DigitalGolem

Re: I need serious help!!!

LQ, I hope I can help you. Here goes:

1. Do you have the Hero Designer software yet? That would take a lot of work out of this.

2. If you're starting off with only a single, basic type of attack, you can design it as a "stand-alone" power now, and change it to a Multi-power later. That might be easier.

3. Designing the extra damage with seperate charges may be done in several different ways. Some of these fit your idea better than others; take your pick.

a. A different RKA linked to the base RKA, with its own charges limitation.

b. An Aid to the base RKA with a constant effect, again with its own charges.

c. Boosted charges. (Not sure if this fits.)

d. Partially limited RKA; 16 charges on the first 3d6 (-0 lim) and 7-8 charges on the rest (-1/2 lim).

4. Hero Designer is your friend. (But I'm not sure if it'll do partial lims.)

If necessary, I'll expand on these ideas a bit more tomorrow. Chances are someone on this board will beat me to it, or come up with an altogether better idea, which would of course be just fine.

Good luck, good nite, thanx heaps;

DGv3.0

Re: 2 more questions

Thanks for clarifying that, Dr. A!

Re: Change Environment and Time Dilation

Unfortunately the suppress effect only works if you consider characters or anything with a Spd to suppress. Subtler effects like those that depend on a fixed duration would not be effected. For example' date=' a smoke grenade that lasts for 1 Turn would not be affected but should be according to the special effects.[/quote']

 

True. That's why I thought extra-D travel would be appropriate; it effects everything. What we're discussing is a form of "time travel", after all. What I mean is, the whole universe travels forward in time at (mostly) the same rate, and this power reduces that rate for everything within the affected area.

 

thanx heaps,

 

DGv3.0

Re: Change Environment and Time Dilation

This effect might be too powerful for "change environment". I'd write it up as extra-dimensional (time) travel, one hex, useable as attack, continuous. Expensive, but it gets the job done, I think.

Re: 2 more questions

Dr. A. was pretty freakin' thorough, so I'll just add a couple of comments.

Deuterium may also be found in the solar wind, probably in greater quantities than He-3, so if you're setting up shop near Mercury, you can get both. Also, the Deuterium-Helium-3 reaction produces only charged particles, which greatly reduces the need for shielding, and therefore reduces the mass of the power plant. As I understand it, this is also one of the "easiest" reactions to initiate. (I've heard that nuclear physicists say this reaction has a very high "cross-section", whatever that means. Anyone grok that?)

I'd recommend Transhuman Space for a good rpg-oriented discussion of all the ideas in this thread. And The Starflight Handbook by Mallove and Matloff offers a more rigorous look at this subject.

thanx heaps,

DGv3.0

Re: 3 1/2d6 vs. 4d6-1

I hate half dice. Never can get the *&^%$#@! things to roll properly after they've been cut in half....

Re: OK, Math And Science Experts: Cubic Hexes

As an aside, the 7m3 volume also makes for very simple conversions to/from the 14m3 "displacement tons" used in certain other games as a unit of volume for spacecraft and other vehicles.

Two Hero hexes = one dton works for me!

Thanx heaps.

Re: Building characters of different sizes

Star Hero also has rules for characters of different sizes. I don't have the Hero Bestiary, but I think they're pretty much the same rules.

I'd just buy extra Int as a power, with a limitation: "Only in combat".

DGv3.0

Originally posted by Kintara

It's very unlike a DigitalGolem to think "no" means "yes." You'd think it would have binary down.

Binary is no problem. I'm just a bit contrary sometimes. (pun intended. shoot me)

I've also considered changing my username to "Anti-Social Construct".

Originally posted by Almafeta

I don't want to know what are the extraordinary circumstances for Going Potty.

Doing 60mph, in an RV with a smaller-than-normal potty, on a very bad Mexican highway, with a driver who's blind in one eye.

Yes, this actually happened, but I managed to make the roll by using the Set and Brace combat modifiers.

DGv3.0

Re: traveller fuel

Originally posted by jmurphy

i still don't understand how one acquires fuel out in the wild in traveller. how do those scoops function? if i'm planning on making some jumps into the wild blue yonder what kind of planning do i need to make?

Traveller's fusion technology (apparently) uses plain old hydrogen for fuel. (as opposed to its theoretically more easily fused isotopes) So a ship needs the right equipment to refuel in the wild; intake vents for hydrogen gas found in the atmospheres of gas giants, processing plants to purify it, and in cases where gaseous hydrogen can't be found, cracking units to seperate the hydrogen found in water, ammonia, methane, etc.

The intake vents from Traveller are defined as capable of taking on 20% of the ship's volume per hour, in the form of unrefined hydrogen. Fuel purifying plants are usually designed to process the ship's entire tankage in a few hours. For warships (time is critical) and for merchants (time is money) this period is usually 6 to 8 hours, but for any ship that's not in a hurry, a smaller plant is sufficient, so long as the fuel all gets processed before use.

DGv3.0

[edit] I looked at your post again, and realize you're just talking about one character who's affected this way; my suggestion is a bit different. Perhaps a vulnerability disad, "takes extra damage from side-effects" would make this more useful to you. [/edit]

I wrote up quite a few effects like this, for a campaign which (sadly) isn't finished yet. I designed it as a "side-effect" limitation on the ship's movement power. There were several types of drives, with different, sometimes unpredictable side effects;

--minor side effects which always occurred. Some were continuous, lasting throughout the trip until the drive was turned off. Others occurred each time the drive was turned off, at the end of the trip. I used this for effects similar to hyperspace travel in the Chanur novels.

--major or extreme side effects which occurred when the drive wasn't used properly. For instance, drives which only work in the "black zone", far from a system's primary, could be activated closer in, but the ship and crew would both suffer the consequences. This would be similar to the "misjump" effect in Traveller, which occurred if the drive was activated too close to a massive object.

This is a very flexible concept; the side-effects and circumstances in which they occur can be defined any way you like. (And you save lots of points on the movement power!) Let me know if you'd like to see some better examples. At the moment it's late, and I've put away all my notes on this.

L8r,

DGv3.0

So, is there going to be an "official" Hero System Abacus product in the works?

DGv3.0

How to move after your attack...

...in one easy lesson.

Hold your action! If there's an urgent need to keep my options open, I hold my entire action until the end of the segment before my next phase. Then I make the half-move, attack, and only have to wait until my Dex comes up the following phase. For a high-Dex character, this provides a chance (not guaranteed, of course) to move, attack and withdraw before the target can retaliate, especially if they already used their action before your attack.

They will usually get wise to this after one or two attacks, however, and respond in kind by holding their own action, saving their very favorite HKA just for you! THWACK!!!

So remember, using the best tactic is smart, but using it over and over again, isn't.

thanx heaps,

DGv3.0

You might want to check out gurps: TransHuman Space and its outer-system supplement Deep Beyond. Both have lots of info on resources to be found in the outer system, and how to exploit them. Fine source material, just waiting to be converted to the Hero System.

Almost forgot! Under Pressure is the latest THS release, and it's got info on the oceans of Europa and Titan.

DGv3.0

Originally posted by Sociotard

I thought so to, until I tried growing a goat. *sigh* they don't call me the sociotard for nuthin. *shudders at memories of dinnertime laughter*

Well I've got a goatee, and soup's no problem for me. Waffle cones are another story....

Oh yeah, cool cover!!! When's it shipping?

thanx heaps,

DGv3.0

and another thing!

You might also want some penalty skill levels vs. time chart mods. Generally speaking, moving one level up the chart gives you a -3 penalty to do something in approximately one fifth of the normal time. (Out of combat.) So 4 or 5 PSL's should give you 10x.

DGv3.0

Originally posted by Farkling

Heh heh heh.

 

Boarding shuttles.

 

10d6 Suppress versus Force Field...only affects field immediately surounding shuttle craft.

 

And for the hull....1" Tunnelling through DEF 25...Armor Piercing.

One of Saberhagen's Berserker stories had something like this. It was a boarding craft with a long ram in front, designed to pierce the hull, absorb the shock (yeah, right.) and the front end had an air lock for boarding the Berserker after the impact.

I'd simulate this as extra Def, 3/4 damage reduction, and extra armor-piercing damage, only useable with move-thru maneuver, one non-recovering charge, side-effect (vehicle is semi-permanently stuck in target) and requires skill roll (piloting, or maybe luck). I like that tunnelling idea, too!

Assuming all this would work as a boarding technique, it also raises the possibility of using the same system to deliver a warhead. Sounds like a combination of armor-piercing and indirect.

As an aside, I'd be cautious of getting carried away with all these bizarre methods to defeat super-dreadnought defenses. If taking out a ship like this was too easy, then nobody would bother building it to begin with. On one level, it's a matter of cost-effectiveness. You don't go to war in a billion-credit dreadnought if a million-credit weapon system can destroy it; your enemy has a thousand-to-one monetary advantage. I don't usually quote president Bush, but he summed up the problem quite well, after 9-11.

"I'm not going to launch a million-dollar cruise missile at a ten-dollar tent in the desert just to hit some camel in the butt."

thanx heaps,

DGv3.0

In addition to the ideas mentioned so far, Find Weakness could be extremely useful. This could be used to simulate a gunner's ability to hit weak points in the target's defenses, or as a fire control computer designed for the same purpose. If the Find Weakness roll is high enough, and the hardware isn't too large or expensive, this could make any ship with such a system very dangerous, even to a super-dreadnought.

However, I don't have the ship's stats with me; how much Lack of Weakness does it have?

thanx heaps,

DGv3.0

"Add to Favorites" click

thanks for posting that link!

DGv3.0

For the extra-dimensional theft, I'd consider stretching with invisible power effects at +1 or maybe even +2, if there's no way to detect the theft.

DGv3.0

Re: Re: Fractionary SPD chart

Originally posted by D-Man

It must have been a very long, very bored moment.

ROFL!!!

Yes indeed, boredom is DANGEROUS!!! I'd like to be able to say I've never seen anything so pointless. Sadly, I can't. An old friend of mine once complained about having a dice bag full of d12's he never used. And, yes, we were very bored. The result was a set of rpg rules entirely in base 12. We actually playtested this monstrosity, and it worked.

My compliments to Zaratustra on a totally pointless but nevertheless job well done! Let us know how it goes in playtesting.

DGv3.0

Originally posted by D-Man

Excellent. For a mere 400 AP I can now shift the earth to another dimension.

I think maybe you could save some points here. Is there any rule against using a hex area w/mega-scale to do this?

DGv3.0, mad point-cruncher

This could also be considered a transformation attack; 10pts per d6 (maybe 15); turns "moving parts" into "frozen-solid non-moving parts", heals when target "thaws out". This is a potentially powerful effect, considering most machines/objects don't have power defense, but then, I've learned from experience that extreme cold can and will mess up any machine made by man, so in that respect it's quite realistic.

DGv3.0