The Monster

Re: Building John Carter of Mars Hmmm....how would you stat that power in Hero?

Re: Steampunk/Victorian fantasy setting questions Of course magic can be invoked to create novel alloys or altered materials. One option that came to my mind is to use rockets, or a kind of gyrojet weapon instead of rifles or pistols. The weapon itself is little more than a tube, which can do just fine as bronze or even hardened wood, and the ammunition is very cleverly devised rockets. Accuracy might suffer, but you could have a wide variey of warheads on the rockets: explosives, gas, flares, etc. Actual steam power might be a problem; I don't know that anything less than iron will hold the pressure for useful steam in any quantity. If you go for truly paved/macadam roads, however, the need for rails can be decreased if large, reliable transport can travel on those roads. With a nicely picturesque series of gears, it might be just plausible that muscle power could be used to much greater effect than an old-fashioned hitching rig. Imagine a large vehicle which is powered by oxen, not pulling it directly, but walking an on-board treadmill, which then turns a series of stepup gears which in turn propel the vehicle. Actually, a smaller boiler engine might also be used in a similar way: while steam technology might work the same way as historical, the technology of power trains would be much more the focus than boilers and higher pressures.

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!" I'm pretty flexible with my plotlines, so there's rarely a major crash. However, something like that happens to me fairly regularly: -- At a convention game, I had a time-traveling villain recruiting the warriors of the prehistorical dinosaur culture (of *course* there were intelligent, civilized dinosaurs. Why do you ask?) to invade their future earth and destroy the humans who were going to supplant them. Anyway, the heros had a good fight with him and the dinos, figured out that he had duped the dinos, and stopped his plot. They were having a hard time taking him down, however, until one of them used his big Drain PRE. Now, I'd designed the guy to be pretty tough. But I searched the character sheet and realized I had built absolutely no Power Defense. So, his PRE went to subzero, and the subsequent PRE Attack caused him, literally, to pass out from terror. --In another con game, I had drawn up in loving detail a bunch of mechs for the heroes to fight. One of the heroes had machine-control powers, which I figured would be a problem, but not a session-killer. After a few rounds of action, the player asked, "do they have ejection seats?" My heart stopped as I realized that, in fact, they did - I had designed the things in loving detail, down to exactly how much STR the ejection seats had. And, just to make matters worse, they were fighting in a cave, where the pilots - who ejected straight up - would also be slammed into the ceiling. The look on my face must have been precious. The fight didn't last too long after that.

Re: Concept help: Zombie Lord Some thoughts that might be interesting: --a corporation, seeking a way to avoid sweatshop lawsuits and publicity, contacts experts on magic to create a workforce that never tires, never ages, and doesn't even have any legal rights ('cuz they're dead!) - and doesn't even look cute, so can't be used for telegenic sympathy pieces. Once they get it to work reliably, one or more executives (rogue or with full board approval!) realize they can hire out extra "post-human resources" as outsourced labor or even truly frightening mercenaries. (They could even create a subsidiary firm offering low-cost cremation, then substitute fake ashes for distribution to the bereaved, for a ready source of fresh material, and even greater profit!) --a scientist is looking for a way to live forever; so far the best he's come up with is to make people walk around after they're dead. He keeps working and experimenting, but can't get the original mind/spirit to stick around and re-enter the animated corpse. Meanwhile, he sends the more successful experiments on errands (i.e., collecting more experimental subjects and resources). He's not so much a megalomaniacal villain as he is a truly heartless and very determined researcher. (This could be the head of research for the corporation above; he could also be their dupe, unaware of the evil the corporation is commiting with his output.) --by some cosmic fluke (the stars were right, mystic tides, a demon's whim), a regular zombie was created by a low-power mystic - but the zombie kept intact its original mind! Enraged by the sacrilege commited on its corpse, the self-aware zombie slew its creator, and studied the magical texts to learn how to keep itself alive and creat an army with which to destroy anyone who might dare attempt such a horrible ritual. He's not bent on conquest so much as cleansing the world of magicians - kind of an undead mystical Punisher, for whom the end (i.e., the death of every mystic in the world!) justifies the means.

Re: Summoner Villan Pokemon is a great source of ideas for a summoner of a bewildering variety of critters with some very strange powers. (And, frankly, Ash always struck me as better name for a villain than a hero...). I know Thia Halmades has done/is doing some conversion work around that theme.

Re: Endurance Reserves: Why so cheap? Wouldn't the suppress/drain work against active points, so that it drains Reserve END at 5x, the same way you bought it?

Re: What are "vitals" Very true! The Roman Empire, for example, did not have 13s. They had a pre-gunpowder version, the XIII. It still hurt to be hit there, though. A lot.

Re: PRE Attack Find Weakness? Another way to do it might be to use your action to Drain PRE, then follow that up with a Presence Attack against their newly-trashed PRE. Works for Darklord!

Re: Move or Shoot Weapon Just to be contrary and nitpicky (and because we dare not "retread the entire rules structure!"), you could fine-tune it by making it a Limited Power: can't fire while moving (-1/4). This way, while you can't move and shoot, like the Extra Time, it does have the advantage of allowing you to do *something* else during your phase, like activate other powers, use maneuvers, etc.

Re: Darkness/Flash/Sense group issues - Book vs Designer It completely disappears - you can't select it at all. So, the Sight Group is defined by the SFX rather than the specific list of senses? That makes more sense (no pun intended, but I'll take it!), and will be welcome news to at least three players (including me).

Re: What are "vitals" In our group, the first reaction - tounge-in-cheek - is the groin shot. Your description is pretty good, however. In Deadlands, a similar hit location array includes the labels "Upper Guts" and "Lower Guts," which probably captures the general sense quite nicely. I think if I had to draw lines, I'd put Stomach at about the bottom of the rib cage down about halfway to the groin (i.e., abour the location of the actual stomach), then below that is Vitals - genitalia, yes, but also intestines, lower spine, and a few other oddities that are really dangerous if messed up. I'm not a doctor, but I played one in an RPG once!

Re: Endurance Reserves: Why so cheap? Biggest issue I can think of is that it only ever gets REC at post-12. It means you can't take a Recovery and get it back during a fight (unless you buy the REC to extreme heights). It also forces you to make a choice, when building each power, whether it uses your personal END or the Reserve (using either is a +1/4 advantage). It is very much like a Fuel Charge, for all practical purposes, just with different math (I haven't worked out which is more efficient). My impression is that it's great if you're fairly sure your fights will be short and widely spaced (which, admittedly, most of them are). But you can get caught short if things go too long or have to do multiple fights in a short time, at which time the self-fueling characters will pwn you.

Our group came up with a couple of questions about Invisibility and Darkness last night, and I was checking things out in Hero Designer and the rulebook to see what it would cost to modify our powers according to need and concept. I came up with what seems a discrepancy: In the rulebook (I have 5th, not 5thRev), the Sight Group under Enhanced Sense Powers does *not* include Infrared Perception. Near As I can tell, this means that to buy powers which affect IR vision as well as normal vision, you need to buy that specific sense in addition to "Sight Group." Odd, but a trivial rules quirk. However, when building in Hero Designer, if you take Darkness or Invisibility or Flash against Sight Group, IR disappears from the list of available affected senses! Does this mean that, in fact, IR *is* included in Sight Group for the purposes of sense-affecting powers?

Re: Hero All-Stars 2008 Don't know if you have setting/adventure ideas yet, but it occured to me that the French were trying to build the Panama Canal, with all the disease, discomfort, and jungle adventure possibilities one might want. And, I just (re)discovered, GIlbert & Sullivan's The Mikado premiered in London. A must-see for good Victorians! "A wand'ring minstrel I..."

Re: Hero All-Stars 2008 Frankenstein's Monster could easily be alive - it was last seen in the Arctic some 70 years earlier, but there's no reason it would be dead - or it might be discovered frozen somewhere(dead? Who could tell for sure?). Again, the book version is far more interesting than the movie version. An ageing Captain Nemo might still be about, for a nautical leg of the adventure. Teddy Roosevelt was ranching in North Dakota (according to wikipedia) in 1885. And then there's John Henry, the steel-drivin man, who would have been active around this period.

Re: What is Your Favorite Item? I come up with two items that hold warm places in my heart: The War Treadmill - derived from an earlier-edition Fantasy Hero Companion IIRC, the original item was a series of gears that could be cranked to create a magical effect. Slaves were used to crank the engine, providing the massive END cost to power the spell. Fromt here it was an easy jump to make it a treadmill upon which slaves were driven. Installed in a castle, various models could boost morale (Aid PRE), strengthen castle walls (Aid PD), healing, etc. A field version could be made which powered siege machines. And all by driving slaves until they literally dropped dead of exhaustion - perfect for orc armies! I've never actually used it (yet), but I always found the idea entertaining. My other favorite I used in a con event (though it was Feng Shui, not HERO ). I actually forget what it was, but what it did was affect all the other members in your party by lowering their best ability by a small amount, then adding the equivalent total point value to the ability of your choice, for your own character! In the event, it actually worked fairly well, as the players worked together to share it where it was needed for any given situation.

Re: Burn, Freeze, Paralyze & Poison Re: Paralyzed. Would a Drain INT work? If you make it big enough (and at 1:1, INT is cheap to drain), and put the target into negative INT, they must make an INT roll to take any action. At 9-, that's worse than 50%, but might reproduce the effect for game purposes. For a sharply limited duration, perhaps make it a Suppress with a short time charge. (My first thought was EGO Entangle, but it might be a tricky build, and it might be too expensive.) I don't know the game well enough to know what defenses work against these attacks (I'm thinking from the show, not the electronic game, so you know). I'd vote for Entangle for the Freeze attack, but is it true in the game that it's less effective against strong opponents? If not, then CE might be the way to go, imposing some CV minuses.

Re: Has anyone done a skilled normals game I haven't run 25+25, but I've run a lot at 75+75, without superpowers (one or two characters had a few special abilities, pulp mysticism and the like). Basic things to keep in mind with characters like this: Stuff that's dangerous in the real world is also dangerous to the PCs. True, guns aren't necessarily as lethal as in RL, but with the hit location rules the possibility of a incapacitating or lethal hit from even a small gun is noticeable. These characters are not going to be able do big long set-piece cinematic battles. You don't have to do a lot of damage to make the player feel it. A few points of BODY, a few points of Drain (via poison or whatever), and things are bad. Similarly, using rules and situations to get an extra +1 makes a bigger difference than it does at supers level. SPD is huge. Remember that a person with SPD 3 is half again (or more!) effective than a person with SPD 2. In my pulp games (75+75), the PCS are all SPD 3 except for one or two martial arts types; most people are SPD 2, and only special NPCs are SPD 3 or 4. The only time I've used SPD 5 or 6 is with animals or supernatural creatures, and that almost never. All that said, I think it would be a lot of fun to either run or play. I much more enjoy dealing with "normal" characters over supers (not to mention how much easier it is to deal with the lower spread of SPD and the fewer wild powers).

Re: Elementary, My Dear Watson I think he should keep the WF for guns. He had bullet-holed VR into his wall IIRC. I concur that, as far as I can recall, he never fired guns during a story, but I believe he did carry them on occasion, and not using them is far different from knowing how to use them. He certainly knew a fair amount about firearms.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification. Delivery to the following recipients failed. Evil.Mastermind@FourthReich.de ....whew!....I had to make sure....

Re: Mythic Creatures as Eco-Terrorists? Paul Bunyan - sure, he's a logger, but modern civilization has just gone too far, not just taking what they need but also polluting and spoiling the land itself. Sort of an ecological version of Punisher? Obviously a giant brick...with an awesome animal Follower. Johnny Appleseed might also take exception to the rampant urbanization of his beloved orchards - you can't plant treees in concrete! He might not fit as a villain but more as a hero driven to desperate measures. Probably with plant powers of various kinds. You can also tap Native American mythos for various stuff - shapeshifters and magicians, or just uberwarriors (or wilderlands versions of uberninjas). Perhaps a thunderbird (roc with EB?).

Re: Alternate Earth/WWYCD - Enough? I ignore them. My problem with them is I pretty much GM all the Hero I get to play at all, so I don't have a 'YC' to 'WW..D' with. The one I get to play is a supervillain (a Necessary Evil campaign jsut getting started), and that doesn't really fit the discussion.

Re: Not Dead Yet Maybe Tk with a Trigger. The TK is limited to moving the body about, with a non-recurring charge that lasts for just a phase or two (or as long as you want them to keep dancing). Make it Independent to help quash quibbles about a power going off after the user is killed. Then it makes no difference what they do to the body (short of annihilation or total dismemberment), it just keeps coming. Or, to get really arcane, a triggered Summon: the death of the critter in game terms Summons a disembodied spirit (you could even build it as an AI) which uses TK to move the body about, but has a short lifespan - as a spirit, it might have something like a Susceptibility to the Real World and takes damage or drain every phase. That's if you want to go through all the trouble of a fully detailed build for what is basically a GM schtick.

Re: Elementary, My Dear Watson One of the problems with makking the player figure stuff out, especially in relation to the Holmes stories, is that Doyle cheats! The reader is never given several clues that Holmes cites during his explanations; for example, a candle guttering on a specific side is an important clue in one case (Scarlet or Speckled Band, maybe??), but the candle, is never described in that detail until Holmes points it out. It's fine reading, but it's the author's version of letting the player roll dice and having the GM rattle off what is deduced. Also, re the writeup: Holmes could alter his height by a lot - several inches, at least - and maintain that for long periods. Perhaps a few more points in Disguise or some talent or other? Wasn't he also supposed to be one of the smartest men in England? For my taste, I'd drop the PER bonus to +2 and put the points into INT; after all, true max normal goes up to 25 with merely the lesser Age disad.

Re: Hey, what's in those ruins? There may be survivors ... in the form of magically altered objects! People turned to stone (though many such "statues" may have eroded badly over the centuries), or polymorphed into other inanimate objects, just waiting for someone to cast dispel, or kiss them, or whatever (maybe even a wizard who did it to himself to escape pillagers, in the assumption that someone would come rescue him). Is there anyone taking an active interest in keeping the place forested? This could be anything from elves, to tree-people, to radical ecoterrorists, to a secret society which guards against the Ancient Evil which (supposedly) lies trapped within (like that group (Medji??) in The Mummy I & II).