Pattern Ghost

Re: YOUR RL Skills Great info, Oddhat. I guess my idea of "average" is more along the lines of someone larger than 148lbs. I was 172-176 in my prime, and knew about as many guys who were larger than me as smaller, so I was taking that as my "average." I could well be wrong, there. I only have myself, really, as a reference. I was in pretty decent shape in my senior year of high school, and when I joined the Army, but by no means buff. At 172 lbs, I could deadlift a bit over 300 with a bit of effort. That would put me at Intermediate on the chart, which I'm not sure I'd rate. I knew plenty of guys who just hit the gym regularly who could do more weight. Heck, I knew a few guys who could bench a lot more than I could deadlift.

Re: YOUR RL Skills Those are good benchmarks, agree 100%. I'd venture to disagree on the STR. It's the only stat that has a concrete real world benchmark. Remember, Hero STR is a deadlift. I know darn few adult males who can't easily do 100kg. Now, this doesn't translate well to overall STR, because between those same guys, you'll have a lot of variance in upper body strength that the rules can't cover, really. I'd say most adult males easily fall into a 10 STR, with a 13 STR being pretty common for fit/athletic guys. Even though this thread isn't about building a normal*, there are definitely some good ideas being tossed around here. Thanks to everyone who contributed. *Entirely my fault for phrasing the subject the way I did, though.

Re: YOUR RL Skills

Re: YOUR RL Skills The characteristics aside, this IS the point, very much. Most folks just don't have a lot of skills in Hero terms. Perhaps background stuff, like KS's, PS's, etc., but most of the adventuring skills? Not so much. How many skill points would an average: Truck driver Waitress Office Manager Photographer Scientist Computer Technician Beautician etc. have on their sheet if they were transformed into a super? Not many. Considering a beginning character in Champions is supposed to be at a starting level in their career more or less, then they won't have too many skills, unless they have an extraodrinary background (adventurer, hunter, military, world-class (comic book) level scientist, etc.). By demanding all characters have X amount of points in Skills, I think you limit the background options to largely those types of characters.

Re: YOUR RL Skills I'd actually use all of those except Conversation to build one (as above). I'd say Conversation would depend on the individual's nature, but is equally valid, especially for someone pursuing a career in crime fighting.

Re: YOUR RL Skills The Everyman Skill list includes your PS skill, so that'd be covered. I don't see most people who are accountants having a need for Deduction or Forgery, though I suppose if they're involved in auditing or forensic accounting, those would be appropriate. I'd say if you took your average Joe accountant and he wanted to be involved in crime fighting, those would be VERY good skills to hone to use to "follow the money." I don't know why you'd include Conversation. In my opinion, it's for information gathering/intelligence, so it'd be appropriate to, say, a military interrogator (97E for Army), police or other intelligence agency. EDIT: Actually, if I was going to build this guy, I'd go with the following for Skills, and actually make him a forensic accountant for his day job, so he's a bit more heroic of an accountant: 3 PS: Accountant (INT-based) 3 KS: Finance (INT-based) 3 KS: Forensic Accounting (INT-based) 3 Deduction 3 Forgery 1 FAM: Criminology (The skill covers analyzing records, but that's just a small part of the skill, and could be considered covered by Forensic Accounting and Deduction) 3 Bureaucratics 3 Systems Operation (Heavy computer user.) 5 Computer Link: Federal Systems 3 Federal/National Police Powers 3 Lightning Calculator 3 Paramedic (Brushed up on old training to be better able to aid people) 3 Teamwork Let's see, that's 39 points in Skills (and perks/talents), for an accounting background that's also useful for crime fighting. Not your typical accountant, either, but if the character didn't have the LE background, he'd probably still brush up the investigative aspects of his profession to help him fight crime. I guess an accountant *could* hit 50 or so points in skills if you include combat skills on top of an investigative set, and toss Perks and Talents into the same bucket.

Re: YOUR RL Skills Both could be Professional Skills. I'd venture to say that since art is subjective, it'd be hard to determine if a given person appreciated your art, but if you wanted to use those skills to make money, the roll could determine your ability to sell the products of your art. If you wanted to represent a high level of skill, you could take a small Wealth perk to represent royalties against your existing published work. Since you can take all the extra time you want to revise your work, you wouldn't have to put a ton of points into the actual skill, a two pointer would do for a talented entry-level pro or semi-pro.

I was just thinking about campaign guidelines I've seen that say your super has to take at least 50 pts in Skills. I think at least part of the reason behind this was a reaction by GMs to the 350 point build totals of 5th Edition. Perhaps partly to avoid characters with every power in the book or to encourage fleshing out characters with skills to add dimension to them. But, really, if your origin is "I'm an Accountant who got struck magic lightning" then do you really NEED to buy any more than Everyman skills to stay in concept? How many of us have actual Hero System skills? Aside from the Background Skills (PS, KS, CK, SS, etc.), all the rest of the skills are Adventuring skills. I don't think most of us have too many of those, though it's quite possible to be a real person and have a good selection of them. Here's my origin story: I went into the Army at the age of 18 after graduating High School. I attended DLI where I learned Spanish, and became an MP. I also served for a while as our Unit Armorer. Aside from Army training, I've spent a lot of my own time on the range, particularly firing handguns, and I'm a pretty capable (though not competition level) marksman. After the Army, I went to college for a couple years to study business, then became a computer tech. Other hobbies/interests include reptile husbandry, reading SF/Fantasy, comics, gaming, and a bit of Poker (both myself and my wife have placed in the money in local tournaments.) Here's what I get beyond Everyman skills from the above: WF: Military Small Arms A couple of OCV levels with Hanguns. A couple of PSLs to offset range. *Maybe* Martial Escape, Martial Grab, and Choke Hold from MP training and additional training outside normal channels. FAM with Survival, Navigation, Weaponsmith, Gambling and Paramedics Lang: Spanish Teamwork and Stealth would be the only full 3pt skills I'd give myself, both from inclination and training. PS: Soldier PS: Computer Technician (one of the two would fall under Everyman skills though) KS: Reptile Husbandry Other KS for hobbies under Everyman So, not even close to 50 pts, and only two full Adventuring skills, and even that list is probably pushing it for the level of granularity that's typical for a Champions game.

Re: Shared Clips I really, really hate that five point doubling rule.

Suppose a character has a matched set of pistols, twin .45s for the sake of argument. Now, normally for a gun build, I'm going to go with something like 4 clips of 8 charges. If I buy two guns with an identical build, I get 8 clips of 8 charges. That's a lot of clips. Even though both are defined as .45 autos, same make, etc., using the clips interchangeably doesn't seem kosher to me. For the sake of flavor, having 8 clips is a bit excessive. So, what about sharing the 8 clips between both? How would you handle it? It means the -0 limitation aught to be worth a bit more since you have access to less total charges. On the other hand, it also conveys a small benefit in the charges working for both powers. An obvious work around would be an END Reserve, but that doesn't evoke the feel that clips does, of reloading. The other obvious work around is to simply buy 2 clips of 8 charges on each power, and either assign an Advantage for shared clips, or GM handwave it.

Re: Weapons with SPD scores? If I was building it as heroic equipment, this would be very true. This is more for building stuff paid for by character points. I don't think it needs a new advantage, just trying to hash out what it'd be worth as a custom limitation under Limited Power. The idea was to build a more or less realistic weapon (no knockback, beam, no range penalty, slow to recharge laser) for either a gadget pool choice or as an accessory for a character with a more street level background. In other words, a weapon in a supers world, that's not super tech level.

Ok, was just thinking about emulating a real life LASER type weapon. One limitation I thought of was a recharge time. Basically, the weapon can only be cycled once every X seconds. The obvious way to model this is to give the weapon a limitation based on SPD. For example, a weapon that can cycle once every six seconds would have a 2 SPD, once every 6 seconds, a 3 SPD every 4 seconds, etc. So, a SPD 4 character could only make 2 or 3 attacks per turn, with said weapon. If the weapon is fired on one of the hero's phases, the delay is just based on the next available segment, rather than the speed chart. For example, A speed five character fires a 3 SPD weapon on phase 8, his next available shot would be on phase 12. I know we have a lot of folks who like modelling weapons, so there's a good chance this has been done. If so, how'd you do it? I guess my main question is how to cost it out. Obviously, if the SPD of the weapon is the same as the character's SPD, it's not worth anything. Perhaps going down at a rate of -1/4 per -1 SPD than the character would be a good basis?

Re: Best Basic 60 Point Power: Followers! Of course, I'm pretty sure any GM would veto this, because who wants to run 16 350 point supers on top of the villains?

Re: Art question Question: ARE these painted minis? There may be a copyright problem in using photos or photo manipulations of them in a publication if so.

I was just having a crazy thought: For 60 points, you can have 16x 200 base point characters. That's a couple super teams! Kind of beats the heck out of a 12d6 EB. Is anything built with just 60 AP this good? Off to build me a Gammazon army...

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. But...but...she's not RED!

Re: Idea/Suggestion: Offline Character Generator Hmm, guess nobody likes this idea?

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Woot! The cosmic balance has been restored.

Re: Massively Article On Champions Online I'm thinking at least the ring and the weapon for my mage. Not sure if the other stuff if worth breaking set bonuses on the crafted gear. /end WoW derail

Re: Massively Article On Champions Online Heck, here's the link to the new badge loot: http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=25046#sells:0+10+1 A little OT, but we have at least two WoW players here it seems. =)

Re: Massively Article On Champions Online You forgot to mention Badge of Justice rewards. Have you seen the stuff coming out in 2.4? It's obscenely good, just takes a ton of badges. I'll need to collect 563 Badges for my healing pally alt to gear up. But, since we're only starting SSC, that'd put my pally ALT ahead of the rest of the raid group gear-wise. Anyway, I wasn't talking about WoW, I was talking in general. In general, the loot shouldn't be made exclusive. Just as WoW has learned, so should go COMMO.

To quote myself, from the Champions-Online boards: That was in response to a thread on the other board. I think something like this would sell like hotcakes as a standalone downloadable product. The dual functionality of using it to pre-load character appearance in the MMO and create character sheets (blank w/the character filled in or even manual input of stats/powers) and stand-ups would be a very sweet synergy, while still offering those who only play on one side or the other a great tool. Edit: I can't claim total credit for the idea, as EQII has such a generator for appearance already.

Re: Plex's Campaign Just a thought. If this is an established team, then giving the characters Teamwork may be a good idea. (If not, they can learn it as they go, of course.)

Re: Gamasutra interview with Jack I agree that the game was mechanically sound. It was great on that level, had great ideas like the sidekick/exemplar system, but the game lacked content. It was cool to have this great character that was so smooth to run, but the game lacked anything interesting to do with the character.

Re: Massively Article On Champions Online A loot system is fine as long as anyone can find any of the loot. You only get exclusion when the loot drops from encounters that some part of the player base doesn't have access to, classic example being a casual who doesn't raid not being able to get raid loot.