mattingly

I've played in and run many Cartoon Hero games. My first experience to heroic-level Hero was a long-running GI Joe campaign. Since then, I've written up and run a Scooby Doo game, a big brawl featuring Warner Brothers toons versus Disney toons, and other cartoon-related games.

Man, where was this stuff three months ago, when I needed it? I've reproduced most of this work for my upcoming GenCon game, which will pit a HERO-ized D&D party (8th to 10th level) against a team of superheroes. All are built on 350 points.

If I had to pick one or the other, I'd go with ED, since I tend to think of acid as "liquid fire."

Is there any way for a character with an Extra Mass Teleport to touch someone adjacent and then teleport away? Or is that considered a Phase-ending Grab? Could some variant of the Grab By maneuver help out?

I once allowed a character to buy some 5 or less skills for a half-point each. To penalize specific skills, take a Physical Limitation: -3 OCV for Grabs (for example) (Infrequently, Slightly).

With GM's permission (which should be easy in your case, Shrike), Skills can be treated as Powers, which includes Frameworks. Either give him a 1-point Elemental Control: International Man Of Mystery, and shave off 1 point from all his skills, or else put his Languages, KSes, rarely-used Perks, etc. into a 5-point Cosmic VPP: Cool Background, for 15 points.

with wings.

And if they ever come out with a pocket-sized digest edition, they could call it MiniMaxiMeta.

It's too cheesy for actual use, but I got a kick out of thinking NND: defense is not being hit by another robot.

I agree with Mister D. The Leader is hard to to without. I can do without someone to lead the team into battle, but the team needs a purpose. Sure, that can be provided by an NPC mentor or employer, but when that figure isn't around, who makes the decisions? The other team member that's hard to do without is the team conscience. Besides a head (the leader), every team needs a heart. That's the person who gets the team to do the right thing, and stops them from doing the wrong thing.

Has anyone been watching Veritas: The Quest? It's a guilty pleasure of mine. It could make a pretty good basis for a campaign, or at least a good drop-in organization.

Do you have the HERO System Resource Kit? The fantasy village square in that should work, but you'd need to scan it in for an online game.

Instead of doing maximum or double damage on a 3, we treat it as a successful one-shot Find Weakness, in that only half of the target's defenses apply.

Instead of piling on the Advantages, why not go for just a large Killing Attack? RKA 7d6-1, Victim allowed CON roll to escape damage (-1), Does No STUN (-3/4) Active Cost:100, Real Cost: 36, END Cost 10 Sure, people with high rEDs will have a good chance of living, but with an average damage of 24, a 10 BODY character would need 14 rED to remain at greater than 0 BODY. If you want to throw on a -1 All-Or-Nothing Lim, so that the attack either takes the character to negative BODY or has no effect, that'd bring the Real Cost down to 27 points.

What are you suppressing here, SPD?

I prefer the Tri-Stat over the d20 SAS, but I also prefer M+M over SAS. As has been mentioned, though, the comic book overview in SAS is worth a lot.

Then there was the guy who tried to convince his GM that since no Characteristic could go below 1, that he couldn't be knocked unconscious...

Cool! I want those walls for my base. Force Wall, Does Knockback.

I'd use a CON-Based Entangle with the Backlash Advantage.

I recently ran my crew against a series of puzzles. One of the heroes (The Element) was a former villain working for a guy called The Alchemist, with classic elemental powers just like his protege eventually gained. Four riddles appeared around the city, one written in fiery letters at a TV station, one sunken in the earth at Central Park, one formed out of smokestacks at the airport, and one formed from water puddles seeming to come to life and form into letters a la Terminator 2. The obvious culprit, from the powers, was The Alchmeist, who hasn't been seen in over forty years, and was believed dead. But riddles aren't his style at all. The trick with riddles, for me, is to make them personal. The way that the riddles appeared immediately pointed to one of the PC's history. And one of the solutions was his own name! The riddles indicated that someone knew who he was, and was out to get him. I gave the players the riddles as the cliffhanger of one session, so that they had a week to figure them out. After hearing the mrun in circles, I was afraid I'd made them too hard, but they eventually figured them out. What's worse, is that in the next session, while they were still mulling over the riddles, they uncovered a plot by Black Harlequin, who si known to be a riddle fiend as well as an evil toymaker. When they confronted him with the riddles -- which he had not written -- he mused them over. "Hmm... Who is this Eddy person that's in such trouble? That's certainly something to think about isn't it? Hee hee hee!" So now, not only do they have one apprarently magical maniac after them, they've practically handed over a PC's secret identity to a technological maniac...

In the 5th Ed Rules forum, this was asked: And Steve answered NO. But in my campaign one of the players is using a Variable NND, and it's working out fine. I inherited the campaign and the character from the previous GM, and I did request a few changes. Originally, the attack was an NND with Variable Special Effects. I had the player change it to Variable Special Effects and Variable Advantage (any NND, +1 3/4). I can trust the player in question, but as an example to some of the other players (and for possible eventual publication), I wanted to make sure he was strictly legit by the rules. Besides, the entire gun only has 2 clips of 12 charges. His shtick is an experimental gun with dials for any electromagnetic frequency. The whole gun is a Multipower with an RKA, an EB, and this NND. So, he can fire light beams, magnet beams, electric beams, heat beams, etc. Anything that vaguely fits within the effect is fine with me, since he's fairly underpowered compared to the rest of the team, having spent a lot of points on investigative skills. So, although a variable NND has a huge potential for abuse, in selected cases it works out okay.

It's not quite so bad if the campaign house rule is that Force Fields don't stack with other forms of PD/ED. That way, a character with 4 normal PD/ED, 3 DEF Leather Armor, and a 8 PD/ED Force Field would have... 8 PD/ED. Another rule that helps out a bit is a -1/4 Limitation (or a campaign rule) that all attacks against Force Fields are treated as if they were Penetrating. That is, for every BODY rolled, at least one STUN gets through the Force Field (or one BODY for Killing Attacks).

4th Edition Ars Magica was just released as a free PDF today! http://www.atlas-games.com/arsmagica/free/index.html

It used to be that if you were firing all of the Autofire shots at a single target, you got a bonus to hit. I think what he's asking about is that since the Gatling Guns were hand-cranked, that would mean that the stronger you are, the faster you can turn the crank, and therefore the faster you can shoot.

Planning to read it over this weekend.