The Monster

Re: The Questions 6th Edition Really Needs To Answer A Duck!!!!!!!!

Re: Help me retrofit an origin...please. You could always pull a Futurama on him, and have him actually be a mutant rather than an alien - he's just been misinformed all his life. Or he could be an experiment - accidental like the Hulk, or deliberate like Captain America. Throws any "established" background into the dump, but could make for some interesting plot hooks.

Re: My first Terran Empire Campaign idea... Pretty good start - though the opening line could be. "You are now dead. Welcome to Purgatory." ("Where you will be given the opportunity to atone for your sins.") Here's another possible twist on Mr. X, which could be easily blended with previous ideas: Mr. X is actually a senior executive (head of state/cabinet member/CEO/board member) of an agency or corporation responsible for the 'unfortunate' release of the zombification process (virus, nanobots, q-bomb, whatever). In order to keep a lid on the situation, he's arranged for the heavy quarantine. However, the reports from survivors has him running scared; if someone is still alive who can witness the (deliberate) mishap, the repurcussions ouwld be catastrophic to his career at least, or his entire power structure (think The Broadcast from 'Serenity'). That's not his 'daughter' down there; it's actually one of the chief scientists on the project, who had warned him of the dangers in the first place, and who he's afraid (or knows for sure) that she kept records in some unknown place to cover her own butt, or just to turn whistle-blower*. If X deploys known military or governmental assets to hunt down and destroy the survivors, there will be too many records of the event, and someone will ask the wrong questions; if he sends in a bona-fide rescue team, they might succeed, and that's the last thing he wants. So he recruits the PCs, has them verified as dead, and sends them off as a rogue operation while keeping his true identity secret from them. X can provide them with the info necessary for penetration - patrol schedules, scan frequencies, and the like, and even a ship (with the clear understanding that the ship itself will not survive landing, due to extreme measures necessary to get past the blockade; maybe even an apparent crash landing will work as an additional layer of deniability!). X will, of course, provide detailed instructions on how to signal the pickup ship - frequencies, time windows, etc. Depending on how deep X plans, there may be no such thing as a pickup ship; or the ship may be equipped with a screamer, which will identify the ship as a spy ship or a dangerously unstable reactr, something that should ensure detection and destruction by the nearest patrol (of course, if the ship is piloted by robot, this allows additional deniability, since no additional humans are necessary, and incidentally allows a creative/skilled PC to hotwire the thing). Assuming the PCs get through all this, they are really on their own - X has set them up to die; they have no usable identity (i.e., no way to get licenses, credits (or credit), or anything), if anyone finds out who they are, they'll be tagged as escaped convicts (the phrase 'dead or alive' comes to mind). A likely outcome is that the campaign becomes a quest for revenge against Mr. X. For a less 'yer skrooed' note, the woman they pick up from the planet does turn out to be very knowledgeable as well as pretty decent, and might be persuaded to continue relations with the PC group, acting as contact/fixer/liaision for future situations. * OK, it could be his daughter, if he's that cold-blooded; in any case, it's someone with a dangerous combination of data and conscience. Daughter, mistress, trophy wife, receptionist, secretary, rival executive...

Re: Chess Grandmaster - KS, PS, or something else? Of course, being a true master of chess does qualify you to at least be a prominent henchman - which can come in handy... scroll down to Kronsteen if you don't twig on the reference right away...

Re: Chocolate Orc The only thing I can think to add might be a Susceptibility to Direct Sunlight, seeing how chocolate melts when it's hot outside. I know this for a fact because of a birthday party we threw for our son several years ago, which included an easter-egg-type hunt in the back lawn for various little toys treats. Among those treats were chocolate coins. Well, it being August, and there being some unexpected delay between the laying out of stuff and the start of the hunt, well, the coins didn't keep their shape. At all.

Re: What is it called? Just don't call it late for dinner...

Re: Balance outside of a Super setting I think I cheat (as GM only!) in so many ways I can't count. For mooks, though, my rule of thumb is that is they take more than a couple points of BODY, they quit. Only heroes and special villains have the gumption to keep going while seriously wounded. For some mooks, even being Stunned twice in a row is enough (e.g., most street thugs; elites like SS goons and ninjas are tougher and have to take BODY or be KOed before they quit.)

Re: Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow Or Doctor Deadhead. (...and his Mellow Truckers of Doom!!!!)

Re: Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow I put it in the 'nice try' category - a few decent ideas, a lot of botched ones. My biggest complaints: too much copy-and-paste - even *one* of those giant robots stomping thru the city would have been an impressive demonstration; to have hundreds or thousands was just ludicrous. Talk about taking suspension of disbelief and wringing its neck like a rebellious chicken! The other was, given a fleet of five - five!! - zeppelins at Captain's base, why *why* did they have to just blow them *all* up? Useless waste of potential!

Re: Spiderman style aerial mobility What I'd like to know is how to work this into the actual gameplay - the wild running up and down buildings, etc., etc., using props simple enough to carry around (i.e., a game mat or some such), without just defaulting to pure narration. I remember watching the Doc-Ock fights and thinking how kewl they were and at the same time thinking they'd be almost impossible to game properly...

Re: Balance outside of a Super setting Interesting - I've had a much harder time adjusting from low-power, non-super Hero games (starting character 75+75) to Champions, resulting in much the same feelings as you describe going the other way. Problems with balance, problems with numbers, combats dragging on...my Champions fights run waaaaaaay longer than any of my fantasy or pulp fights ever did, even allowing for similar numbers of participants. That said, I'll offer what suggestions I can: Probably the main thing to remember about lower power levels is that smaller differences make a bigger difference. At low levels, a simple +1 to a roll, or a 5-point difference in a a stat, can feel much more important. At the root, it's mathematical: the percentage difference between, say, 15 and 20 (33% bigger!) is much greater than the difference between 50 and 55 (only a 10% difference!). The biggest difference is in SPD. SPD makes all the difference in the world. My low-power campaigns run all PCs at SPD 3, most people at SPD 2, and only specialists or nonhumans at SPD 4 or more. It's very restrictive compared to the 5-10 range of supers, but it's very easy and useful. PCs and important NPCs are thus by definition half again as good as normals at whatever they do (allowing for similar skills), and when the bad-guy ninja suddenly leaps in with an extra action, s/he grabs everyone's attention right away. Again, this starts with simple math (3 is 50% more than 2, yadda, yadda), but it makes an easy way to start balancing encounters: a couple leaders at SPD 3, a bunch of thugs at SPD 2, and you've got a basic bad-guy group. In general, I've just used the standard campaign guidelines from the rulebook as far as active points, defenses, etc. It seems to work well enough, given a review of any special powers by the GM. Of course, most of the PCs I've run are using standard equipment - armor, swords, guns, whatever as appropriate - so those give a fair guideline of the suitable potency of special powers; if a spell punches much harder than a powerfully wielded sword, it requires special examination right there. As far as running large numbers, I've done that to a lesser extent, though PCs are almost always heavily outnumbered in my games. Most of my gangs are thugs, significantly less capable than PCs or special NPCs; so many of their attacks will miss just by the odds. When running them, I don't generally have them be very smart, so I don't have to think too much about what they're doing - usually a simple attack roll is all that's needed. It's the leaders and specials that take a little more thought. For really large groups of thugs, I occasionally roll a bunch of them together and treat it as a single Autofire attack (assuming basic thugs with guns or other simple uniform attacks). If suitable, having them make a Teamwork roll and make a single more-potent attack works as well. Another trick I use for large groups is that not all of them are going to focus on the target all at the same time. Some may be watching flanks, some may be distracted, some may go the wrong way, some will be watching the other exit, etc., etc., depending on their leadership, their training, and the actions of the PCs. I make free use of INT, EGO, and Tactics rolls for groups of NPCs to reflect the confusion of battle. This not only keeps me from always havig to make attack rolls for every single NPC, it also encourages players to do tricky things besides just attack or hide. I don't know if this is a problem in your group, but it's easy to fall into a habit of "I'll shoot" and just roll attack dice. One other thing that I think lower-power heroes do that supers generally don't: use cover! Many, if not most, supers rely on their powers to protect them: high DCV, super armor, force fields, etc. Most low-powered heroes don't really have that option; their best bet is generally to avoid being hit, by hiding behind things or being where the bad guys can't get to them effectively. That can be a very different style of play. A lot depends on what kinds of powers the PC (and their opponents!) have. As I said, most of my games have people with fairly standard equipment and skill sets, not a wide range of weird powers. So it's fairly easy for me to balance, since I can generally rely on people being armed roughly equally and having roughly the same defenses. Anyway, I hope this helps.

Re: Chess Grandmaster - KS, PS, or something else? If it were my character, I'd probably take both PS and KS, and use 'em as complementary skills - the book specifically refers to one being theoretical and the other being practical knowledge. Gambling does have Chess on the list, since it's supposed to cover games of all kinds that require some skill. To really complete the picture, a few points of Reputation, would be suitable for a truly top-rank chessmaster.

Re: Rocket launching aircraft carriers That could be great fun-- although any article that includes the phrase "behind a protective screen of frozen animal carcasses" certainly gets my full and immediate attention!

Re: What happens whena ctuloid monster swallows an elder star? ...especially since it "can't pass elder stars." ...oh, you said "can't pass by elder stars...nevermind...

Re: S.H.A.R.D. - Super Hero Acronym Resource Directory Allied Non-governmental and Governmental Enforcers of Law ...a loose cooperative entity encompassing both private-contract firms and individuals as well as officially empowered agencies with a common goal to maintain and enforce security, justice, and order across cultural and national boundaries. ...howzzat?

Re: The Summoned Menace Rather than a gross attack bonus, maybe make the RKA a one-hex area; then the only way to get away from it is Dive For Cover. Plus, the DCV of a hex is always 3 IIRC. Limit the RKA to Only Affects Targets which Suffer STUN - otherwise, this thing can be blasting holes in walls, which might not fit with an "Aspect of Pain." For a disad, you might use a Vulnerable to Dispel/Suppress effects. Or even to magical powers in general, depending on how many points you need. ...by the way, interesting idea to use the GW Ritualist stuff. Some of those spirits are really annoying - I may have to use this idea myself!

Re: Nature + Fire = What? Nature + Fire = Spontaneous Combustion

Re: Images....abuse or no? Wouldn't this also interfere with others attacking the target? If they don't see through the image, they'd be at penalties to attack him, wouldn't they? O course, area-effect and such wouldn't be bothered, but...

Re: Natoxia, Home-Brewed Game - Need expert advice (Long) In the Fantasy Hero game I ran for several sessions, magic use was fairly well balanced without much fiddling. Of course, I had the advantage of designing all the player's spells myself, since no one else knew the system very well. The two primary balancing factors on magic that struck me at the time were END cost and casting time. END cost is pretty straightforward, especially if you disallow END reserves and Reduced END. If you want to further limit defensive magic, one easy fix that you might consider is simply doubling END cost; that still makes it doable but expensive enough to perhaps trigger second thoughts (at that point, that nigh-invulnerable 14PD FF is costing you 6-8 END per Turn, on top of any other END you spend to move, attack, etc., and that's going to eat up most of your post-12 REC right there). Casting time can be a severe limitation in the field, especially if you disallow multiple casting. One character I had was a spell-buffed fighter: by the time he cast his armor boost, and then his attack boost, and then his damage boost, the fight was well under way, and usually half the field away from him. He was pretty potent once he got going, but his buildup time became a standing joke in the campaign.

Re: PS238 RPG Cover Preview This is on my "I WILL buy when it comes out" list, which very few products get on; that's even above my "I WILL buy this" list... The cover just confirms the ranking. Oh, and I'd have to talk myself out of buying a poster version (hint, hint).

Re: Help with a name Glutinator Adhesor Quagmire "...really *sticks it* to crime!" ...hmmm...I may have to add "Doctor Quagmire" to my own campaign...

Re: Mental Defense for the Dead My impression is that, to be susceptible to mental powers, the target has to actually have a mind (for example, Automatons have no EGO score and can't be affected by standard Mind Control, Telepathy, etc.). If it has a mind to affect, then one would presume that all powers and defenses would kick in just like they would any other mind. Undead creatures can, after all, be defined as either mindless automatons or sentient beings, dependingo n the specific kind and genre. In a weird sense, one could think of "dead" as just one of those 'special effects' that don't necessarily define how a power works. Kind of a heck of a 'special effect' though...

Re: Astromancy do planets enter into this at all?

Re: There's always one First, a question: is this character really out of balance with the others? And do the other players feel overshadowed, or are things OK with them? Depending on the answers to those questions, the first course of action is likely to be a cross-table discussion of characters and balance. If the character is actually outshining the others, and play continues in that fashion, then enemies will notice. It becomes perfectly justifiable for enemies to plan to take out the point man. Teams of agents, or even teams of low-powered supers, are a fairly easy solution to this. Simply by concentrating efforts and weapon coordination, the fight can become almost self-balancing: most agents focus on taking down the big guy, while the rest take on the others. And this doesn't even require exploiting specific weaknesses - though it certainly remains an option, and becomes a more urgent and justifiable one when the enemy is a tactical thinker. I'm not advocating punishing the guy per se, but if he's going to play the nigh-unbeatable man, then the bad guys are going to work harder to take him down. It's perfectly fair and logical. (for example, a villain taking on the Justice League has to make sure he accounts for Superman and Wonder Woman; but dealing with Green Arrow and Black Canary isn't so nearly as high a priority. It's one of the most common errors for supervillains - dismissing the "weaker" members of the team.) On the other hand, if the guy plays it fairly mellow, and doesn't always push himself as the ultimate solution, then such measures may not be necessary at all.

Re: Double The Hero Excitement! WotC will announce that "D&D 4th Edition" will, in fact, be built entirely using the Hero System. To facilitate this work, all creative work to be published by WotC will be submitted to Steve Long (or such persons as he deputizes), and, as a further enhancement, all heretofore hardcore d20 players will be required to fall slient and kowtow when an experienced Hero player enters the room. ....but wouldn't it be loverly?