Vulcan

Re: Cool Guns for your Games

If they can actually supress a grenade launcher, they can supress anything.

(Well, maybe not actual artillery.)

Re: Tactics

The Hero System does not penalize you for this to my knowledge. Is there a specific example for this' date=' or am I forgetting a rule.[/quote']

 

Popping up once gives the opposition a position to aim at. Popping up the second time results in getting popped yourself... in real life, anyway.

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

It depends heavily on the power level of supers vs. the power level of firearms.

If you go by Dark Champions, an assault rifle is the rough equivalent of a 20+d6 E-blast at 100+ active points. A 105 howitzer is around 7d6 Killing Explosion. Very few supers can withstand that sort of firepower straight out of the book.

So unless you decide all 'real' weapons do half- (or less!) damage vs. supers, they are not going to be out on the front line. Instead they will be held back for those missions too crucial to fail, or to defend targets too valuable to loose. Supers would be just too valuable to risk catching an 88mm antitank round in the face.

Re: How can mutants be discriminated against while other "supers" get a pass?

My opinon is that the answer has become nothing more complex than bad writing. The writers are all basically saying "That's the way it has been, that's the way it will always be."

Which is a pity, because the basic concept in the '60s was a brilliant way for Stan Lee to address racism in his comic books without triggering the censors, governmental or parental. The problem is, in the past half century, racism has dwindled dramatically in our society. (Which is not to say that it has been elimintated, or is even minor. It just no longer exists at the same levels permitted in the '60s.) The anti-mutant discrimination in the MU, on the other hand, has ballooned into something much more like paranoia than mere discrimination. It doesn't matter how often the X-teams save the world, or even the whole of reality. They are mutants, therefore evil. WFT?

Lazy, the lot of them. Racism, just like any other societal institution, evolves. As recently as 400 years back, the negroid branch of humanity was viewed by Europeans as exotic - even highly attractive. It is only with the birth of the African slave trade that they start to become 'inferior.'

Well, no one ever said my ancestors were particularly smart.

Re: When, if ever, would your character kill?

Or buy off CvK.

Re: When, if ever, would your character kill?

The stuff you have described does not happen in real life on a regular basis' date=' such cases are rare even with cop killers and serial killers. Having them happen in comicbooks on a regular basis would make those comics LESS realistic, not more.[/quote']

 

Are we seriously arguing realism in a world with dudes who can lift buildings intact and fly off with them?

Re: Unwilling Bank Robber

Ah, a van. Vigil has dealt with many a low-end villian by the simple expedient of invisibly riding the top of their vehicle to their lair...

Re: Unwilling Bank Robber

Most of my characters would take the 'victim' at his word at first... but covertly follow him to the meeting where the money will be exchanged. Once all parties involved are present, it should be easy to sort the sheep from the wolves.

Re: When, if ever, would your character kill?

My GM apparently thought rusty Iron Age was the best' date=' a character with a Code vs. Killing wouldn't be living up to the tone of the campaign. Or living at all, for very long.[/quote']

 

As a GM, I just love spending hours writing up NPCs who will only be used once, because they're going to die at the hands of the PCs.

/sarcasm

 

Well, that's you. My GM had exactly no qualms about killing PCs left and right - the ones who tried to be moral even moreso than most. We just lived down to his example.

Re: When, if ever, would your character kill?

My GM apparently thought rusty Iron Age was the best, a character with a Code vs. Killing wouldn't be living up to the tone of the campaign. Or living at all, for very long.

Re: Taking Body from excess Stun

1 Body per 10-20 Stun? You guys are getting off light.

The GM I used to have used 1 Body per 2 Stun. We lost sooooooo many characters that way - usually bricks.

Re: Here's the scenario

Wow. You create an invisible character. He creates one who can detect invisibility. So you smack him.

 

Would you smack him if you created a heavily armored character and he created one with Armor Piercing or maybe No Normal Defense attacks?

 

Or if you created a character with a No Normal Defense attack and some villain has the defense?

 

I can see getting upset if EVERY villain could see your supposedly invisible character, but I'm afraid I can't see getting that worked up just because ONE happens to.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

the palindromedary, on the other hand, is upset if even a single villain shows up with a crab cannon

Perhaps I should say in a little greater detail why this scenario makes my character, in particular, completely useless.

My character has some martial arts, high dex and speed, no defenses worth mentioning, a high DCV, and invisibility. That pretty well covers it.

He knows I there. So now my lower movement will not suffice. I have no range attacks. And he has a higher DEX anyway, so here's how the scenario goes down:

Phase 12, Dex 27+: Cheetah blows past me at whatever high running speed he has.

Dex 26 (yeah, it is a rather low-end game): I stand there and watch the contrail fade, thanking god that no one will have pictures of this embaressment.

So what would be the point of my having even shown up for this? Or are you just objecting to me having weighed in on this WWYCD in the first place?

Re: Here's the scenario

Smack the GM for giving him detect invisiblily. That's my character's schtick; villians with 'detect invisible' make him pretty much useless.

Beyond that, well, this train has already been sent on it's tracks, I'll let the railroad go run without me.

Re: Eccentric but plausible ways a character could be rich?

My last character with Wealth got it by hacking his Hunted's bank accounts. Lots of computer skills helps with this one.

Re: Super hero one liners

Ah, talking smack after the die roll. You have learned wisdom.

Re: Cool Guns for your Games

Somehow, I expect that poison would be less effective at incapaitating the target quickly than the simple shock and trauma of being shot in the first place. Poison might increase the chances of a non-disabling wound becoming a disabling or even lethal wound... eventually.

And if the shot is a through-and-through, the odds are you won't get enough poison into the target to matter.

Re: Sawed Off Shotguns

Nonselective doesn't sound unrealistic; it's highly unlikely to hit everyone in the area that hard.

Or, if you want a nod toward greater realism, add a side effect and make the damage taper off away from the center of the area.

Re: Superhumans and their families

My last GM was infamous for using family, friends, and coworkers as clubs to beat the PCs on the head with. Even if you didn't have them as DNPCs, if they were alive and your character knew them, there was a big ole' target on their backs.

Then he got all upset when the new characters coming in started being neurotic orphans with no personal connections to anybody. Whatever.

Re: Cool Guns for your Games

One question.

How long does it take to replace the antenna?

Re: Cool Guns for your Games

That's probable' date=' but I have to wonder how effective a Sidewinder would be in that situation. They don't have a very big warhead (given their usual targets, they don't need one).[/quote']

 

Besides, wouldn't using the cannon be just as effective and much cheaper to boot?

Re: PRE attacks on PCs

By and large, in our games, we (the players) voluntarily accept the affects of a PRE attack against our characters in the name of roleplaying. Very rarely do we buck the roll. We only do so when we feel it is VERY important that we not react in the intended way... and even then, we tend to accept a 'lost phase' while we mentally deal with the PRE attack.

Thus, we follow the rule (PCs are not forced to react) by accepting the effects ourselves, and let the GM have a little fun with PRE attacks too. That way we can buck it when it is IMPORTANT that we be able to do so without hard feelings - or the GM ignoring PRE attacks for Mind Control...

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition?

The issue that you're not seeing is that there was a 20 point disadvantage people could take called "Normal Characteristic Maxima." By definition, that meant that anything above this is superhuman. Therefore, a 30 COM is 4x as attractive as the maximum level of normal human attractiveness. (Let's call 20 VCOM Playboy Centerfold level attractiveness, with airbrushing)

 

The problem with this is that it cost .5 per point. There are tons of situations where COM 26 was more powerful than 12d6 of mind control. 12d6 of Mind Control costs 60 points. COM 26 cost 8. That's the discrepancy. Plain and simple.

 

And keep in mind, all this because not everyone looked at comliness the same way. Now that you have to define your striking appearance, everyone knows what you're reacting to. When we converted to 6th in my game, COM got converted to striking appearance. This helped people out a lot.

 

But most importantly, the thing that it did was prevent using comliness to simulate mind control because it works in real life.

This is one of the few arguments I've heard so far that makes any sense at all.

However...how do you keep someone from just buying +4 levels of Striking Appearance and doing the same thing?

Answer: The same way you keep someone from using a 28 COM from doing it. GM takes control and says, "Sorry, you're not going to be able to do that, it's too much."

Re: "Neat" Pictures

It was supposed to be stronger than most anything. One drank it to prove that one could.

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition?

No.

 

No, absolutely not. No comparision. They're not the same thing.

 

Striking Appearance has an in-game effect. The COM stat did nothing. No equivalence whatsoever.

That's funny. In my games it gave the character a +2 bonus to do things when their appearance would be an issue.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say 'the COM stat did nothing in my games?

EDIT: Scooped by multiple others.

Okay, I see where this is going. This is yet another rehash of the COM debate. Have fun, guys.

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition?

That is (was) a big problem with COM in my mind. To take an extreme example, lizardmen might have a low COM to a human eye, but they might be quite gorgeous to another lizardman. Who defines beauty?

 

Granted there are usually some societal norms, but those can change significantly between cultures. Throw individual preference into the mix and COM becomes a rather arbitrary stat.

 

That said, I see no problem keeping COM if the players like the flavor, and just granting one level of Striking Appearance for each 3 points spent in it.

 

Or you could define it as a Perk, 1pt = Cute, 2pts = Beautiful/Handsome, 3pts = Striking (and grants 1 level of Striking Appearance), 4pts = Gorgeous, etc. There are no mechanical effects except for multiples of 3, but that isn't so different from having a 14 INT instead of a 13 even though the extra point doesn't give you a bonus to any INT-based rolls. Its just flavor.

And, of course, Striking Appearance as written always makes the distintion between... oh, wait, it doesn't, does it? GM's STILL have to make the judgement of whether it applies or not.

Just like COM.