Opal

Re: Change the focus from KO to Killing

It was most likely the mailinng list, which I started reading through Red October, originally. And, yeah, ratinox was memorable. So was Vox Ludator. There were other very memorable posters, but thier names weren't quite so catchy... Killer Shrike stuck in my memory for some reason, though.

Re: Damage for lightsabers

I haven't used Impairment much but isn't that a similar threshold? So, it's really an F/X thing: A mace impairs your arm, your arm is broken. A rapier impairs your arm, you have a severed tendon. A lightsaber impairs your arm, your arm is no the floor.

Given the aparent ease of replacing limbs (with prostetics that seem to work /exactly/ like the original) in the setting, I guess that's not entirely unreasonable.

Re: Changing the Focus from Killing to KO

Are you looking for mechanical solutions, as I was, or RP solutions?

The mechanics already make it pretty easy. Enough resistant defense to stand up to the BOD of most attacks, an little or no normal defense on top of it means a foe will be KOd before going unconscious. So, Damage Resistance instead of layering armor on top of PD/ED is an easy mechanical answer. For isntance, you could rule that defenses simply don't stack, or you could define normal armor as Damage Resistance on up to 'X' PD/ED (and maybe 'padding' as some extra PD or something). For isntance, chainmail could be DR on 8 PD/ED, and Full Plate could be +4 PD/ED, and Damage Resistance on up to 12 total PD/ED. Or higher if you want to encourage above-human max PD/ED.

If you want to see normal attacks favored over KAs, you can aply the stun multiplier of the KA only to the BOD that gets through, or replace the d6-1 STNx with d3. Combined with even moderately good resistant-only defense and normal attacks become the more efficient way to defeat most foes.

Re: Autofire Option

Autofire used to give you an OCV bonus. +4 for 10 shots in the olden days, then +2 for 5 (and optionally +1 for a 3-shot burst).

I'd call what you described 'walking the target.' The idea is you fire tracers or watch for the bullets hitting the ground down range and correct your aim, 'walking' the stream of bullets to the target. Takes more than 5 rounds, I'd think. Maybe it could be an improved form of 'setting' that requires you to fire on the phase you set?

Ralistically, autofire reduces the likelihood that any give shot will hit, while increasing the chance that each least one will. I'm sure someone pointed out that the original Autofire meant that you hit three times on any roll that would have normally been a hit, which was too good. Now, autofire does nothing to increase your chance of hitting at all, it just rewards you for hitting 'well.' Making it good for high OCV characters, and bad for low OCV.

Re: Not Taking Advantage

Hey, Sean, I know exactly what you mean. I am personally familiar with the impulse to create a system that is perfectly elegant, perfectly internally consistent, absolutely complete - and virtually impossible to read through without falling asleep, let alone play. Even though it's not practical to achieve, it's nice to work toward it, or, at least, not stray to far from the ideal.

I have trouble remembering that NPAs are kosher, now - they were /so/ illegal before.

I take it that in my (long) absence a consensus has emerged that Variable Advantage isn't up to snuff? Actually, I'm having trouble recalling exactly how it works, now, since I used a variant version of it for so long. Still, it seems there'd be some point to it if multipowers weren't an option for whatever reason.

Perhaps, for a lesser cost, you could have a 'Selective Advantage' Advantage that simply let you turn off other Advantages on the power?

Re: Damage for lightsabers

I'm not really sure what you mean here.

Re: Change the focus from KO to Killing

Has anybody tried ignoring STUN damage' date=' except to determine Stunning? [/quote']I'd never thought of that. That's the kind of out-of-the-box idea I was hoping to see!

 

Make sure the foes always get their recoveries' date=' always recover from unconsciousness in a few Phases or next post-12, and make them killable. [/quote']I suppose it would be pretty simple to change the rules on REC, say maybe that characters automatically take a REC on any phase they're unconsious (regardless of how unconscious they may be), and eliminate the 0 DCV for recovering in combat. With STN easily restored even in combat, killing becomes the prefered way to 'win' a fight. (Though, with concerted effort, you could still KO, then tie up, someone you really needed to capture). This would dovetail perfectly with Derek's CdG suggestion, as well.

 

Lower Body.

A simple and obvious solution. BOD starts at 5 instead of 10, say.

 

NPCs can be under the influence of stimulants that do nothing to keep them alive or reduce their chances of being stunned' date=' but that increase their Stun so they pretty much have to be killed to stop them.[/quote']I have pulled that trick in Champions, 'combat drugs' that grant extra stun or stun-only damage reduction, but do nothing to keep the subject alive. I'm looking for something more general, though.

 

 

Killer Shrike, NuSoardGraphite, (I remember you guys from Champs-l or a previous forum, no?), and Spence suggest using hit locations and other optional rules, and, yes, they do increase lethality. Lord Laiden had some similar suggestions about the Stun multiplier and an instant-kill rule. All good.

 

I'm now familiar with using the 'rep' feature.

 

They and others also suggested keeping resistant defenses low. That's easy enough in terms of normal equipment - make armor relatively low-DEF, and inconvenient. It's also simple to set a campaign cap on resistant DEF. But, defenses are still cheap, so anyone who cares to can hit the cap pretty easily. I've considered the possibility of making Force Wall the only buyable resistant-defense power. That way, an active point cap puts BOD inflicted by attacks on resistant defense about on par.

 

Any other thoughts on making resistan DEF more 'expensive?'

Re: Discussion on costs of Characteristics

“Killing Attack” is a game mechanic; it does what the rulebook says it does' date=' like any other Power on the list, no more and no less.[/quote']And what it does is very dependably inflict BOD damage on normal people. It doesn't matter if it's a 1 pip KA or a 6d KA, it /can/ be used to kill, because every hit with it inflicts BOD.

 

Sure, you can also buy it "doesn't work vs living things" and it'll /never/ kill. It is just a mechanic, but it's a mechanic that primarily inflicts BOD (more than any other attack power for the points), and the most common defense doesn't stop it, with STN as a secondary, unpredictable, function.

 

Normal attacks, OTOH, primarily inflict a dependable amount of STN, secondarily, they inflict a dependable amount of BOD that /everyone/ has at least some defense against.

 

STN-only attacks inflict stun with no risk (or capabilty) of inflicting BOD.

 

Three attack options the desireability of which depends on the situation and the intention of the character. Innately, one is not better than the others. So they're all comparable in cost. But, each of which is better suited to some uses than others, making the option of choosing among them desireable.

 

The palindromedary remembers Opal, but suspects Opal has forgotten us.

I do remember the name, I always found it amusing.

Re: Not Taking Advantage

You can take Variable Advantage. When not using Explosion, you could switch it to AP or 0 END or whatever.

Re: Change the focus from KO to Killing

Hit locations do help. You don't get a high stun multiplier without also getting a BOD multiplier with KAs. I'm sure other optional rules would tend in that direction, too.

Obviously, most weapons are KAs, but normal damage is certainly still out there. If you fall off a cliff, that's normal damage waiting for you at the bottom, for instance. If you're punched by a giant, or slapped by a monster's tail, that's presumably normal, too.

What I'm getting at is the way the system stand, you can beat on someone until thier dead or KO'd, either way is pretty effective, and leaves the foe defeated. What could you do to skew things so that killing is the more efficient option, and the KO is something you'd more often have to try for, specifically?

Re: Star Frontiers Conversion

The group I gamed with in the mid-80s was really into Star Frontiers. It really wasn't a great game, but it was playable (unlike Space Opera) and fun (unlike Traveller). (JMHO, don't be too offended if you liked either of those.)

As usual, I'd recomend not trying to convert over the system foibles (like the way lasers work), and just try to port the flavor. Getting the races converted faithfully would be key. If that's already out there, the rest should be easy.

Re: ShadowrunHero game?

I've played in a Shadowrun Game using Mage: the Ascension rules (of all things) and it worked quite smoothly.

I haven't actually played in one for Hero, though I did get as far as designing a character - along the lines of a 'decker' for something similar. Decking was handled with X-D move to 'cyberspace' and a multiform in that environment, both 'left body behind.'

I'd say use the setting, but don't try to simulate the bias in the mechanics. You can do that - I've seen D&D simulated to the point that armor was bought as DCV levels, and all KAs were Transformations with stun multipliers reversible via Resurrection - and it's amusing, but a campaign might be better off just letting the players run with the idea of Magic + Cyberpunk. Set a few parameter - like whether cyberspace will be a dimension, a form of clairsentience, or just a matter of some skill rolls - and decide if you want any gear to be indendent, but otherwise just let the player's run with the basic concept.

Re: Star Wars arms and armor

So everything that does killing damage is AP? And the armors available are 6/6?

One thing I've always noticed about the movies was that blasters, whether tiny or large, generally killed those shot with them pretty consistently. Very little wounding was going on. Of course, the same is true of many action films and firearms, so I guess it could just be a cinematic thing.

Re: Damage for lightsabers

Of course there is an arguement to made that if you have a high enough KA that AVLD is over kill. In my game though a Lightsaber does 1 1/2d6 base. SO the AVLD serves to aguement that.

THe AVLD applies to Combat Luck, which I use regularly in my games for none armored heroes and important villians.

Champions clearly has the focus of combat on knocking out opponents. Fantasy Hero, with generally lower defenses availabe in normal armor, certainly makes killing someone plausible, but knocking them out remains a perfectly viable option and is likely to happen pretty often.

How could you shift the focus more towards killing enemies as the default means of defeating them?

Anything's on the table. Campaign guidelines. Optional rules. Adding deleting or modifiying powers. Changing mechanics. Whatever. But, simple to implement and elegant is always preferable.

Re: Seeking Magic Systems for the following Fantasy Settings

Wow, I have never heard of any of those. I feel very un-nerdy.

I've noticed that magic in literature tends to fall in three broad categories:

A magic-wielder can do one or a few 'signature' things, fairly dependably. Much like a super-power, really. Easily done in Fantasy Hero.

All magic-wielders can do a couple of rather broadly-defined things, with some effort. The hero though, somehow thinks of 'new' (but, realy pretty obvious) things he can do based on those abilities, even though people have been using magic for eons. Doable, the hero's just built on more points, but it won't have the same feel as in the books.

Magic-wielders can do just about anything, but usually don't, unless the plot demands it. This last is hopeless, you might just as well use an established system and not worry about trying to model it - there's nothing to model. No matter how cool it may have seemed in the story, there is no system.

Re: Damage for lightsabers

For the original 'laser sword' - assuming it really is just an attenuated laser beam - the same 2d6 RKA as the laser pistols should be just fine, just with 'no range' tacked on. (Not HKA, 'hitting' someone with a laser sword would just be sweeping the beam through them, it'd trace a burn across the target, not clunk into it unless you pushed harder.) Of course, that begs the question 'why have a laser sword in the first place, when lasers normally have a pretty good range?'

Maybe it could be an energy requirement thing. How and why do you attenuate a laser beam, anyway. Maybe there's a funky technology that causes the beam to occilate between the hilt and the point in space where it end? In defiance of thermodynamics, that saves a lot of power, and a laser sword can opperate for hours or go years of modest combat use between re-charging, while the pistols have charges. It's a possibility.

For the lightsaber, I think there's a lot of over-thinking and overbuying going on. Any melee weapon might damage another melee weapon. Hero chooses not to model that unless you actually intentionally try to damage the other guy's focus. Add a rule to let weapons be damaged on a block attempt, or don't worry about it. Block can model things other than intercepting a blow with your arm, shield or weapon, anyway. When 'blocking' a lightsaber w/o another lightsaber, F/X would just dictate that you actually duck.

Jehdi make thier own light sabers. If one is lost or destroyed, they can make a new one. Doesn't sound independent to me. Sounds a lot like a regular paid-for-with-character-points focus.

Is AVLD: Force Field, in a game where a common defense is an independent, relatively readily availabe, really worth bothering with. Won't a KA do the same thing?

Cutting through droids and severing limbs takes a lot of damage. Armor, if armor is not that high in the campaign, is not going to make the huge difference that'd justify something as expensive and out there as AVLD does body. OTOH, a hefty HKA, a little STR, a little force-boosted STR, and more than a little martial arts and damage classes.... that thing'll be cutting through just about anything on BOD damage, alone. For that matter, blasters in the films rarely seem hampered by armor, and rarely fail to kill unless specificaly set for stun. they'd be pretty high-damage, too, even though they don't seem to damge inanimate objects all that much.

Also, characters get killed by lightsabers, they get chopped to pieces by lightsabers, but they don't get KO'd by lightsabers, at least - I don't recall that in the films. Stun multiple of 1 wouldn't hurt(npi), and it'd make them more nearly balanced at the death-dealing levels of damage they display.

Re: '70s TV Supers

I glad somebody else remembered Isis!

Re: Decoupling Figured Characteristics

OK, so it couldn't argueably give you END, also. ;(

As if it wasn't already obvious I've never 'trained' a day in my life....

Re: Replacing Hexes with Squares

The group I've been in for the last few years has been really into D&D, so I've gotten used to squares. They have thier own problems, like diagonal movement being almost 1.5 times as 'fast' as horizontal or vertical. Hexes have thier own wierdness, of course. I still run champs, though, and still use a hex battlemat.

To draw straight lines and right angles on a hex map, draw along the base of one hex, through the center of the next, forming a straight line. To make a right angle, start at one end of the base of a hex and draw to the same end of the top edge of the hex, nipping off 2 sides of the hex, and continue that line. If you want whole hexes on one side of the line, you just connect the points of the hexes.

Re: WHen did The Hero system first

Yeah, GURPS's debt to TFT (Wizard & Melee) was obvious in it's very small number of stats, for instance. I never got around to playing TFT, so I didn't realize it's 'areas' were hexes like the GURPS 'people tubes.'

Re: Decoupling Figured Characteristics

It's actually worse than that... I mean' date=' honestly, why are STR and REC tied?[/quote']Presumably because living things develop STR in response to exertion, which also developes stamina, and strengthens bone & tissue. Really, it could argueably give you END, too.

 

But, also, simply because it's a game, and games use a certain level of abstraction. Champions used a lot less, in some senses, than other games of it's era - thus had many more characteristics.

 

D&D and BRP for instance, each had 6. If you converted such a character to Hero, he wouldn't not have STN or END. He already had limits to his endurance and ability to stay conscious, they were just wrapped up in one stat, instead of being individual stats that you could customize, if you wanted to.

Re: Discussion on costs of Characteristics

But that still leaves STR as superior to HA (if costed at 5pts per d6) in general' date=' since out of frameworks, it's much better, and in frameworks, it's still better, if only "plain" better.[/quote']By that reasoning, even the standard HA is inferior. It has a -1/2 limitation (manditory), STR in a framework has the -1/2 limititation for no figured charateristics, both do normal physical damage, only, both do that damage when punching, STR also does it when grabbing.

 

It's not hard to find STR 'superior' to a power, but it's really /not/ a power, it's a characteristic, and they don't work like powers. They do work a bit like frameworks.

 

But when looking at HKA vs RKA, you still get this feeling that HA SHOULD cost 5pts per d6, compared to EB.

No question about it. One key difference is the ability to 'transform' STR damage. RKAs do that, standard HAs don't. A 5pt HA would have to have that potential, even if it wasn't always used, to make it an apropriate opposite number to EB.

 

 

I'm pretty sure this is a serious indication that STR is underpriced, somehow. ("Somehow" because my opinion is not that the cost should be increased, but that it should be split.)

STR, on one hand, does damage in melee. So does a no-range EB, which is cheaper. STR with no figured characteristics costs the same as the no-range EB. It can be used to grab and throw things, though, while the EB can be spread. And, while STR always does normal physical damage, EB might do energy or stun-only damage. Also, while everyone has STR, not everyone has EB. STR can be used to leap or pick things up. EB might be used in a variety of ways depending on it's F/X. STR is more quantified in the rules, perhaps becasue it covers a narrower range of more everyday F/X, perhaps, but it's also much more the known quantity.

 

Any disparity between the two is really not that significant. Otherwise, you simply wouldn't see energy projectors.

 

STR with it's figured characteristics is more like an EB in a power framework.

 

 

 

Except I'm suggesting it should be two Characteristics/Powers. Explosive STR should cost 1:1 (or maybe, 5pts per d6?)

Since it's the 'attack power,' yes, that'd be the way to go.

 

and Slow STR should cost whatever:1 (dunno, mebbe 1:1 is too expensive, mebbe 1/2 : 1, like COM or END, is more balanced?). Refigure skills and such to use the "correct" characteristic (I guess this really only means Hoist? Which should use Slow STR, of course).

Are there any STR skills these days? Climbining is the only one I remember. Lifting is occassionally very useful (freeing trapped innocents from rubble), but would have minimal effect in combat. It could probably be priced pretty low.

 

(Grabs? Probably Slow STR. Entangles? Probably slow, too, unless it's one of those Entangles that doesn't prevent use of Accessible Foci, which means you could probably punch your way out, so use Explosive. Hitting? Explosive. Lifting? Slow. Breaking stuff (this includes most uses of Casual STR)? Explosive. Etc...)

I'd think all of those would be 'explosive' to break out of a grab, for instance, you only need to exceed the force holding you for an instant. Anything that inflicted normal damage, likewise. I suppose 'slow' STR could be used for an anaconda-like constriction NND or something. If it could (currently, STR doesn't let you do that), then it would have to be more expensive.

Re: Decoupling Figured Characteristics

No' date=' see, Jupiter's a gas giant, so Clinging would be useless. That's just silly. [/quote']Sure, there are no oceans on Jupiter, and the martian 'canals' are just an optical illustion - that would stop me from running a game set on Barsoom.