Mark Taylor

Re: HERO 5th Revised

5E is reduced in value slightly by the release of 5ER, as it's been stated that answers to rules questions on the forum that are given purely as page references will only be 5ER page references. If you don't own or even have access to a 5ER, the page references don't do you much good.

 

Kelcyron

So on that basis a service which is provided completely free of charge, which many other similar companies don't provide and which DOJ have no obligation to provide is somehow twisted around to become a reason for complaint? Geez, the world is even more screwed up than I thought.

Quite apart from the fact that 90% of the questions addressed to Steve could be just as readily and easily answered by other board members in the HERO System Discussion board, many of whom I'm sure would be more than happy to give you a 5E page reference should you ask for it.

Re: HERO 5th Revised

Believe me' date=' my in-laws, on a fixed income, do complain about this.[/quote']

 

Great, let's live in a world where nothing is ever improved upon, because it pisses off the consumers.

Re: HERO 5th Revised

The $10 increase in a little agitating. I'm not making an extra $10 since last year...

But the price increase is only 25%, and the book is over 50% bigger!

If there were revisions to be made' date=' it would feel better to me if the company would release a PDF, comprehensive list of what was revised and what was not. Then poor bastards like me could use the PDF until I (inevitably) got sick of it and bought the new copy.[/quote']

 

Most of the revisions are in the rules FAQ, avaiable in PDF format. http://www.herogames.com/SupportFAQs/rulesfaq.htm

 

 

This method feels a little like the way my cable company treats me.

 

And don't get me started about Wizards of the Coast and their masters...

 

See I don't understand this POV because could easily just keep using 5E, which is no way reduced in value by the release of 5ER. It seems a bit like complaining that the company who make your washing machine or DVD player released a new and better (and slightly more expensive) model and didn't give you one for free. (Which is something that consumer electronics companes do regularly every six months to one year and nobody seems to complain).

Re: Dealing with Magnetism

How about:

Entangle 6d6, 12 DEF, Takes No Damage From Attacks All Attacks (+1/2) (135 Active Points); Entangle Has 1 BODY (-1/2), Limited Power (Target must be close to a metal surface; -1/2), Cannot Form Barriers (-1/4). Total cost: 71 Points.

Re: HERO 5th Revised

Really' date=' if the rules haven't changed, they aren't Revised Rules anyway.[/quote']

 

It's really the book that's been revised, not the rules.

 

There are a lot of reasons why DOJ (with customer input) decided to do what they did. The feedback they got when these plans were announced was far more positive than negative and I think much of that can be put down to the fact that they listened to the customer input they received. But of course, as is always the case in these situations, there was nothing they could have done that would have pleased everybody.

 

With the amount and nature of the material that's been added, sticking it all into an Appendix to avoid messing up the page numbers (like SJG did with GURPS 3rd Edition Revised) would have created a book that was a nightmare to navigate and use in practice. Even GURPS 3rd Revised (which had a relatively small amount of additional content, and that content was of a nature that was far easier to separate from the main text than much of what's been added to HERO 5ER), was irritating to use when I couldn't remember whether a particular Advantage, Disadvantage or Skill was in the main text or the Appendix.

 

The alternative you suggested of only adding a few pages would have meant that the book couldn't even have begun to address the content of the Rules FAQ, which was a large part of the point of the revision, and the main thing that most customers wanted when they asked for the revision.

Re: The cranky thread

I got curious about the post' date=' finally, and went to read it but Ben had already edited it away.[/quote']

 

It was truly frothing-at-the-mouth material, but I got the impression it was intended to read that way. Basically he started off with "no way am I editing my posts, 'cuz I can say what I like" and then went on to incorporate every offensive term for homosexuals he could think of.

Re: Heat Vision

Since we need the character for tonight' date=' I think we'll stick with the SFX determins effect and use the RKA to heat things up. We'll figure out if he needs another Power after talking it over the the GM when he gets here, and if he needs to make a Power for it, we'll make one later. Keep the ideas coming though![/quote']

 

Perhaps you could use an EB instead of RKA and persuade the GM to allow the player to use a slightly modified version of the Disarm maneuver with it, substituting the EB's damage dice (reduced by ED) and the target character's EGO for the appropriate STR scores in the STR vs. STR contest.

 

It might need a little tweaking to balance it, but I think it's a workable idea.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings

Every time I rep somebody they post something even more deserving of rep an hour later, and I wish I'd saved the rep for that post! Ah well.

Re: HERO 5th Revised

Apparantly the Trolls come out of hibernation over the New Year.

Makes sense. It's fairly close to midwinter, shortest day and all that. Less trouble with pesky sunlight turning them to stone.

Re: HERO 5th Revised

Still' date=' my point must have hit a nerve if my former apologies are going to go completely ignored. Fine by me.[/quote']

 

 

[voice=homer simpson]

 

Such sincerity! My faith in humanity is restored!

 

[/voice]

 

Sorry for missing your apology to me, but as it was cunningly hidden in a reply to somebody else entirely and didn't at any point mention my name or what you were actually apologising for perhaps I can be forgiven for my oversight.

Re: HERO 5th Revised

As someone who is himself prone to the odd emotional outburst from time to time' date=' I think calling Mark Taylor "corporate-drone-man" was pretty rude. I really don't think that was warranted.[/quote']

 

Yeah, I'm not a corporate-drone-man, I'm a drooling corporate zombie. There IS a difference.

Re: HERO 5th Revised

I am willing to bet that things have changed just enough to make buying it a necessity.

I'd suggest you actually read 5ER (as I'm currently in the process of doing) and compare its content with that of 5E before making that kind of assertion. At the moment I think you're making a bit of a fool of yourself by making false assertions based on groundless assumptions. But as you said, time will tell.

Re: HERO 5th Revised

This reminds me of something. For some reason the number "3.5" keeps going through my head. "Almost three years???"

 

"Almost three years???"

You say that like you're explaining the tenure of some eighty-year-old retiree who's been at his job all his life.

 

"ALMOST THREE???"

Yes, almost three. It's easier to type than two years and X months (I think X = 9, but I'm not sure and can't be bothered checking). I'd apologise for my lazy attitude in typing and fact checking, except that I still don't see anything wrong with it. It's also an amount of time after which the FAQ had grown to an extent where little new was being added to it and a lot of people on these boards and probably elsewhere were suggesting it should really be incorporated into the main text. In other words, there was DEMAND for the revised edition. DOJ did something that many of the customers asked for. The fiends!

Exactly how deep does your programming go' date=' Corporate-drone-man?[/quote']

 

Plainly, as you'll discover if you continue to read and post on the boards, I'm a drooling corporate zombie.

 

 

Well' date=' not completely. It is after all, relevant [i']to me[/i] and to my personal wallet. However, since we're on the subject of personal opinions and views. I suppose the issue itself is beyond the purview of your personal inability to see "how it's in any way unreasonable."

 

My point was it is and must be irrelevant to DOJ's decision to publish the revised edition. No matter how many years after the original edition they decided to publish the revised edition, whether it be 2 or 20, there would still have been people who only bought it yesterday. Does it mean they should never publish the revised edition? That's kinda silly. How recently you happened to buy the book is beyond their control, unless they do what certain other companies have done and let the main rule book go out of print for months or years before reprinting... which would generate far more complaints than 5ER has done and probably place the company in serious financial difficulties.

Re: 5ER Picture caption contest.

Page 459: "...an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended lifeforms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."

Re: 5ER Picture caption contest.

Page 213: "Screw this. I'm going for a swim."

Page 230: "Heheh! This is way more fun than tipping 'em over!"

Page 261: "Aagh! Just wait until I catch up with that guy who told me smearing honey on my armor would keep it from rusting!"

Page 330: (thoughts) "I'd bored. Who'd have thought being King would be so damn boring?"

Page 378: (thoughts) "Smoking with no hands is pretty cool, but damn the smoke sure does get in my eyes!"

Page 408: "Check out these biceps, kid!"

Page 443: "I knew that gigantic stick of bubblegum would come in handy."

Re: An EB by any other name...

I don't see how a 'glue gun' could even keep people from moving in the first place' date=' so I don't see how forming a barrier is any more of a stretch.[/quote']

 

Then why use it as an example?

 

 

No rudeness taken. I completely agree that these powers should be read in detail and fully understood before being used.

 

I just would like to know how Grond can help littly granny out of a poison attack. If the poison is bought as an Entangle, all Grond has to do is walk up and pull it off of her. And how would Grond reverse the paralysis of an Atemi strike that impairs a target's nerual pathways to keep them from moving? Again, if the paralysis is bought with Entangle, he can. Hell, a VIPER agent can just shoot the Entangle and break it off, and I hardly see how that would be appropriate for poisons and martial arts Atemi paralysis strikes.

 

Mental paralysis I'll buy as an Entangle, for I rule that it can be ripped off and targeted by Mental Powers/Target's EGO.

 

 

You are right on all accounts. All I'm saying is that many of the published write ups are wrong. The just don't work as described. It's like buying an RKA to blind someone in my opinion. It just don't do that, but if you hit them in the eyes and you're using the disabling rules... I understand the spirit of why these were written up in these ways, but I think that spirit has been taken too far. There's nothing wrong with using Images or Change Environment for concealment, though Invisibility would seem obvious. I simply marvel why Entangle seems to be taken as the only Power than can be used to hold someone still... especially when we have Telekinesis, Change Environment, various Adjustment Powers and even Transform that all do the same thing. I might be going against published material, but just because it was published doesn't mean its the most appropriate way of doing things.

 

I see your point here. I think Takes No Damage From Attacks should include an option where another character cannot damge the Entangle at all, not even by targeting it at a penalty to OCV. Personally this is how I generally interpret the situation anyway in such cases, based on special effects.

 

I still think there are plenty of valid uses for Entangles that can't form barriers though. And in many cases in which they can, they could only reasonably do so in doorways, passages or other situations where they have something convenient vertical surfaces to cling to, and the rules do not reflect that either.

 

I only just remembered it now, but a particular villain (actually a demon) that appeared in my Ninja HERO game had a cinematic "piledriver" attack (the campaign is not exactly 100% serious in tone). The character jumps high in the air and lands with his feet on the victim's shoulders. This is just a sort of "jumping move-through" and as such could do quite a lot of damage, but on anything other than hard ground it could also drive a victim into the ground, trapping him. That part was built as an Entangle, Cannot Form Barriers (among other limitations). Just wondering if you would have built it a different way.

Re: An EB by any other name...

I don't see why not. Spider-man is the archetypal Entangle-using character' date=' and that's what he has: wrist-mounted glue guns.[/quote']

 

Then where we differ is what we define as 'glue'. Spider silk is a bit more sophisticated a material than just glue. For a start it forms threads. All glue is going to do is form a heap, and in order to form a barrier it would have to be an extremely large heap.

Re: An EB by any other name...

Maybe if it has a "spray" attachment' date=' it could be used like Spider-Man makes his Entangles into barriers.[/quote']

 

Sure, but my point was that it doesn't strike me as a natural capability of an unmodified "glue gun" type weapon or power.

Re: HERO 5th Revised

Fifty dollars for a /revision/ of a book, for which I paid forty dollars, less than a year ago?

 

I'm very sorry, but that's just absolutely ridiculous.

I can't see how it's in any way unreasonable to charge 25% more for a book that's well over 50% larger, or to publish a revision of a book that's been available almost three years. However long ago you personally happened to buy it is completely irrelevant, isn't it?

I sincerely hope that future supplements will not require one to possess this revision. Does anyone know?

You'll probably find that the rulebook page references in future supplements are to 5ER, but assuming you can work around that you should not have any problem at all. The rules haven't changed.

Re: An EB by any other name...

I don't really understand why so many people/campaigns/players don't use the Barrier aspect of Entangle. Or worse, don't see how some SFX wouldn't form barriers.

 

Never tied a rope across a doorway? Never formed a wall of ice? Never had a mage cast some force bonds just out there to block someone? Even a glue gun can make a barrier in a doorway or over a trap door.

A rope accross a doorway doesn't form any kind of barrier anybody can't get past in half a second unless it's strung back and forth several times and pretty well secured in place. An action that's going to take a lot of Extra Time, so it's hardly a valid use for, or a natural part of the powers of a lasso, for example. As for mystic bonds, for example, again that's highly SFX dependent. It depends hugely on the nature of the spell and how it's visualised. I'm not sure how a 'glue gun' could reliably form any kind of barrier which couldn't easily be passed, without an awful lot of time and effort or exactly the right circumstances.

As for martial artists' date=' poisons and such, I almost never use Entangle for these effects. I use something that's more appropriate to the SFX of what's actually causing the paralysis. I end up using Transform often, but then again, I've never heard of anyone using Entangle to so simulate turning someone to stone so I guess I'm okay. I also like using weird combinitation of Suppress/Drain STUN or SPD to cause paralysis effects.[/quote']

 

There's nothing inappropriate to these SFX (except the turning to stone one) about an Entangle which can't form barriers. That's why the limitation exists. For my part, using Transform for such powers is somewhat against the spirit of the power, and runs contrary to the guideline that it shouldn't be used to simulate existing Powers. I'm going to suggest that you read the description of Entange again. I'm not trying to be rude, just trying to draw your attention to the fact that the actual description of the power strongly emphasises its restraint / paralysis effects and keeps the ability to form barriers very much secondary.

 

I'm not saying in any way that your way of doing things is "wrong", but I am pointing out that it's your personal taste and not in any way a HERO System standard. You may almost never use Entangle for those effects but you don't seem to be typical in that respect. Official HERO System products provide many examples of Entangles which don't form barriers (two out of four of the examples given in the main rulebook, for starters). OTOH correct me if I'm wrong but I can't recall seeing a single example of a Transform used to paralyse in a HERO book, except in cases where the paralysis is the side-effect of an actual physical transformation, such as petrification.

Re: An EB by any other name...

I guess you and me differ then. In my entire history of gaming using Hero, I've only every seen two, maybe three, Entangles that didn't/couldn't/shouldn't form barriers. One of them was handcufs, another one one was a clunky mental paralysis.

 

So I would say yes, it creates a barrier that the attacker can either form on it's own, or around a target to immobilize it. Anything else is a Limited version of that (Like an EB that can't spread or an HKA that doesn't add STR).

I think we just differ in the genres we play. I am guessing you mostly play Champions. In the heroic (as opposed to superheroic) genres Entangles which do not form barriers are IME actually more common than ones which do. Any kind of paralysis effect from a Martial Artists' paralysing nerve strike ability, to a paralysing poison, to a Wizard's spell of mystic bonds, to a Sci-Fi Tangler weapon is generally built using an Entangle which Cannot Form Barriers. OTOH if a player wants to build an ability which is purely intended to form barriers, he's more likely to employ a Force Wall than an Entangle, since in most cases he gets more value for his Character Points that way.

Re: An EB by any other name...

Thought of a new name for Entangle:

 

Barrier. As I explained in another thread, all an Entangle does is create barriers. Either as a stand alone wall, or around a target.

No, it stops characters from being able to move or act. Physical barriers are just a special effect. Out of the three characters in the two campaigns I'm currently running who have Entangle based abilities, all three are built with the Cannot Form Barriers Limitation, and from what I have seen of characters posted online, Entangles built that way are just as common as Entangles with a physical barrier type special effect.

Re: An EB by any other name...

I always thought that Advantages should be called Enhancers or something similar. Either that call Limitations Disadvantages and Disadvantages Restrictions or Drawbacks.

 

Then again, I've never really had a problem with any of those named as it, nor have anyone I've ever played with.

In GURPS (which has the equivalent of Power Modifiers, though they're not as core a part of the system as in HERO) they are called Enhancements and Limitations. Whereas Disadvantages are still Disadavantages and Talents and Perks are both classed as different types of Advantages.

To my mind, the naming of these and indeed many other elements in GURPS is rather more logical and consistent than in HERO, But HERO is still a far better system overall IMO.

Re: An EB by any other name...

It only just occured to me, Restrain fits quite well.

Re: An EB by any other name...

Entrap? Ensnare? That's the best I can come up with.

Ensnare is pretty good actually. It's better than the thoughts I had, which were along the lines of Impede, Hinder, and similar, none of which sound right. Probably the most technically correct term in the English language would be Arrest, but unfortunately that just really doesn't sound right, probably because of the police-related connotations.