Pattern Ghost

Re: New to HERO Going for the facetious award? =P Your examples are all designed to protect from specific things. Your glove doesn't give ED anyway, just LS: Extreme Heat, limited to your hand. =P

Re: Flight with Passengers - What's the Best Way? You need Usable as Attack or Usable By Others for an AOE flight. My Barker Air example would probably be Usable As Attack, AOE, with a linked KA.

Re: CEO skills, aeronautical design skills Could be an executive VP.

Re: New to HERO I'd just give armor much lower values for ED than PD. There's no reason a metal (or leather, whatever) suit should provide as much protection from fire, electricity, or other energy. For that matter, it'd probably increase electrical damage. ED doesn't have a SFX, the SFX rather determines what kind of defense the attack goes against. If you simply limit the ED available in the setting, you give magic a lot of power, since it's probably one of the few, if not the sole, source of energy damage.

Re: Flight with Passengers - What's the Best Way? So... meat hooks are out? I mean, with enough STR and enough longish meat hooks, you can carry a few folks.

Re: Help with a power write up Fully invisible, desolid duplicate with some indirect attacks and change environment. Make activation of attacks based on luck roll or just give them activations. Kind of like the old hydra build kludge.

Re: Speaks loudly AND carries a big stick Let's see, off the top of my head: Homerun Swing: Offensive Strike Jab (with end of bat): Defensive Strike Choking up (hands spread a bit, like a short butt stroke) : Fast Strike Bat in the Shins: Legsweep Bat Parry: Martial Block Bat Arm Bar: I don't have UMA or the old Ninja Hero handy, but basically using the bat to put someone in an armbar and pin them face first, either on the ground or a handy wall. Bat Shove: Martial Shove (or whatever the shove move is from UMA), basically hold the bat horizontally in front and step forward, thrusting the bat at someone to push them back. Of course, all of the above could apply to riot batons, except Offensive Strike and Fast Strike would be outside of normal baton SOPs. =)

Re: Why must wolves be evil? Let's see... there's the wolves in Julie of the Wolves, the children's story. While not a fantasy per se, they got a pretty good rap. I'd suppose that Romulus and Remus's surrogate mom kind of balances Fenris mythologically speaking. Fairy tales seem to be the biggest place wolves get a bad rap: the Big Bad Wolf, the wolf that ate Little Red Riding Hood and her Granny, are a couple that come to mine. Then again, folk tales, one step or so removed from fairy tales has stories of people being raised by wolves, showing their familial side is recognized, as with the Romulus and Remus story. Then there's the wolf from the old WB cartoons (at least I think it's WB), who's a leering lady's man. Guess he's just an average guy, if a little seedy. Lord of the Rings gives dire wolves a bad name, but then again, they're dire, so that's probably to be expected. The Jungle Book has some pretty nice, family-minded wolves in it, though. But Maugrim from Narnia is definately a heel. I think most of the modern stuff has already been covered (WoT, Belgariad, Poul Anderson, Dickson, etc.) I think that while some wolves are definately shown as evil, there are many instances of their loving, family side shown too. It's kind of a toss up to me. It seems that on the one hand, you have the formidable predator that kills and eats your livestock (and by extension, possibly YOU) and on the other hand, you have an animal not unlike the ancestor to your loving family dog, with its strong family instincts and nurturing instincts. In fact, one quality that's huge in livestock guard dogs, the anti-wolf if you will, is that strong nurturing instinct combined with the capability for ferocity. The Turkish breeds of herd guard dogs, some of which are capable of taking down a wolf one on one, actually don't look that far removed from wolves themselves. I think the best wolves in literature recognize both the family side and the predatory side at once.

Re: Ray Guns Heck yeah! I'm getting in line early.

Re: Lost World critter "microraptor gui" I think I saw one of those flying around by Microsoft Headquarters the other day...

Re: Power suggestions for a "Perfect" human being One I don't think I saw in the thread: Flash Defense to Sight, Doesn't prevent first pip of flash damage (-1/2), or Damage Reduction vs Sight Flash. Rationale: Superior reaction to changing light conditions through faster response of the pupil. Along the same lines, low light vision, but I think that's been suggested.

Re: Giants and Hit Locations I'm pretty sure that nothing I said contradicts your opinion. Adding more sensitive spots to hit makes it easier to do something meaningful to the monster, doesn't it?

Re: Running through the forest I thought this thread was going to end with... "SLAP" You hit a tree!

Re: wheel of time WoT made my head asplode! But I did thumb through the d20 book one time, and it looked like the background material was pretty decent. May be worth getting cheap on eBay.

Re: Need an 8th PC character concept and some other help Re: Vixen. I'm pretty sure I saw her fly in the new JLA books, Animal Man style (by coopting the flight ability of birds rather than shapeshifting.) Re: Animals for the Native American type character. I'd go with local wildlife. Probably SW area, mostly: Raven/Crow: Movement, recon abilities. Bison/Buffalo: Momentum based brick. Gray Wolf: Ground movement, tracking. Coyote: Same as above, with more DCV, if tribe is reverant of trickster versus taking a view of Coyote as the fool. Moving further North: Sub in Brown Bear for Buffalo/Bison. Claws brick. Add an aquatic form, seal or whale. Probably won't be used much, but sometimes being the only guy on the team with underwater abilities can be handy. Sub in Owl for Raven if you want, though we've got plenty of Ravens in the NW, and they're a very common totem animal, probably more so than owls. I'd say 3-4 forms should give nice options without getting too complex to keep track of. One thing I also thought of was skills, which is brought up a few times in the thread. I'd look for the following skill set types across the group, and make sure to involve some perks like contacts as well: Detective/Police (Crime solving skills) Espionage/Face Man (PRE and Stealth skills) Military (Tactical/Stategic skills, possible stealth skills) Science Guy (Theoretical stuff, advanced medical stuff) Technology Guy (Iron Man stuff, hardware stuff) Computer Guru (Possibly rolled into Espionage or Tech, hacking skills: Crypto, Comp Prog, System Opns, Sec Systems, etc.) Overlap in skills would be good. If it's an established team, then give them all Teamwork and explain how it works. Make sure a couple folks have Paramedic if you tend to deal with collateral damage situations, or plan to have the team do rescue type work. One guy with street level social skills and one with high level social skills is handy, or one guy with both (Face Man). Just tossing some more ideas in the hat, hope it's useful.

Re: Giants and Hit Locations If the shooter is on the ground, then Godzilla's head is going to have some range penalties to hit to offset the size, I suppose. =D I wouldn't allow BODY multipliers on called shots to gargantuan things, though, or else I'd give the thing a hideous BODY score to account for the mass involved. Might go as far as having a seperate hit location chart for the head and the body. That would allow for called shots to the eyes (to distract/enrage?), to the nostrils or mouth (to deliver biochemical agents maybe), etc. I'm not sure the core rule book covers giant monsters in this regard, and unfortunately, I haven't got the new bestiary to see if there are any suggestions there.

Re: Military Develops Non-Lethal Ray Gun CS and water cannon flat out knock the snot out of people, so not in the same class of weapon. Rubber bullets can be lethal, so I haven't mentioned them yet, as I'm against them on principal. May as well use real bullets IMO. Troops in riot gear will break a rowdy mob unless they're seriously outnumbered, so they serve the same purpose as CS/water cannon, or complement it. I'm either clarifying or nit-picking this part of your response, though, so I'll leave it at that. =D The rest, I pretty much agree with you on.

Re: Military Develops Non-Lethal Ray Gun I was an MP for a number of years in my youth. Here's the thing: If you use force, it had better be enough force to get the job done. Half measures can tend to incite. In some situations, the heat gun, if it works as advertised will probably work. Now, let's say you have a crowd to disperse. Against a peaceful crowd, you don't use any escalation of force. For example, Desert Storm protesters would come out to our base and line up for a bit of sign waving, etc. The PM would come out and read them the ordinance regarding getting their butts off our base or being arrested. The protest organizer would then ask everyone who wanted to be arrested to step forward and the rest to back off. Then we'd round up the folks who wanted to be arrested, and the rest would leave. We'd just put flexi-cuffs on the protesters, take them to an unused base gym and process them all (essentially take their info and issue tickets to appear in court) then load 'em up again and drop them off in town a good hiking distance from their cars. Nuts, but nothing you need to bust out ray guns for. Now, you may have the peaceful type crowd that doesn't want to be arrested for bizzare reasons of martyrdom, but for the most part, if the crowd is permitted, you only need to isolate and haul off the worse of the lot if their peaceful. Or unchain them from a building and haul them off. You don't want to CS them or water cannon them, or ray gun them. If you did happen to use any less than leathal force on these guys, they'd probably go crying home to mommy. The ray gun might work here, but why bother? Which leaves violent, thuggish crowds. The types of crowd the article mentions using a ray gun on, and really the only type of crowd you're justified in using force on the scale of mass crowd control stuff on. Now, the article mentions military applications in regions like the Middle East. If you escalate force on these guys, they will in all likelihood escalate right back at you. In that case, you want to skip over anything that doesn't flat knock them on their ass. You don't send in cops to drag off individuals, you either go in formation with shields and riot clubs, toss in CS, water cannon them, or whatever. But this is no place for a heat gun, or at least no place to rely on a heat gun (as described in the article). I can see someone blasting a crowd with it then rushing in and overwhelming them with riot-geared police/military, using it as a set up for busting the crowd up with standard tactics. I can't see it being relied on to break a crowd of this type by itself.

Re: Military Develops Non-Lethal Ray Gun I don't have to imagine 130 degree heat, I know exactly what it feels like. The weapon is designed to deter by psychological means, as stated in the article quoted. That makes is a non-starter for me. The sonic weapon (which I think is linked around here somewhere a while back) will actually incapacitate. 130 degree heat just makes desert lizards skitter over for a nice bask. That level of discomfort is nothing to bank on deterring angry desert-dwelling humans with any level of certainty. Sure, humans aren't going to stick around in the heat, but it does nothing to stop them from coming at you as opposed to away from you. Weapons that don't at least seriously impair the body's capacity to function are worthless.

Re: THE HARBINGER OF JUSTICE Writeup.. What's GNC stand for? The only thing I'm coming up with can't be right. =D

Re: Dark Champions the Anime Series Revi cosplayer. Pretty accurate IMO: http://www.acparadise.com/display.php?a=22299&c=8058 I got the same feeling of an abused background as Edsel and Nexus. I think from the body language in the scene on the sub, and the intimacy of the dingy bedroom location in the flashback. I think those cues were deliberately shown to indicate some form of abuse, though whether it was patricide or not would be up in the air.

Re: Military Develops Non-Lethal Ray Gun Sounds pretty useless. 130 degree heat against people who live in a desert? May be of some use if Scandanavia becomes destabilized, though.

Re: Normal-proofing your Bricks? You act like I said "Let's make it so someone can be the most powerful munchiny, everything proof character in the game!" Well, I didn't. Is there anything wrong with a character being essentially punch proof versus character types with the background of having a normal human physiology? Is this any different in the long run than a character who has electric based powers buying effective immunity from electric attacks? Other than the defended against SFX being more common in the first case, it's not. If you extend the immunity to PD, ED and even MD (and that's the case for Wolverine, and enhanced resistance to mental attacks is also a Hulk trick), then you definately have a problem. Personally, I like the model we came up with waaaay back in the building the animated Justice League thread: Moderate CVs/SPDs, and in general higher physical defenses than energy defenses on the brick types. Supes can take a hit from almost any impact and shrug it off, but gets stunned from almost any large energy attack. That works pretty well.

Re: Normal-proofing your Bricks? There, there. I forgive you already, so don't worry about it. =)

Re: Normal-proofing your Bricks? Does every team have a brick? Are all bricks created equally? And even if every brick in the universe was MA-proof, that's not the only type of character you should be running into, so is it really an issue? You're making a lot of absolute statements here. The ranges of nothing are fixed. We're not talking about DnD, and Archetypes aren't fixed classes. You continue talk as if I've offered no suggestions of balance whatsoever, which is patently false. Remember Thor vs. Supes in the JLA/Avengers crossover? "Where I come from, the dial goes up to eleven!" I'm just talking about options for adding numbers to the dial. Why not make some suggestions, then? I have, and since you've ignored them, I'd like to hear yours. Not that I don't respect your role as Devil's Advocate, but this is leaning toward wheel spinning. I can't believe you can't see how it's useful. Let's put it this way: Who can damage the brick when he's on the ground? Your highest damage team member, right? Typically, that's someone with low to moderate CV to compensate, perhaps your own brick? Given the tight range of CVs suggested by the sample characters and the table in the book (7-11 and 7-13 respectively, IIRC), halving anyone's DCV is a HUGE advantage in a fight. Are you telling me that you don't understand the concept? I'm not buying. I've seen plenty of your posts, and I have an idea of your grasp of game mechanics, and I think it's a pretty solid one. So, what gives?