JMcL63

Re: Powergamers - PowerGM's ??? Consequences, the best way to do 'revenge' in that kind of situation, and perhaps a fitting end for the character. Was the new character any better?

Re: Polishing The HERO System A consensus! Meanwhile, the current basic skills cost progression is this: 1+2+2. I think that this is just fine for a stat-based skills system. It costs you the minimum 1pt to get the skill to a basic level that anyone can have with a bit of practice, +2pts to get the skill to a level where your natural talents (ie. your CHA) can make you better at the skill, and 2pts for each +1 thereafter. If anything, I would suggest that there's an argument for reducing the +1 cost to 1pt, because this is not as great a gain as is going from 8- to a full roll (11- typically), and because the statistical value of each +1 decreases increasingly above 11- anyway. This woud certainly make high level skills a lot cheaper, but then I would suggest that skill levels are currently cost effecient enough that they are likely to be more in use than increased skill rolls themselves are, don't you think? If that were to be the case, then reducing the cost of +1 to each skill could make sense, especially since you could, perhaps, then consider unifying the skills system into a stat-based 1+2+1 points progression, thus getting rid of confusing 1+1+1 progressions in background and other skills. Those are some of my thoughts on what could be done to skills to polish the HERO system.

Re: Polishing The HERO System Making all skills general, and removing the DEX, INT and PRE breakdown? Nah, I don't think that's a good way to go at all myself. Tying skills to stats is a strong mechanic that makes for more interesting characters. Removing them would be more scouring than polishing IMO.

Re: Polishing The HERO System One thing that I have mentioned before that I still think would be one of the best ways to polish HERO would be to dispense once and for all with inches. Make the basic hex 1m, and render all measurements in the game in metres, not inches.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings On a 1-10 scale of HERO geekieness, I guess I score quite high because I'm posting a here to mark the recent arrival of my second rep mark...

Re: Powergamers - PowerGM's ??? "Taking revenge" on your players can be a good idea, depending on exactly what you mean and how it's done. I mean, if the GM is taking personal revenge on a player or players for some reason, then that probably won't work out well. But if he decides that an NPC wants some revenge, or that one or more players and/or PC's need a bit of a shakeup, then that can work out great, if it's done with a bit of thought. Basically, just make sure it's going to be a fun game one way or the other, and then nobody should end up bothering what inspired that particular session. But to reiterate, if the GM is using the game to work out some personal beef, then that could well end in disaster, for the roleplaying group as much as for the PC's involved. Yes, powergamers are boring in any game, but especially in rpg's, because they are only looking for one kind of satisfaction from their games- winning, however they choose to define it. This makes it difficult to develop the narrative elements that make roleplaying unique, because those players really don't give a hoot, and are therefore unreliable when it comes to cooperating with the other players to make sure that everyone enjoys themselves. Short of asking them to leave the group, the only way to deal with powergamers is to make them reconsider why they are playing rpg's at all. This might involve dishing out some severe PC thrashings with uberpowerful NPC's, just to demonstrate that the quest for ultimate power in an rpg is totally pointless (unlike in, say, a computer game), because the GM can always trump every PC's power, as often as they wish, by howsoever much they wish. Whatever, this process can be lengthy and/or just more trouble than you can wish, but I know it can work, if you are prepared to work with your players as much as expect them to adapt to you. I hope this helps.

Re: Hotages and Capatured Foci I'd suggest that players who want to keep and use captured foci need an OOC chat to enforce the genre. If they don't respond, then my only suggestion would be to change to a non-supers campaign for a bit, although I admit that this might not be a viable response. And don't forget, that villains can capture PCs' foci too, and should, regularly enough for the focus limitation to be a real limitation (eg. a -1 limitation reduces a power's effectiveness by 50%, so the power should be attacked through its focus on average every other scenario).

Re: Musings on Random Musings Ah, Supertramp, one of the essential backing themes to my teenage angst!

Re: A Thread for Random Musings It's very early in the morning here, and I've been up far too long, spent far too much time on the internet, and I'm experiencing the familiar 'getting a wee bit wacky' syndrome. This is just a polite term for what others would call posting gibberish in a desperate attempt to raise a few cheap laughs. I feel it might have to be time for bed soon. Boing! PS. Heh, finally thought of something to add to this darn thread!

Re: Bringing up Everyman Skills The simple fact is that either option- the official version, or the proposed house rule- can be rationalised easily enough. In fact, it could reasonably be argued that the house rule might be more logical, but I still don't like the idea. I simply don't like the notion of giving players too much for nothing. I happen to think that would create the wrong atmosphere in terms of players' expectations of what they're going to get out of the game. And I especially believe that 150pt heroes have more than enough points and so don't need the kind of break offered by this proposed house rule on Everyman skills. A friend of mine who GM's lots of heroic level HERO games has told me more than once that he finds 150pts to be too much at this level, making it too easy for players to start with characters who can do pretty much everything. So he plays with 100pt heroes, which he says forces players to specialise their characters more, thus creating more interesting parties. It's this kind of thing that happens when you hand out too much for nothing.

Re: Bringing up Everyman Skills I've done some work developing Everyman lists for my fantasy background, to develop social/class backgrounds. I'd probably also develop alternate lists for different cultures too. With modern word-processors, I don't think that this is too difficult. Likewise with Packages. The point about these things in HERO is that they are a neat way of actually developing your background. I mean, does anyone here remember Warhammer FRP, with its careers? One of the things I liked about those was how the careers themselves provided you with a heap of the setting's background. So this is what I see Everyman lists and packages as doing, and is why I think that the effort is worth it.

Re: Bringing up Everyman Skills Yes, but you raised the question, which allows us reasonably to infer that it is an actual or a potential issue in your own game. If it's not, fair enough, but the fact that you raised the question initially makes your response to others' pro-rules response a little suspect. If your players aren't screwing up your game with this issue (as would seem to be the case), then why is it that you end up saying that you have such a hard time with GM's who say that 'your points are your points'? After all, this assumption (that points should be points) was built-in to your original question. You seem to be changing your outlook without acknowledgement in the face of answers you don't like, and with no apparent reason.

Re: Bringing up Everyman Skills As the rules stand (and have done for some time too), Everyman skills do not count as points, so that you have to pay the full value to increase those skills. Oddly enough, under 4th ed., there were skills which I used to call 'Real Frees'. Basically, as well as the Everyman lists, every single character got (IIRC) 6pts of free skills (1pt AK, 1pt PS, and 4pts Language) that were real points. That is gone now. I don't think that this is a bad thing, especially since the Everyman lists have been expanded. As for the question raised by chiralman, well, like everything else in HERO, no-one can tell you to run your own games in a way that you don't like. But let's face it: in a game where character creation is points driven, don't you feel that there is something dubious about players wanting more than something for nothing? This strikes me as being especially infelicitous when the basic power-levels for characters seem to have been moved up a whole level. So, speaking as a fellow GM, I would have to say: don't give these free points away to your players. Devise the appropriate Everyman lists for your campaign; create the packages you want your players to have access to; and then draw the line. I'm sure your players will appreciate this in the end. PS. I have to confess that this post is essentially just a less sarcastic version of those by bblackmoor, who got it about right IMO.

Re: Ellis' Planetary HERO?

Re: Ellis' Planetary HERO? I'm a fan of Planetary and The Authority. I would also recommend Stormwatch: Team Achilles. This takes an interesting look at the activities of supers (the Authority in particular) from the viewpoint of normal agents. The early Stormwatch and The Authority TPB's are also well worth getting hold of if you like the current stuff. The characters and the background underwent a lot of development in those stories, and there is stuff in the current series that is more comprehensible if you've read the early stuff.

Re: persistent movement powers? Yes, autopilot is a definite requirement for viable persistent movement powers! All you basically need is Navigation, and perhaps a complementary AK or two it would seem to me.

Re: Eliminating Killing Attacks Cheers zornwil. Note though, that I only said that it is 'at the very heart', not that it is the very heart!

Re: Eliminating Killing Attacks I remember this same discussion coming up on the old boards, and I still have the same opinion now that I had then. The KA StunX lottery is a mechanism that is both authentic (ie. neatly reproduces the way that this kind of attack tends to work in reality), and at the very heart of HERO's recreation of dramatic action adventure combat. For example, one of my favourite PC's is an ubermensch with no resistant defences. When he faces KA's, apart from his agility, his only other defence is sheer dumb luck. That is, he relies on those low StunX rolls to survive when he does get tagged by a KA. Fiddle with the StunX rules, and any hit by a KA will pretty much automatically take out my PC. In other words, the way that KA works is an intrinsic part of the balance of the HERO combat engine, and of the way in which it models one of the key archetypes of the superhero and other genres- the ubermensch. Fiddle with it all you want (it's your game after all, and no-one can tell you to play it any way other than how you wish), but I don't think you can realistically argue that the mechanic is 'broken', and that your favoured houserules are 'fixes'.

Re: How would you modify humans I'd just go the cultural package deals route myself. The idea of different races is a nice one, but if you only wanted a single species, then I suggest that you'd have to be careful to avoid using the different races as excuses simply to reintroduce the familiar fantasy species in disguise.

Re: What is a Superhero to you? Yes, Batman, he is indeed a superhero archetype. If you think of hyper-skilled normal and superpowered being as a continuum, then I'd say that Batman and Superman represent opposite poles of that continuum. Which is to say that between them they more or less define the range across which superheroes/villains can be defined according to the source of their super abilities. Everything else pretty much falls in between I'd say.

Re: What genre is Champions really about? That's not good enough nexus. There have been plenty of calls to respect other people's defintion of hero' date=' and even those who have cast slurs on classic 4-colour have been willing to step back and agree that taste and personal opinion is just that. Why is it that the 4-colour crew just won't do this? Why? No-one's asking you to change your games. No one's asking you to redefine your own heroes. All that is being asked is that you recognise that the genre has changed in the past generation, to accept that, and to stop telling people whose tastes and games reflect those changes that they have somehow stepped outside of the box. We'll all happily accept that we're not in [i']your[/i] box anymore, but why oh why must you insist that we have gone somewhere completely different just because we like the post 4-colour stuff? Hmm?

Re: What is a Superhero to you? Hmm, the debate seems to be hotting up. That's 3 threads now covering essentially the same territory. My definition of a superhero? Someone who has superhuman powers and/or unique skills, and who fights the good fight. The latter can be defined in a variety of ways, many of which will be an expression of my personal moral, social and political views, and some of which would therefore (as some of us know already) exclude certain supers from other people's defintion of hero. I can't pick a single (or even just a couple of characters to define this, but I can exemplify different kinds of superhero- or different subgenres perhaps- with some examples: classic all-round good guys: Superman and other early DC classic 4-colour: Spiderman and Daredevil contemporary 'edgy': Watchmen and The Authority. I'm sure my choices here fall into the Silver, Golden, etc. classifications, but I'm not actually sure what they mean in toto.

Re: What genre is Champions really about?

Re: What genre is Champions really about? Heh. I've been considering going into minor rant mode on precisely this aspect of said debate bblackmoor (especially since I'm one who has been told that his favourite PC is not a superhero really). I think you have covered pretty much all the bases on why this attitude is so... unpleasant. So your proposition has my vote, that's for sure.

Re: Code VS Killing Poll We most certainly can. The point of contention has always been that you have to be a traditional superhero to qualify as a hero at all in the world of supers.