Vulcan

Re: More cross-genre goodiness: The Predator vs. a Jedi According to alternate sources, the rule of 2 comes from an era where there were thousands of Sith fighting the Jedi - in theory. In practice they spent almost as much time fighting each other for supremacy in the Sith ranks that the Jedi nearly always had the upper hand.

Re: battle Wear vs. Town Wear By and large I let my players write their families themselves. If the leave it blank, I ask them if that means I am free to improvise. If they say yes...

Re: More cross-genre goodiness: The Predator vs. a Jedi Ahh... according to the materials I have read, blasters in SW fire bolts of plasmatized tibanna gas (the stuff they mine at Cloud City on Bespin). That's why they are called blasters and not lasers. So lightsabers are already proven to be very effective vs. plasma weapons.

Re: battle Wear vs. Town Wear What do you mean? In a world where Dragons can fly in from anywhere, at any time; where stone statues can be animated at any time if a magican wants to do so; where a necromancer can get the entire graveyard walking again given an unobserved moment, why would anyone blink at highly-skilled adventurers bearing the tools of their trade with them at all times? And I note: Not one of those three examples of walking disaster would be hindered in the slightest by a 'No Swords and Armor In Town' policy.

Re: battle Wear vs. Town Wear

Re: battle Wear vs. Town Wear And players want to play characters who do not depend on such heavy arms and armor to survive combat - back to the 'Mage, Monk, and Rogue bonus' issue.

Re: battle Wear vs. Town Wear I think that clip (and by extension, the whole document) does a whole lot of assuming as to the nature of adventurers and the very world a GM is running. Sure, that depiction draws fairly heavily on history so it has the weight of 'realism' on it's side. On the other hand, history rarely had individuals of such power routinely roaming around having adventures either. The closest I can think of in 'real' history is... well, Greek mythology, which is hardly real at all. And while town guards might be a petty annoyance to the hero of the story, the hero pretty quickly shows the petty annoynaces who is who and what is what when push comes to shove. Besides, if you start imposing lots of taxes on adventures when they come in through the gate... they stop coming in the gate. The average adventurer of any renown has plenty of ways to bypass the guards. In D&D Dimiension Door has a fairly long range - one can go from the nearby woods to the center of town easily enough. Teleport allows one to go hundreds of miles by itself. And that doesn't even go into the myriad version of flying available. Just fly over the walls after dark and you're good. And now, Mr. Mayor, you have adventurers in town that no one in an offical capacity knows are there! Sure, draconian laws can be drafted to punish people who do this. Great. How are you going to enforce it? You'd need a group of adventurers yourself, a really high level group just crackling with power, to do the enforcement. A less obvious group would just provoke a highly destructive fight, after all. You need a group so bad-ass that no one in their right mind or not (adventurers are notoriously unsane) would dare actually fight them. Such groups do not come cheap. Besides, if you do manage all this, well, you get a reputation as being unwelcoming to adventurers. So they are going to take that highly valuable loot they have collected and go elsewhere to cash it in. Not to mention the little detail that they likely won't come help next time a dragon or a horde of orcs comes a-callin'.... So what do you do? Simple. You hide the taxes. Why do you think the prices listed in the Player's handbook are so high? Does anyone actually think that a simple rowboat is worth a POUND of gold? A guard dog is worth half a pound? Bull. That's the price that adventurers pay, because the local powers have written the tax codes that way. Residents overcharge out-of-towners who are not reputable merchants by a ridiculous margin, most of it goes to the town/local lord, and the resident keeps a small percentage for his work in helping with the collecting. Sure beats getting half the town blown up every time a mid-level party comes to visit.

Re: Environment Fighters I have a question: how does the character do xd6 with his bare hands, when he also does xd6 using strength (which determines how much damage he does with his bare hands) + HA? Is there martial arts mixed in there somewhere? If so the solution is simple. Weapon Element: Non-Weapon Weapons or Object Of Opportunity

Re: Daniela's Move After viewing those stats... I'd abort to dive for cover (not my character, me!). Perferably into a campaign where the players have half a chance...

Re: You Know You've Been Playing Champions Too Long When... ... just before getting into a fight, you turn to your friend and ask, "Phase 12?"

Re: Impact of Figured Characteristics Elemental controls would have to come back. They were the balance for figured characteristics for characters that didn't spend a lot in characteristics, but instead spent a lot on powers. And you'll want to go back to the 5E characteristics costs as well.

Re: battle Wear vs. Town Wear If you want your PCs to go without their main battle gear in town, you need to do a couple of things. FIRST: Establish why people don't wear heavy armor and weapons in town. Several good suggestions have been made for this already. SECOND: Establish that things left stored will not regularly be stolen as soon as the character's back is turned. Once in a while (no more than twice per campaign, total) can be written off to chance. Having it happen every single time just reinforces the 'Must stay with me!' mindset. THIRD: Events that happen in town should be of the type that can be handled with no armor and sidearms, or you again reinforce the 'Must wear armor everywhere!' mindset. Without doing this, your PCs are fully justified in wanting their full kit at all times, for self-preservation if nothing else!

Re: My Players looted the room That's because the kids a) had never actually played the game, and started with legendary magical gear. Kind of takes the fun out of looting if your stuff is vastly better.

Re: Moving Violation Vigil, having a limited form of invisiblity himself, would likely assume an invisible driver who escaped into the mall. That would be an interseting battle. Talk about double-blind...

Re: Strangest Perk you've seen? Our resident gloryhound had the perk 'Unlimited supply of 8x10 signed glossy photos' for his fans...

Re: Order of the Stick And if not, it's almost certain he would have set someone up to guard things once he was dead.

Re: A couple of brain cells connected... Nothing in the book or in the movie says that the bomb used at Helm's Deep was made with gunpowder. In fact, given the magnitude of the explosion in the movie, it would have to be something a bit more powerful than gunpowder. A bound explosive spell set to detonate at a specific point would explain it nicely.

Re: A couple of brain cells connected... In most fantasy stories I have seen, there is some sort of prerequisite for a person to use magic directly. Call it a 'magical talent' without which all the magic instruction in the world is so much gobbeltygook. It doesn't appear as much in fantasy games because of the general desire of the game designers to allow players maximum choice in their characters - in short, if the player wants to play a mage, his character is assumed to have the talent (which often goes unstated).

Re: What If: You were the world's 1st superhuman? Well, I did say...

Re: What are the chances of multiple sentient races to evolve/be created on one world

Re: A couple of brain cells connected... My response, when the players start wanting to apply magic in technological ways (i.e. the easily-rechargable fireball wand, the 'ground-gliding' carriage), is that it is magic, not technology, and therefore does not scale and react in the same way. It is not easier to make the recharge cells for the fireball wand than a whole new fireball wand; the ground-gliding carriage will be vastly more vulnerable to broken wheels due to the speed. Magic is difficult and unpredictable. What works for one person will not necessarily work the same way for another. Technology (once developed) is predictable. What works for one person will work the same way for another.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Yeah, I hate to say it, but the passed me up too... which is strange, because I've read most of the Honorverse stuff.

Re: What If: You were the world's 1st superhuman? I'm afraid with my temperment, I would not be much of a hero. But I'll tell you this: Those f'ed up stories that turn up in the news, where someone kills people and gets away with it? They'd get a couple hours to justify it while we flew to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where I could leave them and a couple of concrete blocks with little worry they would ever be recovered.

Re: Penetrating + Reduced Penetration = Broken? I don't worry too much about it. Why? Because as a GM, it's fairly easy for me to nerf it if it is being abused. All I have to do is Harden enough DEF on anyone/thing that has an excuse for it so that the abusive attack will bounce. Or just flat disallow it / require the power be changed if I don't feel like being that big of a jerk about it. One Penetrating/Reduced Pen combo that worked surprisingly well in a superhero game was for a werewolf. Big Nasty Fangs: 2d6 HKA (4D6 with STR), Penetrating, Double Knockdown, Reduced Penetration. The fangs were big and tough enough to punch through light-to-medium armor, but since pressure was being applied from both sides of the target (top jaw, bottom jaw)... Double Knockdown was because he would grab the target with his teeth and shake it before letting go, which whould knock many targets off-balance and make them fall down.

Re: Order of the Stick Wow. Just... wow. That's not D&D rampant paranioa, that's Vampire LARP rampant paranoia! (at least, the way the St. Louis LARPers used to play...)