Captain Obvious

I know from experience that most arrows that miss the target in an area with a lot of vegetation are almost as good as lost. I would guess that most arrows that hit a creature would remain unbroken unless the creature falls on them. Most that hit a stone wall (whether in a cave or a castle) would break. I've always just kind of played it by ear when running a combat as to whether an arrow was broken or lost (if the characters even stop to look for them), as opposed to building hard and fast rules. I tend to be a little more lenient when determining the fate of a magical arrow.

And thus was born Hiccupon, Earth's most feared villain.

If you want to avoid rolling all those dice, make part of the attack standard effect and roll the rest of it. This will compress your bell curve some, depending on how much you make standard effect, but if counting up all those dice is slowing your game it's probably worth it. As far as getting average rolls all the time, you don't really need to get far from average to make a big difference. If you're carrying weapons doing 25d6 RKAs, then your opponents should be sporting 50 to 75 points of DEF (slightly less if some of the dice are standard effect dice). We'll say, for the sake of argument, that they have 50 BODY each. Your 50 point opponents would be taken out with about two hits on purely average rolls. Just a little higher than average (100 out of a possible 150) will take it out in one hit. Your tougher 75 point opponents could conceivably be taken out with one hit, but it's much less likely. Most will take about 4 hits. A roll slightly less than average will mean that it takes 5. Giving an opponent the opportunity to make one more attack before putting him down can have tremendous consequences in a game. In a fight against multiple opponents, this can really add up.

If you get an interested group and a good game up and running, by all means get FREd. It makes a lot of effects way easier to construct.

Sailing ships in TUV are built with their maximum possible speed, ie with the wind coming from the right angle and blowing a gale, and a crack crew, and about a thousand other factors. Six knots may have been what they'd make on average (most speeds for sailing ships I've seen have been little more than estimates anyway), but to build it right in TUV you'd have to give them probably a little more than double that.

Buy all your powers that you want attached to the armor as Only in Hero ID. Too simple.

When I built ships and stuff under 4th ed rules, I gave all sailing ships a 1 SPD, miniscule movement, and a lot of NCM multiples. Basically any movement over one or two inches was non-combat. As far as a SPD 3 galleon goes, if they're moving at SPD 3 with a SPD 2 crew, it's non-combat as well. For that matter, it's pretty difficult to imagine any sailing ship dodging and weaving around to avoid enemy fire, so any sort of speed in a combat situation should naturally be considered non-combat. If the ship collides with rocks or another ship because it's moving too fast for the crew to keep up, well, that happened historically. I think in most cases, a SPD of 3 gives a sailing ship an incredible acceleration rate, especially if their movement isn't primarily NCMs, but otherwise I have no problems with it.

My suggestion would be to use desolidification with the limitation that it doesn't work against area effect attacks, and you can't squeeze through areas smaller than a rat or bat can fit. I'm not up on what exactly any of the Vampire powers do, so if there's more to this effect of Protean than I'm accounting for, let me know, and give specifics....

Oh yeah, I meant to ask about that. Without giving too much away to the unwashed masses, what's this mass combat system like? Is it based off of the old one from the FH Companion or is it a more wargamey type where the unit takes casualties and loses effectiveness as the fight goes on?

I'd build it as an RKA only vs alarm clocks, but I'm in a weird mood right now.

Well, someone's obviously thought of doing it at least. The 4th Ed Hero Rulesbook had a multi-genre picture on the back with a cartoon dog among the space marines, cowboys, wizards, etc. Champions in 3-D had a short writeup for Cartoon World. I would never do such a thing, because I've found that in most cases, games that are meant to be funny are just overboard with the corniness. I'd have control over a cartoon Hero game that I built from the ground up, but I honestly don't think I could really do it without going corny. Or losing interest either, for that matter.

I made a stretch guy once named Polymer. The name was extra fitting, since I gave him Clinging and a no-range Entangle...gooey plastic-stuff oozed from his hands and feet at will.

Oh yeah, to reply to the main thread... I think Champs in 3-D has to be one of the better supplements for 4th ed. Too awesome. Horror World obviously has a following, but I liked Backworld just as well, where Dr Zerstoiten aka Professor Preserver and Mechanon ("I do not understand why life is so important and special; nonetheless, I am programmed to abandon my existence to protect it") fought against the evils of the Golden Avenger (President for life of the US) and the Champions of Evil. Pre-4th, StrikeForce is an excellent reference, even if you don't plan on using the campaign material as is. Lots of good ideas in there, and good stuff to blatently rip off. I'm surprised no one has mentioned Super-Agents, though. At once a Champions supplement and a genre book on its own. At one point, I had plans on running a simultaneous Champions and Super-Agents campaign, where events from one directly affected events in the other.

Re: Re: 50th Post Someone asked an unrelated question once, which led me to recreate (accidentally) the Piercing advantage. For 1 point of Piercing, add 1 die of attack, give it the standard effect (ie 3 points), limit it to doing only 1 point of effect (ie losing 2/3 effect...-1 1/2 limitation per FREd p 194), and give it a further limitation only to pierce defenses (probably worth -1/2 in my opinion). Voila. For 2 pts Piercing, the only 2 pts of effect limitation is worth -1/2 instead of -1 1/2. For 3 points of piercing, no limitation is needed on points of effect (obviously). For 4 or more, build it up in blocks of 3, 2, and 1....

Sounds like an interesting idea. None of my campaigns have had Luck as a huge factor (although many characters had a die or two of it for the really bad times), and this system seems like it would bring Luck more into play. Firegolem's point seems pretty valid, ie players trying to milk the system by taking lots of always limiting limitations, but it's nothing that can't be worked around with appropriate GM control ;-) Can I take a limitation on my RKA that I just don't have an RKA? That will get me extra points every game, right?

Well, obviously, they have the fact that they're Dragons going against them. There aren't any Adventurer's Clubs lying around the store.... I was wondering what made these particular issues of Dragon so unappealing relative to other issues....

Actually, the "more to it than blasting away" is still easy. It's the various permutations of blasting away that get complicated. Even so, the best way to go with new players is to let them describe what they want, you build it, maybe modify a little right before beginning play if they have any more input, and then jump in with both feet. Nothing breaks down a learning curve like getting hands on. And of course, once they've got the basic combat system down (and that's really not that bad), they can come to these boards and have the panel of experts help out in constructing all sorts of various and sundry powers.

Force Field doesn't go down when you overcome its defensive value. How about Force Field, Area Effect?

Good call.

Well, my FLGS doesn't have Dragon #259. They've got 5 or 6 copies of some issues though. Makes me wonder what's wrong with them....

Go with some of the old pulp-type classics for inspiration. Few if any of the Tarzan stories had mystical elements. Plenty of Conan stories had weird beasts but no magic. It's mostly variations on swashbuckling adventure, but exotic locales and strange animals can keep things from stagnating. Get those characters on the road!

Caseless ammo has been workable for at least 15 years. That G11 rifle from Twilight: 2000 is real, and came out in '88. There isn't a whole lot of caseless weapons around out there because most governments already have stocks of small arms that they're not planning on replacing anytime too soon, and private citizens are generally barred from something with the high rate of fire that caseless ammo would give....

Heh heh heh...nice special effect on that one....

Pre-4th Autofire attacks had an inherent +4 OCV built in. There was also an adjustment to the range modifier, but I don't remember if it was beneficial or not....

Super Agents would be good for a Joe campaign, but not 100% necessary. Most of their equipment was standard modern-day stuff (at least early on in the comics, the cartoon was always jacked up). The gadgets they'd use would be easy enough to do in 5th without all the translating from 3rd you'd need if you were using Super Agents. Of course, anyone who wants to do a Joe game can post gadget ideas, and those of us gaming vicariously will generally be happy to come up with plausible write-ups....