Vulcan

Re: Armor Wars

Re: Armor Wars

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles Well, apparently SW ships have no magnification on their gunsights...

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles He's probably referring to an escort cruiser variant.

Re: Inflicting Drowning... A big NND would KO the target instantly; drowning rarely does so. If you want a big NND and want to call it 'drowning', so be it. But by rules on environemental damage, drowning does not cause immediate damage; it prevents recoveries. Duplicating that with a power involves a power build that reduces the target's REC to 0. Simple as that.

Re: Inflicting Drowning... The simple way is to duplicate the effect of suffocation. The game effect of suffocation is that you don't get recoveries and loose 1 END and (eventually) STUN per phase. So, it's a big all-at-once (and preferably all-or-nothing) Drain REC and a gradual open-ended Drain END and (eventually) STUN. Expensive? Yes. But then, it really should be. Removing the ability to take a recovery should cost a lot; at the very least as much as Draining the target's REC down to 0.

Re: How best to replace "Find Weakness" The simple way to replace it is, well, to just pull it (and Lack of Weakness) over whole-cloth from 5E. I haven't seen anything in the 6E rules that would be overtly negatively affected by doing so.

Re: 6th edition Min Str

Re: 6th edition Min Str Spoken like one who has never swung both a 2-lb rapier (where all the weight is literally in your palm) and a 2-lb hatchet (where all the weight is at the far end of the haft). Where the weight is located on the weapon makes at least as much difference as how much the weapon weighs.

Re: Xenomorphs vs Cobras COBRAs are literally built for the close-quarter fight. Their reflexes aren't just fast, they are computer fast. The merely biologically fast xenomorphs couldn't be fast enough to compete. Add in the heavy laser in the leg and the rest of the COBRAs back of tricks... In an wide-open arena, COBRAs are actually less dangerous than, say, fully-geared up marines with power armor and all. But in tight quarters, you'd have a heck of a time drawing a bead on them. EDIT: Scooped!

Re: Now this is Usable, and I use War of the Worlds a Lot. heh So when do they say it is going to be out?

Re: Sort of a WWYCD: Overthrowing Charismatic Conqueror The best answer I've come up with for this one is the one my semi-reformed villian Vigil would use. He'd just sneak in under cover of darkness and assassinate Tamerlane in his sleep. And to keep the team out of it, he'd do it solo, and under the cover of his villianous identity, Stalker. Of course, given my last GM's track record, Tamerlane would probably have a PD higher than my max damage roll...

Re: Xenomorphs vs Cobras Heck, Ripley handled a queen xenomorph using... well, I can't call it power armor, since it wasn't armored. Power armor vs. Xenomprph + dead xenomorph. Especially if they know what they are going up against and use an acid-resistant ceramic as an outer layer for the armor...

Re: Xenomorphs vs Cobras I've gotta give this one to the COBRAs too. Anyone who can clear a room with an antiarmor-grade laser isn't going to have much trouble even with a horde of xenomorphs. Now the blackcollars, on the other hand, would have more trouble. That whole hand-to-hand thing doesn't work out so well against xenomorphs, and you run out of shuriken eventually...

Re: Don't you recognize your own kid? Oh no, what have I done?! I'd leave the game, if I was still in it. Why? Because with my (ex)GM anything involving time travel inevitably leads to the return of the Monoliths (think 2001, you won't be far off) and half the team is going to die stopping them... again.

Re: "Neat" Pictures We really need to start a Battletech thread to stop derailing this one...

Re: "Neat" Pictures It appears to be a Soviet-era ground-effect aircraft. The vehicle would only generate enough lift to fly when it was within a rather short distance of the surface, buoyed up by ground-effect lift (in essence, the air that gets trapped underneath the wing at very low altitudes - something like within half the overall wingspan). The benefit is being able to lift pretty huge payloads (in the 1,000 ton plus range, IIRC) at much higher speeds than other vehicles capable of handling that much weight (200ish mph for this aircraft, vs. 20-30 mph for a typical freighter). Downside is, it is really only safe over water in decently good weather - if the wave height gets up to your operating altitude you're going to have problems. EDIT: And I see others have beaten me to the punch...

Re: Predators vs. Military Have we seen if they work or not? No? Then we are working with whatever the writer decides will work according to his needs for the story. And frankly, only one of them - thermal - is currently practical for use by an individual soldier for targeting... the one most similar to the raw visual apparatus of the Predators themselves (as demonstrated in the first movie). Anyone want to bet on whether the Predators have considered cloaking themselves from other Predators, or other creatures sharing an common evolutionary background with them? You know, the type of creatures they used to hunt well before the got advanced technology...

Re: Batman meets Doc Savage And no small number of the people he operated on turned up in later books doing good work for humanity as doctors and what-not (rather than mere custodians or other menial workers). It's mentioned in passing in several books when he encounters one of them.

Re: Female Master Villains Loviatar predates D&D by a good long way. She's an old Finnish goddess, as I recall, the Maiden of Pain. The Lady of Pain is somewhat different. She runs Sigil, the city at the center of the D&D multiverse with gateways to literally everywhere.

Re: Predators vs. Military By which time we would also have other more advanced equipment; trying to guess what forms that might take pretty much takes us out of the 'Predator vs. Military' realm and into 'how do we give the military the best shot against Predators.' It's HIGHLY unlikely we would be able to randomly develop a battlefield sensor that can pick up invisible attackers anytime soon, there simply is no need. So you are likely to see a TOTAL overhaul of equipment and tactics - and quite possibly basic weapons technology - long before anyone would want something as esoteric as wanting to give individual troopers the ability to spot something that was effectively invisible. In fact, the most likely way for the R&D to be allocated for it, is if someone comes up with the same sort of chameleon invisibilty that was usable on the battlefield... at which point we have two invisible opponents, presumably with one side (ours) having the ability to sense through it. And that leaves us with a Predator Turkey Shoot.

Re: Predators vs. Military Okay, let's try their minimum 'probable spaceship' vs. our current spaceships... We set something - anything - up on the pad to launch it. They drop a 2-ton satellite on it. Whoops. As far as a military squad vs. a Predator... wasn't that the whole basis of the first movie? Not just any random squad, but an elite squad of troubleshooter special forces types vs. one trophy-hunting Predator? And didn't the squad get it's ass handed back to them? If it hadn't been for writer's fiat, it would have been a complete wipeout. The military simply has no chance at all, one on one. A platoon would be needed, minimum, to take one on, and I'd still give good odds to the Predator. Why? Because it can choose where and when to strike, and there is didilly-squat the platoon can do about it.

Re: More cross-genre goodiness: The Predator vs. a Jedi Yeah, it's dumb. It's also very human. For a living example, look at the U.S. government in (in)action. They're too busy fighting over power to actually accomplish anything worth doing. [/Rant] Before the Rule of 2, the Sith were the anti-Jedi. They went around causing chaos, conquering planets, and generally being nasty. Sure, some of them were trying subtle manipulations and gathering of power, but most of them were... thugs with power. And the Jedi, being well aware of the Sith, were able to stay in the game of stopping them. So in open warfare, there was no victory for the Sith. Once the Rule of 2 came about (and don't kid yourself into thinking that meant there were only two Sith period. There was the Master - the mastermind, supreme until his apprentice took him down; the Apprentice - the working agent looking for that step up; and the support staff - the little people, trainees, Sith Alchemists who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag, that sort.), there was ONE will directing things. And this will wanted things to go underground and take the subtle approach. Undermine authority, make the Jedi look like interfering busybodies, and just in general make the galaxy think the Sith were extinct. And guess what? It worked just fine. Darth Siddeous conquered the galaxy... to thunderous applause.

Re: Predators vs. Military Predators would win the war for one simple reason. They control the high ground - space. They can set a ship in orbit and, even if it doesn't mount any serious weaponry, still bombard us. How? They could just drop our own orbital junk on us. Heaven help us if they decide to (and have the ability to) just drop the moon on us...

Re: More cross-genre goodiness: The Predator vs. a Jedi The same Luke who had only the barest beginingns of Jedi training? Even by the end of that movie he was only half-trained. Luke didn't really come into his full power until the intermission between V and VI. So if the predator strikes while they are on Hoth, or Ord Mandell before that, he'd have a good chance of bagging Luke... not that there'd be much challenge in it. On Dagobah, the predator would have to get to him... with Yoda and his precog allowing him to keep Luke well away from the predator without Luke ever realizing there was danger out there.