Sociotard

Can Sound based images be percieved outside of the area they are bought to affect? If so, why buy a larger area? can some sort of adder be employed to reduce the range modifier (like telescopic, only to make things audible at a distance instead of hear things at a distance)

"You need an Etiquette lesson!" heh-heh, good stuff.

I think you intended to post a poll, but forgot to. I like the idea of calling these additional literacies. It makes sense for ancient hieroglyph based languages where scholars understand the symbols, but can't know what the words sounded like. Codes, however, I'm not sure on. They would, I think be better represented as a perk (knows secret code). Characters could also probably create their own codes with a cryptography roll. Of course, other characters would have to learn how to understand the new code

While I think Robert Jordan's writing style leaves a lot to be desired, the magic system in his world is one of my favorites. I also have the D20 book. I have been trying to convert some of the weaves etc. into hero system with mixed results. So far, I have all of the Cloud Dancing ones more or less done. Several of them had to be done with little tweaks in the rules. Dang! the librarian just turned off the lights to get me to leave, so I'll post some more tomorrow. I had it set up so characters bought 5 different VPP's of different strengths, and bought skills for different 'talents', such as "Cloud dancing" They draw from their vpp's to supply the cost of the power and make a skill roll for the right talent. For example: Summon lightning uses Air and Fire. Characters can draw from both pools (though no more than 4/5 of the necessary real point cost can come from an individual pool) Assuming they have sufficient points, they make a skill roll. Summon lightning falls under Cloud dancing, so they roll for that skill. Oh yeah, Characters also make an ego roll to connect with the source. As long as they hold it they are considered concentrating. They don't have to make additional ego rolls as long as they don't release the source. To simulate how tiring the source is, they cannot take recovery while holding onto the source

I wasn't trying to insult the good and wise people who put a whole keg of effort into this book. I was just trying to make fun, lightheartedly and devoid of malicious intent, of the crew. And Steve is right, it does have a little bit of the submarine atmosphere to it.

The real question here is how many lichs does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop. sorry. I woke up with a pun in me.

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*

Call it a summon of exact replica of given villain. You can then call it a large class of things and you'll be all set. Unless you want them to use the robot elsewhere, buy it with the limitation, only functions in the danger room. and, as you said, extra time (due to construction and programing) Edit: I really should have read Lord Liadens post first.

Wow. Bridge decorum really slips during a battle. One officer stripping down to her undershirt, another hasn't ironed anything in at least a month, and since when does growing a soup strainer become 'captains perogative'? No wonder the xenovore baddies give them so much trouble.

Re: Alien Wars cover *Looks about frantically. Raises dejected eyes* Okay, I give up. Where can I see the cover?

I was trying earlier to create the ability to generate hurricane force winds, about 130 MPH. Steve said that a 0 str change environment equates to about 20 mph. that comes out to roughly 2.7 doublings, or (moving 5 str up the chart from 0 for every doubling) 13 to 14 STR. However, not every tree blows down in a hurricane, so I guess I really don't know.

Very Nice. Very Nice Indeed. Do you have any plans to stat out the face-hugger? It looks like it has clinging, Penalty skill levels to target faces, and another summon (the embryo). Monolith had some good suggestions on how to do the parasite. He advised a desolidification and 1 pip hka nnd affects solid. This would be followed by a multiform into the warrior form, and would take effect once the subject had been reduced to 0 body. I'd say the chest burst itself would be a 1d6 hka. That way, even after being reduced to 0 body, the victim might still be saveable. might. I noticed the critter usually fights in warm environments. Could it have the cold-blooded limitation? As for the short lifespan . . . that could be a disadvantage too, one that may be worth exploiting. I could see the marines try to out last it. So lets use LS longevity backwards. If standard human life span is 100 years, for 1 point it's 50, [*] 50 years [*] 25 [*] 12 years 6 months [*] 6 years 3 months [*] 3 years [*] 1 year 7 months [*] 9 months [*] 5 months [*] 2 months [*] 1 month [*] 3 weeks [*] 9 days [*] 4 days [*] 2 days [*] 1 day [*] 13 hours [*] 7 hours [*] 3 hours [*] 1 hour 40 minutes [*] 50 minutes [*] 24 minutes 40 seconds [*] 12 minutes 22 seconds [*] 6 minutes 10 seconds [*] 3 minutes 5 seconds [*] 1 minute 33 seconds [/list=1] 25 being the usual limit on disadvantages. Come to think of it, that list would be good to pop into my bestiary. A large dog has a 4 point limitation, cats have a 3 point limitation, mayflies have a 25 point limitation . . .

An attack for the parasite. hmm, perhaps a teleportation, 1 charge, only to enter host? Except that the teleportation rules state that the characters 'safety system' kicks in, getting him away from the physical object he tried to get inside. Even if it could stay inside, it can't apply any defenses to the shock damage. It would be almost impossible for the thing to survive. It can't be tunneling. The tunneling rules specify that you can't use tunneling to tunnel inside living things to damage them. The Bestiary has rules for getting swallowed and fighting your way out, but that involves getting swallowed, and wouldn't be very useful for simulating a critter summoned within another. Perhaps the best way (for the parasite, anyway) would be a disease that has a summon linked to it. Summon doesn't take effect until the victim dies of the disease. If he doesn't die, the patients immune system has nullified the parasite. If you ever decide you are curious about the monkey, rent "Bruce Almighty" IMO, the monkey scene is the only good part of the whole movie.

The thing of it is, I'm not entirely sure I would allow a vpp sensor system. With the flexibility of a power pool, the characters could have any cocktail of sensors they could think of! There'd be no way to build a 'cloaking vessel' Helmsman: The enemy ship is no longer visible within the visible spectrum, sir! Captain: Then switch to a different type of detect! Do I have to think of everything myself? A multipower with variable special effects sounds much more reasonable. And if one of the engineers has an aid-based talent, as I've heard done, she could employ it to whip up an additional slot in the pool.

I agree with monolith. This is a summon. This gives me a thought, though. Is there any way to summon a critter inside another one? I ask because the following scenario just came to mind GM: Okay, the Kings Guards have spotted you and are comming straight for you. They don't have an action this phase and you do. Player: I use my "summon skeleton" spell. GM: Um, that requires a skeleton. This is the Palace courtyard, and I can't think of any imaginable way there would be a skeleton present anywhere near here. Player: Sure there is! Inside the first guard. Okay, that would be a straight up NO from any GM. Cool idea though. Maybe if you bought a usable as attack adavantage . . . Sounds like a great way to give a star campaign character a parasite that plans on emerging out his stomach cavity! Or to do the Bruce Almighty "anus dwelling Butt monkey" trick.

*does backflip* Thank you all! This was great stuff. If ever something esoteric and unsual needs to be known, gamers are the ones to ask.

a character at 0 body is dying, but isn't quite dead until he is at - original value. So how much of a limitation would it be for body (only to push back the cusp of death)? By which I mean, a character with 10 body buys an extra 10 body with this limitation, such that he has a max of 10 body, starts dying at 0, and is dead at -20. a -1 limitation sounds right to me, but I thought I'd ask.

I've been asked to do a writeup for a old fashioned, water wheel powered sawmill, probably from the early Renaissance. I agreed thinking it would be a snap to find a book or website on how they ran sawmills 'back in the day'. Reality is a harsh mistress. Does anyone out there know anything that might be useful? Or of any books/websites I should be investigating? What I have so far: There will probably be a pond formed by a small small dam, appropriatly called a millers pond. There will be stacks of logs near the mill drying out. The miller will have about 4 assistants or apprentices or sons. Gears will be used to connect the wheel to the saw blades. Sawblades are sharpened by hand with a little file. What I don't have: Should the blade be a circle or a ribbon? What other processes and tools besides sawing with the saw are used to work the logs? Would the miller have his own team to move the logs? Would the miller live above the mill or just nearby? Where do the assistants sleep? Any references would be a big help.

I found Mind Scan (mechanical Minds) to be useful I posted earlier on basing systems around the 4 fundamental forces. I don't feel like looking 'em up, so I'll paraphrase Gravitational: Good for detecting spacial anomalies and stars, and other good stuff as mentioned by Kristopher (I liked the nutrino scanner, btw). Technically, if it had analyze, it might be detailed enough to pick out any object with mass. Electromagnetic: Set up a detect Full Electromagnetic Spectrum (only ten points!). It gives you the infrared scan Kristopher mentioned (only 5 points by itself) but throws in UV, radio waves, gamma rays, x-rays . . . Bear in mind these would probably be passive scans, so I doubt theres enough background x-ray radiation to see through much. Set up another detect for fluctuations in EM field. Also good for spacial anomalies, but also to assist your Find Weakness (Force Field) You can also 'see' the way solar wind bends around objects, which should be good for something. Strong Nuclear/Weak nuclear: This will really bring stars into focus! Also helps target an unidentified ships energy systems (assuming you have a dilithium reactor, fusion core, or anything bearing any resemblance to nuclear reactions). With analyze you might be able to carbon date things, or percieve physical objects based on the radioactive decay present, be it ever so slightly, in all matter. Other than that, Detect life is always fun. If there's something unusually valuble in your campaign, a detect for it. I always thought a variation on mind scan for planets/star systems would be interesting. Buy the appropriate adders so it can't attack or anything, and it will enable you to find "nearest planet with a spaceport equiped to repair a MOET-5 Bootlegger" Let us know what you settle on. Oh! I almost forgot "Detect: plot device":p

Facinating. Do the metals simply remain in the diatoms cytoplasm or does it add them to its silicon shell? Now if we could get these things to use metals such as iron to build things, a whole new ball park opens up in space. I could see them making an electromagnetic railgun on the moon to facilitate shipment of resources to earth (helium 3 comes to mind). But then I pulled that idea straigt from an old scifi book i read some time back (can't recall the name). With that resource, lunar colinization could become a good idea.

I'm converting some of the spells from the Wheel of Time RPG into hero, and I liked the effect they had for lightning. They had it as an area of effect type thing with selective targeting (many lighning bolts). However a) you didn't have to make any additional attack rolls to hit individual targets. If there were any friendlies in the area of effect, they still took a hit, it was just less. Sort of like damage reduction. How would you write this? I was thinking of +1/2 to any standing area of effect, and any friendlies or other non-targets only take 1/4 damage. That's just because standard selective target forces you to make additional attack rolls and costs +1/4. I suppose you could just call it a +0 advantage and still require additional attack rolls, and have the reduction at 1/2. Then any time you missed the second roll, they at least take 1/2 damage.

Cool. Granted, this bacterial culture would seem to be limited to creating objects out of silicon, which would preclude it making me a hot fudge sundae. Still, very cool. *Brainstorms to think of a way to use silicon-manipulating germs* I wonder if we programed them correctly we could have them go to mars and make silicon domes for space exploration. If we ever went to mars. Which would be pointless. Oh, never mind

I agree that Dogs deserve higher stats than they were given, although, at 110 points, an (untrained) guard dog is much more expensive than a cat. I would Also like to point out that all the critters in the bestiary are built on 75 base points + however many disadvantage points were appropriate + however many experience points are needed to make up the difference. Average and Noteworthy People are built on 0 base points, Skilled people on 25, and Competent on 50. So even the best person in FREd is theoretically weaker than the weakest critter. However, think of any "Incompetent Normal" you might know. Don't you think they could get taken down by a tomcat dedicated to that end? Wouldn't you like to see them get taken down by a tomcat? Okay then.

I misspelled that, I just know I did. Anyway, back to the question. This would probably require player permission, but has anyone ever tried a scenario in which there is absa-friga-lutely no chance the players will survive, much less win, just to see how long they can hold off the inevitable?

I'm building a little canary (STR -30) that has Desolidification (only to protect against fire). Since it can affect the physical world, I need to apply the +2 advantage affects physical world on its str. How do I go about this? Should I treat it like a limitation (-30/(1+2)=-10)? Or would you just forget about it?