zornwil

Re: How many threads?

Re: Mental Powers At least we're down to briefer posts!

Re: Mental Powers

Re: Mental Powers

Re: Champs Worldwide: Whaddya want? I don't really disagree but I would just add, to balance that picture which sounds a bit harsh, is that you basically get a free PDF with the understanding you keep it to yourself and that it doesn't have artwork and isn't exactly what the finished product will be. PS - for a low fee for a year

Re: Campaign Idea - Suggestions Gratefully Welcome Mr. Vimes, I really like the setting, I can't rep you yet but it's on the list.

Re: Campaign Idea - Suggestions Gratefully Welcome Oh, wow, I forgot all about that, my (second) nation has long collapsed.

Re: Mental Powers Oh, crap, Dust Raven, that's what I feared, you're up and on the boards, I remembered this is your time of day...now I'm never going to get off the boards tonight!

Re: Mental Powers In fact, separately, I would like to elaborate here: "(If that's not the case, then I don't know why they made such a specific default to it) " I say this because in point of fact, why would the rules not instead state something such as (but better, I'm not spending the time to write this up properly), "Settings normally have beings divided into different "Classes of Minds". A Class of Mind is a broad group of beings whose minds may, assuming Mental Powers are employed, interact. Beings not in the same class cannot interact, without using a +10 Adder to purchase that additional Class of Minds. GMs should strive to ensure there is balance among the Classes of Minds. The default for many modern and sci-fi games are Alien, Machine, Animal, and Human. The Machine Class of Minds is a good example of a creative use of Class of Minds to represent..." Because it doesn't take much at all to address it this way if in fact the rules weren't deliberately stating "here is a standard for a majority, if not most, campaigns," which, given the lack of any such approach as I have described, must be a deliberate point.

Re: Mental Powers

Re: Mental Powers

Re: Mental Powers I don't. In fact early on in Champions I ran counting animal minds as portions of human minds as they were just a lot less complexity so easier to manage. This came out of things I'd read in sci-fi, such as the way Asimov's aliens "saw" (perceived) beings. Straight from common material for sci-fi. To me, in that context (which I don't use in some other games), mental powers basically simply worked better against less complex minds and less well against very complex minds. Naturally one could argue that gave advantages to beings with more complex minds, but I would have basically just required more points for those beings, and it simply wasn't a part of the game world anyway. And this is a key example, which I wished I'd articulated before, as to why I can directly point to CoM is heavily pushing SFX in a way not helpful as well as it does not reflect source material in some meaningfully critical mass. Don't you think that's just silly as this was hardly available to you for long at all out of your HERO gaming experience?

Re: Mental Powers I otherwise agree, but plucked these out as I would argue with this, as stated. I could see (suspending how I feel about CoM and simply referring to it on its own terms) Human, Animal, Machine, and Exotic if the idea were explained that the utility should be very high for the Exotic category to justify its equality in commonality. The suggestion might even be that encounters with Exotic should typically be major plot points or the like. Of course some comment should be made that Animal is assumed to be as useful and as common as Human, and if the GM does not run a world like that he may wish to restucture.

Re: Mental Powers Well said, Hit Locations is well-respected as options go, it's no bad thing at all. And I'd personally like to see simply 2-3 more paragraphs in CoM just to address the purpose and adaptation, then it'd be basically great as an optional rule. PS - and I wouldn't have been convinced of even that without this thread.

Re: Mental Powers (snips) Thing is, CoM was added brand new, so in this case you're saying it was a correct level of minutiae for it to get into, that this in itself is the opposite of a warning sign as you think they got this right. On a more serious note than above, presuming animals aren't "self-motivated" is something that gets into almost the same territory as assigning a cosmology to HERO. It simply isn't a valid game assumption either way as it intrudes on both heroic fiction SFX (which is littered with self-motivated animals) AND reality (wherein people have contrasting opinions on such matters, and I'm not referring to popular thinking but even among academics).

Re: Mental Powers You've never dealt with cats I take it!

Re: The cranky thread PS - I was going to make a lewd joke involving reusing the word "blow" but I won't... ...wait, I just did!

Re: The cranky thread Good luck, hope it blows over fast!

Re: The cranky thread God, sorry about that.

Re: The cranky thread Best Friends, he works for Best Friends in Utah.

Re: The Last Word DESTROY!

Re: Mental Powers New CoM...resurrected dead beings. Of course it's less frequent, so it's typically bought as a +5 Adder. If it is the default class for an individual, bearing in mind that Lims on their powers will certainly add up to a greater cost discount for 5 points, they simply get a "free" -5 Disad to reflect that they have a default class that is less useful. Gee, I'm glad CoM has made things simpler...so much simpler...the old way I would have just put a Lim across his powers, but CoM clearly demonstrates doing so is giving WAY too much of a cost break. Yes, more evidence of system improvement...

Re: Mental Powers Glad it helped! I would argue that a potential retooling of CoM might be useful even in the core, but it would have to be fairly complete and detailed in order to account for all SFX (and not just type of being but type of mental attack, type of effect, etc.), at which point it amounts to a fairly bulky addition to the book and probably ends up becoming unwieldy even if "better" from a purist standpoint.

Re: Mental Powers Such an approach would be interesting for some completely different gaming system, as an aside. Class of Mind, Class of Body, Class of Stun, all could be used elegantly in some system fundamentally built on this, and could allow for a combo of absolutes and variability. Nothing to do with HERO, unless of course one was rewriting it from the ground up (even then, personally, I wouldn't take this approach, but it is an interesting concept).

Re: Mental Powers Uh...................................