zornwil

Re: Champions Universe Combined Timeline

Re: Hit Location: Heart

Re: Stat Increase = Skill Increase? I'm not debating it, but it didn't work that way in 3rd. I mean, it's fine to play that way if you want, just being accurate on the rules.

Re: Could your Champions character beat... My own Captain America, for my world, would be over 1200 points, I just figured out. Core stats: 30 STR 45 DEX 40 CON 20 BOD 20 INT 25 EGO 35 PRE 16 COM 20 PD (res) 20 ED (res) 8 SPD 40 REC 120 END 90 STUN Lots of combat skills. 8 Levels with All Combat. 5 Overall Levels. Lots of basic skills and intrusion and secret agent skills. A few PRE skills, including Interrogation, Persuasion, Oratory. A few Perks - secret access to SHIELD and most US military installations (and the Pentagon) (during some bad years, especially during the Nixon-era US "civil war" among supers he developed these routes "just in case"). Tons of Contacts. Not so much Favors, he doesn't really go for that. Effectively Filthy Rich in that the government has given him a blank check, he's on the totally blacked-out and unchallenged budget, reinforced by 9/11. Fringe benefits include diplomatic immunity in many places, federal and "uber-state" police powers, military rank equivalent to reporting directly to the president, effective low justice, and effective license to kill. (Thankfully, one of his Disads is "Obeys the US Constitution and nearly all US laws religiously" along with being morally upright). I'd go ahead and pull in the FH Fearless Talent. Buttloads of martial arts maneuvers. As far as powers, his routine, hum-drum attack is his 12d6 H2H Physical strike with the Shield combined with his STR for a 16d6 attack He has an edged KA doing 6d6. He normally uses Martial maneuvers and levels to give more damage, but he has some x2 END dice of normal H2H damage of up to 12d6 more. His Shield gives him 60 PD and ED Armor, and he has Invulnerability to Crushing Damage (20 points, Common/Specific) as it can support virtually any weight. He has a 36- Power Skill with it to do all sorts of stuff at amazing levels of additional AP. He is an Eternal Hero (per my Rep system), he is one of the few who ever get to this, in the company of Spiderman, Red Tornado, Flaming Carrot, Dr. Strange, Dr. Doom (the only super to be head of state - he is the head of Russia, basically in the same sort of situation as Putin), Red Amazon, and Screech the Cat (who is indeed a cat, an Indian (as in India) hero). Those close to being Eternal Heroes would include the Outsiders (PCs from a prior campaign including Desperado, Dr. Time, Necromancer, and Nightshade), Daredevil, Punisher, and China Left. Although these classifications don't necessarily speak to power level. Re my PCs, well, Blazing Arrow would actually befuddle the Captain, I swear, with his bizarre combat tactics, particularly when he suddenly blows an entire phase doing nothing while waiting for the spirits to do something, which usually is nothing or something like they'll send a worm up to help him (not a giant nasty worm, just...a worm). But then Captain America would put him out pretty quickly. Urban Druid, my old and legendary PC from a long time ago, would give the Captain a decent run if it were in an urban environment, but he doesn't have Cap's tactical or analytical skills and would succumb after a while. Now, if it cross-genred/cross-universed into Deadlands, my old PC Bart might actually best the Captain because Bart does NOT fight! He's a talker, and was amazingly lucky in general (luckiest character I ever had, and I mean literally, not just game stats or having chips). So he would probably redirect the Captain and get away! Possibly even maneuver Captain America into a bad position against others.

Re: Could your Champions character beat... Just out of curiousity, if you had a Captain America in your campaign world, adapted to fit and to be "sort of like" Marvel's Captain America (pick the era you prefer), would that version beat Lariat or be beaten by Lariat? Would you build that Captain America as one of the best supers in the world? Is Lariat one of the best? All just curious - there's zero implication here, I'm wondering how you see Captain America in your world and vis-a-vis Lariat.

Re: Champions Universe Combined Timeline This must be bumped! Wow!

Re: How much XP do you give and why? I'm quoting an old post of mine from October 30, 2004, in response to a similar query:

Re: Disadvantages of being Undead See, I thought he was a hero until you said you liked the eating brains part! Now I might make a zombie hero NPC.

Re: How would you simulate this in combat? I might be inclined to call this a highly specialized and rare NND KA, just because that sounds so cool and dangerous, requires being real close to the target's mouth, mouth must be open, requires a grab with some sort of minuses to reflect grabbing the tongue.

Re: Mental Powers Sorry, I meant to type telepathy, thanks for the catch.

Re: Why add a rule? Actually, yes, you are, communication is a two-way process including reception and interpretation. The listener/receiver has as important, if perhaps not more important, job to review carefully and react. At least according to some classes I took. Now how's that for really beating this to death?

Re: Superhero Images Yeah, it really is a bummer. PS - btw, I'm glad to host images for people, but so are others here, too, so I'd hope people aren't letting the quota bite them now

Re: Mental Powers We must not be working from the same terminology. I am calling SFX that layer on top of the mechanics which indicates the "flavor", if you will, but the mechanic works the same regardless. Where the SFX is particularly limiting, one gets a Limitation of course, and there are lots of -0 Limitations referred to as byproducts of SFX. I would have called "Telekinesis, Machines Only/No Humans (-0)..." a declaration of the SFX, at least in the past. Let's be clear here - Energy vs Physical is an SFX embedded in the system. I'm not saying it's wrong or that you will even agree with my comment, but I am just spelling out "what is SFX". PS - and they're clearly forced - prior I could buy "Telekinesis" with no designation, assumed to work against any "mind" and this human/alien/animal thing didn't come into it except by further SFX definition and character construction and so on. Machines of course are a somewhat separate issue and history.

Re: Why add a rule? I already said it wasn't asked well. But I don't see how the question could be construed as you stated it. If someone wants to know Steve's opinions, I would think they would ask him. if that's what I was asking I may as well be posting a thread saying "What is Fox1's reasoning for house rules? Everybody but Fox1 please answer."

Re: Stat Increase = Skill Increase? Just as a point of info, 5th edition has nothing to do with this. Skills have increased with related chars since early Champions days. The formula as long as I can remember for skills linked to chars has been 9 + (char/5) with the char being whatever it is at the given point in time. Of course you can also scale by this - if you want chars to have "a little" influence you can go to char/10 or even char/20 if you like. Just a thought.

Re: Stat Increase = Skill Increase? You can run Knowledge Skills as pure Background Skills and divorce them from INT. But I think it makes sense otherwise and in any case/situation to allow INT increases to affect Analyze and Deduction and other such "quick-thinking" INT-based skills, as well as of course other sorts of skills based on chars.

Re: HERO System Equipment Guide PDF preview

Re: Why add a rule?

Re: Why add a rule? Re Contacts, I think a lot of us are doing something like that. I tend to feel that the commonality and the utility as well as the importance to Play Experience makes it worthwhile to have a sentence or two in the rulebook that a Contact "may be a set of Contacts with the conditions..." (GM control, yada yada). I also think there is in fact a current mechanical problem without such a condition, as the current rules suggest that the utility of Contacts does not scale up as do other things - perhaps, upon reflection, the simplest and best thing is to apply the +5 x2 rule! Simply indicate that "Contacts of an Identical Nature or a Group of Similar Contacts" can be bought at a certain level for +5 points for x2 Contacts or the like. This makes it consistent with other constructs, keeping the system highly logical, while giving a theoretically balanced method. Even if I might not use that method myself, it gives an orthodox method and makes a clear suggestion as to the idea that increasing contacts in a single area really isn't a straight additive value.

Re: Why add a rule? I should have phrased this better originally - though it's interesting to hear the rationale re house rules as well. I'm more interested in what would it take to add a rule to the actual HERO game.

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill? That's why I put realistic in quotes...in the context, such rules aren't at all realistic.

Re: Meta SFX I just made a connection of Classes of Minds to Classes of SFX notion. Perhaps a truly systemic approach would justify both, if carefully deployed and explained as to how a GM would NEED to tweak it (it should not/cannot be presented as "this is a useful standard for everyone" as CoM currently is). Please see post http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=758058&postcount=80 . Interested in comments. I was going to write something on a potential Classes of SFX approach, but just don't have the time to think that through to the extent it needs.

Re: Mental Powers I can't add much, but there is one thing standing out to me... In Lord Zod's commentary (which is good as it goes even if I am in agreement with Hugh on this), I would really call out the point from Zod: The thing is, this is indeed specifically about Classes of Mind, and not the other stuff. Are Classes of Mind, in effect, a virtual form of dividing Mental up into sub-defenses as the physical (note small "p") attacks are divided into ED and PD, with an understandable difference that it's all or nothing so you just have one stat and if you don't have it, it's not 0, it's invulnerability (or the option as cited earlier, which is an interesting leap from invulnerability to "just a little harder")? If so, is this really the right way to do it? Why did Limitations fall by the wayside, why were they inadequate? Why was it not easier to construct CoM with rules about the CoM Framework - I really don't know why the rules are Human vs Alien vs Animal vs Machine when in many genra these are incredibly varying in value. I can presume that it's a broad brush and that the rules intend that there is a balance of both commonality and utility (e.g., Aliens may not be so common but affecting them is incredibly important, perhaps - uh, perhaps...). But without a framework and divorced as such from the tools of the rest of the system, this is an aberrant device - it is a wholly new invented Mechanic manifesting in the Rules or it is a Rule unfounded in the core Mechanics. I really don't know which. Again, we are now embedding SFX directly into the system. I would not object so much if the rulebook were, as a brief, under-written example, "GMs should construct Classes of Minds for Mental powers. A Class of Mind is a type of mind distinct to a type of mental targetting, a particular broad but distinct SFX, such as targetting brains versus targetting computer intelligences. The typical class is very broad, but if a group of target minds would be especially useful it ought to be broken out as its own Class. Typically, in most settings, Humans constitute a single Class of Minds. In modern games, Machines are considered another Class of Mind due to their ubiquity and reasonably "near human" utility, plus the fact that they obvously would be targetted by quite different SFX than human brains would be. In many settings, particularly Fantasy, Animals constitute a Class of Mind. Aliens may constitute a Class of Mind if either important enough to the setting that they should be separated from Humans or if so common that it simply makes sense to otherwise keep them separate from Humans and there is still similar utility for the use of Mental powers with Aliens." That was terribly written, but you get the gist. Instead we got "There are 4 classes, Aliens, Machines, Humans, and Animals, but GMs can and should change this as needed," in essence. Still, I do object to both, the former merely not so strongly. I see no reason for this further embedding of SFX unless the system is going to step up and do the same for the other areas such as Adjustment Powers and NND and Limitations and the like! Now, if we are going to say that the general solution to the matrix of SFX and capabilities in the system will be Classes of SFX, ah, well, interesting, perhaps useful! It becomes a common mechanic and can instruct and inform across the board. Heck, it's not even a bad idea! And then we can really use rules such as "-5 CV, -10 (CHAR)" or the like to ensure it doesn't create pure invulnerabiltiies if that's not desired. Ah, now, here perhaps is a light at the end of this tunnel, if we take this road. But that is something that really requires serious thought. If the intent is a trial balloon of "Classes of SFX" using the Mental area, I don't think this was the way to approach it, even though I think the general notion has merit at least to consider.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Re: Musings on Random Musings Hooray!