BobGreenwade

Ahem... You didn't list a Size characteristic for any of these. On the plus side, using Duplication for certain subordinate Vehicles is a clever idea. I wish I'd thought of it, for such things as escape pods and shuttles. Maybe if there's a second edition in the future, it can be included.

This is assuming that one is using the optional rules in DH#7. The only rules called upon were those in TUV (well, and FREd), from which those rules were cut. Thus, Life Support on a Vehicle affects the occupants, but any restrictions on where a Vehicle can go is either a Power Limitation, Physical Limitation, Susceptibility, or Special Effect. And it's spelled "Vehicle," not "Vehical."

Irrelavent. Starting the engine has nothing to do with whether the driver can breathe.

Very carefullly. Okay, for real. For game purposes, I don't think anything more than a parachute attached to the car (TUV page 71, sidebar) would be needed. A detail-minded GM might ask for an advanced suspension (extra DEF on the undercarriage, only for rough landings (-1), and/or some Flight or Gliding for the same purpose), but overall I think the parachute should be sufficient. Well, that and maybe some Life Support for the high altitude...

I thought that wasn't until September...

Making room for 5th Ed stuff I have a nicer solution... I'm just about to put most of my 3rd and 4th Edition stuff in storage. And I'm definitely buying TE. Even if I wasn't trying to buy every Hero product, I'd buy it. I'm hooked on Mon'dabi...

Zeppelins I would've included a map, but I didn't have enough Graf paper...

Well, I'm pretty much a "give credit where credit is due" kinda guy... but okay, if you say so.

"Be a..." This so makes me want to start signing books with, "Be a Bloomin' Nuisance!"

Well, I just may do that... though I will admit that only about a quarter of the published text on sailing is my own. Steve did most of the work there. OTOH I will say that most of the text on Characteristics (other than the "How Much CHA Should A Vehicle Have?" sections) is my own, as is nearly all of the stuff on mecha (the examples are 100% Steve's work). So is nearly all of the combat chapter, though Steve rearranged it rather more nicely than I had it.

Actually, if anything, the delay worked against me. It was originally to be formatted in roughly the same way that the three Fourth Edition Ultimate Books (TUMA, TUM, TUSM) were formatted, written initially as The Ultimate Giant Robot but later expanding to The Ultimate Super Vehicle. Then Steve Peterson asked that it be made into The Ultimate Vehicle, to take away the appearance that it would apply just to superheroes, and asked that I include more stuff for low-end vehicles. Then there was a year or so of delay, and finally Bruce said it would become the first supplement for 5th Edition Hero but I needed to rewrite it in accordance with the rules Steve had rewritten and also include stuff for Fuzion. Then there was another long delay, Hero changed hands to Cybergames and then to DOJ, and around it came again -- I needed to rewrite it to fit the new Fifth Edition rules (not just Steve's review manuscript), take out the Fuzion stuff... and rearrange everything to the outline in the book as you now have it. By this time, the only Fifth Edition book I had was the rulebook, and I'd only briefly gotten to glance inside the Champions genre book, so I was a bit confused as to how exactly to proceed. I did what I could, but Steve still had to cut a lot of what I wrote (only a little of that got into DH#7), add more material of his own writing, rearrange a lot of the text I'd written into the correct order (nearly all of the vehicle construction rules in Chapters Two through Seven are either moved from my Chapter One or written by Steve), add more sample Vehicles, and fix a whole lot of other stuff. In retrospect, if I were starting the manuscript today and had the other Hero books now in my possession (which is everything published so far except NH and TE), I would've come up on my own with something much closer to what Steve ended up with than what I actually turned in. So, while I'll gladly take credit for 55% of the text in the book (which is about the percentage I got paid for, and rightly so) I have to give Steve at least 75% of the credit for how great the book is. Hopefully I'll be able to redeem myself with a better job performance with a future supplement. (There are a couple of "unassigned" books on the 2005 schedule that I'd drool over, but Steve won't let me start on them. )

With the author's signature, even I would have to go with Champions!

Most of them. It does include INT and EGO as optional Characteristics (as well as PRE and COM), and a good deal of stuff scattered throughout the book on computerized abilities. The deleted computer-oriented material was, I think, mostly minor stuff that could more readily go in The Ultimate Computer or some such.

Not extensively of course, but yes -- in fact, one of the sample Vehicles is a military Powered Armor Suit (page 83).

Re: Re: Re: Driving at a distance Not at present, but there's plenty of time for it to be done before the next issue comes out. It might even be tomorrow. (OTOH It might not be done at all... I'm not in charge of that.)

Yes, though not in depth. The strongest discussion on the matter is just one paragraph (albeit a rather long one) on page 7; the general concept is touched on, often invisibly, throughout the book.

Re: Driving at a distance Not really, though the text on remote control from the final-draft manuscript I sent to Steve can be found in Digital Hero #7.

Mostly great. There were a couple of things that Steve changed or cut from my material for reasons that escape me entirely (I would've included them in DH7, but when I sent the article in to Dave I figured Steve would change them). Chief among this is the mention of volantors, which have a mention in FREd (see the Transport Familiarity table) but not in TUV. They'll probably show up in a near-future DH. That aside, I think this will be a great resource for gamers of any system. I'm giving one of my author's copies to my sister-in-law, a D20 diehard, and I'll just see if she comes up with a way to use it in her games. I heard that as well. I do know that TUV was one of the most-anticipated all-new books of the Hero line, so it doesn't much surprise me. How well it's written will be reflected in how quickly it sells out.

Re: The Ultimate Vehicle... So much for discussing the cover (which is as nice as advertised, by the way)... are there any further comments than this about the interior? Or has anyone gotten that far yet?