Tetsuyama

Re: Turning Undead Klaatu, something, something? A quick lexicon for the D&D (or SRD) impaired: HD - Hit Dice CR - Challenge Rating (used to determine difficulty of encounter) SRD - Standard Reference Document (freely available d20 rules, which WotC extends in a proprietary way to create D&D).

Re: Turning Undead If you want to keep the D&Dish undead turning stuff, port over the Turn Resistance quality that many undead have: +X PRE, Only to Resist PRE Attacks (-Y). Also keep in mind that undead in D&D tend to have lots of hit dice relative to their CR, making turning less likely (i.e. a level 4 Cleric can expect to encounter undead with a CR close to his level, but it may have *many* more HD than that; a CR 4 Minotaur Zombie from the SRD has 12 HD, making it unturnable by a level 4 Cleric).

Re: Pulp Hero I'm working on putting together a pulp flavored 1930s/40s steampunk influenced campaign. It'll probably actually be something like LXG meets Indiana Jones in its final incarnation. Here are my current rough guidelines for character development (still in some flux, but I don't expect major deviations at this point). Starting Points: 175 base/100 disads, max from one disad category being 35. I decided not to go with NCM, rather limiting PCs to one Primary stat over 20. Characters can carry normal technology according to the rules for Resource Points in Dark Champions. Power Levels: OCV/DCV start at 5-8 and are capped at 12 Speed starts at 3-5 and is capped at 7 DEF probably in the 8-12 range, no more than 18 rDEF I'm expecting 3-8, max 12 Skill rolls 11- to 14-, max 16- Powers should be in the 15-30 AP range with a negotiable cap of 45. I'm planning on using Hit Locations, Knockdown, and some variant of Impairing. Characters will be allowed to Push. All told, it's pretty high-powered for a true pulp campaign, I guess. But I tried building a couple of sample PCs for it, and they were surprisingly not outrageous (granted, my view may deviate from yours). My goal with these limits is to make the PCs able to take on lightly armed civilian criminals in droves, and Nazi thugs at 2 to 1 (or even 3 to 1) odds in hand-to-hand or with surprise, but still have them be vulnerable to massed small arms fire from infantry units or border patrols.

Re: Review my campaign guidelines I just want to second what Keneton said, but in a slightly different way. In the current 3d6 system there's a *huge* difference between 8-, 11-, and 14-. Going to a d20-based system changes the mechanics of skills and combat quite a lot. For reference, here are the odds with 3d6 vs. d20 (actually the way you have it written the odds are slightly different, but the interesting thing is the difference in percentage chance of success at each level with each system): 8- on 3d6: ~26% 11- on 3d6: 62.5% (~35% more likely than 8-) 14- on 3d6: ~91% (~29% more likely than 11-) 8- on d20: 40% 11- on d20: 55% (15% more likely than 8-) 14- on d20: 70% (15% more likely than 11-) Incremental steps in the 3d6 system are non-linear, meaning that going from 8- to 9- (a difference of 11.57%) is not the same percentage success change as from 9- to 10- (a difference of 12.5%), which are both considerably greater than the percentage success change from 15- to 16- (2.78% change). Okay, that's all fine and dandy, but what does it *really* mean? 1. As Keneton says, dodge is no longer nearly as useful a defense option. Say you get +4 DCV from dodge (because that's a convenient number). With a d20, this means you get hit 20% less often. Unless you're way at the outer ends of the to-hit, a +4 DCV generally means considerably more than a 20% frequency shift away from being hit on 3d6. 2. 5% (a 20 on a d20) is a *lot* of critical hits, especially if they automatically do max damage. That's actually marginally more frequent than making 3, 4, and 5 all critical hits on 3d6. There are a lot of ways to encourage more cinematic play, if you root through some of the Luck optional rules and house rule threads around here. Changing to a d20 system has really amazing effects on game balance and odds of success failure, which aren't really readily apparent unless you've done some statistical analysis of the change first (other of which won't be apparent until you've playtested it fairly extensively, I suspect). While this will ease people from a d20 system in to HERO, it also changes the flavor and playing experience a lot.

Re: Limits on Killing attacks? More madness to follow... I realize that I'm probably somewhere *way* off in the weeds here, but it seems that a lot of the discussion revolves around elimination of the "STUN Lotto" (or STUN Powerball, or STUN State-sponsored-gambling-institution-of-your-choice). Here's a probably completely loony idea: take a look at the hit location chart, and come up with a distribution of STUN multipliers that somewhat closely approximates that. The current distribution is: x1 occurs 14/216 times (6.4%). x2 occurs 67/216 times (31%). x3 occurs 79/216 times (36.6%). x4 occurs 46/216 times (21.3%). x5 occurs 10/216 times (4.6%). If you want to start worrying about the NSTUNx and the BODYx, it gets more complicated, and I was just worried about the STUN lottery. So here are my two suggestions for what they're worth (which isn't much -- they're free). Roll 2d3-1 for your STUNx. This gives you: x1 occurs 24/216 times. (11% - more frequent) x2 occurs 48/216 times. (22% - less frequent) x3 occurs 72/216 times. (33% - less frequent) x4 occurs 48/216 times. (22% - more frequent) x5 occurs 24/216 times. (11% - more frequent) The net result here is that a x3 result, the most common result on the hit location table, is the most common result. The problematic x1 and x5 results are reduced to a 1 in 9 chance. Roll 3d6 and consult the following table: x1 on 3-5 x2 on 6-9 x3 on 10-12 x4 on 13-15 x5 on 16-18 Odds of each: x1 is 10/216 (4.6% - less frequent) x2 is 71/216 (32.9% - more frequent) x3 is 79/216 (36.6% - same) x4 is 46/216 (21.3% - same) x5 is 10/216 (4.6% - same) This is the same number of dice as using the hit location table, which is inconvenient, but the table is much simpler. I just thought of a third totally crazy idea which I'll throw out there with only off-the-cuff (and probably incorrect) statistics to see what you think. It takes 4 (four) dice, which is bad, but it doesn't use a table, which is good. Use 4d2-3 to determine STUN multiplier. Yuck. x1 is 1/16 (6.25% - less frequent) x2 is 4/16 (25% - less frequent) x3 is 6/16 (37.5% - more frequent) x4 is 4/16 (25% - more frequent) x5 is 1/16 (6.25% - more frequent) Anyways, that way lies madness. But we're all mad here.

Wow. That was a hella good post, Emerged. Do you have any other tips for GMs?

I was thinking about this earlier, so I did a little bit of analysis to see how much damage X DCs (Normal) does how often. I thought this might be of somewhat-general interest, so here are some of the results. The table below shows the approximate breakover points for a given DC (where it does X damage just less than 50% of the time, Y damage just less than 60% of the time, and so forth). DCs <50% <40% <30% <20% <10% 6 21 22 23 25 26 8 28 29 31 32 34 10 35 36 38 39 42 12 42 43 45 47 49 13 45 47 49 51 53 14 49 51 52 54 57 15 52 54 56 58 61 Any comments or questions? Is this sort of information useful to you when designing characters/villians/encounters?

D'oh! I *thought* I was going to get to be the first to mention Deathstalker. I seem to remember that there were shields of some sort, and chemical slugthrowers were totally useless against the shields (high-speed projectiles and such). But there was some reason why the shields were ineffective against the blasters. I don't remember the specifics, which probably means it's time to go back and reread the books.

I agree with Bartman on how I'd build the power (maybe substituting AVLD rather than NND, maybe adding Personal Immunity), though the Area Of Effect at +1 3/4 on this power I think would actually wind up being 3" (30 Active Points not counting the Area Of Effect Advantage) with 3 doublings, or a max of 24". The Flash radius is actually 16" (4 doublings starting at 1").

Whoops - I missed the other questions. You don't have to apply the same disadvantages to both powers, as you don't have to use both powers at once. You may use the "greater Power" without using the "lesser Power", but not vice versa. So, for example, only one of them might have Increased Endurance Cost. In this case, I would probably apply all the interesting disadvantages to both powers, as they're used the exact same way. You don't need to roll for these particular attacks (because of the Area Of Effect). If someone doesn't want to get hit, they have to Dive For Cover to get out of the area, or just not get close enough to the character to get hit. As an aside, unless the PC has appropriate and sufficient defenses, Personal Immunity, or Hole In The Middle, he's going to take damage from these attacks when he uses them.

I might seriously consider trying to figure out a way to put either NND or AVLD vs. Hearing Group Flash Defense or other ear protection on the EB. Of course, that will make it considerably more expensive, but you can probably back down the advantage on the Area Of Effect because there will be more points not in the AoE advantage.

I was thinking about building a character that has some powers that take considerable energy to get started, but that he can use continuously from then on. Under the description of Increased END from FREd, it says, "Sometimes a character wants to have an Increased END Cost for only some uses of a power...In this situation, the value of the Limitation is reduced." They give three levels, Uncommon, Common, and Very Common, resulting in a 1/4 reduction, a 1/2 reduction, and 1 reduction in the level of limitation. I was thinking that as a result of the "Only Costs END to Start", the Increased END Cost would suffer either a 1/2 or 1 reduction in value, probably the 1 (taking x5 END down to a -1, for example). But I'm curious how other people would play/GM it. Tetsuyama

Cool. You're right, he definitely seems like he'd be a good fit for a Dark Champions game. It makes me think some of Escrimadora, but using Kukris (?) rather than the traditional sticks.

If you're looking for interesting source material for your world, I find that Dragon magazine frequently has some interesting stuff on world building. It also occasionally has some cool character ideas and scenarios which I puree with elements from my homebrew world to come up with something useful. I haven't followed Dungeon magazine particularly closely, but it looks like it also might have some decent stuff in it.

It almost sounds to me like this would be something you could use Reduced Penetration on. That way they all either hit or miss together, which is what it sounds like you're going for. But with this route you have to buy a bigger attack (more expensive than Autofire). But it's a reasonable tradeoff, in that even if you only barely hit (roll the exact number needed), you hit completely.