pawsplay

Another thing about cellphones worth noting is that you can't have a secret identity and have one. Apart from collecting all sorts of identifying information, cell phones are easily cracker, and the hacker can access not only your data but your camera and microphone. So a superhero in their costumed identity could at most use a prepaid "burner" phone.

I like the Champions Complete book enough that I like it as a reference, even though I have the 6e books in PDF. Others may or may not feel it's worth the extra expense.

The Turakian Age is probably the Hero setting I know the least about. For a 6e player, where should I jump in?

7 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

 

Yeah and that's the idea I had that led to posting this thread: what was once amazing and super powered stuff is now mundane and ordinary.  I wrote both The Island of Dr Destroyer and the upcoming Champions Begins with the assumption that every superhero is also carrying around a smart phone of some sort (probably a cheap disposable so they can't be tracked in their secret identity, but still)

 

Absolutely. Back in the day, you had Dick Tracy with his radio watch. Then in the 1980s, you have Batman running around with a micro camera and a micro cassette recorder on his utility belt.

I don't know if I would call it outright silly, but I did run a game that got really strange. The villain I created used illusion powers to pretend to be a pair of card-themed villains.

More clearly in the silly column, I ran a game where one of the players settled on "textile powers" gained from "a freak textile mill accident." The whole tone of the campaign shifted to this sort of Silver Age parody crossed with Doom Patrol. One of the players made a brooding, intangible assassin with a Russian accent, which seemed somehow even more hilarious in context.

I think before we talk about moral insight, we should talk about facts. Lincoln did not set out to end slavery, Lincoln did not end slavery at the beginning of the Civil War, Lincoln did not end slavery with the Emancipation proclamation. He wrote a letter to Horace Greeley stating that slaves could wait indefinitely to be freed if it preserved the Union. If you can't grapple with these facts, it is you who aren't ready to have this discussion.

3 hours ago, Iuz the Evil said:

And he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Anyone want to propose a greater single impact on civil rights then ending the legal practice of slavery? Love to hear it.

 

 You can say “yeah but” or “if only he’d” but he arguably did more for that cause than any American before or since with that action.

Lincoln didn't end the practice of slavery. He condoned it for years during the war. The Emancipation Proclamation affected only rebels. Lincoln was okay with letting Black people pay the price with their bodies and freedoms to maintain the Union.

2 hours ago, Iuz the Evil said:

I had a lengthy response but will just say, I cannot accept the use of modern standards for behavior applied retroactively to Abraham Lincoln. That strikes me as a revisionist standard that no human being of any era would withstand the scrutiny of. Particularly any human being in a leadership role. But really anyone.

 

 Anyway, carry on. I will continue to consider him one of the few truly great Presidents and a champion of his time for human liberty. Errors and all.

Ok but can he withstand the criticism of his contemporaries?

Quote

Mr. Lincoln… while admitting the right to hold men as slaves in the States already existing, regards such property as peculiar, exceptional, local, generally an evil, and not to be extended beyond the limits of the States where it is established by what is called positive law.  Whoever live through the next four years will see Mr. Lincoln and his Administration attacked more bitterly for their pro-slavery truckling, than for doing any anti-slavery work. - F. Douglass

For me, Charles de Lint defines the heart of the genre as I appreciate it. Beyond that, I look at off-the-wall comic books (Constantine, Doom Patrol, The Books of Magic, Hellboy), Diane Duane's High Wizardry, Vampire: The Masquerade and its spinoffs, the literary Interview with the Vampire.

20 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

Lincoln wouldn't be there either.

I don't know about that. Lincoln had a very broad coalition that sought to unite Radical Abolitionists with more moderate members. At the outset of the Civil War, he continued to countenance slavery. He started a steep escalation of genocide against Native Americans. He suspended habeas corpus, and expanded emergency powers in ways unprecedented in the USA. He had legislators from rebel states arrested and removed from Congress in order to create the majorities he needed to pass legislation.

As much as I admire Lincoln as a skilled statesman, and accepting that he may have done the best he could with the situation as he saw it as the time, in the fullness of history, I have to count him among the white supremacists, of which Trump is one scion. In saving the Union, Lincoln did vast damage to democracy, from which we are still feeling the reverberations.

Citizens United was wrong because it incorrectly asserted that corporations have the same rights to free speech as people. $ = free speech is correct, by many Supreme Court rulings, as well as broader principles regarding the actual exercise of rights versus nominal rights. Just as it has been established that the right to an attorney is meaningless if you don't have one, and one must be provided for you, the exercise of free speech is meaningless if you can't spend money on pamphlets, ads, staff, etc. Like it or not, raised tent politics are baked into the American system.

What we need are some laws, with teeth, that ensure corporations act in accordance with the public benefit, and that they don't become immortal, amoral "people" that aggregate the interests of the wealthy. Certainly, I would hate to see labor unions prohibited from aiding in any way the campaign of an elected official.

Mind Link 5cp, No Line of Sight +10, up to 16 participants (Conference Call) + 15 = 30 Active Points, Only to others with a cell phone & requires knowledge of their phone number -1, OAF fragile -1 1/4, 1 easily recoverable fuel Charge, lasts 6 hours -0, Counts as Radio Sense -0, Counts as more than one sense (must be able to hear or see the call) (-1/4), Limited Requires a cell phone carrier -1/2, Real Weapon (-1/4), Variable Limitations (-1/2 of Gestures, Incantations, and Extra Time) -1/4

real cost: 7

I would probably buy it as a Unified Power rather than a Multipower, much cheaper. I'm sure most of its functions work out to be about 1 real point each.

One thing I learned is that police often used secure communication devices, and sometimes agencies have problems coordinating using the same technology.

Big RPG publishers hate websites for the same reason Amazon hates unions. They don't want a place for the fans to gather together and exchange culture without the filter of monetization.

A heroic ogre

A magical statue that just came to life a month ago and has almost no skills but speaks a half dozen languages and is as powerful as an armored knight

A talking horse

A former pickpocket turned friar and then vampire hunter

I can't prove it scientifically, but I've always been convinced Cap's shield provides exactly +2d6 N. Obviously he will always use it when available, but his Martial Strike with a shield does the same damage as his Offensive Strike without it, and that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

There is no problem with applying CSLs, provided they are sufficiently broad. You just can't specialize in Multiple Attacks.

If you are really stuck on having an Autofire attack, you could make a minigun as Duplication or a Follower.

Or you could make a "multi-blaster attack" with Autofire and define that each hit is a different blaster.

Or maybe it looks like Autofire but you have a version that is single-fire for use with Multiple Actions.

Or maybe you buy +1 Speed, Only with automated weapon systems -1/4, which requires you to use one of the related weapon systems and doesn't allow unrelated actions during that Phase apart from normal movement.

Moorcock has some stories in which Chaos is clearly evil and Order is clearly good. But there are examples of malign powers of Order as well, things so powerful they just don't consider individual humans that important. Notably Corum and Elric are champions of Balance; Corum comes from a society of Order that fell into weakness and acts as a bulwark against Chaos, Elric comes from a society of Chaos but rebels against it and the cruel embrace of power and chaotic demons. In general, Order is "good" but you don't want too much of it, Chaos can mean "evil" but is also the font of creativity, magic, and organic life, and it was from Chaos that something came out of nothing.

Apollo and Artemis were the Greek gods of disease. A god of disease would be a punisher of impiety, whether disrespect to the gods or against nature. Overweening pride, wastefulness, sloth, insults, breaches of customs and hospitality, and other obnoxious behavior would be sins.

The Greek god of wealth was Plutus, who represented wealth as plenty. The cornucopia was a symbol. This god would smile on commerce, agricultural planning, generosity, and thrift. The Romans honored Mercury, who was a patron of wealth, thieves, trickery, sciences, and all sorts of cunning, intelligence, and gain.

I'm guessing the answer is a mixture of "legacy reasons" and "to subsidize non-powered, more or less human melee characters." It's a nice discount, but it's still a lot of points if you tried to throw it on top of some serious Strength.

On 3/19/2021 at 6:13 PM, Duke Bushido said:

When we get done with this, can we move on to bouncing punches, please? 

 

 

That's a Surprise Attack. A bouncing Blast is actually a kind of trick punch, but at a range...

Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't you just buy all the attacks, and use them variously for Multiple Attacks and Combined Attacks?

The points I would make are

1. Haymaker is allowed with all sorts of attacks
2. There is a good rationale for most uses
3. The name is not inappropriate

In general, I would say that it should be allowed unless it produces a nonsensical result. Characters can't "see" the game mechanics being used, so as long as it has a slow windup, imposes some penalties, and deals extra DC, it shouldn't be a problem if Haymakers themselves are allowed. Just because you can doesn't mean you should, but conversely, just because something is unusual doesn't mean it should be disallowed. I mean, I have seen plenty of "person to frog" spells in movies that really do look like Haymakers, and further, this gets around reasonable DC caps that may be in place while still allowing characters to output stronger Attack powers as called for.

I already posted a link above that notes a Haymaker is "a strong hit." Whether or not you like a given dictionary source, I think the argument is done whether a broader meaning is accepted by some people out in the real world.

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Sure, follow them as you want, I was just discussing how it works in the real world and what makes sense.  The only reason Haymaker was extended to any other attacks was simply "its not fair I can't haymaker my energy blast".  Its one of those meta game mechanic things that has no validity in the world.

In the real world, a haymaker usually wouldn't even be a Haymaker, it would be an Offensive Strike. I know in 4e, the edition i started with, my relationship with Haymakers mainly centered on a wacko vigilante character I made who used a staff. With his high Speed, he could take advantage of Haymakers in ways other characters could not. The reason it was extended to other attacks is because a general case was better than every other sourcebook laying out a special case.

Hero System is effects-based, and there is no reason a certain kind of punch should get the delayed segment, reduced DCV, and +4 DC, and other attacks shouldn't. There are plenty of examples where this same kind of wind-up attack would apply, from energy blasters doing the glowie thing to the stone cold police detective doing a firing range perfect stance and putting down a bad guy.

And as far as bouncing a melee attack goes, you can already use Acrobatics and Surprise Moves with a punch.

EDIT: I looked it up, and the word haymaker is already used in a general sense, not just for punches. Eg.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/haymaker