Toadmaster

I had read all of the books the characters were based on at one time or another except for the Quartermain stories. I bought a collection of king solomans mines, she and allan quartermain and intend to remedy the lack of knowledge. One character that I thought of that I thought would have been a nice addition was Jim West from Wild, Wild, West, the character is in the period and it seems to me it would have been fitting to have the American character be based on a TV show while all the other were from novels. Am I correct in assuming the American was supposed to be Tom Sawyer, I had that impression but didn't see any proof of that. Thanks for the tip on the discussion in the Champions forum, I don't spend much time in there.

Just curious, Saw the movie but I haven't seen the graphic novels, how did the movie do in comparison?

This reminds me of Kelly's heros when Oddball's Sherman fires a paint round into the back of a Tiger, instead of an AP round.

I was leaning towards 1/2, because choosing a load out compatible with the mission is important, and the various rounds have vast differances in effect. The idea of putting the limitation of the individual slots looks interesting but seems more complicated not less, maybe I'm reading your idea wrong. Thanks for the comments

Thanks I did find under charges that as an advantage it maxes out at +1 because that is how much 0 end costs with AF. Had I seen that before it would have made more sense to me. One of the benefits I see to the 0 end vs charges is that when combined with real weapon vehicle loads are that it is easy to assign a total load of say 5000 rounds to be used in all the guns rather than assigning 2500 to each gun which than technically can not be used in the other gun. For the main gun which is fairly limited in the number of rounds and which has a variety of rounds to choose from (AP, HE, smoke etc) I have no problem with using charges. Thanks for the comments, I agree with what many of you said about the effect of having thousands of rounds that there is little differance between 5000 charges and 0 end, but TUV lists vehicles with 1000+ charges so I wanted to double check that I wasn't missing something.

Thanks Since it was WP and is not supposed to be as thick a smoke screen as HC but is instantaneous instead of taking time to build up (I'm going to do HC as darkness with a delay limitation) I went ahaed and did it as a change environment -4, heavy fog was -3 so I figured a heavy chemical smoke would be about like night (plus I'm sure it cause ones eyes to tear up etc, unlike fog)

On a multipower with charges (tank gun) there are three slots (rounds), the number of each slot must be assigned when the tank is reloaded (they are not magical universal rounds) so the player must assign x# of the charges to AP, x# to HE and x# to smoke. I was debating between 1/4 and 1/2, I'd like some opinions.

I was building the main gun for a Sherman tank as a multipower RKA (AP shot) Energy blast explosion (HE shell) and Energy blast aoe, with darkness (WP incendiary smoke shell) While the other two rounds came in at about 250 points, but the WP shell was almost 700 points due largely to the darkness (120 points for 12" radius). I hadn't realized how expensive darkness was. My question is am I reading it right, 10 points for 1", 10 points for each additional 1" radius, Change environment is 5 pts for the first inch and 5 pts for each doubling of the radius, it seems that maybe that is how darkness is supposed to read (2x radius not +1" radius) since that seems to be how almost all other AoE powers work.

Maybe I'm just not seeing it but I can't find any reason to buy 33+ charges instead of 0 Endurance, both are +1/2 advantages. I can understand that charges could be used for a magazine in a gun but unless you have less than 33 charges it is not cost effective. As far as special effect, it seems like using the 0 Endurance and the Real weapon lim to restrict the number of rounds carried to a "realistic" amount (couple of magazines of a reasonable size) would be more elegant. This came up while I was building a Sherman tank, it carries 97 rounds for the main gun, 5000 rounds for the .30 cal machineguns and 1000 rounds for the .50 cal machine gun. I was going to use charges but then I came up with this argument. Any reason I shouldn't use 0 end instead of charges?

The Danger Int'l module "Here there be tigers" by Firebird ltd has a very nice selection of military package deals, of course these are 3rd ed but should be a good start, I am using it along with An Eye for an eye to help me make military packages. I see it on ebay from time to time. You also might find Twilight 2000 by GDW helpful for both packages and general military info such as rank and equipment issue. Again commonly seen on ebay and Far Future Enterprises is reprinting Twilight 2000. These websites might be helpful http://www.pmulcahy.com/ this one is for Twilight 2000 but has tons of useful info for military RPG's in general. http://www.fas.org/ This one takes some digging but has a lot of info you might find useful such as who uses what weapons system etc.

Also keep in mind the examples you gave are all basically infantry weapons, once you reach the most efficient level of damage for seriously wounding a human anything more is inefficient, if you look at 19th to 20th century weapons they are actually getting less powerful, during the Civil war you had .50 caliber rifles (2d6 - 2d6+1, +1 or +2 stn), by the early 20th century most nations were using a 6.5-8mm bullet (roughly 2d6+1, +1 stn), by the beginnig of the 21st century (now) most militaries are using 5.5mm weapon (2d6-1 or 2d6, Stn +0 or +1), the benefit to going smaller is the much larger ammo loads individuals can carry. So the weapons in StarHero are not neccessarily the most powerful possible just what is powerful enough to do the job. Considering that each +1 is twice the power energy weapons would likely rapidly increase in size and weight or have severely limited ammo. Of course body armor advances could completely screw this theory up and you could get into the common GURPS complaint in which high tech weapons either vaporize the target or do nothing based on the armor worn.

You may find this helpful http://www.sclegacy.com/sections.php?op=listarticles&secid=9 Thanks for the tip on the Starcraft RPG but I'm on the other end of the state, I should probably think about searching ebay, don't know why I haven't done so before.

If you recognize my Avitar you will know I am a fan of Starcraft. The old boards had several discussions related to converting Starcraft and might be worth searching for ideas, I was starting a conversion but never got very far. I thought HERO would be a really good system to play it with and have been looking for the Starcraft RPG that was based on Alternity for ideas but have had no luck, there was also a good website listing the various critters that would be very helpful (it broke them down to their hit points attack strength etc in the computer game) but I haven't been able to find it lately, not sure if it is still around or not.

Good job on Killer Queen, I like it. I once made a character based on the video for Y&T's Mean streak, in the video they had a woman in a skin tight black leather or vinyl outfit with a red hour glass on her abdomen. Of course the character was the "Black Widow" sort of a female spiderman but with a little bit of the punisher thrown in for good measure. Now Rob Zombie would probably be able to supply a few ideas as well, Living Dead Girl, Superbeast and Rob Zombie himself would probably translate quite well. I remember a really bad KISS movie which gave the band the powers of their outfits. Then you could also do Steely Dan, and their song Kid Charlemange could probably supply an obnoxious super genious.

How could you people forget Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Suppressors are quite effective at reducing muzzle flash as well as sound, so I'd go with the second method and then RP that shots at close range might be heard. The US military has been issuing muzzle blast suppressors to special ops types for a few years now because of this, these are small sound suppressors meant to reduce noise and muzzle blast, but not completely eliminate them, this makes it harder for them to be found based on the weapons signiture but does not provide the advantage of a full suppressor which might not even alert the enemy to their presence. A sound suppressor (or silencer if you like) is not the same as a flash suppressor, a sound suppressor makes a dramatic reduction in noise (really good ones are about as loud as opening a can of soda, excellent ones are nearly silent) and also eliminates most of the flash and blast which is why they are sometimes issued to "snipers" even though they are using supersonic ammo, it makes it much harder to spot the shooter since there is little muzzle blast. An additional bonus is suppressors provide some recoil reduction. A flash suppressor on the other hand as Trebuchet mentioned is simply meant to reduce the flash from the shooter, often it actually increases the flash from other angles.

Racer X (who is secretly Speeds older brother)...... Yes I think we know that by know, Thank You Yes I too just got the Speed Racer DVD. The points about the series being focused on Speed are true but assuming that the racer team has been very successful, team Racer should be able to hire additional drivers (remember in the first episode Pops is designing the Mach 5's replacement), so surely they would need drivers for the Mach 6, Mach 7 etc. I'm not likely to do the work for a Speed Racer campaign, but if I saw one offered at a con I'd probably try to get into it.

PA is one of my favorite genres so I would love to see PA Hero but I also find it to be one of the easier genres to create, since it basically uses modern equipment and perhaps some lower tech sci fi equipment. Rules for aliens (StarHero), Supers (Champions) or Fantasy (FH) provide most of what you need to create mutants if you so desire. However these why no PA Hero threds come up regularly, so what exactly are people looking for in a PA Hero genre book? (Specifics please, I just might get around to a website so ideas would be useful). Until Hero produces a book, I would highly recommend finding a copy of Fantasy Games Unlimited's Aftermath, it is the best generic PA resource I've found. The rules are complex and kinda funky but it is full of useful material for building a PA world, includes many ways for TEOTWAWKI, building a world from during the end to 100 or more years after, mutants, radiation etc. I see it on ebay frequently, usually goes for less than $20.

Re: Re: Kick and shots per minute I've fired .50 cal civil war replicas and was surprised how light the recoil was, My .303 Enfield kicks much harder and I'd compare it to my Mini-14 in 5.56mm.

Dark Champions is more than just a sub genre of Champions, it is also going to be "Modern Hero" taking the place of the old Danger International, I would suspect that like StarHero it might have a small section discussing PA genre. Terran Empire, Xeno wars etc are support material for StarHero, Hero is making an effort not to put out a genre book without support material, which is why they are generally putting out 2 genre books per year, I would guess this also helps when they have to cut stuff from a genre book because they can always stick good stuff they cut into one of the supporting books. I believe Ninja Hero was practically done already so it was simple to produce, plus it could be seen as supporting material for the Ultimate Martial Artist. Western Hero, Cyber Hero etc are down the line quite a way so I don't think you can positively say they are ahead of a PA Hero but I'd guess Western is. PA has been a popular niche genre since the early 1980's when Aftermath came out, I doubt interest for it will die off in the next 3 years. Finally PA is an easy genre to do yourself. if you really can't wait http://home.attbi.com/~TheGM/SE/savage.html is supposed to be well done, its not my type of PA setting since its more Gamma World like but I know many here have had good comments about it and I think the webmaster frequents the Hero disscusion boards.

PA is one of my favorite genres but I can see why it is way down on the list. It really doesn't require much that is not in StarHERO or will be in Dark Champions except for a specific world one of which will not suffice, a Gamma world setting is not going to make a Twilight 2000 player happy, and neither would work for someone looking for a Fallout or Madmax setting. There are plenty of good PA games out there and HERO can convert most of them. d20 has a few books in the works, Morrow Project is still available. Aftermath and Twilight 2000 are readily available on ebay and there are several PA HERO sites on the internet.

Thanks for the help everybody. Gary, I have a slow dial up connection and the dice calculator looks like it will be pretty helpful for my future needs, but thanks for the offer, if I ever get around to DSL I'll take you up on it. Thanks.

I've been reading through some older RPG's I've got and some use unconventional die rolling (not d20, % or 3d6 which seem to be the most common). I know there are some here who are good at figuring die rolling odds statistics (and even some who seem to it like too, sicko's ). So if you don't mind I'd like the odds of rolling various outcomes for: 2d6 2d8 2d10 (2-20 not %) 3d6 (HERO, Gurps) 3d8 3d10 4d6 I assume d20 and d% are a straight 5%, 1% if not I'd be interested in how those roll. Thanks

With a rather benign class system like 20th century England I would think an advantage for belonging to the upper class would be more appropriate, the upper classes had some advantages compared to lower classes but not really any additional rights (except those unofficial ones money can buy, like good lawyers). I'd use lower class as a disadvantage for situations where the lower classes actually have less legal status (I love my peasants, PULL.... Bam, oooh a little low) or serious restrictions on their day to day rights.

Sleep really is over rated, sure it takes awhile to get past the sleep deprivation halucinations, and you get some strange looks from passerbys when you start wandering about talking to those same halucinations or take a quick cat nap in your soup, but after a few weeks your mind really expands and you can get some great inspirations from conversations with your dresser, bathroom towel rack or the dog next doorrrrrrrr......ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ For those who really need a fix for Justice Inc, I often see the old one on ebay pretty cheap, you can find FGU's Daredevils occasionally, CoC is still one of the best resources for 1920's RPGs and GURPS has re-released Cliffhangers. Winston Churchill must have been quite a guy, no sleep and lots of booze, maybe we need to elect a president that not only admits to inhaling but is proud of it, I can see the next inauguration, as the president elect arrives in a smoke filled limo blaring Bob Marley, snow boards down to the stage and has to brush the dredlocks out of his face to read the speach.