Captain Obvious

Re: Traveller Hero: Weapon Tech Levels Higher technology doesn't necessarily equate to higher damage potential. A weapon with longer range is more useful without being more damaging. Same goes for higher magazine capacity, faster reload, lighter weight, faster rate of fire, etc.

Re: Hitting 'Til It Hurts It might be best to use this as a manifestation of someone's Unluck...broken hand (Impairing wound) after punching a dalek and not being like unto a thing of iron.

Re: Istvatha V'han - why can't she conquer Earth? Well, it is well established that he's a robot, so his loyalty to humanity and humanity's best interests is questionable....

Re: Free Stuff! Valdorian Age Maps on PDF I believe the appropriate response is "SQUEEEE!"

Re: Unleash The Clockworks Of War! For the most part, probably so, but I'm sure if Davinci could design the workable clockworks he did, someone in a fantasy world could build a machine that could travel a particular path (maybe with some mechanism to help overcome navigational errors, like a bump-and-go toy car) and deploy its flesh-pureeing array of axeheads, flails, and blades at a particular point to catch anyone trapped in the room with it. It could even use them to beat down the door to get in after its intended victim. Hitting the front of it could cause a plate to go from "fast movement, no weapons" mode to "slow movement, wall of death" mode for a length of time (long enough to kill or scare away the defender). Side plates could cause it to veer in that direction and deploy weapons for a short period before moving back on its original track. All these mods don't amount to artificial intelligence, but would make something pretty fearsome. Clever characters could really mess it up, even if it's too well-armored to damage...making it swerve off the side of a bridge will be more its "chase attackers/get back on track" programming can overcome, but that just makes it more fun, IMO. The real problem with doing realistic clockworks is how realistic you want to be with it. If they're not clunky enough or too organic, they feel more magical than clockwork. If they're too realistic, you're pretty much stuck with toys, however interesting. My advice is to make any reactions the machine is capable of on its own (without human operator/crew) very mechanistic...doing the same exact movement every time, but pretty much ignore power requirements. Clockworks that are useful for any kind of heavy duty application just aren't feasible with medieval level spring steel. Allowing the magic of strong, lightweight materials opens up all kinds of possibilities.

Re: Ranger Choke Hold? I've heard of the blood choke/air choke dichotomy, but never heard of choke and strangulation used to refer to different techniques. The Scent of a Woman thing looks more like a pressure point hold than a choke to me. It looks like it would hurt, but not necessarily render someone unconscious. At least not without a lot of hurt first.

Re: 8-ball You could probably cut all your billiard ball charges in half or more to save points. You're not likely to use all of any given slot unless the entire local Mafia family is after you...and in that case, you'll probably want to do a hit-and-run kind of fight anyway, giving you a good chance to get away once your ammo runs low. Especially if you pick up some Martial Arts (and if I recall correctly, pool cues are a weapon used for Dirty Infighting), you can drop some of that ammo. And shave some of those points from your skills. You can buy a couple of Skill Levels to bring your rolls back up, if you need to. Buy +1 with All Non-Combat for 8 pts and change your skill list to: 3 Acrobatics 13- 3 Acting 13- 3 Breakfall 13- 3 Concealment 11- 3 Conversation 13- 3 Deduction 11- 3 Demolitions 11- 3 Disguise 11- 5 Gambling (Pool, Billiards and derivative games) 12- 3 Interrogation 13- 3 Inventor 11- 4 CK: New York 13- 3 CuK: Organized Crime 12- 4 PS: Bartender 13- 4 PS: Pool 13- 2 SS: Chemistry 11- 3 Security Systems 12- 3 Seduction 13- 3 Shadowing 11- 3 Stealth 13- 3 Sleight of hand 13- 3 Streetwise 13- 3 Weaponsmith (Muscle-Powered Ranged) 11- Unless I miscalculated something somewhere, buying that skill level and shaving these points gives you a net gain of 31 points, and incidentally, gives you a better roll for your Breakfall skill, since you never bought that up. The only drawback is that that skill level can only go on one skill at a time, so if you're standing on a tightrope and trying to set an explosive charge where it won't be noticed, you'll have to decide whether to put that extra +1 into Acrobatics, Concealment, or Demolitions. But with 31 points of saving, you can afford to pick up another skill level...

Re: Unleash The Clockworks Of War! Cool idea. I'd like to see your final implementation of DaVinci tech. These things are all powered solely by wind. They're lightweight...maybe too lightweight to actually work using Renaissance level materials, but even with heavier materials, clockwork and wind power should be able to push them along and scare the crap out of some less-than-elite soldiers. I know DaVinci himself designed some pretty amazing clockworks with programmable behavior. If your clockwork inventor wanted to put in the time and research, he could build a mechanism that would move quickly up to a guard post, slow down and deliver some rapid stabbing/chopping/shooting (either incapacitating or driving away said guards) then move on, turning corners on a pre-programmed schedule, to attack the next place. Building reaction capabilities in rather than just pre-programming the fighting and/or navigation should be possible as well, although more complex. I think some of the best uses for realistic clockworks, though, would be assisting human crews. A clockwork siege engine could run itself up to the wall rather than needing horses or men to push it. I could easily imagine a clockwork gun crew that uses the recoil of the cannon as power to swab the barrel, measure and ram the powder, and load the ball, so the human crew only has to aim and fire. A clockwork gun carriage could harness the recoil to wind springs up so the cannon doesn't even need horses to pull it...the gunner could mount up, throw the brake off, and drive it away if the enemy got too close, or if the gun needed to be repositioned closer to the enemy. Some of these heavier-duty machines would be pretty dangerous if they became damaged, though. A cannonball crashing into a cannon with automated gun crew and carriage would release a whole lot of tension from the springs, and probably seriously injure anyone standing nearby.

Re: Dwarves with No Spirits Ooh...thinking about Arrowflight's cosmology in connection to this proposition that some races don't have one aspect or the other, it seems logical that these races would ALWAYS turn into undead upon death. So in this case, those without souls would always become wights or vampires or whatnot (probably necessitating cremation rituals upon death, or impenetrable/inescapable tomb/prisons), and those without spirits would always become ghosts or wraiths or whatever, unless there was some funerary ritual to send them on their way. "Hey, thanks for all you've done. We'll miss you, but it's time for you to go. Catch you later."

Re: Dwarves with No Spirits Their use of terminology is a little different from what we discussed here earlier, but Arrowflight Spirit corresponds to what I was calling the soul, while Mana corresponds to what I called spirit. Did you ever decide on how you were going to handle this, Mr E? How did it turn out?

Re: Bushido Hero Markdoc's Sengoku game had some good info online at one point, but all I can find right now are disjointed archive pages. Maybe shoot him an IM and see if it's available somewhere in one place...

Re: NYC Beat Cops From The 1970s

Re: Victorian "lost world" Hero System introduction If it's not too late, run down a copy of "The Lost City of Z" by David Grann. The characters could be accompanying Percy Fawcett, or searching for him after his disappearance.

Re: Interesting discussio on the future of Hero System on rpg.net

Re: "Neat" Pictures Just so long as it's one. You REALLY don't want to put on the beer goggles in that instance.

Re: Are Overall Skill Levels overpowered? Does make for a good jack-of-all-trades character though. If you like playing the Pointman in Spycraft, this is a good Hero build for you.

Re: Interesting discussio on the future of Hero System on rpg.net I don't think anyone's suggesting Hero go handwavey, but rather there should be a less imposing rulebook out there that still maintains enough Hero goodness to serve as a gateway into the full system.

Re: Running and jumping in the same Phase.

Re: Running and jumping in the same Phase. In situations like this, I fall back on the rule of common sense and let the person mix their running and leaping half-moves, even it it doesn't technically work out to one half-move per half-phase. If I was a robot, I might do it more in line with the RAW.

Re: Interesting discussio on the future of Hero System on rpg.net Does Hero even have an official free intro/quick start rulebook? I'm a big believer in the "first taste is free" marketing paradigm.

Re: The Voynich Manuscript Color me dubious about the translation. If he can provide a complete translation that can be logically deconstructed I'll believe it. Especially if the written description gives some botanists an "oh yeah, I see it now" moment when looking at the pictures of heretofore unidentified plants.

Re: Velocity Based DCV Oh yeah...looking back at your post in its entirety, I see you did mention the original strafing concept, and were using "strafing" in the last sentence as a shorthand for "strafing in circles". My bad. That's what happens when you focus on one sentence instead of the entire post...

Re: Velocity Based DCV Something else that occurs to me, in re: velocity based DCV...apparent speed is reduced at greater distances. Something moving at X velocity should get less DCV bonus for it at greater distances than at nearer distances. I don't think I've seen any games that account for that.

Re: Susano Considers His Next Possible Projects (What Do You Want To See?) Fearsome Critters and Things That Go Bump in the Night...I can swipe all kinds of stuff from there for my frontier fantasy game that I may never run. Tarot Council sounds cool too. Champions wouldn't be Champions without theme organizations. If you offer a less superheroic over-the-top organization that can be used in a James Bond style espionage game, that would be even better. (Assuming you weren't building it as a Bond-type group in the first place...if that's the case, a Champions level upgrade is in order).

Re: Afterlife based upon world geography There are no "grave goods" until there's a grave. And the grave goods are put there specifically for use in the afterworld. Maybe it's the funeral rites that allow the goods (or a spiritual facsimile) to cross over to the afterlife. Although this brings up the question of what happens to the spiritual goods when the grave is robbed. If they disappear from the afterworld, it would explain why steps are taken to prevent theft, and so many ghosts come after their stolen stuff. Given the tendencies of graves to be robbed, though, that would make the afterworld a pretty resource poor place.