skill. A "normal" with 10's would still have an 8-, but a 40 DEX guy with a familiarity with Acrobatics, would get 7+40/10= 11 or less. If he bought the full skill, he'd have 9+40/5= 17 or less. The other ways that have been brought up on this thread are also good. And as it says in FREd, background skills all cost the same because more specific ones provide much more detail than general ones. SC: Zoology will give you some good information about Insectology, but SC: Insectology will give you lost more, but very little about Ornithology (though you might get some info about birds that eat insects). Likewise KS: The Champions will give you intimate details about those five people and their history as a group, while KS: The Superhuman World, will give only general info about superhumans, the Champions included.

Re: Oops... Adding more worms to this open can... And what if, after your Haymaker, instead of aborting to Dodge, you abort to Block? Should you get your full OCV/DCV? (since Block gives +0/+0) Or do you use the penalties left over from your Haymaker?

Re: Once more in English, please? For the sake of fantasy gaming, I created a set of my own blazoning terms to describe the positions of weapons and similar items on the shield. It's a simple system that sounds "heraldic" and yet is fairly easy to remember. Take a sword, (please): In general, it could be shown pointing in one of the eight compass directions. So I named each position after the compass direction. Most words describing the position of a heraldic charge end with "-ant," so if the sword points upward (north), I call it "noant" (pronounced "NO-unt") If it points to the upper right (northeast), it is "neant" ("KNEE-unt"). If it points to the upper left (northwest), you could call it "nwant," but that looks a little strange, so I first changed it to "newant," and then to "nuant" (NEW-ant). Likewise for the remaining positions: pointing left (west) = weant ("WEE-unt") pointing right (east) = eant ("EE-unt") pointing down (south) = soant ("SO-unt") down and left (southwest) = suant ("SUE-unt") down and right (southeast) = seant ("SEE-unt") Isn't that simple? Yes, this has no basis in historical heraldry. I created it solely for my fantasy game world's heraldry. Thus the arms of Zenora, Marchioness of Neralf: per fess potenty, sable and argent, three swords nuant proper in chief. That is, the top half is black, the bottom half is white, with three swords pointing up and left of their natural color in the top portion of the shield, and the line separating the black and white areas is "potenty" - it consists of interlocking 'T' shapes.

Re: Language Trees: Do you use them? Amen, brother! This is one of the things I've always disliked about a certain other game system that shall remain nameless. *Everything* was formalized, codified, and standardized: the gods, the languages, the magic, etc. As if everything was made in a modern factory. In my fantasy campaign world's creation myth, there are several contradictory versions in several areas. Sages and scholars don't even agree on whether Delphileq created humans before or after the other gods! Speaking specifically to the issue of languages, in most fantasy settings, the printing press hasn't been invented, and there are no formalized rules of grammar or spelling. I haven't thought about language trees in my games for a long time, though I greatly prefer trees to the Venn-diagram-style langauge familiarity charts. (I have problems with the way HERO prices language skills, but that's a separate topic.) I find the tree structure diagram better shows the relationship between languages. Which ones directly evovled/emerged from which others (Anglo-Saxon -> English), which had influences on others (French -> English), which lent words to others (all other languages -> English). I'll try to find my old language chart and see if I can post it here. Remember also that some languages: May have no written form, they are spoken only. May have no spoken form, they are written only. May have originally had no written form, but incorporated a writing system from some other language. May have originally had no written form, but someone may have later invented a writing system for it. May have two or more alphabets in which it can be written (usually depending on geographical region). May use the same alphabet, but still be completely different languages. May use the same or similar written symbols, but have completely different pronunciations. May use an ideographic writing system, rather than a phonemic one. I love linguistics!

Re: No Range Mind Scan It doesn't matter how many targets are affected, the question was about range. Mind Scan really works a little like AE with Selective. If the person you want to select isn't in the area, nothing happens (except that you know they aren't in the area). But you definitely do select an area to scan when you use mind scan. That area can be anywhere in the same plane of existance, and it can be as big or as small as you like, and it can be anywhere you like. That's a lot of flexibility. If you limit that flexibility, isn't it worth a limitation? I sit here in SoCal, and I can look for a specific mind in Australia, Italy, Nebraska, Boise, the Empire State Building, the first floor of the Gold Spike casino in Las Vegas, or room 901 of the engineering building at UCI (just to give examples of various sizes and distances, continent, country, state, city, building, large room, small room). If I want to limit my mind scan with No Range, I could scan North America, the contiguous states, California, Redondo Beach, my neighborhood, my apartment building, my unit, or my bedroom. I couldn't find someone in Australia unless I scanned the whole planet, which would make the scan considerably harder. If I wanted to find someone in the Empire State Building, I would have to go there or scan the entire country, even if I knew exactly where in the building my target was. How is that anything other than the No Range limitation? If you want to put on an additional limitation "Can Only Scan One Mind At A Time," i.e. the area selected can be no bigger than an individual person, that renders the power almost useless and would probably be at least a -2 limitation.

Re: Gods: How do you handle them? I keep my gods, religions, and myths fairly vague. Players shouldn't necessarily have complete knowledge of the gods or the story of creation, even about their own specific god. "I was raised to worship Socom, but I don't know anything about her." From ancient history to the modern world, very few people were experts on theology or religion. Yes, I have a fairly complex pantheon of gods, 54 so far. Every once in a while I think of a "portfolio" that ought to have a god that I haven't created yet, so I'll add another one. I haven't done this in a while. The last god I added was Tislocra, goddess of disease and plague. (I'm still a little short on the evil gods, perhaps.) I also allow room for an indefinite number of demigods - children of a god and a mortal, who each become deities of some sub-aspect of their divine parent's portfolio. This is especially true for the "material" gods - the gods of nature and other physical phenomena. Nool, for example, is the goddess of the moon. She may have several demigod children who are gods of the crescent moon, the gibbous moon, the full moon, eclipses, the red harvest moon, etc. Likewise Cardile, god of nature may have several offspring who are demigods of various individual species of animals or plants. I do not stat out all my gods, or even define all the aspects of their religions. Well-defined gods and fully-codified religions seem to me like oxymorons. If a player has a need to know some detail about a god, I usually make it up on the spot, if I don't know it already, or I let the player himself choose how he wishes to practice his religion. I post more details later.

Re: No Range Mind Scan A Mind Scan with No Range is perfectly legitimate. Just like any other power that's inherently area-affecting, like Change Environment. CE No Range means you can create a snowstorm with yourself in the middle of it, but you can't create a snowstorm away from yourself. Mind Scan with No Range works just like you said. You could scan everyone in the room/building/neighborhood/city/state/country/continent/planet where you are, but not in another room/neighborhood/city/etc.

Re: Another weird duplicaton question! Yay! Ghost Angel is correct. Power stops working when I'm knocked out - That's Nonpersistant exactly. -1/4 Lim. Everything else is just a special effect.

Re: Alignments

Re: Alignments The point of this exercise is not philosophy. I really doesn't matter why the thief steals or why the orcs want to kill all humans*, I just want a simple way to codify how they are likely to interact with the player characters and innocents. Orcs are likely to attack on sight. Hobgoblins, being somewhat smarter than orcs, are likely to attack on sight only if they feel fairly sure of their superior tyactical position. A demon will appear friendly, while planting seeds of distruction. The hermit in the cave will be unfriendly and unlikely to offer help, but could be won over. The traveling merchant will be as friendly as possible, not necessarily out of inherent goodness or altruism, but to make a sale. The troll sees no reason to leave humans alive, because there's always more room in his stomache, and he isn't smart enough to start a human herd. An unusually smart troll might think of breeding humans for food, but at that level of intelligence, he'll probably realize that the humans are tricksy enough to fight back, making a human herd more trouble than it's worth. *OK, it might matter for other reasons, such as adventure and campaign ideas, but that's a separate discussion.

No, I'm not looking to incorporate deendee-type alignment rules into FH, nor any type of rules at all. What I want is a simple list of "alignment terms" to breifly describe the motivations and likely reactions of monsters, creatures, and characters to the PC's. This is something I feel could have been helpful in the Bestiary and MM&M. I want to not only distinguish between good and evil, but between various motivations and interactions. For example, a troll attacks a small defenseless farming village because trolls are always hungry and defenseless humans are like filet mignon to a troll, who of course sees nothing wrong with eating humans. A band of orcs attacks the village because orcs deliberately want to exterminate all humans whereever they find them. Sure, they might eat a few, but that is just a side benefit. A devil assumes human form and simply walks into the village posing as a common traveling merchant. He then subtly works to corrupt the innocent villagers, and if successful leaves them destroyed or in total misery. The duke of the realm rides through to collect exorbitant taxes and remind the villagers who's boss. He has no compunctions about flogging or even summarily executing any peasant who looks at him the wrong way, but has no motivation to reduce his labor force. A burgler sneaks into the village at night and steals what he can, a few nights in a row until the villagers start to get suspiscious. The burgler knows he can't evade they angry mob forever, so he moves on to the next town. All of these are examples of evil, but they all behave in different ways due to different motivations. What I want is a simple list of "alignments" say, a dozen or so, perhaps with more than one axis (like deendee, with its good-evil axis and law-chaos axis). We might describe the troll as "Amoral Hungry," the orcs as "Racist Genocidal," the devil as "Careful Malicious," the duke is "Tyrannical Greedy," and the burgler is "Careful Greedy." Does anyone have, or can anyone come up with, a simple system to describe the likely interaction with others of a particular encounter (monster, animal, npc) in a two or three-word phrase? Note that "normal animal motivations" doesn't quite cut it. A deer and a wolf both have normal animal motivations, but they will interact differently with a party of PCs. I'm not looking for rules to enforce alignments, or to make them specific ethical groups like religions, or have magic items or spells that only work on particular alignments, or for Psych Lims to reflect an alignment. I'm only looking for a simple set of terms to quickly describe behavior and outlook. Ideally, it should cover monsters, people, and animals, as well as beings with "inherent" alignments such as demons and angels. I know it's a tall order, but if we put our heads together, we can probably come up with something useful.

Re: Extra Limbs and Characteristics drnuncheon, I consider the text you cite in FREd to be a brain fart on Steve's part. It seems so totally obvious that the limitation should be on the Extra Limbs, rather than the STR (not to mention a very simple solution). Don't hold your breath waiting for Steve to justify or explain the rule. He never does that. I understand he really doesn't have time to explain or justify all his design decisions. Just remember that your own common sense and logic can trump any illogical rule. FREd is not the Bible, and Steve is not infallible. (I've been waiting for an explanation of the "No teperature level 0 exists" line for a long time. I don't think I'll ever get it, so I just cross it out.)

Re: Ripping Telephone Poles From The Ground

Re: Ripping Telephone Poles From The Ground My point was that the weight of an object may bear no relation to the strength with which it is achored to the ground. An olympic weightlifter also couldn't lift a chair bolted to the floor, but could easily throw it across the room if it wasn't. A tornado might leave a tree or small structure standing while easily picking up things just as heavy that aren't anchored to the ground. See how much strength it takes to pull up a weed out of your garden and comare that to how much strength it takes to then pick it up an carry it to the trash can. You can easily knock down a stack of bricks that aren't cemented together, you can even juggle the bricks, but it's much harder to knock down a brick wall or pluck out one brick to use as a weapon after the mortar is dry. And yes a person with 80 STR could easily pull up a telephone pole, but a person with 30 STR couldn't, even though he could pick one up easily if it was just laying there. And the 80 STR guy would probably break off the pole long before it came out of the concrete unless he's very careful to pull it straight up.

Re: Encumbrance It's not really that complicated because you can calculate it in advance and write it on your character sheet, thusly: W" unencumbered movement X" mildly encumbered movement Y" encumbered movement Z" fully encumbered movement For however many increments you want or need. That way you never have to do any calculations on the fly. You only need to do it once, before play begins. And this works to save time and calculation regardless of what encumbrance system you use.

Re: Some holding phases questions... 1. Let 'em hold as long as they want, but don't start counting phases until someone actually does something. 2. While they're holding let the bad guys continue their nefarious scheme. A few of the baddies can participate in the staring contest while the rest empty out the bank vault. 3. Have the bad guys put innocent bystanders in immeriate danger. 4. Buy Lightning Reflexes for the bad guys so they'll win the DEX roll-offs. 5. First rule of evil: When in doubt, take a hostage. 6. Have the press show up. "You call yourself a hero. Aren't you going to do anything?" He who hesitates is lost. BTW, IIRC, there's nothing that disallows holding a phase past segment 12, you don't lose the phase. And of course bad guys can do it too, since everyone starts on 12. OK, I admit it. I only responded because I wanted to use some of the new smileys.

Re: Regeneration For those of you interested in constructing Regen as an Advantage to REC, try this: REC Heals back BODY at a faster rate +1/2* per level up the time chart. Since REC is 2 cp per point, each 1 REC that heals BODY faster is 1 cp per time level. So for 1 point, you could heal back 1 BODY per week (in addition to whatever BODY you get back per month for the rest of your REC). Since there are 8 steps between month and turn, 1 BODY Regen costs 8 points - almost exactly what it costs in FREd! What a coincidence! * This value is based on nothing more than what makes the end result most equal to the normal cost of Regen in FREd. If you want it to be +1/4, then Regen effectively costs 4 points per BODY/turn. If you want it to be +3/4, then it will be 12 points for 1 BODY/turn. Oh, and because this method creates Regeneration as an advantage to REC, there is an implied requirement that your Regen can't exceed your REC (which usually won't be a problem). Oh, and this method doesn't have any clear built-in way to heal back limbs or come back from death. I guess you'll still have to by those adders separately. And BTW, it's "meta-rule," not "mega-rule." And I regard that particular meta-rule as one of Steve & Co.'s brain farts, along with "No Temperature Level 0 exists" and the upcoming cubic feet masses of objects in the UB, when everything else in the game is in metric. The meta rule should be "The power construct with the most fair and equitable cost is the one that should be used," or perhaps "The simplest power contruct should be used," or even "The power construct that doesn't use Transform, EDM, or Change Environment should be used."

Re: Ripping Telephone Poles From The Ground I don't think so. I could easily pick up the chair I'm sitting on and swing it or throw it as a weapon. But I couldn't pick it up at all if it was bolted to the floor.

Re: Question on flight and telekinesis I don't see a problem with the TK move thru. The only problem I could see someone having is that TK Man gets to do a move thru without taking any damage because he's using an object. Is this fair? It is if you allow Mr. Brick to pick up the same object and use it to absorb the damage from his move thru. And why shouldn't a tractor beam be built with TK? I'd say TK, (no fine work) Whole objects only. It seems it would cost less than Stretching and work just as well. A powerful tractor beam could be built on a fairly small, low STR, ship. A ship's STR and the STR of its tractor beam might not be the same. And IIRC, a more powerful ship would simply break out of the tractor beam, not pull the other ship along.

Re: OK, Math And Science Experts: Cubic Hexes Did I kill this thread? I didn't mean to.

Re: Ripping Telephone Poles From The Ground That's almost exactly what I wanted to say, but you said it much more succinctly than I probably would have. An Entangle is a perfect way to thing of it. Ask yourself, "how tightly does the concrete, or dirt, hold on to the pole, i.e., the equivalent of what DEF/BODY Entangle?" The same would apply to uprooting a tree, a lamppost, a phone booth, a fence post, etc. I think what we need is a new table for uprooting things, after all, picking up a fallen tree is not the same thing as ripping it out of the ground, nor is it the same as simply destroying the tree. It's probably too late to get such a table included in The Ultimate Brick, but it really should go in there. Something like this: Object Weight Destroy Uproot (break Entangle) BODY DEF BODY DEF Tree Sapling Telephone Pole (wood, in earth with concrete base) Traffic signal pole (metal, bolted to concrete) Street sign Lamppost Mailbox Fence post Boulder in ground Sword in stone Sword in Anvil* Car in mud Wooly mammoth in tar pit Anybody have references for these? *(and why do we often see the proverbial "sword in the stone" depicted as a sword embedded in an anvil? )