RDU Neil

That was actually Civil War... responsibility of power and how far will you go to save a friend with those powers.

Assuming you are talking about MCU female heroes 1. Nakia 2. Agent Carter 3. Black Widow 4. Okoye 5. Wasp/Hope Van Dyne

Winter Soldier, Civil War, Black Panther, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Ant-Man & the Wasp... my top five Marvel movies, all doing something very different, but all powerful, well written, engaging, humorous, well directed, plotted, choreographed... ... and then they gave us this crap with Captain Marvel?? It isn't just about "impossibly high standards" it is about not even living up to the original Thor movie or Iron Man 2 levels of good. I hate that I feel people are bending over backwards to say good things about CM because of the shit-bro anti-SJW types being, well, as shitty as they are. And the tropes were awful... Samuel Jackson as the wide-eyed black guy comedy relief? Really? That was appalling. Jokes like "You don't tell your boss and I won't tell mine!" pause... horribly forced laughter from the actors. God the writing was awful. We finally see the Kree in any depth and they are still just 1950's adolescent imaginings of a space empire? or especially... "We have a human embodied with amazing cosmic energies, let's... put her on a special forces team and see what happens?" WTF? The movie was simply stupid in ways that Marvel should have long outgrown. And all of the "empowered woman" tropes were pure pandering... as I said elsewhere, it was "Free To Be You And Me" level of after-school special moralizing. The skrulls are bad... no they are good... but they did all kinds of stupidly bad things... and no, don't ask us to explain our set-pieces... like the Skrulls have a giant, sophisticated war ship and a mind-reading machine even the Kree don't know about... but yeah... we'll forget about that as soon as we move on to the next set piece. And the Skrulls running around with... like clubs and maces? What? It doesn't have to be top notch, it just has to be good, and this wasn't even close. My wife wept during Wonder Woman, and I loved that movie and we've watched it ten times, easily. She was bored and disappointed and I wanted to fall asleep in Captain Marvel.

By saying "3 Axis" I meant none of those criteria stand alone. You look at the AP of a character, AND the DC of a character, AND the CV Class of a character... and all together they paint a better picture. I think AP is a good measuring stick, if it is not the ONLY measuring stick. You don't have to call them "Caps" or use caps at all... just that AP is "one of the criteria of a character" is all. In fact my "3 axis" comment was an approach for exactly what you are suggesting... the effective DCs... whatever name we want to give it. The idea being that someone who buys a 90 AP power, and someone who buys a 60 AP power plus levels to make it more effective, would be more even compared because we are taking into account all the factors, not just one.

If I recall, this was the "Sean Fannon" effect during 4th Edition days... and I hated his supplements because his power levels were just absurd compared to most other published materials. I never used published sources "as is" and modded them for my games, but his were always so far outside the curve. This is why I separated my internal character descriptions as I did, above... there is the innate ability and there is the training... both need to be considered. I do think the next step is to factor both and say "A combined CV of X (from natural talent or training or both) puts you at a defined Character Class (or whatever you call it). Certain Character Classes are acceptable in a game, other aren't... or whatever your campaign finds acceptable. Maybe what HERO needs is guidelines about judging a character around 3 axis. Active Point (AP Caps) Damage Classes (DC Caps) CV Class (combined CV and Skill Levels) maybe a fourth axis is Flexibility... to incorporate the discussion going on about Multi-powers in that thread?

Yeah... I made this mistake with the current campaign, as I had just two players, and wanted them to be two of the absolute best in the world... the John Wick's of the game... so when I brought in more players, even toning down points a bit for them... there are still too many points going around in some ways. We've got a good group and that helps, but not even trying to min-max, skill levels can get out of hand.

Yes... it occurred to me afterwards that this might be what they were aiming for... let's not just set the movie in the '90s, but film the movie LIKE IT WAS A 90s movie... and that was a horrible choice. This movie also asked no hard questions... it had no thematic heart. What was this movie about? Winter Soldier asked about fear and safety at the expense of freedom, Black Panther was about isolationism, tribalism, colonial diaspora, etc., Civil War was about responsibility of power and making wrong decisions, Wonder Woman was about acknowledging that humanity really is shitty but there are things worth fighting for... Captain Marvel was about nothing... what... maybe checking the fan-service boxes for pop-culture references and the shallowest, most superficial "grrrrl power"... while sanitizing it of any thing remotely weighty or emotionally resonant. Heck, Ant-Man & the Wasp was WAY better and even at second billing, Hope Van Dyne had more emotional resonance (she wants her mom back) and toughness (You'd never have been caught... now THAT'S a line!)... than CM had. And if the Skrulls really were happy homemaker refugees... then why did they even try to kill Danvers at the phone booth or copy Coulson and attack Fury. That made no sense at all at that point, because their Leader already knew that CM was special after hooking her up to the machine. Heck... why leave that last Skrull to get butchered for no reason by Yon-Rogg? What did that serve? This movie was made for lowest common denominator, bland, avoiding controversy or complexity of any kind mindsets. This, along with the awful "bro humor" of GotG are supposed to be the future of Marvel? No thank you.

That wasn't in the movie... no. Not at all.

Interesting... I tend to tell people... "11 + OCV - 3d6... that's what you hit" so I get people saying, "I hit a 7 or I hit a 12, etc." That way they get why they want to roll low... they are subtracting less. It also lets people have a score on their sheet (11+OCV = 18) so they have a simple "18-what you roll" and can easily just tell me a number that they would hit and I can say whether they are successful or not. Not sure if my way is better, but it seemed to have reduced the strain, initially. If they learn, they understand how some things will make their number (18 in this case) higher or lower... but even then it is "18 plus or minus any modifiers, then - 3d6" Again, not sure if it is better, but it seems to get the process across. I'd always wanted OCV to be "11+OCV Stat" and that is the base number in big type on the character sheet.

I totally get what your are saying megaplayboy. Below is what I came up with for my current Heroic "cinematic modern action" campaign, called Secret Worlds. The intent is for PCs and others to be "special" in their level of skill and ability (maybe a weird ability that can be explained away by science... almost) but not really superhumans. (Jason Bourne meets X-Files). I'm not even sure I'd keep it this way if I really work on it over time, but it is a starting place for the campaign world. I certainly wouldn't say it has to apply generically across HERO games. Character Combat Skill Classes “Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” -- Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5 Secret Worlds characters, particularly Specials, are most often both superior in natural ability and highly trained. This combination makes them very dangerous combatants. Below are lists of mechanics along with a "descriptor" that gives a sense of how the character would be perceived by others. Stat Level: OCV and DCV (Reflecting natural ability and combat experience) Normal = 3 Athletic = 4 Talented = 5 Natural = 6 (A person twice as good as normal without any particular training) Prodigy = 7 Phenom = 8 Peerless = 9 (A person three times better than normal without any particular training)  OCV and DCV should be considered separately. A character could be a Prodigy in avoiding attacks (7 DCV) but only slightly better than normal in attacking (Athletic 4 OCV), if that matches the character concept. PCs are limited to Prodigy levels or below w/o GM permission. Skill Levels: (Reflecting Training with a weapon/attack maneuver/group of maneuvers.) Untrained: No Weapon Fam, -3 OCV w/weapon, base OCV for basic HtH maneuvers Trained: Weapon Fam, minimum martial maneuvers, but no levels. Skilled: Trained, +1-2 with a single maneuver Advanced: Trained, +1-2 CSLs with a small group of attacks Expert: Trained, +1-2 with a small group of attacks AND +1-2 PSLs with a group of attacks or other combination Veteran: Trained +3 levels with a group of attacks AND +2-3 PSLs, or other combination Master: Trained, +4 CSL with group of attacks AND +3-4 PSLs, or other combination (but no more than 5 CSL with any one attack) Legendary: 5 or more CSLs AND 5 or more PSLs with a group of attacks, and no limits to how they are combined on any one attack Skill Levels and Stat Levels should be thought of combined to establish the character concept. e.g. A Skilled Normal, or a Trained Prodigy, etc. Combat Class: The combined total of OCV (including PSLs) vs. DCV is important for game balance and sets a characters Combat Class. A character with both medium to high stats and skill levels will quickly out-strip most other combatants. Choices that can stack to affect the final Combat Class of a character are: Weapon Familiarities & Weapon Elements Martial Arts maneuvers OCV/DCV CSLs & PSLs Combat Related Skills (Defense Maneuver and Rapid Attack, Analyze Style, etc) Combat Class Evaluation: Each PC will be evaluated as to the extent they are "better than normal" with the following criteria. Attacker’s OCV - Target’s DCV is Chance to Hit 6 99% 5 98% 4 95% 3 91% 2 84% 1 74% 0 63% -1 50% -2 38% -3 26% -4 16% -5 9% -6 5% Ranged Attack Comparison Examples: A Trained Normal firing at close range against Normal Defender = 63% chance to hit a non-specific area. A Trained Normal firing at close range against a Normal Defender = .5% chance to hit with a "head shot" (-8 modifier) needing a "3" to hit. A Master Prodigy firing at close range against a Normal Defender = 99%+ chance to hit a non-specific area. A Master Prodigy firing at close range against a Normal Defender = 63% chance to hit with a "head shot" (-8 modifier) without PSLs. Difference of "6": Compare a PC's best attack to the Combat Class where they have a 6+ advantage (99% chance to hit). These odds must be considered closely to evaluate campaign balance. Per Attack: Remember that a Combat Class is referring to a specific attack or group of attacks. A character could be a Veteran Athlete with Small Arms, but only a Trained Athlete with knives, and an Untrained Athlete with nunchaku.

Wow... usually we agree on things, but I can't be further from any of this. Wonder Woman and Gadot were top notch, with a level of passion and innocence, while Larson slept through this movie. It was like every line was her just sitting there with no inflection until she noticed someone off camera pointing at her and she just reads the line. Every back and forth with Fury was so awkward, I kept expecting the '70s era sitcom laugh track to kick in to try and get some yuks. THe complete lack of Djimon Hounsou or Lee Pace having ANY point in being in this movie... the absolutely stupid Flerkin use... the pathetic portrayal of Skrulls somehow using American vernacular with Aussie accents and being inept at using their shapeshifting in any useful way. They are just happy-homemaker refugees? WTF? THAT'S how Fury loses his eye? THAT'S how the Avengers come to be? It was like they took the worst writers of the Agents of SHIELD series and said, "YOu get a movie!" "I don't have to prove anything to you." That's her big line? The entire lack of a plot was entirely predictable. The "I can stop dozens of nuclear missiles and a squadron of attack ships in a few flashes of light, but it takes me ten minutes to fight my way through a few Kree soldiers? She's WAY OP for anything in the Marvel Universe as portrayed so far, because if they port all this over to Avengers: End Game... what's the point of the rest of the team? This movie was god awful. I didn't think anything could take the bottom spot from GotG2, but this did, by far. (The same way they ham-fisted the humor in GotG2 so that it was cringe-worthy, they beat the '90s references to death. ugh ugh ugh.)

Wow it was bad. I'm sad to say, but Marvel made its first really bad movie. (I've not read other comments in this thread, yet, but I will.) The writing and directing were the level of a bad after-school special. The Action scenes were badly staged, the plot was... pointless. Everyone, not just Larson, was stiff and awkward, with dialogue that was completely flat. The movie lacked heart in every way... I honestly shocked that this was allowed to be released. It didn't know if it wanted to be Guardians funny (it wasn't) or Avengers dramatic (it wasn't) or Ant-Man heartfelt (it wasn't)... it was a mess. My wife was very unhappy. She wanted... badly... to like it and said, "Like thirty minutes in, I realized, I just didn't care about any of it. It was so stiff and just... whatever. I kept saying, "But this is Captain Marvel!" and am just SO disappointed." So bad... I'm frankly amazed Feige let this be released.

No... the rolls happen each combat round, so the order changes after each "action" for the most part. example: C1 = 4 SPD... C2 = 4 SPD... C3 = 5 SPD First initiative: C1 rolls a 3, so plus 4... goes on 7. C2 rolls a 1, plus 4 goes on 5... C3 rolls a 5... goes on 10... that round, C3, then C1, then C2 action order. Second initiative C1 rolls a 2, so goes on 6, C2 rolls a 6, so goes on 10, C3 rolls a 6 so goes on 11 and gets a second action... that round, C3, C2, C1, then C3 again.

A turn in the SPD chart (if I'm remember correctly) is all 12 segments... so characters would have their full number of SPD in actions by the end of that turn. My "combat round" is simply "everyone gets one action" and then maybe, some characters get second action. Then another combat round starts. A "turn" for game alignment purposes, would be four combat rounds where every character got at least one action each round... and maybe if characters had high enough SPDs and if they rolled high enough, might get an extra action. Most importantly, none of those actions happen in a set order, as the order changes based on initiative each round.

This would make a good Con game, I think. Maybe the PCs are all security guards on another floor, called in at the last second, bummed to be working on Christmas eve, drinking in a half-finished break room on one of the floors under construction. Crazy shit starts to happen... just throw in another set of euro-trash bad guys and be prepared for all kinds of attempts to derail things from the events of the movie. In fact, that is the point... once stuff starts going down, how do things go differently? Make sure none of the PCs have names... just Security Guard 1, Security Guard 2, etc. Minimal skills, just enough to get themselves killed if they get too out of hand, but maybe enough to actually be heroes if they get lucky. Hell, this would be a blast. I'll have to work on this. I think it would take having a clear "Plot" mechanic, where the GM had clear resources for throwing "And then THIS happens!" that railroad events, but those resources run out and the PCs can begin to change things. Also, at a CON, likely to get some younger players, who will likely be familiar with the movie, but unlikely to have worshiped at the alter of Die Hard for thirty years, like most of us, here. Hmmm... this could be a thing. Edit: oh... the more I think about this... each Security Guard has a major Complication... 1. "I'm retiring next month!" 2. "My wife is pregnant and about to have our first kid, and I'm stuck here!" 3. "My boyfriend, who works the front desk night shift, got me this job." 4. "I'm dating this real hotshot on the 30th floor. He's my white knight!"

Has anyone had a chance to see Apollo 11 in an IMAX theater, yet? I saw it last night and... wow... simply amazing. This is how you bring history to life. Go see it.

I found, in decades of Supers play with HERO, that EXP worked fine. I had a 3 pts per standard adventure. 5 pts for showdown adventures and 10 points for Double Sized Issues! (Like when we'd game all weekend back when I was young enough to do that.) Supers gaining incremental power growth so that they start out at "New Mutant" or "New Warriors" level and then go up to "Teen Titans" and "X-Men" level... then eventually Avengers level... then Authority levels (we never got to, or wanted to go to absurdist JLA levels) of power worked well for us. It happened over the years, and characters that started out at 250 were well over 600 plus, even as EXP plateaued in general. As characters became fully fleshed out and broadly powerful, adjustments to the characters became driven by story and plot more than simply power improvements. Now, in Heroic level games, they tend to remain pretty static, as the characters are built as competent level for the campaign, and unless there is significant plot reason for them to become "other" than they were created, unlikely to change drastically. In the supers games, the heroes that struggled against a set of armored agents early in their career, might run into the same kind of agents later, and totally trounce them, because I had a certain power level set for the game world, and agents are agents are agents. If they fought some villains on equal footing at 300 points, maybe those villains got more powerful over time... maybe not. Maybe next time they faced them, they wiped the floor with them, because it wasn't with the Story for that particular villain to get more powerful. Sometimes those villains became even MORE powerful. That was plot driven. I loved how players, though, never felt they were powerful enough. I remember at one point, well into the campaign, a long term player saying, "Man, that was tough tonight... I always feel like we are eking things out by the skin of our teeth." And I'm like, "Are you kidding me? I threw two dozen 350 villains at you guys, and you essential brushed them aside and/or ignored them as you cut a swatch through the horde and went after the 1000 point mega-villain. Your characters ended WW3 in six days, over the course of two adventures. What are you talking about tough?" The player was like, "Those guys were 350 points... man... they were scary." I'm just shaking my head... In my heroic games, when characters change, it tends to be based on the player saying, "I feel that x, y, z has happenened, and Agent Sureshot has developed x contact, or y skill because of that..." I'll probably agree and the player adjusts their character. Growth happens because the story allowed for it. I hate the "world levels up to match the PCs" concept completely. If you've played a character for 20 years and he has gone from fledgling to demi-god... he better damn well feel like a demi-god. He just now has to deal with OTHER demi-gods at times. But the players always make it harder than it has to be. sigh.

I sum this up with "Character advancement is bullshit. What you want is character GROWTH!" Now, that speaks to my personal play preference, as I could care less about EXP and "buying new stuff" for my character when it comes to RPGs. When it comes to video games, this seems essential to the way the game is built (huge FarCry fan, loved Fallout 4, etc.) but that is because video games are "games first" and I want "Story first" in my RPGs. Most Heroic level games of mine are pretty static in terms of characters, unless their "story arc" actually lends itself to advancement... but only because advancement is a result of GROWTH, not as an end in and of itself. Now, psychologically, a large section of the human population is mentally rewarded by "numbers getting bigger." There is something satisfying to a large contingent of humans (I have never felt this) about seeing your 'score' go up. It is at the root of runaway capitalism and runaway D&D characters, alike. Players are "rewarded" for doing game stuff (abstract doings) by getting more points (abstract notation) that enables more game stuff, etc. This type of psychological reward is built into D&D and the like without most people examining what is going on. It is called "Overjustification" and it can change an intrinsic enjoyment of an activity ("I like to play D&D") into a difference in motivation ("I like to level up!") and if that new motivation is removed, then motivation to play is removed. (Let's not even get into variable ratio reward schedules). I remember reflecting on this first back in 1980 when a certain RPG called Champions showed up that got rid of levels and classes and this idea of systematic rewards as the point of the game... and suddenly I was allowed to focus on things that DID matter to me... better simulation of the source material... better stories being told... etc. The quantifiable notation of advancement is a very strong motivator in a large part of the human population... just not everyone. HERO as it stands can certainly be used to create a game with "Character advancement" as the motivation, but it, more than D&D and the like, is likely going to break. I've always seen the system as something that broke that connection and allowed for very different motivations... but probably because those different motivations are more my style. (i.e. I always wanted an RPG to let me emulate the tension and drama of say, Aragorn and the Hobbits fighting the Nazgul at Weathertop... not an RPG that "Let me take my Ranger up to 20th level!"

In my current campaign of modern guns and knives and martial arts, I did make the rule that if a KA does not penetrate Hardened Defenses, it does no stun... flat out. Basically to simulate the "bullet hits the reinforced plate in your vest, you don't even notice" aspect that is duly documented in modern combat. It has served, when it comes up, to speed things up because the Body damage is clearly stopped by that particular hardened hit location... don't even bother calculating Stun. This could be modified to something like "If Body done is less than half of the resistant defense, no Stun is done." Probably calculates out to be similar in effect as calculating the Stun for a bad body damage roll and have it be absorbed or minimal. Again... would speed things up. Level II vest (7rPR without plates) gets hit with a 9mm, bad roll of 3 Body... "thwap, it hits, you barely notice" and move on. On the other side of things, the low Stun multiple for limb shots and such is good for "unlikley to knock you unconscious" aspect, but bad for "holy $%!^ that hurts!" aspect. I'm loathe to increase the Stun multiple, because this is more a matter of Hero struggling for the effect of "Stunned" without taking lots of "Stun damage". That has been argued and debated in many other threads, but I think applies a lot to the "I just got stabbed and it hurts like hell and I'm staggered and not fighting back for the moment, but I'm not really close to be unconscious". It falls under the "Just how much simulation is good for the game, vs. bogging you down?" question.

Right... the mantra is always "Stun multiple BEFORE... Body multiple AFTER"... for Killing Attacks because you have to know what the baseline Stun being done, is. But with Normal Attacks, you simply use the multiplier for both AFTER defenses... since Stun and Body are both determined by the damage roll. That is where it gets hinky. (4d6 punch to the face... 14 stun 4 body vs. 4 PD + 3rPD CL... 7 stun gets through, no body... x2 so 14 stun is taken. 2d6K bullet to the face, 7 body done, first multiply 7x5 for 35 stun... then 7 body vs. 3rPDCL, 4 left over x2 = 8 Body taken... 35 stun vs. 4+3 = 28 stun taken. Really, the confusion is just compounded by Normal Attack vs. Killing Attack vs. Hit Location multiplier... I've done it so long it is quick, but it can be daunting if you aren't familiar with it.)

All PCs and named combat opponents have Combat Luck. It is just a mechanical way to separate them from the mooks or non-combatant types for the feel of the game we want. The two bad guys were Callous McGee and Antonio Cabrini... and I'm writing a short story called "The Tough Life and Bad Death of Callous McGee" because I liked this bad guy and he died on the phone and that kind of tragedy deserves a story.

Well... this is a throwback mention of it... though I know I was talking about it with someone in July of last year, so I'm trying to find that more recent post. EDIT: Ah found the more recent thread...

Well, have been doing it for twenty years or more without the Speed Chart... man, closer to 30 at this point... and when we tried, just for play test sake, to go back to the SPD chart for the Champions Now playtest, we were SO frustrated. Hated going back. We have a very rapid system that works really well, and IMO speeds up HERO combat quite a bit, and we use it all the time. (It is a House Rule I and my group developed and tested over time. I think I spelled it out in at least one other thread, because I remember some PMs about it and one GM considering trying it. Let me see if I can find what I wrote.) Short of it... I and my play group hated the SPD chart for various reasons, primarily the lack of engagement by players (many different players over many play groups) whenever it wasn't "their phase" or whatever. At the basic level of having every player having an action each round, it keeps the whole table "leaning in" to see what happens as they always have at least something to contribute. The GM call, "Ok... Initiatize!" (which isn't a word, but we say it) is the moment everyone sits up, pulls out their dice and things start to happen, combat time engages, etc.

Can't tell if you are seriously asking, or being sarcastic (or facetious... or both)... but the answer to your question is "Yes, we use initiative and action rounds and not the SPD chart."

In our game this week, the ninja assassin and martial artist social terrorist (these are the PCs) facing off against the bruising professional hitman with a .460 S&W... they finally got in close after being scattered by massive shots through the walls and grenades... everyone in the room in temporarily deaf from all the concussive blasts... hitman almost cuts the social terrorist in half... ninja say, "If I'm right... I think he's out of bullets." I have him roll an INT roll, and he gets a 3. "Yep... he's out of bullets. And I'll give you plusses to initiative because you are ready for that moment. (We use initiative and combat rounds, not the SPD chart.) I immediately start cracking up as well, as I have to then tell them all about the "I rolled a 3 for that?" thread.