The Monster

Re: Making Magic weak but useful. A whole lot of useful things can be done with TK, Fine Manipulation, Invisible Power - even at very low STR. Generally, low active caps (like 30 or 20) will keep things doable. With the various requirments others have already suggested, you can salt to taste. At such low power levels, you have to be creative with your powers to make them useful - generally, you can't do enough damage to make it replace a good old gat or bludgeon, but you can pull some clever tricks.

Re: Looking for House rule suggestion In most of my games, I don't make people track END - but most of my Hero games are pulp or medieval fantasy. For pulps, most weapons don't use END, unless you track the STR to wield the thing; it doesn't seem worth it when people are fighting primarily with guns. For special powers - psionics, magic, and the like - then END becomes important, and it needs to be accounted for; most characters at that level have more pressing things to spend points on then a bunch of END or REC. But even so, I echo the impression that most fights among normals & heroes don't last long enough for END to really matter, unless they're burning extra for magic.

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun I myself don't think it's much a problem, either - I tend to run pretty pulpy games anyway, so a game where the heroes are back for action in a few minutes doesn't bug me at all. There is always the fact that BODY damage doesn't REC in tactical time, so the limitation on their combat ability relates (in my games) to BODY damage. I've had several occasions where PCs are operating on one or two hit points, or even negatives (making EGO rolls each phase). It ends up being pretty heroic-looking, with everyone knowing that the next hit could put you down for the count. My impression is that a big part of the problem revolves around role-playing and trust of the GM. Role-playing because it's easy for players to laugh off or totally ignore the fact that their character has been beaten practically to unconsciouness, but recoved all his points after a short rest. As I said in the other thread, it's like the hit points system where the player says "I've still got four hp left, no problem," never mind that the character started with 98 hp. Some of this is bravado, some may be simply game-playing/metagaming. But the feeling of suffering and risk in combat does sometimes lack punch (so to speak) when these attitudes are prevalent. Frankly, I'm not sure imposing it in game system rules is the best way to go, but it seems to work for some people. (As a side note, the death-spiral systems I know - Shadowrun, Deadlands, and Savage Worlds - have "luck point" systems whereby a lot of damage can be canceled. This can be fun, but all it really does is move the its-only-a-flesh-wound problem from the number of hp you have to the number of luck points you have. The thing that strikes me about SWSaga is that the character can, with the right feats and actions, manipulate their own death spiral!) People playing heroes who aren't being heroic? There's something wrong there. Heroes are supposed to be the ones who keep going in spite of getting hurt or other difficulties (I've become aware that some people think that heroes are people who have mega-L33t skilz that just awe everybody else, but that just triggers my anti-munchkin prejudice). In Hero (and D&D), the ability to ignore accumulated damage reflects that. The potential problem with death-spiral games is that the heroes do become *less* capable as the climax approaches, which risks making the GM either nerf the climax or let the heroes lose. But when PCs become cowardly, that sounds an alarm to me. IMO that means the players feel they have a reason to not be heroic - either they don't want their precious characters to get hurt (in which case they're not playing heroes, they're playing cowards and should be told such), or they're afraid they will be punished by the GM for getting hurt. Some - even many, even most - players just have a hard time dealing with having their character KOd or captured; in part I think this is because they are convinced the GM is going to take the opportunity to screw them over, whether they have any objective reason to think that or not (and gosh, I can't remember ever hearing or making cracks about how hard I was going to make things for the PCs...GMs never do that! ) Over the years, I've managed to convince most of my regular players (and all the ones in my Pulp game, thank goodness!) that I'm not going to simply screw them if they fall in combat. They may be captured, or left for dead, or wake up in a hopital, but in any case, the result will be turned into an interesting scene, not an excuse to punish them. Obviously, that's easier to do in some genres than others (after all, getting captured is a staple of supers and many pulps), but it still takes something of leap of faith for the player to allow the GM that much freedom. The GM can help by creating situations where the PCs don't necessarily have to succeed or die in the first attempt; the classic bits like the world-ending ceremony that is about to reach its climax takes careful application (though usally that's an ambush by the PCs, so it's easier to deal with then open combat). If the GM can establish that the bad guys aren't going to automatically take all their stuff and slit their throats just because they can. Aah...I'm getting all long-winded again. My main point is that I think this is primarily an issue about players and GMs, not so much about rules.

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun I can certainly understand the OP's issue, however - it does seem rather anticlimactic to have a tense, dramatic fight, with the PCs squeaking a close victory, then only a few game moments later, they're fresh as daisies for all practical purposes. It's kind of the same problem with hit point systems - as long as I got one HP, I'm good to go, never mind that I used to have 98. Relying on "roleplaying" to create those moments where the heroes have stop for breath, or wake up feeling very stiff and sore from the exertion and battering of the previous day, is unreliable at best. It's true that it's a difference between "heroic" and "gritty;" and it's true that a lot of it is cosmetic. Even in films like "Raider of the Lost Ark," which had a couple of scenes which showed Indy really suffering from his adventures, he was back in the next scene, pretty much as spry and active as ever (just with a few more cuts and bruises painted on his face). It is a staple of heroic fiction, however, that the thing which distinguishes the hero is not necessarily so much greater skill than anyone else, but the determination and ability to keep going when others would give up. With systems such as Hero, there's a big risk of losing that tension if people can just pop back up after a few REC phases. Some games do have mechanics for degrading ability as damage is taken: Savage Worlds, Shadowrun, Deadlands (the original) are ones I'm familiar with. The new Star Wars Saga Edition has a mechanic I find fascinating: they do use the good ole hit point system, but they've added a Condition Track, which is related to, but separate from, hp damage. Basically, when you take a big hit (more hp than your con, basically), you go down one level on the track: the first time, you're now at -1 to do anything (even defend!), then -2, then -5, then -10, then you're done. The fun thing is they've added a bunch of tricks to manipulate this condition track directly: force tricks, class abilities, and the like. So you could have a situation where you may have no hp and still be fine, or you may have a bunch of hp left, but be dragging around at major penalties. I haven't played it yet, but I find the concept fascinating. Not that I want to recommend that game necessarily for this campaign (it's still level-based d20, after all!), but as an example of how other games do things. I'm not sure if this is an easy thing to do in Hero. I'm still mulling over my time-chart-REC idea above, which actually intrigues me; it could cause all sorts of consternation and tension.

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun Here's a thought: what would it be like if you greatly slowed REC? Eliminate the post-12 recovery, and simply say that REC only kicks in once per minute, or hour, or whatever. Perhaps something like, you get one Recovery for each step on the time chart: one after a single phase of rest, the next after a turn, the next after a minute, and so forth. To give the players a break, have the clock reset each time they take damage. That allows some expression of the adrenaline rush of actual battle, but stretches out the recovery time after things calm down, so you could easily be feeling the blows the next morning. I though I'd run this up the flagpole and see if anyone tugs a forelock...

Re: Brainstorming superhero team liaisons ...and if you still want a supernatural element, you can have the respirator daughter appearing in the hallways occasionally - or is that a ghost? Or an illusion? Or an astral form? (The nurse wouldn't be related to a certain Ms. A. Harkness, would she?) Many potential plot hooks there. You may want to decide just how she ended up on the machine. A normal disease, for which they keep searching and hoping for a cure? Perhaps by criminal/supervillain action, or an accident involving criminal/police (e.g., a stray bullet) or supervillain/superhero blunder? Such things will certainly affect the attitudes and psychlims of the couple, even if they try to hide it. In any case, this is something best held in the background for a while, maybe with hints and occasional fleeting events. In any case, the PCs are likely to ask questions, so if there's a cover story, have that ready.

Re: Your Superhero Identity for Today Must be one o them "alternative" comix...

Re: Hero vs D20 Future

Re: Your Superhero Identity for Today I did one for my wife, and she's got a Neutron Blunderbuss! What a team!

Re: Your Superhero Identity for Today Well, while I don't actually have a fear of flying, I do have a fear of heights, so that's not far off. I've never been on a skateboard in my life (for more than 0.84 seconds, at least). One of the guys in my regular group is named Eric...hmm...could it be...? Ion Blunderbuss...now THAT's a weapon I could get behind! Name: Black Lad Secret Identity: Special Power: Blazing Feet Transportation: Turbo Skateboard Weapon: Ion Blunderbuss Costume: Stainless Steel Overalls Sidekick: Samwise Nemesis: Eric the Ripper Tragic Flaw: Fear of flying Favorite Food: Melon

Re: Poetry/clue help Workers pack it, Soldiers protect it, Her Majesty's spew. Like a wee one, Bigger than you, Watch your step Or they'll step on you!

Re: The Heart of Hero Reason from Effect. Not merely that you can build things - powers, characters, etc. - but that you can do so within the rules. This not only lets you do whatever you want, it lets you do it without making house rules, and without needing to look everything up. For comparison: Fireball in D&D is easy enough, once you know the radius and caster level. But for Meteor Swarm, there's a whole separate spell description! In Hero, going from Fireball to Meteor Swarm is a simple matter of adding Autofire to the basic area-effect EB/RKA that is a Fireball. You don't need to look up a separate spell, you just need to know the Autofire rules. And once you know the Autofire rules, you can apply them to fireballs, machine guns, superspeed punches, etc., etc., all without additional rules. An oversimplified example - and I don't mean to say D&D (whatever edition) is necessarily a bad game. But this, to me, is the distinguishing "heart of Hero" that makes it special to me.

Re: Brainstorming a mystical superhero mansion Steal ideas frm the Harry Potter books - shifting stairways, hanging portraits you can talk with, animated brooms & mops, etc., etc. Ghost staff (butlers, maids, repairmen) can be good for a laugh or plot twist whenever you want.

Re: Where have all the Superheroes gone? On a positive note, I think the success of the "Heroes" TV series is a fascinating example of how superheroes have really entered the mainstream (the recent spate of not-bad superhero movies also shows this). It's a prime-time, successful dramatic series about people with superpowers (successful enough to have been revews for at least one more season, anyway). That hasn't happened much, if ever, on TV ("Wonder Woman" tried occasionally, and "Incredible Hulk" really only used the Hulk as a plot device/special effect and little else). I think it's also very much worth noting that nobody in Heroes wears a costume - it's very much about "normal" people, who have (mostly) "normal" problems, who also have to deal with these weird powers. The fact that there's no spandex cuts way down on the silliness of traditional comics; their willingness to address issues from drug abuse to government coverups and everything else allows the audience to take the characters seriously. The fact that some of the most heroic characters have no powers also helps, IMO. So there is definitely a place for heroes, even superheroes, in the public imagination, even beyond the comics/sci-fi/fantasy subculture. I don't know how much place there is for the good old spandex-and-cape crowd; some movies are making it work, though. The real issue is that it has to be done well, and the story has to be allowed to take itself seriously, at least within genre. If the material (and the people involved) can't show respect for itself, the project is doomed. And it's hard to steer that course when dealing with people in outlandish costumes whose primary occupation is beating on other people in outlandish costumes. Oh, gosh, I'm pushing this more toward NGD, aren't I? Sorry...

Re: Where have all the Superheroes gone? IMO it's not that the world per se is any worse (or not) than before. It's that the whole idea of heroes and superheroes has been so heavily assaulted (i.e., denigrated under the banner of "deconstructing") over the last generation or three. You can't have real "good guy" heroes any more it seems, who try to maintain serious codes of honor and behavior, and usually succeed; such characters are derided as "unrealistic" and/or "boring." To be acceptable, it seems you have to have heroes who have flaws - and not just flaws, but serious emotional issues, like addiction or schizophrenia or love of violence for its own sake, something that almost negates their effectiveness as heroes. It isn't that world is so much worse than before (IMO, it isn't really any worse, except maybe in some very specific ways), it's that we can't tolerate heroes who are heroic in the classic mold.

Re: [Warped Game Ideas (WGI)] Psycho-powers Actually, I think it could be fun, certainly for a short run. Though if I were doing it, I'd be tempted to give the PCs maybe 25 points. Yes, just 25. Oh, but cap the disads at 100...or, allow only 25 points of disads, except allow psychlims all the way up. Then let them go to town with standard superhero campaign limits.

Re: Hero name Son of Godzilla?

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested) A set of apprentices casting various Aid spells makes for an extremely powerful wizard. I've used this scheme a couple times, and it's always really scary until the players twig onto the fact that the apprentices are fairly easy to take down, and once they're gone the main villain is much less awesome. Even a simple team of three (Aid INT for the spellcasting rolls, Aid END, and a Force Field or other defense) works very well. (It also plays into the one advantage NPCs really have over PCs - teamwork. I've seen almost no PCs who were built primarily to assist other PCs.)

Re: GMs: making abilities useful As with most issues of this ilk, the responsibility to get those oddball abilities "on stage" needs to be shared between GM and player. As GM, I try to keep aware of possibilities for this, but our group is large enough and varied enough that it's really beyond reason to expect the GM (of any of our games) to keep track of every little thing (or even every big thing) each character can do. Actually, this is perhaps the biggest difference between the Champions game I'm co-GMing and the Pulp/Fantasy Hero games I've run over the years: there's a lot more different stuff happening in Champions, what with widely varying powers and stats and so on, that just keeping a session moving is a major challenge. Getting too clever with details just adds more difficulties. It's still fun, just different - I haven't GMed Champs nearly as much as hero-level games. In general, my approach when GMing is to create a situation, then let the players react to it as they see fit, without me designing a specific solution or counter to the villain's caper. If they come up with an idea to use their abilities, that's great, and I will rarely deny them the attempt: the results may or maynot be what they expect, but I do lean heavily in favor of the player on such things. But I rarely set up a specific place and time for Joe Hero to use his professional-level string-figure skill. My impression when that's been tried (by me or other GMs) is that the setup usually feels artificial, and it's also easy to miss the GM cue. A device I will use is to give the players information (directly or through a contact) based on their characters' particular KS/PS/Backgrounds, but I assume this thread is aimed at involvement way beyond that. IMO (and IME), a character who has at least a couple of "irrelevant" skills is more likely to be a "real" character, as opposed to a character who is minmaxed (not to say munchkinized) for combat only, and thus is not really a "character," but a thug (even if he's a good-guy thug). As a player and as a GM, I have a lot better time dealing with characters than with thugs.

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested) Or... Stupid Wizard! Drain INT, big area, continuous, etc. Only affects targets with Sorcery skill. or, again... Silly Wizard! Add naked limitation: Side Effects Always to any magical power ...of course, these only work if you don't want to use any of your own magic (unless, of course, you buy Personal Immunity!)

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested) To pre-select friendlies, you could have them carry or wear markers or foci - amulets, helmets, or even tattoos. Then design your spells so that they only affect people who have that particular focus. Of course, this means that a significant "special ops" mission is to discern and obtain those items from the enemy for your own use and study (or to prevent the theft thereof). Another "special op" might be to mark enemies for a magical strike - kind of like "painting" a target like they did in the Iraq war, where specforces infiltrated to mark advance targets for the airstrikes (especially SAM sites, IIRC - analogous to taking out magical personnel or prepared ritual sites?). And civil wars would get really nasty. All the markers would be available to both sides, at least until the war went on long enough to make new ones. Of course, this might also mean that people just don't make markers for everyone; just their chosen personal/elite forces. These things would also be tightly controlled by higher-ups (kings, emperors, archbishops, etc.). My thought for a long time has been that high-magic worlds would have a lot less emphasis on massed armies, but I've never really hacked seriously at the issue. My initial thought is that there would be a lot more raiding-type activity, since any large concentration of force would invite magical hits. Large armies would still have an advantage, since they can cover more places and areas than small armies, but most battles, even sieges, wouldn't be the mass assaults so delightfully depicted in most fantasy books and movies. There's be a lot more emphasis on maneuver and sustainability; the ability to get to the critical point, and assemble potent strike forces from among scattered components, would count for a lot. And sustainability - the ability to keep pressure on an enemy position, with multiple waves and directions of attack - would take advantage of the typical limitations on most fantasy magicians: limited ammunition. Sure, the wizards can cast fireballs at you, but after three or four waves, they're gonna start running low on mana/charges/spells. A grim arithmetic, to be sure, but when isn't it?

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested) As a plot device, you could make this linked somehow to the lifetime of the head of the particular church. When the head dies, the new head's first offical act is to renew the blessing. In the meantime, though, every believer is a little less lucky... Now, if the electoral process is as involved as the Pope, which can take several weeks, you have a window of opportunity for enemies. And these deaths can be arranged...

Re: good one Naaaah.... that's way too munchkiny. Too overpowered. I'd sure never allow that in MY campaign!

Re: High power magic (Brainstorming welcome and requested) Now for some nasties... Curse of Idiocy: Drain/Suppress INT, large area. As little as 2d6 can reduce normal people to the mental equivalent of cows and sheep. 1d6 is less drastic, costs half as much, but enough to reduce normal people to unusually stupid normal people (No, I won't suggest that another name for this could be "U.S. Public School System." I won't say that.) Curse of Leprosy: Drain COM, Sticky. A single die of "effect" turns into 2d6 of actual COM removed - enough to turn normal people absolutely hideous. The Sticky means you only have to cast it on one person to cause a plague - or even just a panic (especially when medicine and Cure Disease spells fail, since it ain't a disease!). To really get nasty, you cast it on the ground, which makes everything that touches that patch of ground ugly - ugly trees, ugly crops (perfectly edible and nutritious, but disgusting to look at!), ugly animals, ugly people. Curse of Guilt: Drain 6d6 PRE, recovery time years, trigger. When the wizard is killed, the person who killed him suffers this effect, which pretty much reduces the killer to a quivering, crying wreck for the foreseeable future. So much for being the great hero! Curse of Overpowerment: Aid (magical effect). Designed to operate on large-area spells, such as those which enhance crops or attributes, this greatly increases their potency. Carefully chosen, this could result in serious distortion of economies, social structure, and so forth: if everyone is rich, gold has no real value, as it were; if everyone's chickens lay a hundred eggs a day, what you have is a lot of rotten eggs (and a serious kingdom-wide cholesterol problem!). Curse of Extreme Weight: Density Increase area effect, usable against others. Over a large area, this makes everyone in the realm weigh more - not fatter, just heavier. A lot heavier. While it also makes them a little tougher, it makes for difficulties with vehicles and buildings - not to mention riding animals! - as they are not built to carry such increased loads. With Gradual Effect, this might not even be noticed until several floors, wagons, and ships start collapsing. Edgeless Weapons: Transform all sharp metal objects to dull metal objects. All medieval weapons which were Killing Attacks become Normal Attacks. While this isn't necessarily a fatal flaw, it does distort the enemy army's fighting a bit (especially arrows!). It also makes meat a lot harder to cook and eat, without sharp knives and skewers!

Re: Time Dilation Question Bah - let me do a field test - I'll head out now and get back to you in a minute. Of course, to you, it will seem like 300 years....