Cargus10

Re: Increasing Radius Why Mobile? The radius is increasing, but he's paid for the full radius already, and it doesn't sound like the center point is going to move. I thought Mobile was only to move the center location of the AoE?

Re: make a mistake power What Chris said, I think.

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant were the Cherokee & Creek considered Mound Builder cultures? I think they had a bit more in common with the Iroquois...but the Cherokee did some really amazing things, albeit a good bit after the period we are talking about here.

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant Good point about the cultures linking up. Add into that the possibility of hooking up with Mississippean cultures and their farming and governing ideas, and something really interesting could have emerged. I haven't the foggiest idea WHAT, however

Re: Alternate Earth 4: First Nations ascendant For a good take on "might have been", get thee a copy of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. It goes into great length as to why the Europeans conquered the world, and not the Americans or Africans. Anyway, some rambling ideas off the top of my head... 1. It can be argued that the Black Death actually advanced European technology. Two reasons for this: 1. It eroded some faith in the monolithic Catholic Church, allowing people to begin to question their decrees and 2. The reduction in population lead to a huge labor shortage, which in turn made the serfs and peasants much more "valuable" and able to command higher wages or concessions...accelerating the growth of the freeholder classes. 2. The Americans had zip for useful, easily domesticable draft animals. Really, all they had were the llamas, alpacas, etc. And these were fairly small and didn't have a great range. This lack of speedy transportation makes larger empires untenable. 3. The North/South alignment of the Americas means that there was no easy way for common staple crops to be shared between different states. In Eurasia, the E/W axis meant that wheat, oats, etc. could be grown over a large swath of land. In America, if you go too far north or south, the differing climate meant that staple, well known crops began to do much more poorly at the edges....squash, corn, etc. couldn't spread as far, also limiting the size of a potential nation. 4. The note above about the Aztecs being subject to revolt by their subject states is spot on. The Conquistadors used this against the Aztecs at every turn, and in fact got a lot of support from the tribes that were angered by the tribute in slaves, goods, and sacrificial victims demanded by the Aztec.

Re: Increasing Radius I think I'd use Gradual Effect, and the SFX is the expansion. It can be built as an AoE or an Explosion, and I think maybe you might need to take Lingering as well, to make sure the inner parts of the cloud stick around. Hole in the Middle might be a good idea, too, if the caster wants to live

Re: A New Dawn. 'Post-Apocalyptic' Fantasy Being an online GM does take a wee bit of getting used to, but not as much as you'd think. Mostly you have to be able to deal with the lower pace of things. In some ways, you can really get better roleplaying out of it. As for the UK thing, I've played in games where both GM's and players were in the UK, and it's not that big an issue. I do have an idea or two for a character - I'll send a mail to you with an outline and see if it's doable or even interesting to you.

Re: A New Dawn. 'Post-Apocalyptic' Fantasy June, huh? Well, if he still has an opening, it'll sure give me some time to decide on which of several concepts I have floating around in my head since I read this last night

Re: A New Dawn. 'Post-Apocalyptic' Fantasy Ye Gods, I just read this thread and I was looking at running a FH game that would have been markedly similar. Now that I see you are doing it, I think I'm going to switch to a Dark Champions PA type game, with lots of paranormal stuff. And...wow, this looks like a great game to play in. Any openings left, or are you full up?

Re: Which one? They're both confusing. Seems to me the question revolves around whether the target will have any control over the FF once it is up - can they "open" and "close" it at will, or make it go away? In that case, sounds like "Usable By Others". If only the caster can control it, then it sounds like Usable as an Attack - though in general I'd then the target would be willing.

Re: Use of the Kusarigama I think the weapon is unique enough to have its own element.

Re: Weapon Design Question Really, really, really hot air . At least, one assumes it to be if it's weaponized!

Re: Game of Thrones Another good resource for ASOIAF is http://www.westeros.org/ I just hope he gets the next book done this year

Re: Ramming Speed You've just hit upon why reactionless drives are such a (potential) campaign-buster. Take a chunk of rock, ice, iron, or what have you and stick a reactionless drive on it and some kind of AI guidance. Aim it at a planet. Better yet, do that for several. Start out in the Oort Cloud, if you really need time to build up velocity (though aren't most reactionless drives "instant on"? All the folks that spot UFO's say so anyhow), and fire 'em all up. Pretty soon, you have a dead, dead planet. Wash, rinse, repeat. Makes for ugly space warfare. And it's hard to hand-wave around the problem without some....quirky rules, though it can be done. The Stutter-Warp drive, for example. Nicely done, though they did have to toss in that rule about how far you can go before servicing the engines...

Re: Weapon Design Question Yeah, you have to think that plasma should be a KA. I just don't see flesh and bone being all that resistant to a plasma splash...

Re: Ramming Speed Ah, but didn't the original poster mention that this was a game of Full Thrust, or at least those rules are being used for the ships? In that case, you are constrained by tech assumptions. But yeah, a game of space pirates and boarding actions could be fun...particularly if they got to fight space ninjas.

Re: Ramming Speed You could assume the ships are surrounded by a cloud of foglets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foglet if your nano-tech is good enough. That would act as an inertial dampener and make the collisions less devastating. Plus, foglets (or utility fog) is just so freaking cool in general, for a myriad of applications.

Re: Combat Changes All food for thought. Some things a bit unique about my campaign-to-be: 1. Armor above DEF 3-4 is expensive and hard to come by. 2. Mostly no one except PC's and main baddies will have any Combat Luck - I figure that it's a pretty rare thing in general. 3. Disabling & impairment rules are in effect. So that might make a difference. Anyhow, I still need to run my mock combats. I'll post the results here for the general amusement of the natives

Re: Ramming Speed If you don't have some techno-magic "forcefield" or super-nano-armor or similar, then pretty much any "realistic" speed is going to have a really bad effect on everyone involved. Robinson's First Law of Space Combat says that anything moving at about 3 km/s will, upon impact, release roughly the same kinetic energy as an equivalent mass of TNT would release when exploding. And 3 km/s in space ain't all that fast.

Re: Combat Changes Agreed. Total realism is something that you really can't simulate with any system that is remotely playable (I cite the old game "Aftermath" as an example. We used to say, "after the math you get to play...a little). Even if you could, most folks wouldn't want to play it. I want a "gritty" feel to my game, but I don't want the PC's to have to go around killing the wounded. I also don't want to have to make every puncture to the abdomen a death sentence, as it was in real life (can you say peritonitis? Sure you can...). So, there will be at least some magical healing available, for example. I want to have a somewhat grim setting, but I also want the ability for the PC's to be *heroes* by gawd, and that means putting themselves in harm's way, as well as not routinely killing downed enemies because they can't be burdened with prisoners.

Re: Combat Changes Indeed, this is true. But in this campaign there is no plate or field plate, and while there are knights, the whole ransom concept isn't very well established as yet save for the recognized lords. Heck, below the nobles and a few of the more wealthy merchants, there isn't even a real "money" economy in my game - a lot of folks still use barter as no one trustworthy is really in the coin minting business yet. Old empire coins are known to be good, sure, but there aren't a whole lot of those around as most were lost in the cataclysm that destroyed the Empire. But, maybe the "as is" rules will do fine for people in lighter armor. I plan to run some simulated combats when I get a chance this week and see how things change when I tweak various parameters.

Re: Combat Changes Y'know, I think you are on to something - why didn't I think of simply reducing the STUN multiples for body hits? I know what they are trying to simulate - the shock of the blow, the "getting the wind knocked out of you", etc. But isn't that already sort of simulated with the rule for being CON stunned? Yeah, me like....1/2x STUN for hands and feet, 1x STUN for arms and legs, 2x STUN for body, 3x STUN for vitals, and 4x STUN for head. I think I'll try that instead and see how it goes.

Re: Combat Changes I agree that in real life, not getting exhausted is important. It just seems that in every heroic game I've run, this never happens. I've toyed with not allowing a post-12 recovery phase and forcing a players to take a recovery as needed, but...hmmm....not sure it's worth the extra bookkeeping. I don't dislike Combat Luck at all, but it sure is popular . I mostly wanted to avoid the whole "slaying of the fallen" thing that is so NOT a trope of fantasy, even the more gritty fantasy.

I'm toying with these as house rules, and wanted to get people's opinions on how well they might (or might not) work in practice. For reference, the campaign is going to have roughly "Dark Ages" technology, so any armor over DEF 6 will be pretty much unheard of, other than helmets which may get DEF 7. I will be using hit locations, impairment, and disabling, as well as some form of bleeding rules (though maybe something requiring a bit less bookkeeping than the stock rules - still thinking about that). 1. Armor gets double its DEF vs. STUN. This has 2 effects I like. First, it lessens the problem with lots of unconscious opponents that have to be given the coup de grace. Second, it makes armor a bit better vis-a-vis Combat Luck. 2. I like the idea that fighting ability is more a result of training than just natural talent. So instead of CV = DEX/3, I'm thinking of making the base CV = DEX/5. The same would apply for ECV, in the very rare instances that ego combat would occur. 3. I'm going to completely ignore regular END, as it rarely makes sense to worry about in a Heroic campaign (at least in my experience). I *will* worry about LTE, for cumulative effects of spellcasting, fighting, overland travel, etc. What do y'all think? All comments and opinions are welcome!