Neverway

15 hours ago, drunkonduty said:

On a tangential topic - I've been wondering about Shrinking recently. I was re-watching some Antman, and Wasp fight scenes on youtube. In the movies the guys shrink but don't seem to lose much mass or physical strength. Well, except when the story wants them too. That's an inconsistency for the movie makers to deal with.

 

What it did was get me thinking about is how I'd like to model Shrinking while staying consistent. Should it come with limitations to reduce Strength and movement in proportion? Extra Knockback is built into the Shrinking  power, but if I'm not insisting that STR be proportional  then why should mass be proportional? Multiform was mentioned above and obviously that allows one to model the power in a different way than buying Shrinking with side effects (or conversely putting limitations on STR and move powers.) So many choices...

 

So how do you guys model shrinking?

 

This is just a theoretical for discussion purposes. In an actual game situation I'd let the player model it however they want and come up with whatever BS they want to justify it.

Mass, as has been pointed out, decreases as levels of Shrinking increase.  As to strength and movement decreasing:

6E1-283 under the Shrinking Power:

Reduced By Shrinking (-¼): If a character wants
to lose some abilities — such as STR, or the full
power of his Blast, or the like — he can use this
Limitation, which is described above.

5eR says approximately the same thing on page 219 under Using Shrinking. 

So add "reduced by shrinking" to the character's STR and Movement powers?

Toxxus' "decreased striking surface area means more damage/penetration"  could be done with a linked HA or HKA, I'd think.

Grandfather Paradox solved... maybe:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-travel-simulation-resolves-grandfather-paradox/

Short version:  Schrödinger's Grandpa

Re: Types of Superheroes/Villains

Technically I believe Hulk and She-Hulk (and several Flashes, all of the Fantastic Four, etc) are called Mutates. I.E. they start life as relatively normal human beings then some circumstance comes along and Mutates them into beings with super powers. Mutants are born with their powers (or with the potential for them, this usually doesn't immediately manifest at birth) and in Marvel anyway all share the X-gene so that they are a distinct species from humanity. It is sort of a grey area at times. Many people over the years have blamed the x-gene's very existence on the amount of radiation humanity is exposed to on a constant basis, among other reasons (if it was ever defined clearer than that I am not aware of it, but while I am a fan of the X-Men I have not been able to collect their comics for years.)

 

I remember an old Supes RPG (I believe it was Marvel FASERIP) that presented classifications for origins of super powers. Note that this list is from memory from 20 years ago so I am NOT saying it is an accurate representation of the information made available in whatever product it was originally from:

 

Mutants: Born with innate powers (X-men)

Mutates: Born normal for their species, but later changed in some way to gain their powers (Flash, Hulk, etc)

Granted: Powers are given to the person by some external intelligent force (Captain Marvel) NOTE: This generally does not apply when the powers are granted through an item.

Tech: Powers are based upon some form of "item" that grants the ability to the user, everything from weapons to power rings to limited Duration drugs that grant super powers (Iron Man)

Mystic: Powers are based upon training and knowledge, everything from martial artists to most Magic Users fit here (If the use of magic requires an essential spark then it also shares origin with either Alien or Mutant, depending upon the campaign. (Dr. Strange, White Tiger)

Alien: Super is a member of a race of beings that all possess similar powers (Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Hawk-Woman)

 

Those are the ones I can remember, however I feel like I am missing a couple.

 

Of course many supers dip into multiple "origins" to explain all their powers. Batman is Tech/Mystic, Wonder Woman is Alien/Tech.. Modern Era Wonder Woman is Granted/Tech, etc.

The Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP) Player's Guide lists the types of possible Super Heroes as:

Altered Human

Mutant

Hi-Tech

Robot

Alien

The Ultimate Powers book increased the list to 42 entries (unless I miscounted) including three different types of Mutants (Induced, Random, and Breed - the FF are given as an example of Induced Mutant) and four types of Modified Humans, but no Mutates I'm afraid. Possibly you are recalling nonRPG Marvel material as Wikipedia explains Mutate_(comics) as you do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutate_%28comics%29

Re: LEGIONS OF HELL Now Available!

aaaaaaaaand... Purchased!

aaaaaaaaand... Downloaded!

Now, to read.

While perusing the web, I happened across a couple of nifties from PopChartLab. If you don't want to click the link, these are images of posters (18" x 24") available for $27. Very helpful for people like me who have difficulty coming up with character concepts. Or people who just like superheroes.

But not so nifty that I'm going to drop $54 on them. Especially since they look to be the same chart with slightly different visual styles.

Re: Planetary Value?

A question, then, for you, the person reading this now. You learn that the Earth will be destroyed in a few years, with absolute certainty... unless you, along with everyone else on the planet, works very hard over those years to avert its doom, making considerable sacrifices and facing no small amount of hardship. However, you're presented with an alternative: you, your loved ones, and every other human being on the planet can be transported to another world, as habitable and resource-rich as this one, where you can start your life again. Facilities are already in place on that planet to make life much easier than it would be while you were trying to save the Earth. However, you can bring only small items of personal property. Every building and monument, every animal and plant species on Earth (barring your pets which you can bring along), will be lost forever.

 

It's given to you to make that choice for the whole world. What do you choose?

I am a person who is reading this. Right now. When I read this, I was reminded of people who refuse to leave their homes even in the face of certain disaster. I've seen people, locally, refuse to evacuate in the face of advancing forest fires and at least one of the people who died in the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens did so because he refused to leave his home no matter what.

Given that you stated that hard work would defenitely save the Earth, I'm certain that a large percentage of the human race would choose to do so rather than run like cowards. My children are old enough now that I can think of myself instead of them and I'd like to think that I'd be with the people working to save our home.

Re: Does Aid go to Active points or Real?

Note that while aid doesnt affect the negative body for Death, it DOES affect negative body, for instance if you have base 15 body, and your at -10 body, a 12 pt aid would put you at -4 body (Body is considered a defense power so aid is only 1/2 as effective). This is why i believe my construct would work. The rule Christopher stated is that even tho, in this example, the character would have a max BODY of 21 (15 + the 6 points from the Aid), he would still "die" at -15, NOT -21 Body.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong Christopher (since in that case i need to know as well )

I'm not Christopher, but if he is citing 6E1 page 141, I'd say you're right. I also agree with psyber624 that all you need to do is slap a custom limitation (and possibly increased fade rate) on Aid to get the effect you want. Remebering, as cited above, that Body counts as a Defensinve Power for purposes of costing Aid.

Re: More space news!

Cute. But one of the links from that video was this one of honkin' fast photography. As in "so fast they have to correct the images for Relativity effects. As in, "so fast they can watch light move".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoHeWgLvlXI

Re: New Magic PDF From Steve: DESERT MAGIC

I don't know if random posts in the forum are meaningful since you can track sales in the store, but I just bought the whole slew of them. Now on to reading!

Re: More space news!

Black hole caught destroying star

NASA has a simulation Here

Re: More Railgun

Cool! As long as all we want it for is firing squads' date=' it's a viable tech now![/quote']

 

All that's left is engineering. Putting the demo gun in a turret with train and elevation abilities presents little in the way of difficulties. The question is how many shots can you get from it before having to replace pretty much everything?

 

Railguns use a ton of electromagnetic energy...

 

... I'm not thinking we're going to be getting many technical details.

Re: Physical Manifestation

I generally don't reply to rules discussions for the same reason I generally don't reply to most threads (the less I talk, the less I look like and idiot), but moreso. However, I've been thinking about PM a bit myself though I've come to different conclusions. I hope you don't mind that I've cut your post appart to slip in my thoughts

I have been looking at Physical Manifestation (PM) as it has been discussed on a recent thread: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/88786-Demonic-Swarm

 

Looking at it, there seem to be some issues that could do with discussing.

 

Physical Manifestation gives an opponent the ability to 'break' a power. The first problem is that it seems to work pretty much like a focus in terms of toughness, but you are never without it. So that is issue one: no cost differentiation between PM and a, inaccessible, inobvious focus (IIF), even though the latter if far more of a limitation (e.g. it can be taken off you, depriving you of access to the power)

Since there's nothing about PM that makes the power or its source invisible, I think OIF would be a better comparison in which case it comes out looking to be about the right cost. Given that an inaccessible focus generally won't be taken away from you in battle, PM on most powers should play out exactly as OIF until someone gets captured/defeated.

If you have (say) a power like this: limitation Stonewall: Barrier 12 PD/12 ED, 0 BODY (up to 16m long, 6m tall, and 1m thick) 60 active and real points, then you save 12 points if you tack PM on to it BUT there is no actual disadvantage: the toughness of the PM would greater than the defence of the barrier, and any damage through defence would shatter the whole barrier anyway.

 

Perhaps the toughness of PM is too high: if you made it (at most) 1 point per 10 active points in the power, that would differentiate from IIF and also make it more worth the -1/4 you get for it.

This is one of the reasons we have GMs, to stomp on ideas like this; PM shouldn't be allowed for powers that already have a physical componant any more than "Costs End" should be allowed for powers that already cost end. I'm not married to any particualr scheme for toughness so have no particular objection to your sugestion other than prefering to use already extant rules rather than making up new ones for every case.

Another issue is that the DCV of the PM is based on the character's DCV (it still says in 6e 'i.e. as calculated from DEX')' date=' which means that it is much less of a problem for high DCV characters to take this limitation than low DCV characters. To give it more universal applicability it should have either a fixed value (perhaps agreed with the GM as an average value for the campaign) or be automatically hit if targeted.[/quote']

 

The power I tend to think of when looking at PM is TK and I think that such a power (TK w/PM) would logically benefit from the charater's DCV. On the other hand, the book's example of ice slides as + Running, PM looks more like it ought to be DCV 3, the ice slide being stationary. Perhaps allowing an aditional -1/4 of a disadvantage for using DCV 3 instead of the character's DCV when appropriate? You run into granularity issues with that though, is DCV 3 really worth an entire -1/4? What if the character's DCV is 3 or 4 like a Fantasy Hero Wizard?

 

Part of the issue I have with the limitation is one that I have with a lot of powers: how is someone going to know that what they are seeing is a PM and not a simple SFX? One of the example powers in 6e is Running (useable as flight) with PM - ice slides. The problem is that someone looking at this power will not KNOW that they can blow the ice slides apart to stop the power. If someone tried that and it was just sfx, I would probably have ruled that an ice slide could be targeted anyway as part of the sfx (and perhaps allow the slider to tow another character or two 'for free). It does not seem to add anything, and this is a book example. Moreover, it is only ever really going to be a problem when you are using it in flight mode: if someone stops your running between phases, you just start it up again with no penalty.

 

I would probably have to rule that PM can only be used where there is no other way of stopping a power (for example a constant attack). Otherwise it really does not seem to add a lot to the power.

 

This comes down to the GM again, if the power has a disadvantage on it, it should be described in a way that makes it clear that the disavantage exists (except for inobvious focii where it's less of a disadvantage to not be noticed). Back when I read comic books, no one seemed to have trouble picking out when attacking a power would have any effect or not; or at least that's how I view it since comic books don't have to follow game rules.

 

Finally the description in the book specifically mentions that re-activating a power should take a lot of time or effort, or similar BUT does not define what that means: is a delayed phase enough, or should it be at least a turn. I know the GM has discretion but it would be nice to have a place to start from. Given that an opponent has to spend an attack to deactivate the power, I would suggest that it should take at least an extra phase, possibly a full turn to switch a power on before you get a limitation value for PM.

 

Thoughts?

 

The language seems in line with Only In Alternate ID, but I see your point here. Extra Phase seems to be about right.

Re: 1800 Trek

Alas, only five attachments per post, so Uhura is all by herself (if I knew it was going to work out like this, I would have done Kirk by himself )

[ATTACH=CONFIG]41967[/ATTACH]

I don't recall seeing these posted before. Now, through the magic of Photoshop:

Re: Book of the Empress

The weekend got kind of busy, but I finally managed to finish BotE. I must agree with LL about both the Empress and Kharrl Korathon; I was reading along, dismissing most of the "destroy everything" and "kill everyone" bits as unfortunate by-products of war, then hit that. She can be one stone cold %@%^# when she needs to.

The sections on V'ehicles made my eyes glaze over, it's invaluable for someone running a game where V'han's starships will be assaulted or for a Star Hero GM to lift, but that someone isn't me. The sections on how the multiverse is put together and how to make your own are from The Mystic World (including the art) but Edited For Content and to Fit on Your Screen, though I'm too lazy to do a side by side comparison to see what new stuff was added other than mentions of Istvatha V’han. The various example dimensions , old and new, were all well done and fun. All-in-all it's a good book, well up to Hero Games' standards and a good read. Even if I won't use most of it I don't feel like a chump for kicking in $25, even without the "Support Hero Games today so they'll be here tomorrow" factor.

I only have one major complaint: Given its overwhelming importance to both the CU and the world in general, why did Foxbatworld receive such a small write-up?

Re: Book of the Empress

I've managed to download the file without having to install the software on my computer: You have to read the lines under the "Download Dropbox" button.

I clicked on the link and downloaded it from the web. I do have an account already with DropBox' date=' but I didin't have to install software to get it (in fact I typically access DropBox via the web).[/quote']

 

Yesterday Jason sent out Dropbox links to everyone we had e-mail addresses for so they could get the BotE PDF that way. As several of you have already found out' date=' it seems to be possible for you to use that link and get the PDF without having to install and download the Dropbox software itself.[/quote']

 

I be unsmart.

 

That said, Chapter 2 (written as I read): Largest! Character Sheet! Ever! Although it's probably on par with other Book of the es. There's nothing really surprising in the first part, most of it was covered in various forum conversations about Her Empressness, but it goes into a lot of nice detail.

 

Minor typo, the sidebar on her time travel ability on page 23 uses the phrase "The second, representing precise control over short-term time travel, allows her travel back in time up to a week day and start the events of that period all over again..." a quick look at the actual power write up shows that it's supposed to be "week".

 

Hmmm, her Replay ability (and her near constant use of it) and her general desire to have only one V'han at a time seem at odds with each other. I wonder how that works out. Also, I find it odd that she schedules her time by the objective clock. Work from 6 Am to midday, Replaying those hours over and over again to get all her meetings etc in, then going to leisure time. As opposed to dividing work and play in subjective time, attending (for example) three meetings (all happening at the same time thanks to her Replay ability) then heading off for some fun before coming back for a couple more meetings during the same hours.

 

There's some interesting bits on her time travel that make me eager for Time Travel Hero to come up on the Kickstarter rotation.

 

While the Other Genres section doesn't really have too much to offer (what are you going to do with a dimensional conqueror?) I do like the idea of using her instead of your bog standard Dark Lord in a Fantasy campaign. "Why are you trying to stop someone who is trying to make the world better for everyone? Because she doesn't have the right relatives?"

 

Art: There's a nice Storn piece on page 23 that I like, which is odd since I generally find his work to stiff and "posed" for my tastes. Other art in the chapter is... not up to the same level (imo, of course).

 

Now, on to Chapter 3!

Re: Book of the Empress

I've managed to download the file without having to install the software on my computer: You have to read the lines under the "Download Dropbox" button.

 

Haven't had time to read it yet, but it seems to be very interesting. Just a little disappointment when I found only black&white pictures in the book, but I guess that delays and costs would have been totally different...

Cost. Apparently going to full color raises costs by almost an order of magnitude. It seems artists want to be paid more to break out the crayons.

I'm now regretting not loading BotE onto my Color Nook as I would have been able to sneak reading it while at work.

Re: Book of the Empress

All right, I've finished the Introduction and Chapter 1 "A Crusade Across Realities: The History Of Istvatha V’han." I'm not a superhero fan, but there were a couple of things that almost made me want to squee in glee. Admittedly, one was pretty close to a "Take That" for a few posts on this board. Specifically, the bit in the Intro about "Realism."

That aside, the first chapter being presented as excerpts from the official V’hanian histories as well as rebel tracts was fun, even if it did leave me wondering what "really" happened. My favorite bit by far has got to be the following:

She became convinced she could could manage peoples’ lives better than they could manage them themselves — an attitude that in anyone else would seem to be the height of arrogance, but which in future Empress Istvatha was merely the first stirrings of her career.

On the other hand, we seem to have been given the Empress's entire history without any illustrations of Istvatha V’han as a petulant 16 year old. I am disappointed. Very, very disappointed.

EDIT: Unfortunately, that's as far as I am going to get tonight as I have to get up early for work tomorrow. I'm sure someone with less need/desire for sleep than me will post more by the time I get up. tomorrow

It's here! I got the pdf, straight from Hero Games a little bit ago. I can't say I like having to download a program to get the file (dropbox), but I can't think of any good alternatives so I'll just have to cope. Also, I think my attempts to get a copy of the file onto my computer caused everyone who got it before me to be notified of two extra copies. Sorry guys.

Enough talking, now I need to read it!

Re: Video Game Martial Arts (Coments Welcomed)

It doesn't look too different from what you did with 5th. I'll have to have a closer look/compare and contrast when I get home (presuming I remember once I get home... that's getting to be more and more of an issue )

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/577-Fighting-Game-Hero?p=717290#post717290

Re: Transcript of Steve Long's MYTHIC HERO chat -- Feb. 22, 2012

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Lord Liaden again. Alas.

Thank you for posting this.

Re: MYTHIC HERO Kickstarter

After watching the video on the Kickstarter page I'm a bit confused. I could have sworn that Steve had said he wasn't going to put stuff like how to play demigods and gods or how to make your own gods and pantheons into Mythic Hero, but on the video he said he was going to do just that. Ah well, my misconception and enough to push my pledge up from the cheap seats into "get a hard copy of the book" territory.

Re: MYTHIC HERO Kickstarter

April 2? You should have made it April 17 or some such, so those of us expecting to get a tax refund can schedule it as thing to buy with the IRS "gift". I expect to be pledging when I get home though.

Yes, I know I should file early if I expect to get a refund; I'd like to introduce you to my little friend... procrastination.

Re: Susano Considers His Next Possible Projects (What Do You Want To See?)

Mike's Martial Artists:

You're going to update Midnight Maid for 6E? >shudder< I might buy it, depending on the price point.

The Well of the Worlds:

This looked interesting when you were posting your Actual Play. If I haven't given Steve Long all my money by then, Ill pick this up.

Kazei 5: System Upgrade:

If I bought this, I'd probably have to buy Kazei 5, wouldn't I? That said, K5 has been on my radar for a while. Maybe inform my wife that Xmas is coming up...

Re: Possible HERO System Supplement Kickstarters From Steve -- What Interests You?

Mythic Hero: 25$

It turns out this isn't the book I was hoping for as I have no use for god stat blocks; but I'd be willing to pay/pledge $25 for Steve Long to research pantheons so don't have to.

Cyber Hero: Maaaaybe $25

I like the genre, but never managed to get into a game. It depends on my financial situation at the time of the kickstart as I'd be buying it to read, not to play.

Dark Champions: Zed, no interest.

STORMlords: $50

Easily the most interesting offering and I've been keeping an eye on it since it was first mentioned. If I'm feeling flush at the time of the kickstart, I could go $100.