Pattern Ghost

Re: Normal in a Supers Land IMO invest in nuclear weapons. If you can't get your hands on nuclear weapons, how are your social skills looking? In some games, having a "face man" may not come up too often, but a nice combo of social (PRE) skills can come in handy in certain situations. A bag of marbles is also sometimes handy, if you're short on social skills and nuclear weapons. Or oil, even. Strategically placed, you could potentially have your own shooting gallery of enemy agents! I always liked Night Man's taser-gloves. I liked 'em because my PC Striker had 'em first. =P Adding a little Energy HA or NND to your punches can come in handy for overcoming high physical defenses, and is a little less brute force looking (aesthetically anyway, if a character sheet can be aesthetic) than a ton of DCs. (Cheaper too.)

Re: Flavor Power for Brick Assuming he has a Lion Rampant somewhere on his costume, you could have the lion leap off his uniform and enter the fray, either as a power with a lion special effect, or a summons or follower. Perhaps making it an unusual power that's not too frequently used would give it more impact. Something along the lines of a dispel against magic-based effects, or an unusual sensory power.

Re: Firearms granularity I thought the history of this thread was pretty much discussing ways to take out the cinematic aspects.

Re: Firearms granularity One thing I've always found funny in reading Hero write ups is that in Supers campaigns, everyone goes with exactly that approach: High defenses, almost no wasted points in BODY, while in lower level games like Fantasy or modern/pulp, everyone has a bit of extra BODY.

Re: Firearms granularity I'd venture to say most head shots from .44 Mags or .223s are going to be very messy. Both are listed as examples of 2d6k attacks in Fifth edition. Given close enough range for either one to deliver its full energy and a square on hit, a brain is going to be shattered by the bullet passing through. The temporary wound channel left by hydrostatic shock is quite permanent in non-elastic gray matter. That's your max damage roll scenario. Any perfect shot to the head that's not deflected by the skull should be instantly fatal. A single .22 LR may not be enough to do the trick, or one of the more anemic loads for a .38 spl, but when you get into magnum caliburs and rifles, you get serious splatter.

Re: Firearms granularity I'd thought Sean thought the damage multiplier was excessive before, now I'm not sure. I agree the granularity of damage isn't realistic. That's probably because people don't like creating new characters frequently. There's a reason why real people, at least the sane ones, avoid gun fights. Turning on Hero's optional damage rules, like hit locations works pretty well in raising the level of lethality, particularly in lower point campaigns. Of course, you run into the problem of metagaming: If your players know combat is lethal, they're going to buy up BODY, and you get into something similar to the SPD race. I'd say for more lethal campaigns, upping the cost of BODY might be a reasonable start.

Re: Firearms granularity Head shots should HURT, though. Of course, you have the low roll possible of 4 BODY, which isn't too bad, maybe a case of the bullet whizzing around the inside of the skull and not hitting too much gray stuff. It can happen. So can the 24 Body, head exploding like a melon type damage. Now, I'm assuming that 2d6 is coming out of a rifle at the very least, so I don't see a big problem with the multiplier in that case.

Re: Super Origins Here's where I'd get uptight about character origins: Wonder Woman spontaneously getting Daredevil level senses. That rings much less true to me than a human being more trained than a super human, really. I can see it having an impact on her hearing, super human physique or not. If her ear drums were hardened against vibration to the degree needed to be immune to an ear cuff, she'd not be able to hear in the first place. He just made her ear drums vibrate excessively and a little painfully. No damage, just a hearing flash. =D

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Hmm, I just did a search on the first title to make sure I got it right and I found: http://www.baen.com/library/067131985X/067131985X.htm So, if you want, read it for yourself for free. =D

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Just finished March Upcountry and March to the Sea by Ringo/Weber. Series of three books, with what looks like one followup book. Good enough that I'll likely pick up the next two books, though nothing amazing or mindblowing. I'd say a solid 3/5. Sub-genre is military SF, but these also have kind of a pulpish feel too.

Re: "Realistic" sanction package Drop one of the ranks IMO. Either your military or LE, not both. Your rank is going to be in the organization you belong to. I dunno about the wealth perk. Guess it'd represent a really well-paid super, but it doesn't feel in genre to me. Military ID = passport for example. Same could go for the organization's credentials. (Of course, that may be why you have it as optional anyway.) Otherwise, looks good.

Re: Random musing of the week The Champions character generator is OK, but after taking a hard look at it over the last few days, I've come to the conclusion that it's pretty broken. It still makes for a good jumping off point for character generation if you're stuck for ideas, and I'm not going to fault the author for tackling a nearly impossible task. My biggest gripes in 5th over 4th (and I don't have revised 5th, just the first one): Organization could be better for a reference-style book of its size. (Not to knock the Index, which is great.) Combat "clarifications" that smack more of the author's house rules. Deconstruction of 4th to the meta system taken too far: Talents rewritten as powers. Regeneration turned into a big rules hash. Shapeshifting likewise turned into a bigger rules extravaganza. Fourth handled all of the above better, IMO. On the other hand, there's not so much change that you can't simply use the 4th Ed. versions of any of the above, so it's not a major gripe. All in all, though, I wouldn't mind seeing something like a beefed up Sidekick, basically 5th with all the rules but most of the fat trimmed. It'd be easier to carry, for one thing.

Re: Unofficial Welcome Mat (For New Members) I unofficially welcome all the new people.

Re: Character concept: Shadowcat Lady Shiva in deep cover.

Re: Cyber Ninja Villan You could send Tsunade after them: But she may be a bit too much of a brick.

Re: Possible Teen Champions Help

Re: Large Creatures Versus Head Shots You managed to quote a math error after I deleted it. Anyway, weak dragon, yeah.

Re: Possible Teen Champions Help Plenty of plot ideas, though.

Re: Large Creatures Versus Head Shots Fair enough, but the problem with the charts, the critter write ups and the weapons write ups, along with all the combat rules options is that it can all add up to a very short fight if the GM isn't concious of the max potential for damage he's handing his players. Some tweaking is bound to be needed somewhere. If you take too many tools out of the Hero toolkit, you run the risk of dropping one on your foot. =D

Re: Large Creatures Versus Head Shots Looks like that dragon's a heck of a lot tougher than the old generic one.

Re: Alignment Issues I don't know if it's been mentioned or not, but this thread made me think of Palladium's alignment system. I did read the thread, but a couple days ago. So, yeah, slow thinker here. I liked what Palladium did with the idea. They had good and evil types, then they had what most people fall into: Selfish. Instead of Neutral, the Selfish type was pretty much just that, interested in their own welfare to differing degrees and not so much inclined towards heroics or villainy. They also dropped all of the metaphysical baggage and stupidity of alignment languages from DnD. All in all, I thought their descriptions for each alignment were well done and could probably be lifted wholesale as Psych Limit disadvantages.

Re: Large Creatures Versus Head Shots Of course, you could go with my first thought: Why does a dragon take extra damage from a head shot? Make it a called shot to the eyes, nostrils, ear openings if present, or the open mouth. Then apply a ton of penalties for the small target. Dragons aren't supposed to have vulnerable spots. When your head is the size of a largish normal critter, and probably very heavily armored as well, do you take extra damage from being hit there? I think not. A lot of real world critters have heavily armored heads to the point of shooting them with high powered rifles in the head is generally considered a very bad idea. Same could go for dragons.

Re: Large Creatures Versus Head Shots Sounds like a weak dragon to me. I don't have the new FH, but I have the old one sitting here. It seems that this is a problem of balancing the damage output vs. the monsters. In the old fantasy hero, a Very Heavy Longbow is 2d6+1K. The old FH dragon short writeup has 14 PD/9 PD armor (so 23/9r PD), 30 Body and 80 STUN. Before adding any damage through skill levels or martial arts , the bow's max damage would be 13 BODY/65 STUN. The dragon would take 4 BODY and 42 STUN if everything came up 6's. You'd normally not get more than one roll like that in a combat, if at all, so while it's a boatload of STUN, it's still sort of OK. Now, when 4th Edition FH was written, the author probably had in mind that you could add a bit of damage from combat skill levels, though the average character wouldn't have too many to throw to damage anyway, and ranged Martial Arts were probably considered out of genre. However, push that bow to max DCs with levels and MAs maneuvers, and you're cranking out 4.5d6K. That's a max 27 BDY/135 STUN if everything comes up roses, and there are no added stun multiples involved. Same 4th Edition dragon would be hurting plenty in that case. That's 18 BODY/112 STUN, for essentially a one-shotted dragon. If the new edition of FH has similar DCs for the weapons and similar defenses for the dragons, then something is unbalanced. I'd say just give big critters a bit of DR versus Stun only. Stuff that's very big and noted for having a slow to respond nervous system such as grizzly bears, rhinos, elephants, cape buffalo, give 25% vs Stun. For stuff that's larger, such as monsters on the order of medium dragons, medium giants, giant bugs, whatever, go for 50%. For the really scary beasties, sitting at the top of the food chain, give 75%. If it's big, it shouldn't be stunned down easily. An arrow only makes so much of a hole (unless you're the Dukes of Hazzard and you have dynamite arrows... yeee haw!), so it's not likely to stun something the size of a dragon. Most large game animals don't just fold up and die when fatally wounded, they bleed out. Same thing here. Make the body count for taking down big beasties and not the stun. Also, look at the max your characters can dish out when figuring out how tough to make your monsters, as well as the average damage, so you won't be surprised if a serious threat is one shotted. Make your beasties one-shot proof.

Re: WWYCD: Fuel for the fire It doesn't seem like the alien/bug thing can fly. In that case, I gain altitude comfortably out of his reach and assumed throwing range and wait for rocky guy and stretchy guy to get those civllians clear. After dealing with the monster I give the stretchy guy hotfoots for a week for being a noob.

Re: Age and Sanction? Most hitmen will sanction your hero regardless of age. No worries.